Corrected entry: A human being cannot survive inside a closed refrigerator for even one hour, let alone overnight. They would suffer from a lack of oxygen and die. "Refrigerator death" is a rare occurrence but has happened on several occasions when children accidentally lock themselves in a fridge or if someone purposefully traps an individual in one.
odelphi
9th Dec 2019
Joker (2019)
Correction: It is possible the fridge just simply didn't seal fully. They are a poor family and likely have broken down old appliances. The airtight seals around the door could have been damaged thus letting air get inside, albeit even if just a little.
The fridge did close. Watch the scene, we here and see the fridge closing fully, it was night when he entered and the scene cuts to morning of the next day where it's daytime, so he was in the fridge overnight.
A refrigerator that is on, like the Joker's, has a fan that circulates cold air. The air comes from somewhere. A running refrigerator is not a vacuum.
There is so much wrong with this statement. First, that's not how refrigerators work. Second, asphyxiation doesn't occur in a vacuum. The mistake isn't claiming the Joker was in a vacuum.
21st May 2020
Common mistakes
Factual error: In movie plots that take place hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the characters have perfectly white, straight teeth. It is a known fact that Queen Elizabeth I was virtually toothless by age 40. Good dental hygiene didn't really exist until after WWII. Some movies get it right, but only for the bad guys.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: False teeth have been around for centuries; they could be made from a variety of materials including wood, porcelain, or even human teeth taken from corpses or people who willingly sold their teeth to make some quick cash. People with the means to do so could acquire them quite easily, and they were often indistinguishable from a person's own natural teeth.
Your reasoning is very weak. Yes, false teeth have been around for centuries, but even today with much better technology, with close observation you can tell someone has false teeth. Everyone knew G. Washington had false teeth. No, these characters from 500 years ago are not ALL wearing false teeth.
Australian Aboriginals have (had, before colonization) almost perfectly white, straight teeth and it's known that this is somehow related with their foraging diet. If it's true, then most people back ago could have almost perfect teeth too.
Furthermore, widespread tooth decay before great age was only a rich person's problem until refined sugar became cheap, so the peasants wouldn't have bad teeth either.
Tooth decay is not caused by refined sugars. Any carbohydrates will promote bacterial growth, which can cause tooth decay. Additionally acidic food and drinks and alcohol (which can be high in carbohydrates) can damage the teeth and promote bacterial growth. And the mistake is talking about movies in general with countless characters, not a few select characters with significant means.
Thanks for your response. You said it better than I could have.
I mostly agree with you, but I am talking about characters who are rich with perfectly white teeth (and more importantly) great gums - no recession. What I disagree is that only sugar causes teeth decay. Not true. Virtually all food breaks down into simple sugars with enzymes in your saliva.
14th Oct 2018
Common mistakes
Character mistake: People who carry a loaded pistol, or keep a loaded pistol next to them, that never have a round in the chamber, just so the character can cock it right before a shootout. Or when a round is suppose to be in the chamber and the person cocks the gun anyways and no round is ejected.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: On the first point, this is not a mistake. Proper gun handing would dictate that you don't have a round in the chamber until you are going to use the gun. On your second point, you are assuming too much that there is a round in the chamber.
Proper gun handling would be to use the safety. It's ridiculous for a character to keep an unchambered gun that they're planning on using, or think they might use. On the second point, I'm not assuming anything. I'm saying when it's suppose to be chambered because we saw it chambered, or it was fired and a round was chambered, etc. I didn't say when it's assumed to be chambered.
You are right that it would be ridiculous for a character to keep an unchambered gun they are planning on using, but that is not my point. My point is that proper gun safety would be to not normally keep a round in the chamber unless you were going to use it. Cocking the gun shows the audience he intends on using it. Before that, you didn't know his intent. On the second point, OK, you provided additional clarification.
14th Oct 2018
Common mistakes
Character mistake: When someone gets shot and the first thing people try to do is remove the bullet, often with a knife and no anesthetic.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: This commonly happens but this is not a mistake. What is wrong with removing the bullet with a knife and no anesthetic. Many times the characters don't have access to a medical facility with all the accoutrements to remove a bullet or don't want to go to a hospital where bullet wounds are reported to law enforcement.
It seems my original entry was edited to make it more brief. But in real life, bullets are not commonly removed because there's no need. The bullet is not the concern, it's the hole the bullet caused that's the concern. They (and more specific to what I was trying to suggest, they as in medical experts) are increasing the risk factors for no viable reason and are never addressing the main cause for concern. And the point of not using anesthetic is they are increasing the risk factors even more for an already pointless surgery.
21st Oct 2018
Common mistakes
Factual error: Protagonists who have been able to clear their name after being framed, but only in the process of committing several other crimes, for which they receive no punishments. The law is still the law and crimes are all separate from each other committed in that time period.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: This can be true or not. Prosecutors have a lot of discretion whether to prosecute a crime of not. If you help the police solve a crime that you were originally a suspect by committing another crime, as long as that crime is not murder (it can be self-defense) the prosecutor has discretion whether to prosecute.
Plus, in the case of common mistakes, they are not working with the police to clear their name. And just because they're not murdering people doesn't mean they're not assaulting people (outside the realm of self-defense). Plus, this common mistake is especially true for police officers kicked off the case and then break all sorts of police procedures with no consequences.
The only point I am making is that prosecutors do have discretion whether to prosecute crimes. If the crime is minor AND you helped the prosecutor with other more serious crimes, they can choose to not prosecute you for the minor crimes. The OP was vague as to what kind of additional crimes they committed. If murder, then I don't see how they get away with that just because they helped solve other crimes. It would depend on what kind of other crimes the protagonist committed.
