Best mystery movie mistakes of all time

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Kiss the Girls picture

Plot hole: In the scene where Ashley Judd runs away from her attacker and falls into her aquarium he has moved to the bottom of the stairs - there is no way he would have been able to move that full fish tank. It looked to be about a 30 gallon tank - it would weigh about 400 pounds with the stand and even if he slid it with some superhuman strength, glass tanks are notorious for shattering when you move them full. Plus it would've made enough noise to wake the dead - no way she wouldn't have heard it.

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Knives Out picture

Plot hole: The killer shows up at the scheduled appointment at 8 AM. They kill the idiot blackmailer with an overdose of morphine. Remember, that morphine that supposedly killed Thrombey in 10 minutes. Marta finds the blackmailer at 10 AM...alive, and does CPR on them, keeping them alive long enough for the ambulance to come and bring them to the hospital, even if in critical condition. So we went from "kills in 10 minutes, you can't even try to save him" to "after 2 hours, you are still hanging on"? (01:56:10)

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Marta injected an absurdly large dose. A smaller overdose would not kill in 10 minutes.

I read that objection before. From 10 minutes to 2 hours there's quite a leap that the movie does not explain or address at all, if it were part of the plot they should have said why this difference, on something so time sensitive (of which they got the factual details wrong anyway). Even visually when you look at the dose injected to Harlan and the dose in the syringe for the murder, they do not look different. He even stabs her with the syringe. Which makes sense since he has no reason to leave her there with a small. Controlled overdose in her veins risking that she would be saved as it -almost - happens - it's amazing he got away with it to begin with because she is so dumb to show up for no reason in a derelict place without talking to her accomplice that passed her the toxi report, or anyone.Without a throwaway line from an investigator or anything of the sort ("but you injected her the wrong way, so she was still alive two hours after"), we are just left with an inconsistency.

Sammo

Suggested correction: You've assumed a hell of a lot! Marta said Thrombey was given a dose of 100 mg (instead 3) of Morphine and would die in 10 minutes unless given the antidote. You just asserted that "Thrombey would die in 10 minutes" as if it was fait accompli, while Thrombey didn't die of morphine overdoes at all! (He cut his own throat.) For all we know, Marta's 10-minute assessment was a worst-case-scenario assessment. Fran's age and physique, as well as Marta's CPR, helped negate the effect until the ambulance arrives. If the medics administered the antidote, it could have prolonged Fran's life. Finally, 2 hours is the time after which the viewer is informed of Fran's death, not her actual death time. Most importantly, this happens in the medical world all the time: A person who is supposed to die after 3 days lives for 16 years. There are case-by-case explanations for each one, but they baffle the medical examiners at first.

FleetCommand

Two hours is not my assumption or when the viewer is informed of her death; the killer gives the appointment to the victim at 8 AM and to Marta at 10 AM, so as I said, after 2 hours with 0 medical care on her she is still hanging on and with barely a little tap she is ready to dispense important clues. I go by what the movie says also about the 10 minutes overdose time. Of course if you tell me that baffling freak occurrences can happen all the time in medicine and that very precise statements from the movie don't matter because the character can just have gotten it wrong by over 10x and the movie does not acknowledge it at all, well, that's a very respectable opinion; mine is that fiction (a whodunnit, not a slasher flick with a killer surviving multiple gunshots and the like) is not reality and it should respond to higher standards than "I guess she was still alive somehow."

Sammo

I re-watched the movie to verify that Fran was given an appointment at 8 AM. I discovered something new: The bottle that was injected to Fran contained only 5 mg of Morphine. That's 1/20th of what was "supposedly" given to Thrombey Sr. So, yeah, 10x is OK. In fact, 20x is OK.

FleetCommand

No, no; it contains 5 mg of morphine PER ml, it's the concentration, not the total. Go back to the scene when Marta "messes up", the vials are the exact same as the one that Ransom injects (obviously, since they come from Marta's bag after all). It's new for you but I covered that already in the Factual Error about it. It's something that piles upon a previous mistake. She did not give him 100 mg of morphine because it would have emptied the vial (which is more than half full) and because a full vial of ketorlac would have killed Trombe regardless, at that concentration! The movie gets both the props and the medical facts wrong (100 mg of morphine does not even kill most patients, Harlan would have not died in 10 minutes especially since he takes safely big doses of toradol and morphine), but nothing - in the script - says that Marta or Ransom got basic medical facts wrong.

Sammo

Okay! It seems mistake after mistake is piling up. Now, it appears Fran lived 4 hours, during 2 of which she was unattended. Plus, 100 mg of Morphine from a 5 mg/ml vial amounts to 20 ml of liquid. Well, now, everything you say makes sense... or at least most of the things. On the whole, I think it was a complicated situation.

FleetCommand

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Safe Haven picture

Character mistake: When Katie's husband arrives in town and confronts her on the night of July 4th, he says "I miss you Katie." He does not know her name to be Katie as that is the name she created when she came to town. He is married to Erin.

