Sammo

Plot hole: Sandman's only wish is, as he repeats, to go back and see his daughter again. He helps Spider-man a few times, but at the same time he does not trust him entirely, so he does not act as full time ally. In the final battle though, at one point he explicitly sides with the Sinister Five, making for cool visuals in the battle but no sense; Electro and the others want to destroy the device that will send him home. He has no reasons to support them and every reason to prevent this from happening.

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: He doesn't side with the Sinister Five. He demands for Spider-Man to hand him the box during the final battle. It's clear that his intention is to hit the button and be taken back to his universe. He is fighting for himself in the final battle.

As I said, cool visuals in the battle at the price of not making sense. At one point he's doing coordinate attacks on them with Electro and Lizard, he fights without chasing the box, and again, he's visually and in actions on the side of those whose victory will spell the end of his only wish, just because he wants those who wanna help him to do it faster? At no point in the battle it would make sense to do what he does.

Sammo

You are incorrect.

Plot hole: The original "Make everyone forget that Spider-man is Peter Parker except..." spell went horribly wrong and Strange at the end of the movie is struggling to prevent a complete collapse of reality because people from the whole multiverse who fit the exception shoehorned by Peter have been drawn to this reality. Strange then does a new spell that supersedes the other by making everyone forget Peter Parker, period. The problem is, by that logic everyone would forget who Peter is also in all those universes involved and so Maguire and Garfield's life are likewise ruined and one wonders if they are even allowed to remember their own name (after all, the initial spell did affect them, so the radical undoing of it should too).

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: There is no indication that Strange's spell works on the multiverse. I'd say that is a bit of a stretch. The spell was focussed on MCU's spiderman, and him being forgotten fixed the multiverse (temporarily probably). The initial spell was flawed and broke down the multiverse barriers, causing other universes to spill in. The new spell fixed that, not change those universes.

lionhead

I came here because I had realised the exact same thing Sammo had. The villains are not there because they know who MCU-Peter is, they are there because they know that Peter is Spider-Man in their universe. The first spell is still active, the second spell adjusts the consequences of it, because why else would the second spell send them back? The only way the villains can vanish is if they forget who Peter is in their universe as well, which means the other two Spideys are in the same situation.

The spilled over Spider-Men and villains can vanish because the second spell restores the flaws of the first spell, which caused the barriers of reality to come down. With the flaw restored, everything that spilled over is returned automatically. Not because they too don't know who Spider-Man is now, but because reality is restored.

lionhead

That's not really the way they presented it in the movie. The second spell is "Make everyone forget who Peter Parker is." If it works the way you say, wouldn't they have been able to accomplish the same with a spell with less severe consequences, like "make everyone forget my middle name"?

MCU's Peter Parker, because MCU's Spider-Man is not forgotten. My point was that since the spell failure DID affect people from the whole multiverse, "everyone who know that Peter Parker is Spider-man" even when it's not THEIR Peter Parker, why would the fix (which happens when the beings have already broken in) be a selective one on a specific Peter? Happy if they address it in one of the next movies.

Sammo

The first spell was also focussed on the MCU's Peter Parker but the failure caused tears in the multiverse and caused people to spill in, the spell didn't directly affect them. The fix was again specifically aimed at the MCU's Peter Parker, to supersede the failed spell and cause the tears to heal and the spilled over people to return. This one did work and thus only the MCU was affected whilst the others were returned (still with memories from changes by MCU's Peter).

lionhead

As I said, hard to say it "didn't directly affect" those people when they were sucked into a different universe against their will, and they were because they had one peculiar trait the movie keeps hammering in; knowing that Peter Parker, any Peter, is Spider-man. It's the characters that use it in the exposition and then in the resolution, with two different meanings that don't match.

Sammo

It was stated near the beginning that the spell went out of hand because it was changed six times mid-spell. Changing a spell while it's in the middle of being cast causes the spell to go berserk. The spell cast at the end is not changed mid-cast, so it was more controlled than the old spell.

If he just needed to cast properly, he could have casted it again in a more controlled way, but he cannot since "they're here." So it is a different spell, but if the condition "being Peter Parker" was not sufficiently clear the first time around (and Peter even interrupted the spell saying "everyone who knew that *I* was Spider-man before", not "everyone who knows Peter Parker is Spider-man"), there's no reason why it should be now.As I said, I'm pointing out that the meaning keeps shifting.

