Best action movie character mistakes of all time

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Strategic Air Command picture

Character mistake: When Dutch is at the main gate to report for duty, he addresses an Airman as Sergeant. In the time period of this movie, an airman wearing three stripes would be an Airman 1st class.

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Age of Heroes picture

Character mistake: When the American hands over the wills to Ian Fleming he calls him Lieutenant Commander, but when Fleming turns up at the camp he has gold braid on his cap - only commanders and above wear gold braid. Also they kept calling the RAF guy Flight Sargent but he didn't have a crown above his stripes.

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Kim Possible picture

Character mistake: It's merely training, but her opponents are hostile and want to exclude her from playing, so it's funny then that they don't call Kim out for her actions being egregious fouls; she brings the ball trapping it between her feet in multiple cartwheels (you can't just hold the ball between your feet for prolonged amount of times and 'carry' it). You could also say she kicks the ball at an opponent's face on purpose, which is equally unsporting. (00:24:00)

Sammo

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 Family picture

Character mistake: At the party, Fred is supposed to make a bbq, feeding about 50 people. But once he's got the fire going, he puts two lonely pieces of hamburger meat on top, to cook - only two.

kh1616

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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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Devotion picture

Character mistake: While discussing his squad providing air support for the Marines on the ground, Lt. Cmdr. Cevoli refers to the men as "soldiers." Marines are not called "soldiers" because they are not in the Army. It is common for a layperson to make this error but nobody in the U.S. Navy would do this.

BaconIsMyBFF

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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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Smokey and the Bandit picture

Character mistake: When Carrie says to Bandit "are we doing 110? We're doing 110!" there is a shot of the Trans Am's speedometer. The needle is pointing to 110 on the kilometers per hour dial. On the miles per hour dial, the needle is pointing to a number between 65 and 70.

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The Last Castle picture

Character mistake: When Col. Winter has Yates brought in to see him, Yates tells the colonel that his father won the "Congressional" Medal of Honor. This is a mistake, and one a lot of people make. The award is correctly and simply called the Medal of Honor, and one doesn't "win" the medal, it's awarded. (01:21:10)

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