Best thriller movie factual errors of all time

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Alien picture

Factual error: When the crew shoots Kane's body out into space, the door opens up and "explosive decompression" causes Kane's body to fly out into space. At the beginning, the body slowly rotates. Then as it moves further away, the body begins flipping much faster. The reason something would increase speed in rotation like that is due to aerodynamics. An object traveling through space would simply keep the same rotational velocity it begins with since there is no air or other influences (gravity, etc.). The explosive decompression may cause it to increase rotation speed, but by the time it begins to flip, any air would have dissipated into space and not work as a column of air/wind to force the body into a flip.

12o

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The Mechanic picture

Factual error: When Bishop and McKenna are discussing how to kill the preacher, Bishop states that epinephrine and adrenalin are a lethal combination; they are actually two different names for the same thing.

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Scream picture

Factual error: At the end when they are loading Dewey into the ambulance on the stretcher, it is standard procedure to put the patient neck brace when they receive any type of unknown injuries (stab wounds) to their back as Dewey did - it was notably absent.

jerimiah

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The Imitation Game picture

Factual error: The detective played by Rory Kinnear is shown in 1951 typing a request for Alan Turing's military records. He changes a name with correcting fluid - unknown in the UK in 1951.

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Swordfish picture

Factual error: Worms are not created in AutoCAD. Ever. Period. Does not happen, cannot happen. Building design work and the like is done in AutoCAD. Viruses and worms are coded out by hand or created with a generator by slackers that don't know the code and then compiled into executables.

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Unbreakable picture

Factual error: When Bruce Willis is looking at his old high school news clippings you see a professional baseball score on one of the newspaper clippings. The game was Pittsburgh vs. Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks were not a team yet when he was in high school. (00:33:35)

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Fast & Furious picture

Factual error: During the first tunnel sequence, all the cars travel very far into the mountains, turn lots of corners, yet not only is Gisele still able to speak to them over the radios, their GPS still works. GPS signals invariably need a clear 'sight' of the sky and can penetrate light cover, but most certainly not that depth and cover. (00:58:05)

GalahadFairlight

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Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle picture

Factual error: Helicopter rotor blades do not unfold by themselves and there is no way to unfold them from inside the helicopter. A trained mechanic with the right tools and equipment (including the proper ladder for the job) will take a minimum of twenty minutes to rig a four bladed rotor, and that's if (s)he's in a hurry. An airborne (i.e. falling) helicopter? Forget it. (00:07:40)

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Flight of the Phoenix picture

Factual error: After calculating the amount of water they have available Townes and A.J. announce they will be living on "a pint of water per person per day". One problem - they'll be dead within three days, if they manage to last that long. A GALLON - eight pints - a day is the absolute minimum in conditions of dry, extreme heat such as they are experiencing, and that is for a resting male. Take their strenuous exercise into account and you can push that up to two gallons a day. One pint a day? Forget it.

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X-Men 3 picture X-Men 3 mistake picture

Factual error: Take a look at Google Earth - the section of the Golden Gate Bridge Magneto breaks off (about a mile - tower to tower plus a section each end) isn't anywhere near long enough to reach Alcatraz from anywhere on the mainland.

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Capricorn One picture

Factual error: The whole conspiracy is doomed from the start! They show a Lunar Module on the set representing Mars; the astronauts were supposed to use this to 'land' on the Martian surface. This is insane. The Lunar Excursion Module cannot operate in an atmosphere; it would burn up on entry. It has no heat shield - the engine nozzle and landing legs would have to poke through it if it had. Exterior protrusions like antennae and steering engines would burn off during descent through the Martian atmosphere. While Mars' atmosphere is thin, it is still more than sufficient to burn up a Lander designed this way. All three recent Mars Landers, Spirit, Opportunity, and Phoenix, had heat shields and parachutes to facilitate safe re-entry. This is not a radical redesign of the LEM; it simply cannot be the shape it is if it is to work in an atmosphere. Any schoolkid would know that, and the world's media would not be fooled for a second.

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picture

Factual error: In the original Transformers, Tyrese Gibson's character is credited as and wears the rank insignia of a USAF Technical Sergeant. In Revenge of the Fallen, set two years later, Gibson's character now wears the insignia of a USAF Chief Master Sergeant, three ranks higher than his rank in the first movie. The USAF would not jump someone three grades into the top 1% of the enlisted force no matter what his heroics or experience (that does not even happen to Medal of Honor awardees). Clearly the screenwriters recognized this as Captain Lennox is bumped only one grade to Major despite his actions in the first film and Gibson's character, as noted in another mistake, is credited as Master Sergeant Epps, a reasonable promotion. The costume department simply got the insignia wrong.

