Best sci-fi movie mistakes of all time

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Planet of the Apes picture

Revealing mistake: Most of the posed, fake displays in the ape's Museum of Natural History contain real people who are slightly moving if one pays careful attention. Especially noticeable are those posing with objects held in - or above - their hands.

Hans Deutsch

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Total Recall picture

Revealing mistake: Doug has the hologram when inside the alien nuclear reactor, and a bunch of bad guys encircle the holographic image and fire at it at point blank with automatic weapons, and not one bad guy gets hit. If they encircled the 3D image, at least a few bad guys would have been hit by their own men. (01:37:00)

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Avatar picture Avatar mistake picture Video

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Parker is shown playing golf on the indoor golf course in RDA, the first time he hits the ball, there are two other balls lying on the course side by side. In the next shot, two are distant apart and in the shot after that, they are in their original position. (00:12:15)

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Iron Man 2 picture

Continuity mistake: In the final scene when Stark, Rhodes and the senator have a picture taken, Tony's jacket is first buttoned, then unbuttoned from the same viewing angle. (01:56:50)

rasmioche

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Terminator Salvation picture

Other mistake: When Marcus, Kyle and Star are at the petrol station, a flying HK and the giant Harvester robot are able to appear just outside without making any kind of sound. In every other scene of the Harvester and the HKs however, they both make an incredible amount of noise. (00:37:40)

GalahadFairlight

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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home picture

Other mistake: After they take off from California, Kirk gives a heading to Alaska. He then tells Sulu "full impulse power", and Sulu says "aye, ETA 12 minutes." Full impulse is 1/4 the speed of light. No way they would use speeds like that to go a few thousand miles.

ckstaats

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You Only Live Twice picture

Plot hole: Blofeld tells the bad guys that they had Bond and let him get away. The woman says, "But Bond is dead. It was in all the papers." As we saw in a paper near the start, there was a well-publicised photo of Bond, and when she met him he wasn't using any kind of disguise, so how did she not recognise him if she'd seen the papers?

Jon Sandys

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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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Resident Evil picture Resident Evil mistake picture

Continuity mistake: Near the end of the film, on the train ride out of the Hive, Rain is quite close to becoming undead. When she speaks, we notice her teeth are still "movie-star white". However, a few shots later, when she becomes a zombie, she sort of hisses where you can see it has taken what couldn't have been more than a few mere minutes for her teeth to become brown and discolored. (01:21:00)

Sammi

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Black Mountain Side picture

Revealing mistake: Throughout the film, the base station radio is not connected to an antenna. In many lengthy shots of the back of the radio we can see the power cord trailing out the back of the unit, but there is nothing plugged in to the antenna socket. This is especially annoying because base station radio problems are a key plot point.

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2010 picture

Factual error: While the Leonov has a centrifugal section to simulate gravity, the ship's bridge is not part of it (evidenced by the stationary views outside its portholes). Yet in various scenes, including the one when Floyd rushes in to discuss his plan to return to Earth sooner with Tanya, gravity seems quite evident. Floyd marches across the compartment onto the raised pilot area's floor, then steps down from it, his foot landing audibly. Tanya's open jacket also hangs down normally as she moves about. Yet when Floyd demonstrates his plan using two pens, they float in mid air. (01:26:50)

johnrosa

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The Time Machine picture

Plot hole: When George stops the machine for the first time, the candle burned down to about half of its size, which took according to his observations 98 minutes. But as the trip continues it takes seven hours for it to burn down completely. (00:25:45)

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Transformers: The Last Knight picture Video

Audio problem: Anthony Hopkins is in his car with Cogman, discussing Pangea the super continent over the phone with John Turturro. There are two instances in this scene in which Anthony Hopkins' voice has been dubbed over by a different actor that does not sound like him. Anthony Hopkins first says "That's Pangea. The super continent." The scene then flashes back to the round table and the dubbed voice attempting to sound like Hopkins says "It's the same shape on the round table." The dubbed voice is heard again when he says "Genius", before reverting back to Anthony Hopkins immediately after when he says "Stonehenge."

Casual Person

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Venom picture Venom mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Anne breaks up with Eddie on the sidewalk right after they get fired from their jobs, she approaches him and drops the box she is carrying. A ceramic mug falls out of the box. There is both visual and audible confirmation. After putting her ring in his shirt pocket, she bends to pick up the empty box and proceeds to walk away without also retrieving the missing contents. (00:14:45)

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom picture

Plot hole: Being transported from the west of Costa Rica all the way to Northern California by ship would take about a week. Are we to assume that Owen, Claire and Franklin were staying put in the back of the truck the whole time undetected? They would have to eat and use the restroom, at least.

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

Suggested correction: Maybe they did have to sneak around but the director thought making us watch Owen sneaking away at night to take a whiz wasn't really important to the plot.

It was established in the plot's timeline that the ship travelled overnight. A ship like this travels at about 12 knots and would take for them about 9 days to complete that voyage.

Nauticalisimo

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The One picture The One mistake picture

Continuity mistake: During the fight with Gabe and Yulaw, Yulaw does a powerful move of lunging forward and smashing Gabe with both his fists, sending him flying into a green metal box that crumbles from the impact. Gabe then falls to the floor, close to the box. The shot changes to Yulaw thinking he has victory, then back to Gabe. Gabe is now noticeably further from the green box, and his arms and legs are in different positions. (01:08:40)

Quantom X

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Prometheus picture

Factual error: The type of surgery shown made by the machine transversely cuts the rectus abdominis muscles. Besides not being a standard surgical incision in order to "remove a foreign body" as stated, it seriously damages important muscles of the abdominal wall making any immediate active mobilization of the trunk virtually impossible, even under strong analgesia.

Manuel Correia Ramos

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Sphere picture

Plot hole: The first time they communicate with the "entity" in the spaceship, they find a correspondence between numbers sent by the entity and letters of the alphabet. The entity presents itself as "Jerry". Later on, the entity tells Dustin Hoffman, "Stop calling me Jerry" - and then Dustin Hoffman realizes that the number-letter correspondence was wrong, and the actual name of the entity was "Harry". But if that is true, how could they have communicated without problems before? The very first word that the entity used was "hello", which would have to be displayed wrong, since it begins with an "h" and has an "e".

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Overlord picture

Factual error: During the plane ride into France, the Paratroopers are holding/carrying their weapons by their sides. In reality, their weapons (M1 Garands, B.A.R.s, etc.) would be carried in special "bags" strapped to their parachute harness. This not only protected their weapons, but also secured them to their person.

Matdan97

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