30th Sep 2019
Ad Astra (2019)
Factual error: The Cepheus appears to be under continuous acceleration on the way to Mars, and to Neptune. That would be the only way it could travel so far so fast. So, there would not be weightlessness any any time on board the ship, unless the engines were turned off.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: You are making an assumption that Cepheus was under constant acceleration. It could have accelerated to the desired speed then "cruised" at that speed the rest of the way.
If Cefeus travels to Neptune in only 79 days, it should fly 500 km per second. It's a long time to accelerate to this fantastic speed, and long time to decelerate, whole time of travel easily.
Not a long time - at an acceleration of 1G (10 m/s/s) it would only take only 50,000 seconds to reach 500,000 metres/sec. That's only 13.8 hours. Also, the rocket did a slingshot manoeuvre around Jupiter and Saturn to gain speed, which fortunately (perhaps too fortuitously) must have been on the same side of the Sun as Neptune in its orbit.
24th Sep 2019
Ad Astra (2019)
Factual error: A nuclear explosion couldn't kick start a rocket on its journey home as shown. There's no atmosphere, hence no shockwaves to help propel the ship forwards.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: The explosion itself is still a projection of energy that would push the ship. The plan itself is stupid, as it would be impossible to correctly set a trajectory, but the explosion would still push the ship.
The only way the explosion could transfer energy to the ship would be if massive pieces of the Lima slammed into the ship, destroying it.
What the spacecraft needs is some way to acquire momentum from the explosion. The explosion does convert a great deal of nuclear energy in the form of radiation, but not very much useful momentum. This was a major hurdle attacked during Project Orion back in the early 1960s, which was a program to develop an interplanetary spaceship propelled by exploding a series of nuclear bombs near to an aft pusher plate. The solution was to coat the plate's surface with a material which would ablate off the plate. The material would rise in temperature under the intensely hot radiation, with its molecular constituents vibrating violently. At a critical temperature the outermost molecules would attain escape velocity and scatter off the plate aftward. Momentum is conserved, so the aftward momentum of each escaping molecule would be balanced by an equal increase of forward momentum by the spacecraft.
The explosion creates violently expanding gases that apparently were great enough to offer some push to the rocket. Since there is no friction in space to act against the force, theoretically the ship would be pushed at the same speed as the expanding gases.
Sorry but there's no such thing in physics as 'a projection of energy that would push the ship'. Maybe you are thinking of the photoelectric effect, but this is much too small. The only thing from the explosion that would propel the rocket is mass - the Lima ship's vaporised matter which would radiate in all directions, so only a few pounds of gas would hit it - even at a huge velocity, just a little nudge.
24th Sep 2019
Ad Astra (2019)
Character mistake: Brad Pitt has control jets on his space suit - he uses them to accelerate him back towards his ship at the end, but somehow doesn't think to turn himself around and use them to slow down, hence slamming into the ship at great speed. Given the skill he demonstrates every other time in the movie, this only seems to happen for the sake of a dramatic arrival.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: It is not unfeasible that he used the RPS fuel to accelerate and had none left, since he already wasted a certain amount after his father pulled him away from Lima station.
In space you can't just swing around and change directions because there is no friction or gravity. He would have to have a jet that shoots forward (a retrorocket) or he would have to turn using the jets which would make him go in the opposite direction, not slow him down. From what I saw, there was no retrorocket on his pack.
There were retrorockets in his father's suite, he was flying in space using them. Why there was no such rockets in Roy's suite, wasn't it exactly the same? Helmets were identical, and other details too. He could slow him down.
There are no 'rockets' or 'retro rockets' on an EVA space suit, just thrusters that used in combination and with direction of the nozzles, can make it move any way they want, including turning and yes, slowing down. It's just Newton's Laws.
1st Oct 2018
A Simple Favor (2018)
Corrected entry: When Faith and Hope meet at the summer camp, they are supposed to be identical twins. Even though they look very similar (possible fraternal twins) you can tell the actresses who play them are not identical twins. Hope has an obvious cleft in her chin but Faith does not.
Correction: Hope and Faith, at age 16, are in fact played by identical twin sisters (Nicole and Lauren Peters). The phenotypical expression of a cleft chin can depend on environmental factors.
I guess I should have been more specific as to when they meet at the summer camp. I am not referring to when they were 16, but when they met at the summer camp as adults when Faith killed her sister by drowning her and ditching her car. The actresses who played the adult twins were obviously not identical twins.
According to IMDB, Blake Lively played both adult twins, so the above makes no sense.
Unless I missed something, Blake Lively plays both Faith and Hope in the scene. There are not two actresses, just the one. Feel free to reply with the name of the actress who played Faith so I can see what I missed.
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.
Correction: Clearly it didn't work for him as he tried to commit suicide but was alive the next day. Maybe he got cold feet and exited quite quickly. Since the scene cuts after he closes the door you can't know what happened.
lionhead
Incorrect. We see the refrigerator fully closing. When he closes it, it's night and when it cuts to the next scene it's morning, therefore he was in overnight.
Sure it closed, but you can't see he was in it all night. You can force yourself out of such types of fridge, if you have to.
lionhead
So long as there is no scene specifically showing him crawl out of said refrigerator at dawn, there is no proof - implied or otherwise - he was in there overnight. As the previous entry corrected earlier, there is no way of knowing exactly how long he was inside for, and he obviously survived up until the end credits so the entire point or duration is moot.