Best movie factual errors of 2021

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A House on the Bayou picture

Factual error: Towards the end of the movie, two characters finally make it to a Louisiana sheriff's office. The sign out front reads, "Vierge County." There are no counties in Louisiana, only parishes.

TXTerry

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings picture

Factual error: Although it's a commonly used movie trope, cutting the brake lines on a bus would not produce the effect seen in the movie. Buses use air brakes, which by design, can operate even with substantial loss of pressure and often engage automatically if there is too much pressure loss.

wizard_of_gore

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Suggested correction: I don't know what air brakes you have used but the very nature of air brakes means that low pressure means they can't work. If you have no pressure in them, how are you supposed to press the brakes? I have personally driven hundreds of vehicles with air brakes (I am a truck driver by trade) and can tell you this is a fact. All that happens when air brakes lose pressure is a warning light on the dash and an alarm sounding in the cab, one must manually slow down the vehicle at that point.

I respect the fact that you drive a truck, but my dad has been a master mechanic for more than 50 years and he is the one who pointed this out to me. Depending on the system, there are various fail-safe systems that will engage the brakes during an emergency loss of pressure. Plus, a simple Google search led me to several examples of these systems.

wizard_of_gore

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Black Widow picture

Factual error: The sisters run out of fuel for the helicopter, which is then shown slamming down on the ground and essentially destroying itself. All helicopters are capable of autorotating safely to the ground in the event the engine(s) quit. Of course, that would not have been as dramatic. (01:05:15)

toroscan

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Suggested correction: You may have noticed the helicopter was severely damaged, it may not have any rotating capabilities left after the fuel was gone.

lionhead

I did notice it, but it did not look that any damage would prevent it from autorotation.

toroscan

Perhaps the sisters (not being experienced helicopter pilots) couldn't use the autorotation properly.

OK, while that may be a possibility, if they have a helicopter pilot's license they would have had to demonstrate autorotation as part of both the curriculum and the practical exam. But listen, it's just a movie. The way they did it makes it more dramatic.

toroscan

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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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Eternals picture

Factual error: Druig leads several warriors outside Tenochtitlan as it was sacked by the Spanish conquistadores, and they live peacefully in the nearby forest, for 500 years. The forest is of course the virgin Amazon forest, as captions say. Small problem; Tenochtitlan was in Central Mexico.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: It never says that the people who live with Druig in the Amazon in the present day are descendants of the people from Tenochtitlan. Nor does it ever say that the forest outside Tenochtitlan is the Amazon. He's probably been moving around for the last five centuries just as the other Eternals have.

Necrothesp

Never ever? He literally says "Do you remember this forest? Beautiful. It's the last place we all lived together. I've protected these people for 20 generations." They split after their argument during the sack of the town. If their base of operations exterminating the mutant space dogs in Mexico was in the Amazon forest, their logistic could use some work.

Sammo

Just because the last time they fought together was in Tenochtitlan doesn't mean that was the last time they lived together. They may have spent some time living peacefully in the Amazon before moving north to do their business in Tenochtitlan. And just because he's protected the people for twenty generations doesn't mean they're descendants of the people from Tenochtitlan. He may have found them later. We don't know every detail of the Eternals' history. You're just making assumptions.

Necrothesp

You are assuming the presence of a third party stranded for 500 years that the movie never showed before, different from the people that he led out of the city and that we have then to postulate he let go, in a location far off from the one of their last encounter. It's an assumption on entirely new details that you had to make up. My only assumption is to think that what is shown in the movie had purpose and fits, and someone just borked a caption.

Sammo

Who says they're stranded? He just said he had protected them for twenty generations. They'd probably always lived there. You're making the assumption that they must be the same people because nobody said they weren't. But nobody said they were either. Nobody in the film ever made a connection between the people in Tenochtitlan and the people in the Amazon. No mistake has therefore been made in either the dialogue or the captions.

Necrothesp

I noticed the same problem, the scene indicates the location as "Amazon" (it could be any of the Spanish speaking countries that have part of this forest), but then, Druig comes with the affirmation you pointed. It's obviously a geographical inaccuracy.

They don't speak Spanish in the Amazons.

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Cyrano picture

Factual error: The morning after the ambush, Cyrano meets with the baker asking for a private spot. Ragueneau is an amateur poet, and he reads his composition. When Cyrano asks for a place more private than the oven surrounded by men, the baker recites "Jupiter and Pluto are planets, revolving like us, far apart." The story is set in the 1600s, and Pluto hadn't yet been identified as a planet nor sighted, let alone named. It happened in 1930. (00:28:40)

Sammo

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Halloween Kills picture

Factual error: The morgue is located on the lowest floor of a hospital not on the patient rooms floor. And the blinds on the windows would certainly be closed. In this hospital they are open and people can see dead bodies. Never happen.

