Corrected entry: The call of "going ballistic" is totally wrong. Calling "we're going ballistic" is a warning call to all other aircraft that you have no control of your airplane and it's only being controlled by the laws of physics (diving, turning etc) and not the pilot.
stiiggy
15th May 2020
Top Gun (1986)
12th Jan 2008
Thunderball (1965)
Corrected entry: Two Vulcans left the airbase together. They would have flown together as well. Where did the other go? Why didn't it follow the other plane when it got in trouble - and reported where it had gone to?
Correction: It's not odd to think the Vulcans separated at some waypoint in the flight for simulated bombing runs or as practice for some sort of decoy maneuver and were to return at different times.
Spot on. The Vulcans were nuclear armed. There's no point having 2 aircraft drop a nuclear bomb on the same target.
Correction: No it was standard procedure to have multiple bombers, missile silos and subs go after the same target. That's so if the primary aircraft is shot down etc. another would take its place, it's called target redundancy.
25th Apr 2002
Days of Thunder (1990)
Corrected entry: Nicole Kidman's character is a neurosurgeon, yet she has no objection to a helmetless motorcycle ride.
Correction: So?? Even though she is a neurosurgeon and probably sees the effect of not wearing a helmet in a crash, it does not mean that she would wear a helmet. In real life people who should know better do stupid things too.
Exactly. How many times do you see doctors and nurses smoking cigarettes?
25th Apr 2002
Days of Thunder (1990)
Corrected entry: At the begining of the movie when Tom Cruise is due to test the car, Randy Quaid says that his driver has come from single seaters, when Tom Cruise arrives, he produces an open face helmet with peak and Microphone - a single seater driver would wear a full face helmet.
Correction: Randy Quaid says Cole had, "Two All-Star wins, seven straight Feature wins, and he's been driving ASA." ASA was a lower Stock Car division at the time, and quite plausibly, that could have been where he got the helmet.
Even as a very amateur race car driver, I have helmets of both type. A professional like Cole would have access to many helmets, and not have just one. He obviously knew he was about to test a stock car, so he brought the appropriate helmet. Nothing to see here.
1st May 2018
M*A*S*H (1972)
Factual error: When the South Korean Colonel and General are in the mess tent, their rank insignia are wrong. The insignia they are wearing are for the U.S. Army.
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Suggested correction: They could have been Korean Augmentation To the United States Army (KATUSA) officers, who were Koreans drafted or volunteered into the US military to act as a liaison between Koreans and the US military. As such they wore US uniforms and rank.
11th May 2010
Blue Thunder (1983)
Factual error: Cochrane chases Murphy in a Hughes 500 which has a top speed of 147 mph and easily keeps up with him, demonstrating that Blue Thunder's top speed is less than 150 mph. The F-16s sent after Blue Thunder have a stall speed of 175 mph. They would have to slow down to the point of falling out of the sky to have a shot at Murphy. Its utterly impractical and far more likely that the military would have sent AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters after him.
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Suggested correction: Not necessarily. The F16 (and other fast movers) can and do engage slow moving helos all the time. They just engage them by missile from a long distance, where speeds are irrelevant.
I'm no expert, but I wouldn't think the US Military keeps helicopter crews on Alert Status like they do for fighters. This film was during the Cold War, so maybe, but it wouldn't make sense to keep an attack helicopter crew (and ground crew) on Alert like they would for fighter jets. Even after 9/11, I wouldn't think a (armed) helicopter crew would be beneficial to keep.
18th Dec 2019
Common mistakes
Factual error: Regular, unmodified weapons firing blank rounds. Real weapons use large and obvious attachments to block most of the propellant gases from going out of the barrel, which cycles the weapon. Hollywood weapons have blockages or mechanisms hidden in the barrel to do the same thing (or they have other effects like CGI or a gas flame), but those would make them unable to fire actual bullets. Also, real blanks are dangerous when fired close to people because they can still fire out debris. Die Hard 2 is a good example, with the bad guys swapping back and forth between blank and live ammunition in the same weapons.
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Suggested correction: Technically incorrect. You can get very high powered blanks called 4 in 1's that can cycle a weapon without the weapon being modified or having a blank firing adaptor. The reason they are not used commonly is because of how loud they are.
14th Oct 2004
Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
Corrected entry: When the marines go in with their helos to rescue Burnett, where is their air support? There should be at least 2 fighters and as many as four securing the area.
