Best action movie character mistakes of all time

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The War of the Worlds picture

Character mistake: On several occasions, scientist (Clayton Forrester) refers to the impacting objects as "meteors". Any scientist knows (or should), that when a meteor impacts the the ground, it becomes a "meteorite".

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Moonraker picture

Character mistake: When James enters and exits the laboratory, the door has a sign on it that warns for radioactive materials. The laboratory actually contains a biological weapon. Therefore the door should be marked with a bio-hazard symbol. (00:41:00 - 00:42:00)

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Face/Off picture

Character mistake: When Troy is getting the bomb ready, the screen shows it will blow in 216 hours, which is 9 days. Yet the agent tells Archer it will blow in 6 days.

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Live and Let Die picture

Character mistake: When Rosie sticks her revolver in Bond's room and Bond flips her onto the bed, Bond incorrectly identifies the gun as a Smith and Wesson .38 which would make it a model 10 or 15. It was actually a Model 19 .357 Magnum.

BocaDavie

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3 Days to Kill picture

Character mistake: In the bathroom scene with the fat man tied up, Kevin answers his phone upside down.

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City of God picture

Character mistake: After crashing their car into the bar the Tender Trio attempt to flee on foot but Clipper twists his ankle. Goose says "Goose f***ed up his ankle" accidentally referring to himself but obviously it's Clipper that twisted his ankle. (00:14:59)

Jack Vaughan

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Back to the Future picture Back to the Future mistake picture

Character mistake: At the beginning of the movie Marty is turning on a huge guitar amplifier. The two switches for the filaments are misspelled. They are shown as "filiment." (00:03:25)

toroscan

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The Great Escape picture

Character mistake: When Werner asks Hendley why, as an American, he fights alongside Britain, he mentions that the British burned down the U.S. capital in 1812. While it happened during the War of 1812, the burning of Washington actually occurred in 1814. (00:11:10)

Cubs Fan

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

Suggested correction: The question was intended to demonstrate how far out-of-touch Werner was with United States history.

Charles Austin Miller

You misunderstand. Werner's question in and of itself is not the mistake; it's merely a point of contextual reference. The mistake is him giving the incorrect date of a historical event he claims to have read about; it's hard to believe that every book that he might have read on the topic are all wrong, so he must be remembering, and thus repeating it, incorrectly.

Cubs Fan

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Demolition Man picture

Character mistake: When the alarms go off in the police station indicating the code 187 all the police officers are confused as to what is going on since they know nothing of MDKs. Zack Lamb should have already known what the code meant, yet he never says anything and just waits for everyone to figure it out.

jbrbbt

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

Suggested correction: I took it as he went into almost shock that after so many years a murder had actually taken place. He says, "I don't believe it," indicating he knew what the code meant but then he kind of froze until Phoenix's name was mentioned.

Suggested correction: Zack Lamb is quite old and it's possible he simply forgot what the code meant. He was a pilot too, not a street cop.

lionhead

When Stallone first meets Lamb after being thawed in the future, he tells Spartan he was "grounded" after the events in the opening scene so had not been a pilot for 36 years.

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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre picture

Character mistake: When Curtin shoots Dobbs, the two shots are close together in time. When Curtin explains it he says that he was shot and falls. Then Dobbs shoots him again. This takes time but the shots were fired very quickly.

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Volcano picture

Character mistake: The downed firetruck was referred to as engine 17, however it is actually engine 23.

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21 Bridges picture

Character mistake: Toward the end of the film, Detective Davis orders Captain McKenna to put his badge on the table. New York City police always refer to their "shields", not badges.

bnemirow

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S.W.A.T. picture

Character mistake: The two fake cops that hit the prisoner transport bus used a suppressed Beretta 92FS and a TEC-DC9. At the press conference, Capt. Fuller says that they used AK-47s.

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Alien Resurrection picture

Character mistake: When Ripley asked the doctor how they "got" her, he replies from blood samples on Fury 16. This is in reference to the planet in Alien 3, but it was called Fury 161. (00:11:00)

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Mercury Rising picture

Character mistake: The newspaper headline quotes "parent's" death in a murder-suicide story. Should be "parents' deaths" as both have died. (We can forgive the newspaper not picking up on the fact they were killed by a government assassin).

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Outland picture

Character mistake: The movie starts with shots of the moon Io and the company's operations, with typed descriptions at the bottom of the screen. Guess they couldn't afford a proofreader. They spell dependents as dependants, marshal as marshall, and principal as principle.

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