Continuity mistake: In the first dogfight lessons, Maverick flies an F/A-18 with a characteristic black color scheme with light blue lines on the rudders and the plane's back. When Maverick is shown in the cockpit, you can see the rudders behind him are light grey.
Revealing mistake: Tom Cruise is placing his right hand on the cockpit canopy during an ACM training. The Rhino takes 2 hands to fly at all times unless you are in a straight and level flight. Since they were in ACM and his hands were on the canopy, this tells you that Tom Cruise was actually in the RIO position of the aircraft.
Suggested correction: It does not take two hands at all times. The throttle can be set for short periods, allowing the aircrew to brace themselves against the canopy to turn around and look behind them.
True IF you are in straight/level flight. They were in ACM at the time which would require both hands on stick and throttle.
There's a former Navy pilot on YT that confirms this.
Confirms that a pilot can or can't fly one handed like that scene?
Cannot. The channel is called Mover Ruins Movies.
Continuity mistake: In the bar scene when the other aviators meet BOB, Phoenix says: "Nine ball, Bob. Rack 'em." In the subsequent shots, you can see they are playing 8 Ball. Especially after Hangman says: "That don't confront me" you can see the 14 ball. (00:26:05 - 00:27:00)
Other mistake: When Cyclone and Warlock show Maverick the 12 candidates, Maverick looks at Rooster's profile, left of which is that of Hangman. There you see that Rooster and Hangman have the same Department of Defense ID: 720,956,349. (00:20:06)
Continuity mistake: When testing the Darkstar, Rear Admiral Cain is talking to Hondo, first his hand is touching his face, then next shot down, then next shot back on his face.
Factual error: "BOB" is wearing the patch for VFA-51, the "Screaming Eagles." This squadron was disestablished in 1995, roughly 24-25 years before the movie takes place. Also, it was disestablished as "VF-51", which flew Tomcats as a pure Fighter Squadron. Being a young LT, it's not likely he was ever assigned to this squadron, and in general Naval Aviators will wear their current squadron's patch on their flight suit.
Revealing mistake: When Maverick and the team are heading into enemy territory after leaving the carrier, they start dropping below enemy radar. There is a shot from a "belly camera" under a plane facing rearwards. The wings are moving around, then disappear upwards out of the picture. This is because the low flying aircraft (supposedly not an F-18F) pulled up in the shot, while the belly of an F-18F was overlaid / pasted into this cut in post. (01:31:45)
Factual error: When Maverick is flying faster than Mach 10 near the start of the film, all the screens at the base short out as those on the aircraft also do. This wouldn't happen; at worst, the screens would go blank. Most likely, a "no signal" or "no input" message would display.
Continuity mistake: The second time Penny is riding on Maverick's motorcycle after the beach scene she is wearing the navy blue sweater that she wore during the first ride, but when she and Maverick get to her house she is wearing a green button down shirt.
Plot hole: How could the E-2 Hawkeye not spot the enemy helicopter? It must have been airborne for many minutes at least before attacking Maverick. But less than 90 seconds before we see the helicopter, Comanche only confirmed the two Bandits approaching. (01:40:29 - 01:42:00)
Suggested correction: The helicopter is never shown on film more than 50 feet off the deck. It was previously established that the Hawkeye lost radar contact of Dagger Flight when they lowered their altitude on the approach-and they were over water at the time. The helicopter was shown exclusively within the heavily forested area which would almost certainly mask it from radar regardless of altitude.
Only the carrier lost radar contact, which is why they switched to "E-2 picture." The Hawkeye had radar contact with the Daggers all the time when they were cruising low through the narrow, forested, snowy canyon. The enemy helicopter would be as visible to Hawkeye radar as the Daggers.
I stand correction-corrected. Thanks.
Continuity mistake: When Maverick and the team are heading into enemy territory after leaving the carrier, they start dropping below enemy radar. Watch how close they are to the ocean. They've already reached lower altitude. In one shot, Maverick is higher above the ocean. In the next shot, he's lower again as before.
