Corrected entry: During the America special, the squirrel they find by the roadside is a grey squirrel. But, when they prepare to cook it, it's a red squirrel.
Tailkinker
8th Oct 2008
Top Gear (2002)
2nd Dec 2003
Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Bumblebee and Spike are trying to escape Unicron, listen carefully. Just as they are being sucked in you can hear Spike curse in adult language. Yet this is a PG rated kids movie.
Correction: Swearing is allowed to a moderate degree in a PG-rated film these days. The swearing was only reinstated for the 20th Anniversary DVD release in 2006, making this release entirely in line with modern-day certifications. As a result, this can hardly be considered particularly notable.
28th Sep 2008
Heroes (2006)
Company Man - S1-E17
Corrected entry: According to the writers and producers, Claire is 16 in season one. In this episode we go back 14 years to when she is first given to Bennet, but the child Bennet is handed is only a few months old. Claire would have been somewhere between one and two years old at this point.
Correction: Statements by the writers and producers are irrelevant - what matters is what's stated in the series itself. If it's stated on-screen that Claire is sixteen, and this is later contradicted by something, then this is a valid continuity error. If, however, Claire's age is not stated or implied in the show itself, then no continuity error exists, as statements by the programme makers do not form part of the show itself.
Correction: Two things, in "The Fix", Claire says to get dad she's almost 16, so she's 15 at the time. Second, the newspaper article stats that baby Claire is 18-months old. So the timeline is correct. I couldn't find who played the baby in "Company Man", but the baby certainly looks older than a few months.
11th Jul 2005
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Balian of Ibelin is preparing the defense of Jerusalem and he sets white markers at a distance from the city walls, he measures this distance in meters. The meter was established in 1875 A.D, almost 700 years later.
Correction: Standard practice in historically set films is to use present-day language and terms, to allow modern audiences to understand - this is a standard movie convention and is not considered an error (the metre was actually first defined in about 1790). Regardless, in this particular film, the unit of measurement is never stated - they only ever mention numbers.
29th Sep 2008
Sunshine (2007)
Corrected entry: The crew are ongoing with the repairs to the payload shield, and the oxygen garden catches fire by reflected sunlight from the damaged com towers. The big plot hole here would be: why design such a critical area with pointless windows, which only expose the very critical area needed for the human crew to survive, to possible but unlikely destruction? There is no reason to have windows, as the sunlight would be destructive. It did, in fact, cause the destruction of the oxygen garden in the first place.
Correction: Why put windows in the garden area? For the same reason as they put windows everywhere else, including cutting one in the very shield that protects them - to look out of. It's a human psychological thing, the need to look around them, to see what's there, directly, with the naked eye. The whole thing is a freak chain of events, starting with the discovery of the believed-destroyed Icarus I and the resulting change of course from the mission profile (something that could not possibly have been foreseen), that leads directly to the accident. Failure to anticipate something as phenomenally unlikely as that does not constitute a plot hole in the slightest.
10th Feb 2008
300 (2006)
Corrected entry: On the DVD at 124:29, Leonidas yells for his 'children' to gather round. Nobody moves. At 124:30 He is standing in front of a crowd already assembled.
Correction: Standard cinematic technique of time compression. It's not necessary to show the Spartans moving to surround him - it just wastes screen time.
25th Sep 2008
Fringe (2008)
Corrected entry: Dr. Bishop asks Peter to play him Bach's Mass in A minor on the piano. There is no Mass in A minor. The Mass is in B minor.
Correction: Doctor Bishop has shown himself to have memory problems on several occasions. While a genius in many fields of academic and scientific endeavour, there's no indication that his interest in music is any more than a casual one. He simply remembered incorrectly, which is not grounds for a mistake.
8th Sep 2008
Heroes (2006)
Corrected entry: We learn in season two that Claire, Adam and Peter can be killed through decapitation or a bullet to the head. So how is it that Claire's blood is able to revive Noah when he is shot in the head?
Correction: In season one, we see both Peter and Claire revive after the object that killed them and lodged in their brain is removed. Given that the intent is clearly to revive Noah, it seems reasonable to surmise that the bullet would have been removed first.
