Revealing mistake: In the scene where the soldiers are in the trench on Saipan's D-Day, a Japanese soldier points a gun at Yahzee's head and Yahzee freezes up. Then Enders comes up and slits the Japanese soldier's throat. If you look closely at the Japanese soldier's throat, you can see that there is no cut in it, just blood. (00:46:55)
Visible crew/equipment: In the scene (chapter 16) where Joe and Ben are riding on the back of a truck up a dirt road, there is a shot where Joe and Ben are leaping off the back of the truck after it was hit. You can see the shadow of the overhead camera very clearly in the bottom right hand corner. (01:04:22)
Continuity mistake: In the middle of the movie as they are under friendly fire: Pappas jumps into a bombing crater and you can see the shadows very clearly. But the shadows in the next shots are much shorter. (01:05:36)
Continuity mistake: A group of Marines approaches a minefield and one of them falls with his back on a mine. The explosion throws him in the air and you can see his uninjured back. Not even his shirt got a scratch. (01:46:50)
Continuity mistake: During the end of the movie where Ben, his wife, and George are sitting on the rocks there is a visible error. In one shot the dish (in which Ben will wash Joe's dog tags) is sitting on a blue cloth. In the next shot where he actually washes the tags, it is sitting on the rock. (02:07:48)
Factual error: The movie is set in 1944, when there were only 48 states, yet we see many American flags with 50 stars, then 48, then back to 50 throughout the film.
Continuity mistake: When Enders gets shot numerous times at the end, he lies in a crater left from a shell. He begins to cough up blood, and it drips down the left side (as we look at it) of his mouth and chin. The view then switches to one behind him, facing Ben. There is no blood around his mouth or dripping down his chin. The view then changes back to the original one, and the blood's there again.
Factual error: Near the end of the film, Nicolas Cage is looking at the envelope of a letter sent by the Second Class Petty Officer that helped him pass his hearing exam. On the envelope, her Rating (a job in the Navy) is written as HM (Hospital Corpsman). During that point in history, those jobs were called PH (Pharmacists Mate). There were no HM's in the Navy then. The envelope should have read PH2 not HM2.
Continuity mistake: When Ben is talking to his son afterwards we see a shot of his son from behind and he's wearing Ender's dogtags. Then next shot shows the kid from front and he isn't wearing them. Then Ben puts Ender's dogtags around his neck.
Factual error: Just an observation here: Do you ever notice how the wound/kill radius on a lot of the heavy artillery explosions is like 1-2 feet. In one explosion (usually against the Japanese), the artillery does massive damage, i.e. takes out an entire bunker, but another round will land almost right next to guy and it does virtually nothing. I also wonder where all the shrapnel is, almost all the explosions in this movie create a lot of dirt or a lot of fire, but no shrapnel or its effects.
Continuity mistake: If you look at Cage's ear wound you can see it getting bigger and smaller every now and then.
Continuity mistake: When Enders is drinking the Saki and talking to Ben there is a shot from behind Ben. Enders raises his hand to point towards Ben. The camera angle changes to show the shot from behind Enders and he is raising his hand again, pointing towards Ben.
Visible crew/equipment: When Nicholas Cage goes and throws the satchel charge into the Japanese bunker, as he turns to run his helmet falls off and you can plainly see that it is not Cage but his stunt double.
Factual error: Late in the film, Nicolas Cage throws a grenade to kill the Japanese who have captured Roger Willie. The resulting explosion is a prolonged pyrotechnic plume with petroleum flames bursting out of the ground. WWII grenades didn't produce flames of any kind, and they still don't.
Continuity mistake: When Enders is getting his hearing examined, the medical officer moves the left knob to "30", tests Enders' hearing, has a conversation with the nurse, and then moves the knob to "30" a second time.
Factual error: Throughout the movie, most of the artillery and grenade explosions produce massive fireballs, as though each one hit a fuel depot. In reality, explosions of most artillery shells produce a lot of dirt, dust and smoke but very little flame unless they produce secondary explosions of gas tanks, etc. In Windtalkers, even explosions that go off in empty ground produce prodigious fireballs.
Visible crew/equipment: In the final battle scene in which the heavy Japanese artillery is firing down on the column of U.S. Marines, One rather large Japanese shell explodes next to a tank and engulfs the tank commander in flames. You can clearly see the silver fire-retardant suit the stunt man is wearing.
Deliberate mistake: In countless shots showing Japanese, and some shots showing Americans, being shot, take notice of the ground that they stand on. Almost every time a bullet(s) will hit below them at their feet, yet they still fall dead. In some shots even, there is a continuous line of shots from a single shooter, hitting the ground, yet numerous Japanese soldiers fall dead.
Revealing mistake: On the final combat, just after the Japanese uncover their cannons, one of the cannons take a shot but the recoil is a good half second too late.
Revealing mistake: In the scene where they come under fire by their own artillery if you look very closely you can actually see the flash pot used for the first explosion right before it goes off. Its the shot from the driver's side rear of the truck and it occurs right after Enders and Yahzee are talking about Yahzee's son and Enders orders Yahzee not to write letters out.
Answer: The point of using the Navajo code to call in air strikes was to encrypt what the Marines were requesting without the Japanese being able to decipher what was said. This is critical because during the Battle of Saipan, the Japanese made extensive use of caves and reinforced earthworks to support their artillery positions and machine gun nests. The delay between requesting artillery support and the act of carrying it out allowed the Japanese to withdraw their infantry to relative safety before the fire mission could commence. By using PVT Yahzee and PVT Whitehouse, they were able to circumvent this and request attacks without the Japanese knowing what was coming. The only time Yahzee does not use the code is when he uses the Japanese radio to call off the artillery strikes that were falling short and hitting Marines. This situation required immediate attention and it would not have been appropriate to use the code.
Invader_Gir