Question: In the opening sequence, the younger silo guy is about to shoot his partner for not turning his key as ordered. What would be the point of this? If they have to turn the keys simultaneously then how would killing the other guy help? You'd just have a dead guy with nobody to turn the other key.
stiiggy
14th Feb 2022
WarGames (1983)
Answer: The younger one threatening to shoot knows that if he kills the other guy, he cannot launch the missiles alone. He is betting that by threatening to shoot his partner, he will force him into complying with the order in order to save his own life. It's a situation where the older guy may or may not comply, but at least there's a chance.
Answer: The reason the missile launch crew is armed is to stop one from going rogue and trying to launch without permission. The scene where he threatens to shoot the other one for refusing to launch is dramatic, but totally untrue.
Answer: The opening sequence was a test and I think only the older guy didn't know it was a test. The younger guy actually knew it was a test and was there to threaten him with death as part of the test. Later we find out that 22% of missile commanders failed to launch. So the fact that the younger guy calls the other one "sir", makes it seem (to me) that the older guy was the missile commander and was the only one actually being tested. So when they kept saying "these men", I think they're referring to the commanders being tested and not the pair of men we saw.
2nd Jun 2022
The X-Files Movie (1998)
25th Feb 2020
General questions
What war movie had a tank being hit by a boulder and crashing down the side of a mountain?
Answer: Are you thinking of "The Beast", set in Afghanistan?
17th Jan 2005
General questions
Some people (through correcting some goofs) state that it is illegal for film producers to imitate U.S. military officers (in use of medals, insignia, where they are arranged, etc.) in their films. What civil or military code states this?
Answer: There is no law that says that a movie has to have permission from the military to use their uniforms, or any punishment if they are wrong. A long time urban myth.
3rd Jan 2022
Jaws 2 (1978)
Question: Mythbusters never tested this so does anyone know if filling a hollow point bullet with cyanide and sealing it with candle wax would actually work? Or would the wax melt/disintegrate and the liquid cyanide disperse in the air while the bullet flies through to the target?
Answer: I have no doubt it would work with a small sub-sonic round such as .22 calibre pistol. There's no way the wax would survive the heat generated by the cartridge and aerodynamic force of anything much bigger.
8th Dec 2021
General questions
I've seen this countless times, most recently in the new "Hawkeye" series; someone wants to sneak into a building/crime scene that's on fire, or recently on fire, and firetrucks are on the scene. So the person will grab a fireman's jacket and helmet out of the truck as a disguise. Do firetrucks carry extra jackets and helmets? Or would someone take their gear off and put it in the truck for some reason? In the same vein do ambulances and hospitals have white lab coats lying around as well?
Answer: Often the driver of the truck doesn't wear turnout gear to the incident, and has his gear in the truck. It is also very common to have an extra set of gear in case someone's is contaminated or fails.
10th Nov 2017
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Question: Could you really use tracer rounds in the type of machine guns the Germans were firing during the Normandy scene at the beginning of the movie, as seems to be the case?
Answer: Absolutely. There were tracer rounds in ammo belts for the MG42.
Could you fire incendiary rounds as well?
Yes, an MG42 can fire incendiary rounds.
26th Feb 2021
Rambo: First Blood (1982)
29th Jun 2020
Top Gun (1986)
Question: For any military pilots out there: Is it even realistic that Maverick's accident would've been investigated, concluded, and Mav would have been cleared and put back to flight status within the time-frame of the TOPGUN class? Wikipedia says TOPGUN in the 80's was only 5 weeks and today it's 9 weeks. I don't remember how far along they were when Mav and Goose crashed but I'm guessing 1/2 way through at most, so that gives 2-3 weeks to investigate and clear Maverick.
Answer: Totally unrealistic, especially since it was a fatal incident. These can take weeks and months to be investigated and the pilot returned to flight status.
1st Sep 2020
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)
Question: Before I claim this as a continuity or factual mistake - a question: When the Arab raiding party shows up over the dune, they camp by a collection of scrub that was not all dead, some was green. There were also a number of plants in that low-lying area around the camp. Wouldn't the survivors had a better chance of surviving more days by digging for underground water in that area? Perhaps deep, but there. If they took 12 days to build the plane, it seems 2 days digging for water would have given them more time.
Answer: In the desert, the only place you can find water as at an oasis or maybe digging in a dry river bed. Those bushes would be extremely salty, and any meaningful water would be far too deep under the sand.
23rd Feb 2021
Point Break (1991)
21st Jun 2004
The Simpsons (1989)
The Springfield Files - S8-E10
Question: When Homer and Bart are looking out for the 'alien' there are 3 frogs croaking something. What are they saying, and why?
Answer: The frogs are saying Budweiser. One frog says "bud," the next one says "weis," and the final one says "er". This is a satire of a popular Budweiser television promotion that was going through America at the time.
Answer: Then the 3 frogs were eaten by a big crocodile that says "Coors", Budweiser's biggest competitor.
18th Nov 2013
The Simpsons (1989)
16th Jan 2014
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Question: What do the soldiers have in their mouths during combat? Shortly after Miller's team disables the machine gun nest at Omaha Beach you can see Tom Sizemore take something out his mouth and drop it and later when Edith Piaf's song is playing he takes something out of a bag and puts it into his mouth again.