Sammo

Plot hole: The whole premise of the movie is that due to a botched spell, people who happen to know that "Peter Parker is Spider-Man" are pulled inside this universe. It's a bit of a stretch already that amongst those people is...Peter Parker himself, twice over, but let's say it makes sense. The problem is that Jamie Foxx's Electro does not meet this condition; he never found out. You could say it's a retcon or it's a different universe from the original movie's, but even this cop-out explanation is negated by the movie itself when Max Dillon makes a joke that shows that he didn't know Spidey's identity or even race.

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: Although Max didn't discover Peter's identity on film, an explanation of why Max knows his name IS offered. When the villains are talking about what happened before they found themselves in the MCU, Max indicated that once he tapped fully into the power grid and information systems, there was nothing he didn't know at that point. Since we know there is a clandestine organization tracking Peter from the end of ASM1, it's possible Max gained the info from their database.

In the interest of clarity, you refer to the one line that goes "I was stuck in the grid, absorbing data."? Nothing about tapping fully, and becoming omniscient as the correction presents. So we have to give it that specific meaning and make a connection to the obscure postcredit scene by Fiers in the unfinished trilogy that asks Connors if he said anything to the boy imagining that it produced data that was 'on the grid' somehow, and Electro never processed this information in the movie. Not sure if it's quite an"explanation offered", since the movie offers none. It's a 'possible' explanation like the other one people use, about hearing Gwen say Peter's name (I like this one better because at least it would give a special meaning to a throwaway line and I do I love attention to details).

Sammo

Suggested correction: I don't find it such a stretch that he knew Peter's name but didn't know what he looked like.

Electro didn't learn Spidey's name during the events of the original movie.

Sammo

When Spider-Man is explaining his plan to defeat Electro to Gwen, Gwen addresses him as "Peter." Electro was laying on the ground nearby and likely would have heard this. Presumably, knowing that Spidey's real name was Peter was enough to pull him in.

There are almost 10,000 "Peter" in New York alone in our world. Knowing just the super-common first name wouldn't cut it and the movie does nothing to support this theory, in fact does everything to undermine it (Strange's explanation, Electro's joke, complete lack of addressing it, etc). Also if he overheard that bit in the original movie, he would have also learned their plans to defeat him.

Sammo

It's not shown, but Harry could have shared details off-screen.

What kind of details and for what purpose? Harry himself learns that Peter is Spider-man when Electro is already dead and they had a very improvised and loose alliance to begin with.

Sammo

Suggested correction: I guess we're all going to ignore the fact that this Electro has a completely different look than the Max we saw previously. It's quite possible he's from a different universe.

DetectiveGadget85

He's not from a different universe than the Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The Lizard and the Andrew Garfield version of Spider-Man both know who he is, and he talks about events from the aforementioned film. His different appearance is also explained in the film.

Phaneron

All that means is he went through similar experiences and has a similar appearance as the Max they knew. Ala J. Jonah Jameson.

DetectiveGadget85

Suggested correction: It's not people who know who is Spider-Man that are spilling in, it's people who are connected to him in any way.

lionhead

No, no. Strange says it explicitly "That little spell you botched, when you wanted everyone to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-man? It started pulling in everyone who knows that Peter Parker is Spider-man" and so on. That's why in the end they fix it by making everyone forget who Peter Parker is, not who Spider-man is.

Sammo

Plot hole: A core plot point (lifted by the comics) is that Venom needs phenethylamine, and the only way to get it is from brains and from chocolate. Let's just go with it and forget the fact that phenethylamine can be legally purchased as dietary supplement, which would solve every problem. So, Venom gets incredibly angry because Mrs. Chen's shop ran out of chocolates, and *therefore* they need to go raid a chicken plant to eat some chicken brain. Uh, Venom lives in San Francisco. Chocolate is sold everywhere. If Mrs. Chen ran out of it, there are hundreds of stores and vending machines that have it in abundance. The escalation does not make sense.

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: The point is he needs to steal it. At Mrs. Chen's shop he gets it for free because he protects her from robbers. Eddie doesn't have the money to buy all the chocolate Venom needs all the time. Stealing some chickens as an alternative is better than trying to shoplift at a different store.

lionhead

In the rest of the movie Eddie lives in his old apartment constantly in need of repairs, but shows zero serious money problems. He has lavish breakfasts, and he replaces the $2,000 TV the same day. Raiding the chicken place appears riskier than slipping his symbiote in a vending machine or shoplift, especially if it's just temporary - again assuming he's so poor that he literally has no money to eat, which is something the movie should have let us know, instead of pointing to the contrary and making him talk angrily about the need for them to not draw attention.

