Full Metal Jacket

Continuity mistake: When Animal Mother calls Cowboy to get the lone sniper, Cowboy chooses 4 guys to go with him: No-Doze, Stutten, Donlon and Rock. Then Joker and Rafterman say they wanna go too, so that makes 7 men (including Cowboy) but we only see 6. (01:34:00)

Continuity mistake: As the men get out of bed to attack Pyle, a close-up of Cowboy shows him looking to Snowball. Both are in bottom bunks. Between them we see a pair of legs lower and hang from a top bunk. The shot changes to a more distant angle and the legs repeat the motion. (00:28:50)

johnrosa

Continuity mistake: When Joker goes to see Cowboy and the squad are sitting in the temple, the dead Vietnamese's face can be seen without the hat covering it. When the photo is taken by Rafterman, his hat appears and is removed.

Continuity mistake: While Hartman is addressing the privates, who sit on the bleachers, the sky behind keeps swapping from dark grey to sunny, back and forth depending on the angle.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: After Hartman punches Joker, the scene shifts to Joker's point of view with Hartman pointing his finger directly in Joker's face while berating him. After the scene changes to a distant shot, Hartman is pointing behind Joker's head.

Rick

Continuity mistake: After Cowboy says they are pulling back after Eightball and Doc Jay were wasted, Mother pivots to tell everyone to wait. After his pivot, his left leg stayed behind him, but the very next shot of a closer look to Mother, his left leg has moved up beside his other leg.

posty

Continuity mistake: After Cowboy dies, Mother comes over and states, "Are we ready for payback?" Joker says, "Yeah." He then proceeds to start bringing his arms together. Immediately, the camera switches to a wider view, and Joker is starting to bring his hands together again.

posty

Video

Continuity mistake: When Hartman is messing with Snowball, Joker quotes John Wayne. Hartman seeks out who said something. He grabs Cowboy by the blouse and pulls it upwards forcefully while questioning if he made the joke. Then Joker admits to making the joke. Hartman moves over to Joker, but you can see Cowboy's blouse is now bunched up at the top and no longer properly tucked in. After Hartman reprimands Joker, he moves back to Cowboy. Cowboy's blouse looks as if was never touched by Hartman. (00:03:40 - 00:04:40)

luchador

Continuity mistake: When the squad is first ambushed they take cover around the corner of a building. Around the corner the window is boarded up. The next shot the window is unblocked and wide open and it enables the sniper to shoot Cowboy.

Continuity mistake: Just before the jelly doughnut scene, as Hartman is walking up the aisle, he is in front of Joker's locker, about to reach Pyle's locker. A moment later he comes to Joker's locker, before he gets to Pyle's.

Video

Continuity mistake: After Cowboy and company hook up with Mother, there are seven soldiers. When Cowboy gets shot, there are seven against the wall, not including Cowboy.

posty

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Funny thing is, there are 8 whilst there should be 9. When they go to get Mother, Cowboy points out 5 to come with him, and then Joker and Rafterman volunteer to come along. That's 8. Including Mother that would be 9. But there are only 8 in later shots. I can count 8 at the 2:30 timestamp. What is even funnier is that at 2:02 there are only 6 running, not 8. And lastly, when they hook up with Mother, they are 6 in total against the wall (2:24). Maybe someone could confirm this for me so it can be edited.

lionhead

Actually, he tells four to come with him: No-Doze, Scutter, Donlon, and Rock. Joker and Rafterman join, so that should be seven going to mother, but only six are shown. There was an entry for that here, but it is under corrections, saying that the viewer is one of the seven, which is totally incorrect.

posty

Continuity mistake: When Hartman slaps Joker, Joker's head is turned sideways by the slap. A moment later, he is looking straight down.

Continuity mistake: During the scene where the Joker moves into the building to kill the sniper, the sniper sees him and starts shooting at the pillar he is behind. During this shot, large chunks of the pillar fall away, but in the next shot, when the sniper gets shot, the pillar is intact.

Continuity mistake: When Hartman is showing the doughnut to the Privates, it changes looks depending on the shot: smooth and sugar coated, or wrinkled with barely any sugar.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: The shape of the beam of light coming from Joker's torch, after he enters the bathroom where Pyle kills himself, is different from the shape of the beam before he enters.

Jack Vaughan

Full Metal Jacket mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Gomer Pyle is in the toilet with his rifle and after shooting the drill instructor, Pyle sits down on the fourth toilet seat from the back of the room. In the next shot where Pyle kills himself, he is sitting on the third toilet seat. You can see this already from the front shot of Pyle when he kills himself because there is a rise in the wall next to the third seat, which is visible through the whole scene. It is more obvious in the following shot where you can see the row of toilet seats and Pyle sitting dead on the third one. (00:43:00 - 00:43:35)

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Trivia: R. Lee Ermey actually wrote all of Gunny Hartman's dialog himself. Ermey was involved in a serious car accident right before shooting, so Kubrick invited Ermey to come stay at his house in England to recover. While recovering Ermey read the script over and over, and he remarked that the Drill Instructor's dialog that was in the script was obviously the work of a screenwriter with a cliche imagination who obviously had no idea what boot camp was really like. So Kubrick allowed Ermey to re-write all of the dialog himself.

RJR99SS

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Answer: It was Gustav Hasford's idea. It happened in the original book that the story is based on, "The Short Timers."

Captain Defenestrator

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