Correction: Actually the rescue choppers wouldn't of had any fighter escort for several reasons (A). Fighter escort is usually used for protection against enemy aircraft which the Bosnian didn't exactly have a whole lot of at the time. (B). Fighters would have been relatively useless in protecting the downed pilot and the choppers even with AGMs. (C). They did have air support. Those 2 other UH-1N's with the 2.75 in rockets and mini-guns. And finally (D). What would fighters have done to those tanks? AGMs and bombs are in to close proximity to the running pilot they would have vaporized him to.
Yes they would have fighter escorts. That's what happened when Scott O'grady was being rescued.
This film is not a documentary on Scott O'Grady.
26th Apr 2004
Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
Corrected entry: Early in the movie, when Gene Hackman is berating Owen Wilson for wanting to resign from the Navy, "Admiral" Hackman refers to the ship they are on as a boat. Not even an 18-year-old Seaman Apprentice fresh out of boot camp would make such a grievous error in basic naval terminology.
Correction: I'm in the Navy myself and people frequently refer to their ship as 'The Boat'. When my squadron deploys we all gripe about having to go back to 'The Boat.'
Correction: Any ship where a naval aviator has made an arrested landing on is called a "boat." The aviators have been saying this since the 1950s, because they know it annoys the rest of the crew.
27th Aug 2001
Red Dawn (1984)
Corrected entry: In the scene where the freedom fighters are attacked by the Soviet helicopter gunships, one of them fires a rocket from an RPG-7 at one of them. It does little damage - it should have been blown out of the sky. The RPG-7 is an anti-tank weapon, so even a heavily armored helicopter shouldn't be able to withstand a hit from one.
Correction: If you look closely the RPG actually hits the Soviet guy in the open area of the helicopter. The copter actually has a open door (much like the US Huey) in the middle. The Russian is manning a gun in this middle part. The explosion kills this man (possible another) and disperses the explosion out the open sides instead of throughout the helicopter's hull.
Correction: The Hind helicopter is the most armoured helicopter in service. It will easily withstand an RPG hit because the RPG is designed to penetrate solid armour and has a relatively small explosive charge. The main enemy to all helicopters, as proven in Afghanistan, is the Man Poertable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS), like the Stinger, which homes in on the engine, and could easily drop a Hind if it hits there.
The original correction is correct: the explosion is dispersed through the open space. Had the RPG round struck the Hind elsewhere, the chopper would've been obliterated: RPG-7s have destroyed numerous main battle tanks, and an MI-24 Hind's armor was designed to withstand 14.7 mm rounds, not rocket-propelled grenades.
This is factually wrong. The RPG-7 as shown in the movie has actually only destroyed a few main battle tanks. In both Gulf Wars only 1 Abrams M1 was disabled (not destroyed) by an RPG. If the RPG had indeed exploded in the "open" part of Hind it would have killed the crew.
7th Sep 2006
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Corrected entry: When Grimes fires his grenade launcher at the technical, he does not put the special sights for it up and aim with that.
Correction: This is easily a character error since Grimes is inexperienced (or at least rusty) and a bit rattled with all the mayhem. The film even seems to acknowledge this since he misses and has to fire a second shot.
Correction: As an experienced operator with the M203 grenade launcher, its very rare to need to put the sight up. I used to just use the M16's rifle sight. Under 100m that's all you need anyway.
18th Jul 2017
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Factual error: After the second Black Hawk helicopter (Super 6-4) gets shot down, all of the crew members aside from the pilot appear to have been killed in the crash. In reality, all of the men survived the crash. They were later killed by the Somali mob, except for pilot Mike Durant who was taken prisoner.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Black Hawk Down is frequently regarded by many, including real participants of the battle, as a dramatization of what actually happened. Therefore some details will not match up to real events. This is simply one of those instances.
Suggested correction: Mike Durant in his book "In the Company of Heroes" states that this did not happen.
25th Mar 2005
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Corrected entry: Mr. Jeremy's assault rifle at the end of the movie has a silencer at the end, but it is just as loud, if not louder, than Riggs's submachine gun.
Correction: Firstly, Gary Busey's character is called Mr Joshua and secondly his gun doesn't have a sound suppressor, it's called a flash supressor: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Lethal_WeaponColt_XM177_Commando.
3rd Mar 2008
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Corrected entry: In the scenes where cars are flipping through the air, the roof flaps never deploy. Roof flaps are the two flaps on the top of the car that always deploy during wrecks, particularly if there is a chance the car could go airborne to keep the car on the ground. They are required safety devices in NASCAR and would definitely deploy if a car was airborne.