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Suggested correction: He says "I miss you, baby" and then "I miss you so much, baby."

Bishop73

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Inception picture Inception mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Ariadne wakes in the Snow Fortress and the floor goes from under her, we can see her gloves fall in to the crack but in a different camera shot of her we can see the gloves are now back near her head again. (02:12:20)

09mcateero

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Snake Eyes picture

Revealing mistake: After the sniper is shot he falls through the wall. Look at his silencer when he hits the ground - it bends where it attaches to the muzzle. A real metal silencer wouldn't do that. (00:41:25)

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Escape Plan picture

Plot hole: The most secure prison in the world, designed with the advanced schematics of world leading prison-building architect (J.D Ray Breslin) has cameras somehow interconnected to one another so tightly that physically neutralizing one puts every other camera out of commission as well.

Sammo

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Flowers in the Attic picture

Continuity mistake: When Corrine takes off her blouse, she shows her children seventeen scars on her back that she got from being whipped by the grandmother. Later in the movie, when Corrine is dancing at a party, she is wearing a strapless dress and there are no scars or any signs that she was struck with a whip.

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Atonement picture

Factual error: Near the beginning of the film before James McAvoy heads up to the house for the evening meal, he is seen looking up through a skylight when a Lancaster bomber slowly flies overhead. At the time it was was supposed to be 1935. The Lancaster bomber did not fly until the beginning of 1941. Can't be an Avro Manchester either, they only had two engines and first flew in 1939.

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Scream 2 picture

Revealing mistake: When the killer is attacking Cici on the balcony, you can see blood on Cici's back before she is even stabbed and both times she is stabbed, the knife that comes out of her back has no blood on it. (00:33:20)

Hamster

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Monster House picture

Other mistake: When Nebbercracker is on the stretcher and is being wheeled away, the grass pulls off one of the last wheels. When the stretcher is loaded into the ambulance both of the back wheels are intact.

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The Nice Guys picture

Factual error: When Holland March is swimming behind the bar with mermaids, "Get Down On It" from Kool and The gang is playing. That song did not come out until 1981 and the film is set in 1977. (00:39:50)

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I Still Know What You Did Last Summer picture

Factual error: At the end when Ben Willis and his son have Julie at the graves, Ray shows up with a gun. He fires at Ben but there is no bullet in the chamber. Later after the fight between Ray and Ben's son Julie picks up the six-shot gun and fires 8 shots at Ben.

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Basic picture

Factual error: When the Ranger trainees first meet Samuel L. Jackson, he's wearing the rank of a Specialist on his collars even though he's a Master Sergeant. Title 18, Chapter 33 of the US code prevents the unauthorized wear of a military uniform (among other things), however this does not automatically correct the mistake since a common misconception is that one slight alteration is sufficient to make the uniform legal. Having the wrong rank on is too obvious of an alteration, especially for anybody who has spent more than a day in or around the Army and would still be punishable by law, if he was dressed in an attempt to fool your average citizen outside of a movie.

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Eyes Wide Shut picture

Visible crew/equipment: In a scene not too long after Tom Cruise attempts to revive a hooker who has OD'd, he is speaking with an older gentleman. The three are in a bathroom and the hooker is passed out on a chair. One of the shower or light fixtures toward the left of the screen is shiny, and in a shot during which the camera briefly tracks in reverse, you can see the camera, cameraman and the focus puller reflected. It's pretty clear and not all that fast.

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It (1990)

It picture

Revealing mistake: In the library scene when Richie sees Pennywise the clown, all the balloons filled with blood are popping on people who aren't supposed to be able to see them, but one lands on a lady and you can see her jump as the balloon pops.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince picture

Continuity mistake: In the dormitory, when lovestruck Ron is going gaga over Romilda, he is wearing a brown sleeveless tee shirt and its tan trim has many holes. When Harry brings Ron to Slughorn, Ron is still wearing that tee shirt, but now some of the holes are gone and the rest of the holes have changed position. (01:26:50)

Super Grover

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The Nun picture

Continuity mistake: When Sister Irene's habit is ripped at the back, you can see a bra strap on her left shoulder which disappears when she is seen at the front and when the camera is closer to her back (when she has the pentagram carved into her).

Andy Benham

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Knowing picture

Character mistake: The newspaper article states that Lucinda was thirty-three at the time of her death in 1988. However, that would make her just four years old when she wrote the time capsule note in 1959 - four years old in the 3rd grade?

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Final Destination picture

Plot hole: When Alex and Clear are sitting and having coffee they are on a corner. He looks in the window to see the bus pass, and as he looks to see if it is there, it's not. As the camera pans across the street, there is some construction going on which is blocking that whole road from being used, but then Terry, Carter's girlfriend gets "waxed" by the bus - no way it could have got through all that construction.

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