Best sci-fi movie factual errors of 2008

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Journey to the Center of the Earth picture

Factual error: Trevor - a Professor of Geology - boasts about having an article published in Scientific American, and that is not something any scientist would do. Scientific American is looked upon with slight disdain by the scientific community, considered to be a populist crowd pleaser. It is not even peer reviewed. Considering that he has just turned the geological and archaeological worlds on their heads he would have been better off publishing in Journal of Geological Research or Geology, both prestigious professional journals.

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Cloverfield picture

Factual error: During the scene where everyone runs outside, the Statue of Liberty head crashes into the street. The head is scaled too small and its size can be compared to the people taking pictures. In real life the statue head is large enough for people to walk into (17' from chin to cranium).

frecklejam

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Wall-E picture

Factual error: As a trash compactor Wall-E does not function logically. When he fills his chest compartment with garbage and runs his internal compactor, the cube that exits his body is the same volume as the trash he puts in, despite that trash having been compacted. He does not add extra trash to fill the empty space after running the compactor - there are three scenes that show him filling up only once with loose garbage and then ejecting a densely compacted cube. (00:02:30)

BocaDavie

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Suggested correction: You haven't noticed the exact shape of his body. The back sticks out a tad. Garbage fills the space and the back pushes in to compress it.

You've missed the point of the mistake here. The cube that is ejected is the same size as the compartment. Wall-E puts loose fitting items into the compactor with gaps between items but once it's been crushed and compacted it's exactly the same size as before. It should be smaller.

Ssiscool

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Iron Man picture

Factual error: When Iron Man catches the Audi SUV, the front wings/fenders don't bend when he catches it, the car weighs close to 2 tons, some damage should occur to them as they are made of such thin metal.

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The Incredible Hulk picture

Factual error: At one point during the final battle, Betty puts her hand on the minigun. Having been recently fired for long periods, that thing would be scalding hot and would badly burn her hand.

Friso94

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Jumper picture

Factual error: Shortly after David and Griffin jump to Japan, Griffin goes to a car dealership and takes a Mercedes. Griffin then drives on the right side of the street rather than on the left as he should in Japan.

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The Day the Earth Stood Still picture

Factual error: The electrical power grid fails, depicted by a series of shots of city blackouts and equipment shutdowns. When the power goes out, the lights of an oil refinery go out as well as the flare. In actuality the exact opposite happens to a flare when powered equipment such as compressors and cooling devices fail simultaneously. The flare is not an electrically powered device and is designed to stay lit during power outages. All excess pressure is immediately vented to the flare stack within a second, causing an enormous flame and smoke cloud that will be visible for several miles.

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Impact picture

Factual error: The Moon is pushed into a "more elliptical" orbit. When the orbit it shown, it is more eccentric than the Moon's real orbit. However, it is centered directly on the Earth. This violates Kepler's first law of motion, which states that a natural satellite has the primary body at one focus of an elliptical orbit. In other words, the Moon should come much closer to the Earth at one end of the ellipse, and recede very far from it at the other end, rather than receding to the same distance in both directions.

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Warbirds picture

Factual error: The dying colonel opens the bomb bay doors, and drops the "little man" atomic weapon on the island, destroying the flying reptiles. In fact, the bomb and the fusing assemblies were transported to Tinian by separate methods. No one in his right mind would have loaded a FUSED atomic bomb into a B-29 to transport it to Tinian.

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Babylon A.D. picture

Factual error: After Toorop and the women arrive in Canada, they stay at a motel in Kitimat. The caption on the screen says it's 10 miles from the American border. In fact, Kitimat is more than 370 kms from the American border. There are a number of towns closer than that. The caption also has the latitude for Kitimat three degrees further south than what it really is, which would make it even further from the American border.

rswarrior

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Stargate: Continuum picture

Factual error: When Cam ambushes Ba'al in 1939, he has two Thompson M1 submachine guns. The M1 version of the Thompson wasn't developed until 1942.

Grumpy Scot

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Journey to the Center of the Earth (II) picture

Factual error: One of the women in the group picks up a piece of calcite (Iceland Spar variety). It is obviously calcite because of the very obvious rhombohedral cleavage and other visual indicators. The sample is later identified as ringwoodite. Ringwoodite is cubic with no reported cleavage. Even if it did exhibit cleavage, it would not be rhombodedral.

Noman

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Doomsday picture

Factual error: Late in the big chase scene, Sol climbs on top of the Bentley just as Sinclair decides to drive it straight through a bus that is blocking the highway. Somehow, the Bentley levitates from the highway to about 4 or 5 feet in the air, penetrating the bus passenger cabin rather than impacting the chassis of the bus. Also, as the bus inexplicably explodes in a fireball, Sol (who was atop the car) is torn to pieces, with his decapitated head hurtling straight into the camera. Without lungs or diaphragm, Sol's head is still audibly screaming.

Charles Austin Miller

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