Continuity mistake: When Simon pees himself, Albert's hat keeps changing the way it's tucked on his head in every single angle until he gets to the van. Watch for the right side of his temple and cheek. (01:14:25)
Continuity mistake: At the hotel, when Helen is about to destroy her dress she places her gabardine on a bench, to the right of her bag. In the next 10 shots, the gabardine's position and the way it's folded keeps changing. (01:18:05)
Continuity mistake: When Helen is about to enter the hotel room she tears her dress' right sleeve off. The strap of her bra is either fallen over her arm or correctly placed over her shoulder, depending on which angle focuses. (01:18:15)
Continuity mistake: The position of the champagne bottle holder and the next chair changes between shots. When Michelle enters the room and the camera is placed in the bedroom, the bottle holder stands between (and somewhat behind) the chair and the window wall. When Michelle approaches the table (camera is now Michelle) the chair is between the bottle holder and the window wall. Later, at the end of the scene this changes again, depending on where the camera is. (01:19:50)
Continuity mistake: When the terrorists burst in on Jamie and Arnie in the hotel room, the positions of Arnie's hands change between shots. Once going from being by his side to one being behind his head instantly. (01:26:25)
Audio problem: While on the plane, Helen says 'we are married and we have a child!'. When the shot changes the part 'and we have a child!' does not match her mouth. (01:28:05)
Continuity mistake: When Harry picks the handcuffs right after he receives the truth injection, he still has the handcuffs hanging off his hand. After he kills the guard with the hook, he grabs Helen and says "let's go". He doesn't have time to take the handcuffs off his hand but they are gone. (01:40:10)
Revealing mistake: When Harry has beaten Samir and his guards, he then has a fight outside with 4 or so terrorists in amongst some pallets. You can see in some shots that it's not Arnold but the stunt double doing some of the fight scenes. (01:41:25)
Revealing mistake: When Arnold uses a hose as a flamethrower, the terrorist on the left has his head and face soaked in fire retardant gel. (01:44:47)
Continuity mistake: After Helen drops the MAC-10 down the stairs and it keeps shooting, killing all the bad guys, you see it hit the floor, then the shot changes and it stops on the stairs. (01:46:10)
Continuity mistake: Throughout the limo chase scene, Tia's scratch on her face disappears and changes from cheek to cheek. (01:49:10 - 01:56:00)
Revealing mistake: In the scene where the harrier shoots a missile and blows up the bridge you can clearly see that it's all miniature, but if you didn't know, you could tell it by the crash barrier that is obviously made of some sort of rubber - it bounces up and down during the explosion (you see it in the frame where the car crashes down on the bridge again). (01:54:10)
Continuity mistake: During the bridge scene the limo driver is shot and blood splatters on the windshield. In the outside angle the blood is gone. (01:55:20)
Continuity mistake: During the bridge sequence, the limo drives through an area that is on fire. After emerging from the fire, the passenger side headlights are shown to be blackened from the smoke and heat. Further down the bridge the headlights are shown to be clean and new looking again. (01:56:40)
Revealing mistake: In the scene where the limo crashes off the bridge after Hellen Tasker has been picked up in the chopper, the camera pans back to show a strut of some sort is falling from below the limo. (01:58:35)
Factual error: Schwarzenegger flies the Harrier without ear protection of any kind. I was fifty metres from one at the Farnborough Air-show, and I can tell you that after landing he (and his daughter) would be both stone deaf. Yes, they are THAT loud. (02:02:00)
Other mistake: Harry commandeers one of the AV8-A's to go to save his daughter, and makes a clumsy vertical takeoff (where he bumps the police cars, etc). The reality is that, besides the deafening noise, the AV8-A generates a strong down wash when it takes off vertically which would have blown all the people on the bridge (and even some of the cars) in all directions. A few seconds later there is a cut to a real AV8-A vertical takeoff over water where we can see the effect of a real down wash on the water's surface. (02:02:20)
Deliberate mistake: In the scene where the bad guy is attached to the missile and fired, in the split second before it hits the helicopter you can see below it a building called SUN BANK, but the letters are backwards. A close look reveals the likely reason - to the right of the reversed building is one which looks just like the building to the LEFT of the Sun Bank building behind the harrier a few seconds earlier. Most likely they couldn't film the chopper from the right side because there was a building there (the one the camera flies through), so they filmed it from the other side (the same side they'd filmed the harrier from), catching the "Sun Bank" behind, then had to flip it to have everything facing the right way. (02:06:55)
Audio problem: In the scene where Dana's about to fall off the crane, you hear an audio of her screaming "Help me. Help me." But if you look at her face, she's not saying anything. (02:08:15)
Factual error: The terrorist with the AK47 is unaware of the fact that a Harrier is hovering just outside the window until he slowly turns and see it there. He does a double take when he sees the Harrier just five metres away! A Harrier is an incredibly loud aircraft; you can hear them from three kilometers away. At that range the floor would shake with the noise and he would have been in no doubt whatever that he had been under attack for some time.
Chosen answer: True Lies did well, earning about $379m worldwide from a $100m+ budget, the first movie to have a production budget that high. It was the third highest grossing movie of 1994.
Jon Sandys ★