Factual error: In multiple scenes in the movie the U.S. Navy pilots are shown flying without Nomex flight gloves or wearing them with fingers cut out. The gloves are fire retardant and it's standard policy for actual Navy pilots to wear them in flight, no reason they wouldn't be.
Deliberate mistake: When Maverick is in the bar texting Iceman, Iceman's sentence-long responses come almost immediately after Maverick sends his messages, without enough time having elapsed for Iceman to have typed them out. Compare this to the later scene at the selectively mute Iceman's house, where he types out various sentences for Maverick to read, and the amount of time it takes him to type them out is more of what one would expect.
Suggested correction: Typing on a PC keyboard isn't the same as typing on a smartphone. The former requires proper coordination of both hands. The latter may use AI-assisted predictive suggestions and auto-correct. Microsoft's discontinued SwiftKey could predict all of Iceman's responses.
Predictive text and autocorrect still wouldn't account for Iceman's responses appearing on Maverick's screen almost immediately after Maverick sends his texts to Iceman. It would still take at least a few seconds for that to happen. The reason this is a deliberate mistake because they didn't want to waste screen time showing Iceman's responses appearing in a more realistic time-frame.
Iceman's typing starts at 0:21:51 and ends at 0:21:58. That's more than long enough. Maverick is twice as fast and we see his typing on the screen. He can type a whole sentence between 0:21:58 to 0:22:01. And it seems natural to me.
Maverick texts "The kid's not ready for this mission." Iceman responds "No one is," and roughly 2 seconds later a separate text appears, in which he says "That's why you're here." No amount of predictive text or autocorrect can both type out that sentence that quickly as well as deliver it to the recipient's phone.
First, in the real world, Iceman would be typing even as he hits the Send message. Maverick's phone would stop displaying the "Iceman is typing..." message to do the unfurl animation, but Iceman is still typing. Second, yes, Microsoft's AI-assisted SwiftKey could. Iceman types "That's" and SwiftKey guesses the rest. This degree of intelligent predication is mundane! Microsoft's IntelliCode predicts the C# code you'd want to write.
Other mistake: After Hangman shoots down the last 5th Gen fighter you can see his F-18 in all remaining shots including landing still has all its missiles. (01:55:41 - 01:56:20)
Factual error: Admiral Cain is sitting in the control room together with the Darkstar team looking at the mission control screens when the camera zooms in on one particular screen in the control room. It shows the density gradients around the airplane, visualizing the shock waves in a so-called schlieren image. The angle depicted between the shock wave and the Darkstar's fuselage appears closer to Mach 1.5 than Mach 7.5. (00:09:47)
Continuity mistake: When Maverick and Rooster steal the F-14 Tomcat, Maverick adjusts the throttle to move the aircraft out of the hangar. When he does, the wing sweep lever (marked by black/yellow diagonal lines) is all the way forward: wings fully extended. When Rooster says both runways are destroyed, Maverick flips the cover up and pushes the lever forward to extend the wings, but it already was. Back means the wings are stowed, forward means the wings are extended.
Continuity mistake: After Maverick and Rooster are shot down, they go to steal an F14 from the enemy. After the crash Rooster has a wound on the right side of his neck - in several scenes afterwards the wound moves back and forth, from right to left.
Continuity mistake: The scene in the hanger where Maverick is introduced. When Admiral says "be seated" there are only 2 rows of chairs. When Hangman looks over to Rooster he is in a new 3rd row.
Continuity mistake: When Maverick calls Comanche, the sun is behind the Daggers. When they descend below radar a few seconds later, the sun is ahead of them. (01:31:16)
Revealing mistake: When Maverick is chasing the 5th Gen fighter in the canyon, it cuts to a shot above his left shoulder. You can see a Gold, Red, and White Flag patch reflected in the canopy. Neither Maverick nor Rooster are wearing flag patches during the mission.
