Outbreak

Outbreak (1995)

11 corrected entries

(4 votes)

Corrected entry: As we all know, at least those of us who bother to keep up with the news and scare stories about the current Ebola crisis, while viruses such as this do continually mutate it is simply not possible for them to substantially change their mode of transmission and "go airborne" overnight. This one, rather bizarrely, suddenly grows microscopic hairs. Total nonsense. It's never happened that quickly, and it never will, as a fundamental mutation such as that would take very much longer indeed. Panic ye not!

jonsleeper

Correction: That's not what they say. They make it very clear that the host monkey is infected with both strains of the virus and just happened to transfer one to Jimbo and the other to Rudy.

Greg Dwyer

Corrected entry: Before getting on the plane, Col. Daniels has a conversation with General Ford. Ford salutes Daniels, which is incorrect; as the lower ranking officer, Daniels should have saluted first as a sign of respect and protocol.

Movie Nut

Correction: Ford and Daniels are also very good friends. Doing something like that privately and not in the presence of others just shows signs of their friendship.

lartaker1975

Corrected entry: The character Salt is a Major, and was only in his mid-20s or so. On average it takes around 12 years to make the rank of Major (and after a minimum of 4 years of college), which means that Salt would have had to enter the military when he was around 12 or 13, obviously not possible. It would have been far more believable if Salt had been a Second or First Lieutenant.

Correction: MAJ Salt is a Medical Doctor. In the Army that is called an AMEDD officer. He would have entered a CPT, and possibly got promoted after completing both his Army Medical training and other training. It also showed he was an Aviation officer previously. The rank is at least plausible.

Corrected entry: At one point in the film a Hummer pulls up quickly outside the main hospital. So quickly in fact it bumps into an old lady in the crowd knocking her flying.

Correction: Not a mistake, as this can happen in real life. Unintentional in the movie, perhaps, but still possible.

Twotall

Corrected entry: Near the beginning of the movie, when the man who smuggled the monkey out of US Customs is flying on the airplane, he is approached by a young boy dressed in a cowboy outfit complete with two toy guns. I know it's obvious the guns are only toys but FAA regulations at the time (both real world and for the time frame of the movie, which are about the same) prohibited toy, simulated and/or fake guns from carry-on.

Correction: Before 9/11, airline security was taken much less seriously than it is today. It's quite possible that the child's parent was able to persuade security that the toys were harmless and/or that depriving the child of the toys would result in tantrums that would not be appreciated by the other passengers or crew.

Phoenix

Corrected entry: The Asian who first came in contact with the monkey died on the ship. But the ship, the Tai Kuk, had just departed to sea the day that Sam visited. The man who had the monkey would have been the first to die, before Jimbo. If he had died then, why did the ship's crew still have his dead body on the ship, if they'd already been to port?

Correction: They are transporting the body home to his family for burial.

Correction: This is nonsense because the crew in port would have to report this mysterious death.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Cuba Gooding Jr. and Dustin Hoffman are in the helicopter and Dustin is about to jump onto the Japanese freighter, Cuba's character goes out of his way to say that there's no place to land the helicopter and Dustin will have to jump onto the freighter. Cuba says he's got plenty of fuel to wait while Dustin checks out the freighter. Dustin reluctantly makes the leap, landing on a lifeboat. Dustin looks around, finds the pic of the monkey and the scene ends. Next we see Cuba and Dustin landing the chopper at the news station. How did Dustin get back on the chopper?

Correction: Before Dustin jumps onto the boat he asks how he's going to get back up. Cuba then replies for him to have the boat crew clear him a space to land the chopper.

wolfchild

Correction: They conveniently fast-forward without showing it, but in reality it would've taken hours to do all those steps to reboard the helicopter. That's assuming it was even possible.

Corrected entry: When the truckload of citizens is trying to flee the town, and the helicopter is chasing after them, it fires a missile, and the truck is consumed by the ensuing fireball. However, if you look at the driver and his passenger as the truck is blowing up, you can see them frozen into position - they're obviously dummies.

Correction: the reason that they look like dummies is the fact that the helicopter shot them with it's machine gun before firing the missile. If you watch closely, you can see bullet holes appear in the windshield, killing the passengers, before the missile is fired to blow up the truck. You can also hear the shots fired from the helicopter.

Corrected entry: When they stole the helicopter and Donald Sutherland is following them, he says he's chasing helicopter number 1350. Later when they take off to try to stop 'Sandman' (with the bomb), watch closely near the rotor blades of the helicopter. It will show 1360.

Correction: Actually, if you pause the DVD, the number will show very cleary to be 1350 - the number that everyone has been using.

Corrected entry: After stealing a helicopter and flying it all around the West coast, never running out of fuel, when they somehow find the original infected monkey and try to capture it Cuba Gooding Jr. somehow happens to have a large tranquilliser gun with him that apparently appeared by magic.

Correction: Cuba mentions at one point when Dustin Hoffman asks if they're low on fuel that the Loach can go over 400 miles without refueling. The total area they flew over wasn't that big. Also, they went off with the intention of finding the host...chances are they came armed with the tranq gun.

Corrected entry: Why do they make such a dramatic deal about the virus being airborne especially with Hoffman looking at the camera and saying it's airborne? We know it's airborne by the fact that people caught it in the movie theatre. You would think people from the CDC who would have handled cases like this would know that if it isn't transmitted through fluid or blood than it has to be in the air.

Tobin OReilly

Correction: Actually, if you recall the movie theater scene, the lab worker who spread the disease coughs, and you can see the spray of saliva (animated and followed for effect) touch several other moviegoers, and even land in one woman's mouth as she turns and laughs. Also, as he stumbles to the snack counter, it's obvious how many people he touches as he fights through the crowd. That means it could still be spread by bodily fluid at that point. Also, Dustin Hoffman wasn't IN the movie theater so had no idea how many people that man could have directly touched, and how many THEY'D touched, etc.

Factual error: When the camera is panning through the different rooms of USAMRIID it exits out of BSL-3 and as it does a female technician takes her breathing mask off before she opens the door. This is supposed to be the highly infectious room that tests things like Anthrax or H.I.V. yet this woman not only takes her mask off she's not even quarantined or decontaminated.

jbrbbt

More mistakes in Outbreak

Sam Daniels: If you think I'm lying, drop the bomb. If you think I'm crazy, drop the bomb. But don't drop the bomb just because you're following orders.

More quotes from Outbreak
More trivia for Outbreak

Question: Why did General Donald McClintock want to keep the virus a secret and not let anyone know of its existence?

Trainman

Answer: He wanted to eventually use it as a biological weapon.

raywest

Answer: Is it because if anyone knew about it will spread information across the globe and will likely lead to his enemies and will no longer be a secret and his plans will be ruined?

Trainman

More questions & answers from Outbreak

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.