Continuity mistake: When Cadet Major Morelan is unbuttoning his jacket he unbuttons the top 2 buttons and the bottom 2 buttons. This leaves the middle 3 buttons fastened. He then sits down and is talking to Tom Cruise, Sean Penn and 1 other Cadet. In the next shot when he stands up, the bottom 3 buttons are now unbuttoned and only 2 buttons are fastened. He had sat down with his hands on his knees and that never changed. The button could not/would not unbuttoned itself.
Continuity mistake: Shaving cream reappears - When Cadet Major Morelan is shaving in front of the mirror he shaves his right side of his face then shaves part of his left side of his face. The next shot is a closeup of him in the mirror and the left side of his face is unshaven and completely covered with shaving cream. He then begins to shave the left side of his face again.
Continuity mistake: When Cadet Major Morelan is talking to the officers in the Admin Building about a plan of action. He is constantly leaning agains the table and standing upright. When they finally agree on the plan of action, he says "agree?" he is standing upright and away from the table. The next shot the officers immediately respond and Cadet Major Morelan is leaning on the table with two fists then stand upright when he hears sirens. There was not enough time for Cadet Major Morelan to lean against the table again between the question and response.
Revealing mistake: During the fight scene, when the young man pulls Gen. Besh's pistol and fires it, the pistol is shown close up and slow motion. The pistol doesn't cycle. (I.E. the slide doesn't recoil to load another round) This make it obvious that the pistol is loaded w/blanks and no blank adaptor.
Continuity mistake: Disappearing bar of soap. When the two younger cadets are in the shower the one on the left places his bar of soap on the soap dish. Tom Cruise then pushes him aside. In the next shot Tom is placing his bottle of shampoo on the same soap dish. The younger cadet never had time to get his bar of soap out of the soap dish so that Tom could put his shampoo on it.
Character mistake: When the adults are inventorying the weapons in the armory, one of them walks over to a case of pistols and says, "Pistol, 45 millimeter, M 1911A." The M1911A is a .45 caliber pistol and is listed as such right on the crate. There's no way the actor could have read "45 millimeter" anywhere on the crate.
Continuity mistake: During the fight/shooting scene we are shown a town boy jumping on Gen. Basche's back and struggling with him for the pistol. The we are shown in slow motion the town boy firing the pistol under Gen. Basche's arm. In the very next shot, the boy is sliding off Gen. Basche's back and the gun is in Gen. Basche's hand. And Gen. Basche is taking responibility for the shooting. There's no way that Gen. Basche could have grabbed the gun back from the boy and held it in firing position with one hand in that short a time. Nor could he have neglected to notice that it wasn't in his hand when it fired.