Amy Emerick Tice

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Malignant picture

Factual error: It is not possible to have a conjoined twin of the opposite sex. They are similar to identical twins, which are always of the same sex, in that they are formed from a single zygote. In the case of conjoined twins, the zygote fails to divide normally.

wizard_of_gore

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Suggested correction: There are always exceptions to the rules and, although VERY rare, it IS possible for conjoined twins to be - rather, end up being - different sexes. There are about 10 documented cases. In one case, is my understanding the conjoined twins started out as males but a genetic mutation (or something) occurred and one male lost his Y chromosome, thereby developing into a female with no ovaries. (The now-female twin would have so-called Turner Syndrome.) I don't have any sources to quote off-hand.

KeyZOid

The male would have lost his Y chromosome after the zygote "split", but he was a monozygotic male.

KeyZOid

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Army of the Dead picture

Factual error: There is no way in hell they can carry $200,000,000 in cash (over 4,000lbs), let alone load it on the helicopter.

LATINLOVERS124

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Suggested correction: They never did and it was never the idea. They simply didn't figure out it's not physically possible. They took as much as they could from the vault in the much more limited time they had, and never got any of it to the helicopter (except for 1 small stack) anyway.

lionhead

It's true that the team was not meant to recover all the money, but they didn't know that going in. How did Ward and Peters, who seem reasonably smart, not consider the weight when planning the heist? The deal Ward believed was "get paid $50 million to recover $200 million" not "grab what you can and good luck"

I suppose it could be counted as a stupidity, but I'm not sure anyone is really aware of the weight of 200 million in cash, even reasonably smart people. Never seen it, never weighed it.

lionhead

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Nobody picture

Factual error: Neighbor states: '72 Challenger, 4.9-liter, V8. The '72 Challenger came with a 3.7-liter slant-6, 5.2 and 5.6-liter V8. (00:11:30)

Movie Medic

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Suggested correction: Sounds like the neighbor is mistaken, which would just be a character mistake. Remember, the car wasn't his. He had just inherited it, recently as Hutch points out. He admittedly didn't even know the correct 0 to 60 time.

jshy7979

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Cruella picture

Factual error: When Cruella first drives her iconic car, being in Britain the driver's seat should be on the right side, not the left.

Rob245

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Suggested correction: Cars can be imported from overseas. It's very possible the car was imported from America.

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Operation Mincemeat picture

Factual error: When Fleming salutes Cholmondeley and Montague, they return the compliment whilst not wearing their headdress. Members of the British armed forces never salute if they are not wearing a hat, instead they would stand to attention.

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Outside the Wire picture

Factual error: Lt. Harp is told by Capt. Leo that the Lieutenant has 56,000h of UAV flying time, That is ridiculous. Even seasoned pilots of the Military Airlift Command do not have that many hours. Drone pilots can fly up to 1,800 hours a year, and Harp hasn't been flying drones for 31 years straight.

toroscan

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Tom Clancy's Without Remorse picture

Factual error: In the nighttime hostage rescue scene, the rescue helicopter has its right and green navigation lights on, which are designed to show other aircraft where it is and which direction it is heading. This of course would not be the case while staging a clandestine operation in hostile territory.

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Fast & Furious 9 picture

Factual error: In the beginning, it's 1989. The crew chief, Michael Rooker, is wearing Mechanix gloves... which didn't come out until the 1991 Daytona 500.

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Red Notice picture

Factual error: Dwayne Johnson is pursuing a thief. He gets into a Porsche Taycan and pushed the start button, and he can drive off. But you have to have the key fob in your pocket or bag. Porsche explains: "As long as your key is close when you grab the door handle, the system automatically checks the encrypted access code on the key. Once your code is validated, the door will unlock, and you'll be granted access to your vehicle." Dwayne had no fob, as the car was just parked.

toroscan

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Suggested correction: I assumed the car belonged to the guy who was stood just in front of it, so the fob would have been in his pocket, close enough to start it.

Maybe start it, but since he drove away, the fob would no longer be in his possession and although the car would continue running one time, it could not be restarted.

toroscan

Maybe the owner was so stupid to leave the keys in the car. "Who can steal it, here in front of me?"

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Suggested correction: I didn't see any ice puncture the body, certainly not any that would break any window. Later you see dents in the hood, but that doesn't mean the windows should be broken. I've had severe hail damage in real life where the body of the car was dented without any windows being cracked.

Bishop73

At 22:54 you will see multiple dents into the hood up to about an 1-2" deep. At 27:35 you will see multiple dents so deep that the paint is gone and the bare body is showing. Sorry, at that force the windows would at least cracked if not more.

Movie Medic

The glass used in car windshields is about a quarter inch thick, seven times thicker than the sheet metal used in body panels. It is also about five times stronger. It wouldn't necessarily break or crack.

LorgSkyegon

Well you have your view and I have mine. Cheers mate.

Movie Medic

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Zack Snyder's Justice League picture

Factual error: Martha Kent drives away from the foreclosed property. The realtor address is "Comanche, KS 66531", but that's the zip code of Riley, in Riley County. (00:14:45)

Sammo

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Sing 2 picture

Factual error: Johnny's dad and gang come to over protection services to Moon and the singers. Despite almost no time having passed since the first Sing movie, as evidenced by Rosita's children having not aged, the gang appear to have been released from prison. The gang were in for armed robbery and at least one case of escaping prison. The minimum terms for those charges would keep them in prison for years.

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