Answer: During landing scene he puts chewing tobacco in his mouth... later we see him take it out and then still later he takes more from the same pouch.
Answer: They're chewing gum, or maybe tobacco.
Answer: Chewing tobacco without a doubt.
16th Oct 2016
Hogan's Heroes (1965)
The Antique - S5-E12
Question: When Hogan gives Klink $100 for the cuckoo clock, the bill handed over was a crisp American $100 note. How did Hogan get an American $100 note? At best, in this time period, he should only have Reich Marks. And how would he have 333 Marks, 33 pfennigs? Unless he had a side businesses going, this seems unlikely.
Answer: It's a comedy, not a documentary.
Perhaps it was counterfeit. There are numerous episodes where they deal in counterfeit monies.
Chosen answer: Hogan and his men are running a spy ring out of the camp, they have access to supplies from outside. (In another episode, they have to convince a defecting German officer that they're legitimately working for the Allies by arranging a specific personal ad to run in the next day's London Times, so a new $100 bill is not beyond their capabilities).
Answer: Werner Klemperer fled Nazi Germany as a teenager. His two conditions for taking the role of Colonel Klink were that he had to be a bumbling idiot and he always had to lose. It would then be a character mistake that if Hogan offers him a fresh American hundred-dollar bill, he's not going to ask questions, he's going to take the deal. The fact that he's Commandant and could just confiscate the money from Hogan would never occur to him because, again, he's a bumbling idiot who, by the actor's contract, always has to lose.
Answer: Rightfully, Hogan should not have any money at all. POW were stripped of all cash they carried. The intention was to make escape more difficult. The fact that Hogan has what is the equivalent of a third of the price of a KdF-Wagen (You'd probably know it as a Volkswagen Beetle) in cash should rightfully make Klink more than a litle suspicious.
19th Oct 2016
Twister (1996)
Question: If the two waterspouts were swirling closely around the pickup truck, how come they weren't able to pick it up?
Chosen answer: A tornado would have to be at least an F3 to be able to pick up a truck. The waterspouts were very small.
The Fujita Scale is incorrectly portrayed as being used to describe the size of a tornado. It's actually used to describe the amount of a damage it has caused AFTER it has passed.
9th Jan 2018
MythBusters (2003)
Seasickness: Kill or Cure - S3-E24
Question: It has already been proven that if you put your finger in a shotgun barrel you will lose your hand. Would you also lose your hand if you put your finger in a pistol barrel?
Answer: No. You would definitely lose a finger or 2 though. A shotgun has a wide barrel compared to a pistol.
Answer: The barrel can get hot if it is fired quickly. Revolvers allow hot gasses to escape from the front of the cylinder so you should keep your hand way from the gap. But if the barrel is not too hot and you keep your hand away from anything it should not be near, just touching the barrel will not hurt your hand.
I meant would a blast from a pistol firing blow off your hand as a blast from a shotgun firing?
22nd Jan 2021
Apollo 13 (1995)
Question: Since it was so cold on the return journey to Earth, why didn't the astronauts wear their full space suits they wore on lift-off to keep warm? The just seem to be wearing their lightweight flight overalls.
Answer: Because they need to be able to move quickly through the confined space of the module, and the full suits would be far too bulky in an emergency.
The older Apollo missions all splashed down with full suits and helmet on. Just the launch suits, not the much bulkier EVA (moon walk) suits.
Answer: According to Jim Lovell in a later interview about the mission, the crew considered putting on their space suits but in addition to them being too bulky, there was concern the suits would make them perspire too much, thus making them wet and even colder. It wasn't quite as cold as depicted in the movie, it was always above freezing, and there were no icy windows or frozen hot dogs.
According to Lovell in his book, there actually were frozen hot dogs.
Answer: In addition, since they have to leave the ship after landing, the suit filling with water would be very dangerous.
The launch abort mode was for an ocean landing, so they would have been just as vulnerable at the start of the mission. I get your line of thinking though.
Answer: Don't remember the source (the actual movie or one of many books) but I do remember there were only two moon suits on board (the CMP, Swigert, doesn't land on the moon). I believe they decided to suffer together. I misread the question, but the option for wearing the Lunar EVA suits was considered. IIRC, they did actually wear the boots at one point.
29th Jul 2019
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
26th Apr 2020
The Simpsons (1989)
Oh, Brother, Where Are Thou? - S2-E15
Question: How exactly did the production of Homer's car bankrupt Herb? If Herb, as a highly successful car manufacturer, was spending so much money spoiling Marge and the kids that an $82,000 price tag for making a car was enough of a straw to break the camel's back, wouldn't he have gone bankrupt sooner than later anyway?
Answer: It wasn't the cost of one car, but that they'd produced thousands of Homer's ridiculous vehicles, which they'd marketed as a family car, but cost five times as much as a new car at the time. No one would buy them and the company went under.
Wasn't the car just a demo though? How would they have been able to produce thousands of cars in such a short amount of time?
Big difference between a "demo" or prototype car compared to a launch car. The dealers must have stock available of the launch car so people can actually buy them straight away.
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Answer: But if he doesn't turn the key, they can't launch anyway. So threatening his life results in either a) his death, and nothing's different from him refusing to turn the key, or b) him giving in and turning his key.
Jon Sandys ★