Best sci-fi movie character mistakes of 1989

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier picture

Character mistake: Sybok tells Kirk that no one believed the world was round until Columbus proved it. Someone who studied at the Vulcan Academy should know that the Greek philosophers had proved the world was round and calculated its circumference centuries earlier. Columbus never set out to prove the world was round, just to find a shortcut to India.

More Star Trek V: The Final Frontier character mistakes
The Abyss picture

Character mistake: When they're reviving Lindsey, Bud screams "fight" and slaps her. watch as she closes her eyes on the second slap while she is supposed to be dead.

korporal kool

More The Abyss character mistakes
Honey I Shrunk The Kids picture

Character mistake: While pitching his shrinking machine to NASA Szalinski claims that reducing the size of a rocket's payload would result in "staggering" savings in the fuel required at takeoff. However, he makes it clear that his machine works by reducing the space between atoms, meaning that the shrunken object weighs the same as the original. Weight is the critical factor in calculating fuel consumption, not size. Anyone at NASA would pick up on that instantly.

More Honey I Shrunk The Kids character mistakes
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure picture

Character mistake: In the movie they grab Genghis Khan in 1209 which would have been correct, he ruled Mongolia from 1206 to 1227. In the presentation at the end they say in 1269 he did this and that, that would have been Kublai Khan's reighn of terror in Mongolia.

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

Suggested correction: Bill and Ted have proven not to be that smart. Easy for them to get those things confused.

lartaker1975

It was also an excuse for a callback to the "69, dude!" joke from earlier in the film; whether Bill and Ted intentionally got that detail wrong just for the sake of a joke is anyone's guess.

zendaddy621

More Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure character mistakes
Ghostbusters 2 picture

Character mistake: Ray and Egon are giving Oscar the check-up; Ray suggests to run a "Gammill and Pross Infant Acuity Test", which does not exist and is an inside-joke in the screenplay, since Tom Gammill and Max Pross are a duo of comedy writers. Egon agrees and says that they'll finish with an Apgar score, which is a real pediatric term - but it's a test for literal newborns, not an eight months old one like Oscar. (00:16:05)

Sammo

More Ghostbusters 2 character mistakes

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.