Sammo

Not only are the original mistake and Sammo 100% correct, but chocolate isn't exactly expensive. You can get 5 pound bulk orders of melting chocolate on Amazon for like... $25. And that's just a quick 2-second Amazon search. You could probably get it even cheaper elsewhere online. Even if Eddie hypothetically has little money (which doesn't seem to be the case - he has a nicely sized apartment in a major city, new TV, etc.), it's still ridiculous that he couldn't get his hands on chocolate. This is definitely a case of the movie ignoring practicality and reason to manufacture a funny situation.

TedStixon

I agree. There are many other stores that sell candy so all Eddie had to do was to go to one of those instead. Plus, at the end of the first movie, Eddie told Ann that he was going to become an investigative journalist, so he has a new job.

Suggested correction: Which would you rather have phenethylamine, chicken, or chocolate for dinner? That's like saying just because we need food to survive...we should just eat anything or buy our base vitamins and minerals over the counter and from the store.

DetectiveGadget85

Sure. How does that have anything to do with the entry? Venom wanted chocolate for dinner and not chicken, supplements to a diet don't mean that you can't eat actual food and the main point was and is that if a store in a metropolis is sold out of chocolate of any kind, there are a dozen other stores in a few blocks' radius who sell it without you having to resort to crime to eat it.

Sammo

Corrected entry: Spoiler: Everything goes well in the end and all the ghosts (and returning demigod Gozer) are sucked into a giant ghost trap. In fact everything goes so well that the trap selectively spares one specific ghost so it can have a lengthy farewell scene, hug and smooch every single character at leisure and leave on its own terms.

Sammo

Correction: The other ghosts were above the traps. The one specific ghost was not. Every time a ghost has been trapped they have been above the trap. In the first movie they even have to move Slimer to position him to be trapped.

This trap cluster was designed to cover an area, If Gozer could get away simply because he/she was standing one foot to the right or left of the nearest trap, the plan was flawed to begin with.

Sammo

Even if Gozer stepped away from the traps, the Ghostbusters could simply wrangle her into the traps with their proton packs.

Correction: That particular ghost was not standing near the traps. Granted, the traps pull in the ghosts floating over the farm, but those spirits were in direct line with the trap laser beams, that ghost you reference was standing safely away.

26th Mar 2002

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Corrected entry: The film takes a large liberty when portraying the Titanic. The Titanic we see is complete with a huge hole in one side. The real sinking was nothing like this with small gashes made along the front of the ship, which eventually split in two. There was no large gaping hole like that made when she hit the iceberg. The Titanic was found four years before the film was made, so it was known at that time what condition the Titanic was in. (01:20:35)

Correction: It's a ghost ship, so I think we can forgive them for this, just like the ghost train in the subway scene, because it was a steam engine, which never would be in a subway tunnel like that.

This isn't a valid correction. The ghost train appearing on the subway tracks is different and had nothing to do with the way the Titanic ghost ship looked.

Bishop73

They are both ghost vessels, not the actual machines, it is understandable that they will look different on the etheric plane.

They aren't the actual machines sure, but there isn't any reason why a ghost ship would pick a physical appearance with severe damage that is in a different spot from the original. The explanation is not in 'the etheric plane' but in poor research (not that in a movie like this matters) or the fact that it simply is more impactful visually to show that sort of gaping hole. It is a factual error even if we understand very well why it was made - call it Deliberate Mistake if you will.

Sammo

The people are the ghosts, not the ship. The ship never picked the appearance. One can assume the ghosts made the Titanic alongside themselves, from memory. Since the victims never actually saw the damage, this is what they thought it looked like.

lionhead

We don't know who picked the appearance of the Titanic or the ghost train and how any of the 'supernatural' works, other than the end result is factually inaccurate. There's no reason to try to find metaphysical justifications for a clear creative liberty the art department took without giving it a second thought. Which is exactly what the original poster said; "The film takes a large liberty when portraying the Titanic."

Sammo

It's just a matter of opinion whether they are allowed to take that liberty or not. If they did it intentionally, it's not a mistake.

lionhead

The thing is, 99% of Factual Errors in movies are very likely to be liberties taken for convenience of the plot or better visual impact (like I said, Titanic=big hole in the hull from iceberg, the audience instantly makes that mental association and feels more real than reality). That's why as long as the observation is accurate and not strikingly obvious (such as "ghosts don't exist") I wouldn't try to read the intent in it too much.

Sammo

27th Aug 2003

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Corrected entry: In the final scene where the Ghostbusters are coming out of the Museum, where did their proton packs and slime blowers go?

Correction: As noted by Tully as he proudly put on a proton pack, then ran about 20 feet and had to stop to catch his breath, and saying "this equipment sure is heavy" one can assume the other ghostbusters definitely needed some relief after having them on for so long.

