Continuity mistake: When the man walking with the tracker steps on the mine, one shot the mine is pushed forward and in the next it has been pushed backwards. (01:24:10)
Continuity mistake: The three Marine helicopters leaving the carrier are three UH1N Marine model helicopters. When they arrive in Bosnia to rescue the downed Navy pilot the same helicopters become two Bell model 205C and a Bell 412. When landing back on the carrier with the rescued pilot, they are again N models. (01:26:50)
Continuity mistake: At the end when the 3 Marine helicopters take off to rescue Burnett one of the 3 has their side door open. The position of this helicopter changes instantly between camera cuts. It goes from left to central of the 3. (01:26:50)
Continuity mistake: During the scene in which in the downed Navy pilot is roughing it out in the abandoned factory, before the mines start exploding, you can see that the spot of blood on his left cheek keeps on mysteriously disappearing & reappearing.
Continuity mistake: Barnett takes a drink of the Coke from the girl. When he goes to have another slug of the Coke, there is more in the bottle.
Continuity mistake: When the pilots are talking about the DMZ, they point to the left of the plane (port side) then you see the forest move from right to left. The plane is now headed in the opposite direction.
Continuity mistake: Gene Hackman begins the movie as a two-star rear admiral. Later in the movie, however, shortly after the second stand-down ordered by NATO Admiral Piquet, he wears three stars on his collar, signifying a promotion to vice admiral. This is highly unlikely, as he spends nearly all of the movie in the grease with his superiors. By the end of the movie, he retires as an Admiral with 4 stars on his uniform.
Continuity mistake: During the ejection sequence there is a major problem with the parachutes used by the crew. When you see the first parachute open, it is a standard Navy Conical round canopy with 3 colours; Orange, Green and White from the bottom view. A moment later they are flying ram air rectangular parachutes with different colour patterns.
Continuity mistake: The plane's weapons are there in some shots and not there in some shots. At 14:22, on the carrier you can clearly see 2 sidewinder missiles on the tips of the wings. At 14:52, they are there but are now blue. At 14:53, as it goes past "SHOOTER" they are gone. 14:57 there again.
Continuity mistake: Owen Wilson is carrying an AK47 with a wooden full stock when going to start the beacon on the ejection seat. When he is retrieving the film from the ejection seat, his rifle has a side-folding stock metal wire stock.
Continuity mistake: Towards the beginning of the movie when the F-18 is taking off to go on the recon mission, it shows a lot of different shots of an F-18 taking off. One of these shots is actually of an F-14.
Answer: The two seats collided in midair before their chutes opened and Stackhouse yelled, "ow!" Not realistic because in the 5 seconds it took for the second pilot to eject they would have been far apart.
But you see his leg get injured before his leaves the jet. I think the original question refers to how did that happen.
Ssiscool ★
The injury to Stackhouse's leg was from a pen attached to his knee pad. When watched in slow motion, you see it disintegrate and somehow throw shrapnel into his leg. It makes little sense, I believe it was merely a plot point to make Stackhouse unable to travel out of harm's way. This prompted Burnett to leave him unattended for the bad guys to find him as he went to higher ground to get better reception on the PRC-90.