Guy

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Star Trek: First Contact picture Star Trek: First Contact mistake picture

Factual error: In the scene where Picard opens a viewing port and shows Lilly that she is in a starship orbiting Earth he shows her New Guinea and Australia. New Zealand is missing. (00:42:45)

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Suggested correction: Actually when you look at Australia and New Zealand from orbit, New Zealand is a lot further away from Australia then shown on a map, also a lot more south of Australia. A map is a 2D image of a sphere, causing proportions to be off (its well known Africa is a lot smaller on maps than it is in real life). Especially the further south or north you go distances are way off. The depiction shown in the movie is actually correct, in that angle New Zealand is just outside of the frame. There are plenty of pictures from orbit to compare.

lionhead

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Psycho picture

Factual error: When Janet Leigh is shown lying dead on the floor of the shower, there is a close-up of her open eye. The pupil is contracted to a pinpoint (obviously due to the bright lighting) where it should have been dilated. After the film was released, Hitchcock heard from several ophthalmologists who pointed this out and suggested he use belladonna eye drops in the eyes of "dead" people in future films, as the chemical prevents the pupils from contracting. (00:48:30)

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Ghost Ship picture

Factual error: The gold bars that the crew finds must be some new type of lightweight gold. There's no way that Julianna could stuff a gold bar in her back pocket and then pull it out and toss it on the table and Greer simply tosses it back and forth like it was plastic. A gold bar weighs around 27 pounds, you definitely wouldn't be tossing it around. (00:42:05 - 00:47:50)

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Godzilla vs. Kong picture

Factual error: Let's go by the movie geography; our planet is a big matrioska. By diagrams shown, this Hollow Earth would be by the Earth's core, thousands of miles deep. They enter from a portal in Antarctica. And yet, Godzilla later in the movie burns a random hole in the ground in HK deep enough to reach it, roars through it and Kong hears it, and the ape easily climbs it to poke back to the surface. Even admitting you can do the magic "1,000 miles in 2 seconds" warp anywhere, the scale is ludicrous.

Sammo

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Airport 1975 picture

Factual error: The scene in which the Beechcraft Baron hits the Boeing 747 in flight plumbs new depths in cinematic absurdity. Assuming both aircraft are at their normal cruising speeds - they appear to be - and the Beechcraft has half a fuel load left, it will hit with the same energy as 7,700 kgs of TNT. The Beechcraft Baron weighed 3,200 kg and the two aircraft would have a closing speed of something like 700 kmh. Even a glancing blow would tear the entire front half of the 747 to bits - there would be virtually nothing of the fuselage left intact all the way back to the wings, and the film shows the two aircraft on course for a head on collision.

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Suggested correction: What matters is how much of the small plane's kinetic energy was deposited in the 747's structure. A glancing blow would deliver less energy than a head-on collision, because it lessens the total time interval of the impact. Another important thing is if the small plane shattered or stayed largely in one piece during the collision. If it promptly shredded on impact, then each little fragment carried away its portion of the total energy. Smaller pieces of something as light as that plane would immediately get caught in the powerful airflow and be diverted around the 747.

Absolute rubbish. Airliners do not survive mid air collisions.

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Hunter Killer picture

Factual error: When the order is given to activate the US Navy 6th Fleet, the warships are shown with their crews standing on deck in their dress white uniforms, which is only done when pulling in or out for a deployment, or ceremonial port call (fleet week). (01:33:00)

Snag.1

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xXx: Return of Xander Cage picture

Factual error: When Xander Cage is chasing Xiang on the dirt bikes, he lets his bike get entirely submerged, which would flood the engine.

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Knives Out picture

Factual error: Opening the blank envelope, Marta finds the fragment of the toxicology report. It is signed "Office of the chief medical examiner, Norfolk County, Massachusetts." But then it writes also the address of said office, which is in Marlborough. Marlborough is also the city when Marta resides, and where the lawyers' letters we see come from. But Marlborough is also a city in the Middlesex county, not Norfolk. (01:28:25)

Sammo

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