They are not just removing them for a minute to stretch their legs, they are walking out of the museum and going home - that'd be an exceedingly bad time for them to not bring them along and leave their unlicensed nuclear reactors behind without any real reason.

Sammo

9th Apr 2007

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Corrected entry: When the Statue of Liberty makes its entrance in the streets of New York, close observation shows that the statue actually steps on a bunch of people.

BillyBlake

Correction: How is this a mistake? The guys cannot see exactly where the statue is going, and she is stepping on cars and other objects, so why not a few accidental people?

wizard_of_gore

Oh so it's not a poorly placed optical effect; the movie wants to tell us that the Ghostbusters are actual mass murderers. Just great.

Sammo

10th Jun 2014

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Corrected entry: Two of the Ghostbusters are examining their evidence, and one of them puts a picture of the man in the huge painting into a device similar to a photocopier. Problem is, the picture comes out the other end of the device before it has entirely finished going in.

kh1616

Correction: It's a spectral analyzer. Eagon also turns up the roentgens, a unit of measurement for radiation, which presumably makes the device more sensitive. It analyzed the spectral presence within the photograph and printed out a visual representation of that presence. The printout that discharged from the device has nothing to do with the original image that was actually photographed and fed into it, therefore the spectral analyzer does not need to scan the entire photographed image to create this facsimile of the spirit possessing the photographs. In other words, the machine was able to "see" the ghost and print out a picture of it before the entire photo had been scanned. Not out of the question at all, especially for completely fictional technology.

Phixius

It's a fascinating explanation that proves that you'd be great at writing sci-fi tech for a series or movie (I say it unironically, legit love the write-up), but I don't see any visual or conceptual hint in the movie that supports it? It looks like they feed a picture to a copier and the output comes out before the original picture has gone through the apparatus. Visually the photo rolling in is such a minor detail it's almost unnoticeable.

Sammo

27th Aug 2001

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Corrected entry: In the scene where Ray and Egon are in the dark room analyzing the photos they took at the museum, watch as they run the one photo through the "spectral analyzer". As they put the photo into the machine on the left side, the photo goes throught the machine at a very slow pace. You can see the photo as they are talking about what food they should get. The photo is about halfway through the machine on the left, when the entire photo magically appears on the right hand side of the machine and is finished being analyzed. When they pull the completed photo out of the right side of the machine, you can see the original photo still being analyzed on the left side. (00:56:26)

Correction: They're analyzing all the photos. The machine is obviously capable of scanning another photo while analyzing a previously scanned photo.

Phixius

Ray says that he'll run "this wider shot" and Egon specifically tunes the machine for it; it'd make no sense for the machine to print a different picture from the one they are specifically discussing.

Sammo

23rd Jan 2013

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Ghostbusters 2 mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When the Judge states his sentence, from Stantz's POV of the front of the table the pink goo in the jar starts bubbling with a tag hanging on its right side. From a wider angle of the front of the table not only is the tag not visible, but the ghost trap next to it is different (check the number of dials and looks of the box), plus the trap is now slightly skewed as to how it was positioned before. (00:31:45)

Sacha

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

Suggested correction: I believe the tag is visible at all times, at least the string of it (the tag itself in the wider angle from the defence's table is hidden by the jar itself). Not sure about the mentioned box, you mean the ghost trap? My impression is that the different angle accounts for a perceived different placement, but it's just my perception.

Sammo

I've seen it again and can confirm that the tag is missing and even the wole set changes. Picture is online.

Sacha

23rd Jun 2004

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Visible crew/equipment: When the chairs are flying through the air in the courtroom, if you look closely, you can see the string pulling one of them. (00:34:30)

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

Suggested correction: This would need more clarification. I couldn't see any string in the mentioned sequences - and for the record, I don't think strings were used, you can easily find interviews with the production team that mention the different trick at work here (they quite literally 'shot' the chairs up in the air).

Sammo

31st Oct 2004

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Revealing mistake: During the courtroom scene, one of the ghosts grabs the prosecutor and she is hanging upside down. Her dress comes down a little, but when she is about to fly through the door you can see part of the dress is pinned to her panty hose to stop the dress from falling off. (00:33:30)

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

Suggested correction: She's not wearing pantyhose, she's wearing stockings with a garter belt, that's the part that is 'pinned' to the hosiery. The skirt does seem to ride up (I mean, upside down) a bit but it could have latched onto one of the clips.

