Full Metal Jacket

Other mistake: When the sniper fires her rifle at Joker after his rifle jams, she fires at him and strangely no shell casings are ejected. A few bursts later and her rifle does eject shell casings.

Jack Vaughan

Other mistake: During patrol before Crazy picks up the stuffed animal, you can see the bottom half of the stuffed animal move slightly up, then back down before the booby trap explodes.

posty

Other mistake: In the first PT run if you look at their boots you see they have their trousers bloused, this doesn't happen in boot camp till week 3 or 4. In the next scene they are at drill and no bloused trousers.

Other mistake: Private Pyle seems to be just as large in the bathroom scene with Hartman as he is in the Jelly Donut scene. In reality, it's just the same actor, but in the film's plot it implies he went through 12-22 weeks of boot camp under Hartman without ever losing any weight, even though Hartman was specifically trying to get him to.

Moose

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

Suggested correction: There's a simple answer: Hartman failed to get Pyle to lose weight. Technically, Hartman was trying to get Pyle to graduate, regardless of his weight, which was achieved.

Video

Continuity mistake: In the opening scene, Gunnery Sgt. Hartman is making his speech and passes by Privates Cowboy and Joker on his way to the other side of the barracks. On his way he passes Private Pyle standing to the right of Private Joker. Later in the scene, when he rushes over to confront Private Joker and then moves on to Private Cowboy and then Private Pyle, Private Pyle is on the left of Private Joker. (00:02:00)

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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

Answer: It was to show what someone might do (someone with a loaded gun and confronted by their abuser) whilst in the process of having a mental breakdown.

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