The Hunt for Red October (1990)

Factual error: When the USS Dallas submerges to attack the Red October, they rig for battle stations as well as rig for red. On a submarine, rig for red is only for periscope depth operations at night, to allow control room watchstanders eyes to adjust to the darkness topside. No other area on the boat rigs for red. Throughout the movie the lights darken along with battle stations. No naval ship would reduce visibility on purpose in a heightened state. (01:31:00)

Visible crew/equipment: When the Red October sub has surfaced to let the crew get off because of the supposed nuclear leak, there is a brief shot where you can clearly see the camera and its filming crew in their tennis shoes on the deck.

Factual error: Aboard the aircraft carrier, there is a closed-circuit TV that shows the operations on the flight deck. At one point, a gull-gray F-14 Tomcat, in obvious distress, comes in for a landing. The camera cuts away from the TV to Ryan's face, and the cuts back to the TV. All of a sudden, the plane crashing is no longer an F-14, but an old Korean War-era fighter (F-9F Panther of VF-21), colored the dark blue the Navy stopped using in the 1950s. The director chose to insert a piece of stock footage from George Duncan's crash on the deck of USS Midway (CV-41) on July 23rd, 1951 rather than build a model F-14 to crash for an otherwise unimportant scene.

Trivia: Paramount Studios essentially rented a US submarine to be in the movie. The USS Houston (SSN 713) played the USS Dallas and the surface scenes were filmed off of Long Beach, CA and Port Angelas, WA. Two crewmembers off the Houston were actually given very small speaking parts in the movie.

Trivia: The Alfa-class submarine Konovalov commanded by Captain Tupolev is named after Soviet Rear Admiral Vladimir Konovalov. In March 1945, he sunk the German luxury liner Goya in the Baltic Sea on its way to Kiel, killing 6220 East Prussian refugees out of 6385.

Trivia: The bear that Jack Ryan brings home to his daughter is the exact same bear Bruce Willis brings to his son in Die Hard (both films were directed by John McTiernan).

Jeffrey Pelt: Mr. Ryan, I'm a politician. Which means I'm a cheat and a liar and when I'm not kissing babies I'm stealing their lollipops.

Admiral Josh Painter: This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.

Jack Ryan: "Ryan, some things in here don't react well to bullets." Yeah, like me. I don't react well to bullets.

Question: In the sonar room on the Dallas, there is a roll of what looks like toilet paper next to the monitor. Is there some special purpose for that?

Question: During the ending sequence (with the Alpha) the Red October is running on the screws instead of the caterpillar. Now, we know the "reactor leak" was fake...and we know that the caterpillar was working normally (right after Ramius says "let us turn South" you see the Red October dive over a canyon wall with the screws not moving hence the caterpillar running). Wouldn't it have been wiser to run on the caterpillar during the ending?

Question: In the scene in which Jack is asking himself how Ramius is going to get his men off the Red October, how does he figure out what Ramius is going to do?