Rat Race

Factual error: In the beginning of the movie when the main character is watching ESPN. The footage of the Dallas game, where the referee (Cuba Gooding) messes up the coin toss, you clearly see the sky right over the crowd in the stadium. The ESPN people say it was in Dallas. In Dallas, the Cowboys play in a dome. The hole of the dome is in the center of the roof and the sky would not have been shot so easily. Also the dome has artificial grass. The footage showed natural grass. (00:05:35)

Factual error: When it shows Cuba Gooding Jr.'s botched coin flip call, he is wearing a black hat with white stripes. This hat is only for Line Judges, Back Judges, and Umpires in football. If he is doing the coin flip, he should she be wearing a white hat to signify that he is the referee. The referee wears the white hat in every level of football, from high school all the way to the pros. (00:05:35)

Factual error: Silver City doesn't have a train station. (01:30:15)

Factual error: When Whoopi and her daughter get in the rocket car, look at the wheels, they are ordinary car wheels with car tires. The tires would literally disintegrate well before the car reached 745 miles per hour.

Sol Parker

Factual error: The bullet that was fired and travels next to the rocket car defies the laws of physics. Assuming that the bullet was fired parallel to the ground, the bullet should remain in the air for the same length of time as it would take to drop the bullet from the same height. The bullet in this scene remained in the air for a much longer period of time.

Factual error: As Whoopi Goldberg and her daughter stop the rocket car, the engines on it are clean and shining. After driving through all the brush, not only would they have been very dirty and filled with plants, they would probably have been FODed (Foreign Object Damage) out and quit running long before it ran out of fuel.

Jason Sieberg

Factual error: Security at the airport must be a little lax if two men are able to cut into the fence and climb the radar tower without being noticed the whole time, making all that noise, etc. Also, when the man in the control tower (with the binoculars) noticed the truck hanging, you'd think that security or police would notified. No-one ever questions them, and in the next scene we see a worker at the "U-Rent-It" car rental, checking his licence. No cops investigate the matter, nor is security called. (00:30:15 - 00:33:05)

Factual error: When the brothers are both in the pond and one of them comes up covered in pond weeds, notice a few places on his body, for instance the side of his head, he has a plant attached to him called Water Hyacinth. This plant not only does not grow in the South West, but also floats and you can see that there are none floating anywhere on the pond, especially in the middle where he landed.

Sol Parker

Factual error: During the monster truck scene, the brothers line up their car with others that are to be crushed. All of the cars have their windows and antennae intact. In a real crush, they would all be removed for safety purposes, ie. No flying glass and pierced tires.

Factual error: You can see Joshua Trees many times during the movie (During the Rocket Car scenes, for example.) There are no Joshua Trees outside the Mojave Desert.

Factual error: After the helicopter crash lands, the girl tries to re-start it. The sound is from a piston powered helicopter. The helicopter in the movie was turbine powered. (00:48:10)

Factual error: When Whoopi Goldberg is riding in the supersonic car with her daughter, it shows a bullet traveling at the same speed as the car. However, most bullets travel at 1700 miles per hour; far exceeding the vehicle's maximum speed.

Factual error: When they are riding in the helicopter, she is shown piloting the helicopter from the left side. However, in actual helicopters, the pilot sits on the right side of the cockpit.

Other mistake: When Rowan Atkinson is riding in the train, near the end of the film, he is looking out the window. He is looking forward, then quickly looks backwards. He does this several times in a row, as if trying to see things quickly as the train passes them. But, when the camera pulls back, Rowan's back is facing the direction the train is moving, thus he was looking the wrong way! You can tell by the way the scenery is moving as you look through the window. (01:28:05)

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Donald Sinclair: I can do anything. I'm eccentric.

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Trivia: At the beginning the two brothers are in the casino taking quarters out of a feed the children donation box. It's ironic that they should get the gold coin with the quarters and race to Silver City and end up giving the money to the Feed the Children Foundation and the end.

More trivia for Rat Race

Question: Besides being played for comedic effect, would getting the coin toss wrong have really mattered?

Answer: It really would have mattered. This was over time and the winner of the coin toss gets the ball first. In 2001, NFL overtime was sudden death where a field goal wins the game. So having the ball first is a huge advantage. The messed up coin toss seems to be a joke about the 1998 Thanksgiving game between the Lions and Steelers where the ref messed up the coin toss in overtime because he heard the Steeler's player's call wrong. The Lions ended up getting the ball and winning. Not to mention that many people who bet on football games also bet on the coin toss.

Bishop73

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