The Thing From Another World

Corrected entry: The thermite bombs vaporize the saucer leaving no trace except for the thing; yet, the saucer survives a fiery entry (still shots shown to the captain) into our atmosphere and the craft was determined by the scientist to weigh 20,000 tons when it crashed and made up an unknown alloy. With this in mind and no trace but a body, how did the body survive that heat?

Larry Koehn

Correction: The book explains this. The thing survived the crash, wandered out and was lost in a blizzard then froze. The ship caught fire because thermite burns much, much hotter than air friction from reentry.

Grumpy Scot

Corrected entry: The baby aliens are shown to all in the camp. No mention of them at the end of the movie even from the reporter who raps things up. (01:01:45)

Larry Koehn

Correction: At one point one of the soldiers says they burned everything in the professor's lab.

Grumpy Scot

Corrected entry: While at the saucer near the North Pole, you never once see the men's breath from the cold. (00:20:45)

Larry Koehn

Correction: That's because visible breath is NOT solely due to cold, but to air humidity. If the air is dry, it does not matter how cold it is, breath will not be visible.

Twotall

The last statement of the correction is incorrect, and there's a misunderstanding of the role humidity plays. If the relative humidity of the air and your breath combined is 100%, you'll see your breath. There are two ways to affect relative humidity, higher humidity or lower temperature. Thus, at a certain temperature (usually below 45°F), you'll always see your breath, no matter the humidity.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: When the Thing opens the door to walk down the corridor, there are boards nailed and propped to keep the door from opening up. Whoops, the door opens up in the opposite direction. (01:20:00)

Larry Koehn

Correction: Not necessarily. There are two equally plausible explanations: 1.) The Thing rips the door from its hinges, so it doesn't matter that door opens in (in which case, though, the mistake is that the door jamb doesn't crack and splinter, not that the barricade is on the wrong side); or 2.) Captain Henry and his team knew that the door opened out, but placed the barricade there to slow the alien down (albeit temporarily).

The Thing From Another World mistake picture

Revealing mistake: The Thing takes a swing at the captain after the captain opens the door. As the Thing swings his arm, he takes out a chunk of wood out of the door. If you step through the frames on the DVD, you can see the wood leaving the door a full second after the Thing has hit it. A small explosive charge that was not in sync with the actor. You can also see the outline of where the wood comes off before he swings his arm. And one more thing, his arm does not touch the door or even comes close to where the wood comes off - a safety precaution I presume. (00:57:33)

Larry Koehn

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

Suggested correction: It is not a full second delay. It is four frames which translates to 1/6 of a second. Everything described in this entry is only visible if you step through frame by frame which invalidates the mistake.

More mistakes in The Thing From Another World

Ned "Scotty" Scott: Here's the sixty-four dollar question - what do you do with a vegetable?
Nikki: Boil it.
Ned "Scotty" Scott: What did you say?
Nikki: Boil it... bake it... stew it... fry it?

More quotes from The Thing From Another World

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