Factual error: At the end of the movie WOPR tries to crack the launch-code using brute force. So far so good. When WOPR finds out one digit of the 10 digit code, the first digit locks and the search goes on with the remaining 9 digits. Then he finds the second one, it locks too and so on. Problem is, brute force doesn't work that way. It would be too easy (26 letters and 10 numbers = only 36 possibilities for one digit). Brute-Force works only "all or nothing", you can't sneak your way to the whole code one by one.
WarGames (1983)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: John Badham
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, Ally Sheedy
The hacker gets the computer to stop blowing up the world by telling it to play tic-tac-toe so the computer will realize that there is no winner in a nuclear war.
Rob T Firefly
More mistakes in WarGames
David Lightman: [On the computer] Hello, are you still playing the game?
Joshua: Of course. I should reach Defcon 1 and release my missiles in 28 hours. Would you like to see some projected kill ratios?
David Lightman: Sixty-nine percent of the housing destroyed. Seventy-two million people dead. [Types into computer] Is this a game or is it real?
Joshua: What's the difference?
Trivia: A very early reference to computer "firewalls" is mentioned in this film.
More questions & answers from WarGames
Answer: Writer Walter Parkes explained they had John Wood read the dialog backwards to give it a flat tone (i.e. Game a play to like you would). Then after rearranging it they would synthesize and process it to give it an electronic quality.
Bishop73