6th Mar 2020
1917 (2019)
Corrected entry: At the hospital towards the end, the doctor tells someone to go to "triage." The hospital is British. The term triage is French and comes from the Napoleonic wars and was coined by two French/Belgian doctors. The French were using the term triage during WW1 with plenty of photos to back this up. There is no evidence that the British or even the USA were using the term until about 1960 when it is mentioned by a Baltimore based medical facility. I can find no mention of its use in either WW2 or the Korean War. It only after this time that its usage becomes more widely used in the English speaking world.
Correction: The US Emergency Medicine Journal states that "triage" was introduced to the UK and US in the early 1900's. It was a term definitely used in WW2 and Korea by those and many more nations.
Correction: "Triàge" as a French word was already in use in Britain and America, especially in the wool industry. But medical triàge in France was developed before the Napoleonic Wars, the wars just created a different method of triàge. The use of triàge as a medical term was recorded during the American Civil War (source: Lorenzo RAD, Porter R. Tactical emergency care military and operational out‐of‐Hospital medicine).
18th Feb 2006
Robocop 2 (1990)
Corrected entry: There's no way a kid could fire a Desert Eagle gun, not even the 357 version - they have a massive amount of recoil.
Correction: All Desert Eagle pistols employ gas-operated blowback system to operate. This, in addition to the pistol's heavy weight, lowers recoil significantly. And actually, 357. Desert Eagle was advertised as "Lowest Recoiling 357. ever" way back when.
Correction: I've owned both a .357 Desert Eagle and a .44 Desert Eagle and the recoil is nothing like firing a revolver in these calibres.
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Correction: While you are correct technically, I don't believe Goose was referring to the technical use of the phrase/term. He was using it as a indication of excitement. "My daughter went ballistic when she saw the new puppy."
oldbaldyone
The fact that you point out the mistake is correct isn't a good way to open a correction. Plus, there's no indication he's expressing "sudden excitement." On top of that, even if he did intend to say "we're excited", it would still be a character mistake to use a specific phrase that has a specific meaning out of context like you're suggesting.
Bishop73
I did not point out of the "mistake" is correct at all. I pointed out that what the poster stated is true (to my knowledge) about what going ballistic means in the technical flying a plane sense. However, this is not how Goose is using it. He was absolutely expressing excitement. Maverick states that they are going vertical. Goose replies "We're going ballistic Mav, go get'em." He is not saying it to alert other craft (thus the call out specifically to Mav). This was a phrase used a lot in the 80's, but not much anymore. "Dad is going to go ballistic when he finds out", or "She is going to go ballistic when we get to Disney." It expresses anger, excitement, craziness. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/go%20ballistic.
oldbaldyone
The NATO Brevity Code manual (google it), specifically mentions "going ballistic" as a the term to be used once you have lost control of your aircraft, a warning to others. It's a term that was adopted *after* the movie for expressing excitement.
stiiggy
When the couples are all together at the restaurant/bar (01:01:45), Carole tells Maverick, "He told me all about the time you went ballistic with Penny Benjamin" (the Admiral's daughter). So considering his wife, Carole, uses this specific slang expression it's believable that Goose also uses the slang in this way despite its "technical" use. During the earlier training mission (00:31:55), when Goose reacted to Maverick going vertical after Jester goes vertical, Goose, perhaps inappropriately, casually used the term only while speaking directly to Maverick, so if this is to be listed as any kind of mistake it would be a character mistake. This movie was released mid 1986, and excitedly "going ballistic" (just like "going bananas") was indeed used prior to this movie's release.
Super Grover ★
Yet, they are not losing control of the aircraft in that scene, and he is not warning other aircraft since it's not happening AMD he is only talking to Maverick (the pilot who would be well aware if they were ballistic). I don't know exactly when the term hit the main stream as a term of excitement but it's pretty clear to me that he is saying it that way. Classifying this as an error would be like saying the lines "a walk in the park Kazinsky" or "the defense department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid" are errors because neither is true. He wasn't reporting to anyone that they were ballistic. He was encouraging his pilot and just happened to use an aeronautical statement in his excitement.
oldbaldyone
From The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer: "It began to be used to describe human anger in the 1980s and quickly caught on." No exact date, but was used in magazine articles in the late 1980's, so probably by around 1986 it was a popular expression.
jimba