Best sci-fi movie character mistakes of all time

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom picture

Character mistake: At the beginning they refer to the G8. Russia was removed from the group in 2014, making it the G7. (00:07:20)

Joey221995

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Watchmen picture

Character mistake: While he is describing his origin, Dr. Manhattan mentions a circulatory system appearing at a military base. However, what is actually shown is a nervous system, as it depicts a brain and spinal cord.

wizard_of_gore

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Stealth picture

Character mistake: When Lt Gannon is in the dogfight with the Russian jets, he announces that he is deploying "chafe and flares." The term is spelled and pronounced "chaff", and any pilot would know that.

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Iron Man picture Iron Man mistake picture

Character mistake: There is a misspelling on the cover of the issue of Forbes magazine shown in the presentation about Stark's life. It reads "Tony Stark takes reigns at 21". The correct spelling of the word is "reins". Stark may "reign" at Stark Industries but he would take over the "reins" of the company.

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Jurassic World picture

Character mistake: When Claire and Lowery look at the gyrosphere in red on the control panel, written above the gyrostation is "Return Request Disbhatched." Dispatched is misspelled. (00:55:20)

Comedyfan74

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Pitch Black picture

Character mistake: When Carolyn first addresses Imam, she quite obviously pronounces his name "ell-mom," as though the capital I in his title were a lower-case L. It should be pronounced "ee-mam". We distinctly hear Ali call out his name in this fashion after the ship crash lands on the planet.

THGhost

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Meltdown: Days of Destruction picture

Character mistake: Throughout most of the movie, many of the characters are seen wearing dark, heavy clothes such as long pants, sweatshirts, etc. Wearing warm clothing puts them at a greater risk of suffering heat stroke and dying more quickly, than if they wore light-colored, cooler materials.

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind picture

Character mistake: When Ronnie is cutting the article about Roy's encounter out of the newspaper, the title of the article begins with "UFO's...", the apostrophe making it possessive. It correctly should have been "UFOs...", with no apostrophe making it plural as intended.

Kit Sullivan

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

Suggested correction: You are incorrect. The article is actually correct. It is used as a contraction, not a possessive. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/apostrophe.html.

It's not a contraction. A plural acronym is simply "s" added to the acronym. An apostrophe never indicates plurality.

Charles Austin Miller

Suggested correction: There is no standard on how to pluralize initialisms or acronyms and either way is acceptable, depending on a person's preference. An apostrophe does not automatically make something possessive, such as using apostrophes in contractions to replace missing letters.

Bishop73

Nope. In contractions joining two words, apostrophes only replace vowels (typically the letter "o," such as in "hasn't" or "wouldn't" or "isn't," and most obviously with "it's" replacing the letter "i" in "it is"). In this case, the acronym "UFOs" stands for "Unidentified Flying Objects," and there is no vowel to replace between the "t" and the "s" (in fact, an apostrophe wouldn't replace any letter at all). So, the contraction argument is invalid. Using an apostrophe for "UFO's" makes the acronym singular possessive (such as in "The UFO's movements were erratic").

Charles Austin Miller

It seems you missed the point of my comment. What you're stating is an opinion on how to pluralize initialisms and acronyms. While many lean towards just adding an "s", many real life publications back in the 70's did in fact use and "apostrophe s" for initialisms and acronyms. (Notice how 70's isn't possessive or a contraction. But many prefer using "70s.").

Bishop73

"Many publications" were wrong (especially in the late 1970s) and followed poor literary and journalistic standards. No, it's not a "matter of opinion"; throwing in apostrophes where they are not appropriate is a matter of poor education in the English language.

Charles Austin Miller

The question is not whether using the apostrophe is "correct" or "appropriate." It's whether it was used by publications in the '70s. It was, therefore it is not a mistake.

You should be more educated when stating opinions then, because it wasn't about being wrong. It was about no set standard. For example "The Chicago Manual of Style" would recommend UFOs while "The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage" would recommend UFO's. Of course, both would recommend using the apostrophe when making single letters plural "A's" or p's and q's."

Bishop73

The New York Times manual of style is predictably bogus. I'm a professor of Journalism (Southwest Texas State University 1979 to 1987). I know what is proper.

Charles Austin Miller

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Minority Report picture

Character mistake: Near the end of the movie, John's wife calls one of his colleagues and says, "Jad, it's Laura, John needs a favour." Her character's name is Lara. (02:08:30)

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Night of the Living Dead picture

Character mistake: After Ben tells his story about his first encounter with the ghouls, Barbara begins her story. She talks about the ghoul Johnny was joking about. She tells Ben that she wanted to apologize. She states, "I said good evening, and he grabbed me." If you go back to that original scene, you'll never hear her say "Good evening." (00:29:40)

DrLoomis1978

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Battleship picture

Character mistake: After getting his silver star, Hopper is spoken to by a special warfare commander who has the Navy and Marine Corps medal. But the colors are reversed. The blue should be on your left, and the red should be on your right as you stand face to face in front of the wearer. The stars on some of his ribbons are also upside down. (01:53:45)

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Blade Runner picture

Character mistake: When Deckard is talking to the street merchant trying to identify the snake scale, the identification number he reads aloud is not the number that shows on the monitor. (00:47:30)

Lynette Carrington

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Moon picture

Character mistake: The word "satellite" on the uplink screen at which Sam Rockwell spends a lot of time staring, is incorrectly spelled "sattelite". The correct spelling is used a little further down on the same display.

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Spaceballs picture Spaceballs mistake picture

Character mistake: During the scene in the diner, there is a sign that reads "EMPLOYEE'S ONLY." There shouldn't be an apostrophe.

Low Cow

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I Am Legend picture

Character mistake: When LT. Col. Robert Neville's wife fails the eye scan and he's ordering the soldiers to scan her again, the soldier that escorts them to the scan point, and later to the helicopter mistakenly uses Will Smith's real last name. You can faintly here him identifying LT. Col. Robert Neville to another soldier as LT. Col. Robert Smith.

rickrude

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Reign of Fire picture

Character mistake: When newspapers are flashed on screen to demonstrate how the dragons have destroyed the countries, one of the headlines reads "Europes' capital cities in ruins." It should read "Europe's capital cities in ruins."

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The Matrix picture

Character mistake: When Morpheus is explaining to Neo the reason the Matrix exists, he states that a human being gives off 25,000 BTUs of body heat to help power it - this is just not true. Even human beings that are running a marathon can't give off that much heat, and the humans in the Matrix are all lying down, not moving.

John Tetris Lawless

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Plan 9 From Outer Space picture

Character mistake: The pilot says to his wife that the flying saucer was cigar-shaped. The actual shape was more like two dishes attached together. (00:04:45 - 00:12:20)

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The Hunger Games picture

Character mistake: When Katniss is trying to destroy the supply pile, we see a close up of her drawing back on the her bow. We see she has the arrow to the left of the grip, meaning the fletchings (feathers at the end by the string) have to be facing to the left. Otherwise the fletchings will hit the grip, rip off, and make the arrow unstable in flight and go completely off course. However, the fletchings are are facing to the right and so will hit the grip. Any archer or anyone who is skilled with a bow would know this. (01:32:45)

Ssiscool

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Dark City picture

Character mistake: When Murdoch finds the correct page in the phonebook, it is not sorted correctly. e.g. "Harber G" should be before "Harber TJ" and "Harrison Dale" should be before "Harrison E" (00:44:18)

jle

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