5th Sep 2008
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Corrected entry: After Anakin gets his arms and legs mutilated by Kenobi, he is transported to a facility to adapt the bionic parts to him. Amidala is delivering the twins about the same time. It's obviously all for the sake of drama, but it makes absolutely no sense that a society so technologically developed as to have invented hyperspace jumping, had not invented a simple glass cover, or even an umbrella to shield Anakin from the rain while transporting him, nor painkillers or a way to sedate him through the medical procedure. Amidala is delivering the old-fashioned way, so apparently they haven't invented cesarea either. This is unacceptable, even for our universe.
Correction: Sidious wants Anakin to suffer through the process - the Sith gain power through rage and hate and pain. He wants Anakin to feel everything that happens to him as he's put back together again. As for Padme's delivery, she delivers naturally, which proves nothing whatsoever about whether they've developed caesarean sections. By the time they realise that they're losing her, the babies are nearly there - to start cutting into her at that point would only increase the strain on her body, making it even more likely that she won't survive.
30th Jul 2008
The Dark Knight (2008)
Corrected entry: When Gordon comes back, he taps the Joker and when the Joker looks up for a split second, you can see that he doesn't have a scar on his face. Upon turning back, the scar is there.
Correction: This shot is not done in close-up - there's simply not enough visual information to state that his scar is missing. Having watched for this specifically during my last viewing, the Joker looks no different from any other shot in the film.
28th Aug 2008
Superman Returns (2006)
Corrected entry: When Jor-El is "talking to" Lex, footage of Brando is used from Superman I in which (in this movie) he says "So. Kal-El. Speak". However, in the first film the line was "So. Speak", to which Clark asked who he was and was then told his Kryptonian name.
Correction: So, what's the mistake that you're claiming? Yes, they've manipulated old footage for the new film, that's true, but this isn't a video that repeats the same every time; it's an interactive projection of Jor-El created by Kryptonian technology. This isn't the same incident as the original Superman film; it's a different situation, ergo, the projection doesn't have to say the same thing.
28th Aug 2008
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Corrected entry: Near the end, as Cameron Diaz approaches pregnant Maxin with a gun on the 7.5 floor, she accidentally knocks her head really hard on the door frame.
Correction: Why is this a mistake? The whole point about the 7.5 floor is that it's got a low ceiling, tiny doors and so forth. Of course people bash their heads occasionally.
25th Aug 2008
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Corrected entry: After the survivors of the Defiant are beamed aboard, Dr. Crusher escorts Worf to the bridge. Why would she do this? There are undoubtedly casualties from the Defiant in sickbay which could do with the Chief Medical Officer's attention. Worf doesn't need to be shown the way - even if he doesn't know he only has to step into the turbolift and say "Bridge".
Correction: Probably there are casualties, and no doubt her highly trained staff are keeping them under observation. Only one, however, has insisted on going straight to the bridge; Beverly is merely keeping him under temporary observation to ensure that he's not being all Klingon and shrugging off a serious injury. Any other member of her staff, Worf could intimidate into leaving him alone, but not her.
19th Aug 2008
Wall-E (2008)
Corrected entry: The scooter that Skinner used in Ratatouille can be found in the trash pile early in the movie.
Correction: The entire opening third of the movie is set around piles of trash. If you're going to point out things of this nature, please take the time to make it clear exactly where this can be seen. "Early in the movie" is not remotely sufficient.
Correction: It's a very low chance that it is actually Skinner's scooter. There are probably hundreds of them amongst the rubbish.
27th Jul 2008
Batman Begins (2005)
Corrected entry: Scene - the monorail train crash; Batman escapes the monorail by throwing an explosive to the rear of the train; the explosion separates the first car from the rest of the train. As the locomotive pulls away from the rest of the cars Batman flies out the back. Seconds later when the train goes off the edge the locomotive is reconnected to the rest of the cars and there is no damage from the explosion. A previous corrector proposed that the trailing cars of the monorail still had forward momentum. True, but they were decelerating and could not possibly have caught up; Batman jammed the accelerator of the locomotive. The trailing cars could not have "caught up" while the locomotive was still accelerating and certainly could not have re-attached themselves after the explosion. (02:03:30)
Correction: Incorrect. The fight between Batman and Al Ghul finishes in the second car of the train - we see them move through the connecting doorway during the fight. The front two cars are seperated from the remainder by the explosion - the brief external shot of the explosion clearly shows two cars ahead of the break point. The front two cars are all that you then see fall, move through the underground parking garage and eventually explode.