Sammo

25th Jun 2008

Ghostbusters (1984)

Corrected entry: Near the end when the Ghostbusters are talking with the mayor, Ray's hair is flat on his head. In the next scene when they get to Dana's building his hair is full and wavy. Would he have washed and blow dried between scenes?

Correction: Of course he washed and blow dried his hair between scenes. After speaking with the mayor, the Ghostbusters obviously had to go back to the firehouse (which isn't very far from city hall) to get Ecto 1, along with their uniforms and proton packs. While there, he did his hair. The Ghostbusters then drove Ecto 1 back to city hall to meet their escort and head to Dana's building.

Despite the usage of "of course" and "obviously", it sounds convoluted from start to finish, especially considering that they have a police escort at all times. It'd be more believable if you said they used the Mayor's shower or something (the truth is that simply they did not bother with the detail because it would have been pointless and detrimental for the movie's pacing, but that is a meta explanation).

Sammo

23rd Apr 2013

Ghostbusters (1984)

Corrected entry: When Winston says "I wanna make a phone call" to the guard in the jail, the guard closes the door of the cell twice. (01:10:45)

Correction: In fairness, you do hear two noises, the second more subtle. I took it as the door taking an extra pull to properly close. You can argue that in the first shot we don't see the door touching the strike plate or frame, and in the second shot you don't actually see anyone locking it, but I am pretty sure that there are many doors that behave in a similar way in real life.

Sammo

1st Aug 2017

Ghostbusters (1984)

Corrected entry: When Ray pulls up in the Ectomobile (before it has been painted), Peter is walking over to the car and the camera is following him. In the reflection of the window, a piece of equipment can be seen (possibly a boom mic). (00:20:30)

manthabeat

Correction: Possibly a street light. Judging by the shape of it.

Sammo

14th Mar 2020

Ghostbusters (1984)

Corrected entry: When Dana comes to the station for the first time, Ray is working on Ecto1 and it's primer gray, no light bars or equipment. In one of the following scenes they are eating dinner and cheering to their first customer. Then the alarm sounds for their first call to the Sedgwick hotel and they get in the Ecto1 that is all tuned up, painted with lights and equipment mounted. The events all appear to happen in the same day. It wouldn't be possible to do all that work to Ecto1 in the perceived span of time. (00:21:50)

Correction: The key word is, "appear." Even if there are just a few days between the events, it makes sense for Ecto-1 to look as it does.

They are toasting to their "first client", which is as specified Dana. Would it make sense for them to celebrate finally having a client only days after? They see each other all the time.

Sammo

27th Sep 2020

Ghostbusters (1984)

Corrected entry: Why did the Gatekeeper and Keymaster (the dogs) have to possess Dana and Louis? From everything we see, the dog statues are at the top of the building, and the demon dogs break through. Then they go and destroy half the building to find people to possess. They wait a while, Louis gets taken to the Ghostbusters, and Dana stays in her apartment. Then even later they go back to the top of the building, and stand exactly where they were standing after changing from the statues where the lightning changes them back into the demon dogs. What was the point of them leaving, possessing people, then coming back?

Correction: This is a question, not a mistake. Just because the whole scenario seems pointless to you, it doesn't make it a plot hole.

Phaneron

I agree; it's a legitimate question though, so instead of sticking it in the correction section I'd say to move it in the appropriate section.

Sammo

It actually is addressed in the new movie why it happens, so I thought about adding the reason in, but have held off on it in case I get some of the details or wording wrong.

Phaneron

Oh! Great, thanks for the heads up, I am going to see the movie this week most likely, I was just rewatching the first two - will edit this comment later.

Sammo

10th Jun 2014

Ghostbusters (1984)

Corrected entry: When Ray and Winston are driving back to the Ghostbusters' office, Winston (who is driving) is wearing coveralls; when they arrive and get out of the car, he is wearing just a shirt and trousers. (01:04:00 - 01:08:20)

Correction: But they also switched place; Winston is not driving anymore, Ray is the one at the wheel. So it is technically possible that they stopped the car at one point past Manhattan Bridge and Winston took off the uncomfortable suit.

Sammo

31st May 2019

Ghostbusters (1984)

Corrected entry: After Dana and Louis break the gargoyles their hair is clean, but when they get to the lower floor their hair has foam in it.

oswal13

Correction: Very true. It has though been corrected multiple times already, because it's quite easy for them to have got some of the marshmallow muck (or 'foam' as you correctly call it since it's obvious shave foam) on themselves being next to the Ghostbusters who were covered in it. I am not a big fan of "it might have happened offscreen" explanations, but this does seem in line with what is shown.

Sammo

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