10th Aug 2008
Robocop (1987)
Corrected entry: Robocop is seen scanning the police directory for information on Emil. This leads him to Clarence's rap sheet, including the charges for murdering Murphy. When he checks the file for Murphy, the photo shows him wearing his Detroit Police uniform (the OCP symbol is plainly visible on his shoulder). Given that Murphy wasn't even on the Detroit Police force for a day, let alone in the Police HQ for more than an hour, how is a casual shot of him in uniform in the HQ lobby on file possible?
Correction: Murphy's been part of the Detroit Police for years. At the beginning of the film, he's simply been transferred between precincts, not from another force altogether.
11th Aug 2008
The Dark Knight (2008)
Corrected entry: Batman cuts out the bullet hole from the wall to look for Joker's fingerprints, but Joker wears gloves.
Correction: Joker usually wears gloves, yes, but that doesn't mean that he wears them every hour of every day. While it makes sense that he'd wear them while out creating mischief, to avoid leaving his fingerprints, there's no particular reason for him to wear them when hiding out and preparing. Bruce is hoping that the Joker wasn't wearing them when he loaded the bullets into the magazine, something that turns out to be correct.
11th Aug 2008
The Dark Knight (2008)
Corrected entry: The events of this film take place immediately after the events of 'Batman Begins'. In the previous film, Lucius Fox introduces and describes the 'Tumbler' to Bruce Wayne as a military prototype 'bridging vehicle', designed to jump across ravines and chasms to drag lines which would then be used to pull bridges across. The vehicle is then used in that film is ways that are consistent with the expected features of such a vehicle. However, in this film the Tumbler (now officially the 'Batmobile') suddenly acquires the ability to shed its outer skin, revealing the motorcycle-like vehicle from within. Not only does this serve no conceivable purpose for an intended 'bridging vehicle', but that ability would preclude the interior passenger space shown quite thoroughly in the previous film. Also, there has not been any time between the two films' timelines in which to make the modifications necessary for such a feature, even if they only recently decided to add it.
Correction: Incorrect. The Joker makes reference to it having been a year since the mob had it all their own way, Harvey Dent has risen to prominence and has had the time to start what's an ongoing relationship with Rachel (they're at the point of talking marriage), Bruce has set up a sophisticated underground lair, Gordon is now senior enough in the Gotham Police to be selected as the new Commissioner, despite only being made a lieutenant at the end of the previous film. Clearly some considerable time has passed since the first film, a year at an absolute minimum. Plenty of time for Fox to have tinkered with the Tumbler. Not that the feature couldn't already have been there anyway. Think about it - you're designing a military vehicle to leap across rivers into what could well be hostile territory. Designing a system that would allow the driver to escape swiftly in the event of terminal damage to the vehicle makes perfect sense. And given that we really don't know exactly how the 'eject' system works, your assertation that it would preclude the internal space seen in the first film is flawed at best.
6th Aug 2008
The Dark Knight (2008)
Corrected entry: When in the interrogation room after The Joker says, "Good cop, bad cop," Batman is about to push his head down, and the Joker closes his eyes and looks as if he were hurt the second before he actually gets hurt.
Correction: It looks more to me like he's reacting to the sudden bright light rather than any pre-emptive pain from Batman ramming his head into the table. Remember, he's just gone for near-darkness to bright light. A somewhat pained reaction is quite understandable.
8th Aug 2008
The Last Samurai (2003)
Corrected entry: When Algren is talking to Katsumoto about General Custer's defeat at the Little Big Horn, he states that Custer leads a single battalion against 2000 Indians. Katsumoto asks, "How many men for Custer?" Algren replies, "211." A battalion is actually made up of 5 companies of approximately 200 men each. Therefore, if Custer would have taken a battalion to Little Big Horn, his accompaniment would have been closer to 1000.
Correction: Incorrect. At the time of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the entire 7th Cavalry regiment, Custer's unit, consisted of just 45 officers and 718 troopers, 166 of whom were not present on the battlefield, having been detached for other duties. Prior to the assault, Custer divided his troops into three battalions of varying size, taking the largest group, consisting of just over 200 men with him, a group that would subsequently be completely wiped out in the famous Last Stand. It may not match what you think should be the right numbers, but Algren's statement is historically accurate.
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Correction: The red squirrel is not native to America, so unless you're seriously suggesting that the production team brought a dead squirrel with them, just in case, I think it's safe to say that this is purely an illusion due to changing light levels.
Tailkinker ★