The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993)

36 corrected entries

(26 votes)

Corrected entry: Harrison Ford insisted on doing the stunt where he jumps out of the overturned prison vehicle to escape the oncoming train himself.

Correction: Completely false, since there was no "stunt" involved. The image of Kimble jumping off the upturned bus was a special effect using a blue screen.

Corrected entry: When Kimble reaches the hospital the first time he takes a box and carries it inside, as if he is one of the delivery guys. Why does nobody notice him? Wouldn't the delivery men see that he isn't one of them? And wouldn't people notice his unkempt appearance and ask questions of him?

Correction: This is not a plot hole. The hospital is busy, with many other people walking around, and as we learn from his colleagues throughout the movie, Dr. Kimble is very smart and he would not do anything to draw attention to himself. Also, Kimble looks at the delivery truck (presumably to see if the driver sees him) before grabbing the box and entering the hospital.

Mister Ed

Corrected entry: In the scene where Dr. Richard Kimble - posing as a janitor in a prosthetics lab - prints off a list of patients with a particular type of arm prosthesis, he quickly crumples up the paper and shoves it in his pocket. In the next scene, where Kimble is shown in a telephone booth calling people from the list, the paper has magically smoothed itself out.

Correction: It's not completely smooth. He probably uncrumpled it and pressed it out against something flat. People do that all the time.

Corrected entry: When Richard Kimble is running from the U.S. Marshals, to blend in with the parade he finds a green hat in the garbage can, but notice he approaches it like he knew it was in there to begin with.

Correction: Maybe he could see it from his vantage point. He's not that far away, it's a mesh can, and it's a very visible bright green.

Corrected entry: When Kimble is looking at the apartment, the landlady and son are speaking Polish. The landlady asks her son a question and he answers "Da" which is Russian. Polish is "tak". (00:55:50)

Correction: In fact the landlady's son is speaking Polish - he says "ta" which is the ordinary form of "tak". The English parallel would be "yeah" instead of "yes".

Corrected entry: When the car drives away at the end, with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in the back, the windows are clearly shut - however, just seconds before that they are clearly open, note especially when the door is closing, you can see it then!

Correction: I just watched the movie, the windows are down during the entire scene. As the car drives away the windows are still down since there are no reflections from exterior lights on them. Something that would be evident in a night scene shot on a brightly lit street.

Corrected entry: Wouldn't Kimble need a password to get into the computer database when he is getting a list for the patients with prosthetic limbs?

Gavin Jackson

Correction: The computer is up and running when he accesses it. Someone left it logged on. Dumb idea, but it happens all the time.

Corrected entry: The prosecution uses Kimble's wife's 911 call as the most compelling evidence against him, since she says, "Richard. . .he's trying to kill me." Fair enough. But the first thing she says when the 911 operator is "There's someone in my house." As in an intruder, and not her husband. Why his lawyer doesn't jump on this is beyond me, as this should provide the jury with reasonable doubt, if not outright proof of Kimble's innocence.

Correction: I am not convinced by this phone call, too, but she didn't say there was somebody in her house. She said: "He's still in the house" or something similar. The operator then asked: "Did I hear you right? Someone's in your house?"

Correction: The prosecutor may have said that Kimble's wife didn't know it was him at first.

Corrected entry: After Harrison Ford rents the apartment, he dyes his hair dark brown/black to add to his disguise. Later on, it magically returns to its original sandy grey colour.

Correction: He's washed the dye out of his hair (remember, we see him leaving a hotel). People know what he looks like with the black hair, so there's no point in sticking with the disguise. In fact, reverting back to his original appearance might help throw people off.

Corrected entry: When Tommy Lee Jones goes to the one-armed man's apartment, the one-armed man enters and says "I hell to hope you are a cop" instead of "I hope to hell you are a cop."

Correction: No, he doesn't - he says "I sure as hell hope you're a cop".

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: In the St. Patrick's Day parade scene, Richard grabs a green hat from the trash can. This hat is completely different from the hat he is wearing later on that scene.

Correction: The top of the hat was flattened; he simply pushed it back out.

Corrected entry: Are we really supposed to believe that when Kimble falls over 30 feet onto the top of the (metal) elevator, he does not have even a scratch on him (let alone being dead.). He even falls directly onto his face, its just way to much to even be slightly believable.

Correction: The height from which he fell, which was actually more like 20 feet, is a very tricky height. Land wrong, and you can easily die. Land well, and it is not at all uncommon to walk away completely unharmed and unscathed. Kimble does not land on his face. His whole body absorbed the impact, making it even more believable that he was OK.

Corrected entry: When Richard is being interrogated by police and tells them about the one-armed man, he says "You find this man." Later on, when recalling that moment, he remembers it as "You find that man."

Correction: Not everybody has a photographic memory. It makes sense that when recalling such a terrible part of his life later that he would not remember it exactly. This is done very realistically.

Correction: U.S. Marshals are fully capable of finding and apprehending any fugitive of the law. If Harrison Ford hadn't been convicted yet, the U.S. Marshals wouldn't have anything to do with the case, but because he was a convicted murderer at the time who was now a fugitive, the U.S. Marshals would use their full power to apprehend him.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Harrison Ford is being chased out of Cook County Hospital, he tries to get lost in the St. Patrick's day parade. He takes his tan rain coat off, having a blue shirt underneath so that he will look different. Notice that when he takes his coat off in the middle of the parade, the next shot shows him having absolutely no coat.

Correction: He dropped it on the ground - you can see it in one shot.

Corrected entry: There's a fundamental flaw with this whole film. In the United States being innocent doesn't entitle you to escape from prison; it isn't even legal grounds for appeal. Kimble may not have murdered his wife, but he is guilty of escape from legal custody, resisting arrest (by threatening a U.S. Marshall with a gun which is a federal offense) and dozens of lesser charges.

Correction: You're right that Kimble is guilty of these things, but how does that constitute a mistake? Nothing in the movie ever indicated he wasn't guilty of them. Nobody ever said he escaped because he was entitled to, and there is no proof that he won't be charged with any of the lesser offences you mention. All the movie shows is that Tommy Lee Jones believes (and cares) that he didn't kill his wife, and that he takes Kimble's handcuffs off as soon as they get in the police car. None of that makes this a mistake.

Other mistake: When Kimble takes the elevator to the conference to confront Dr. Nichols, he presses a button, but the one beside it is the one that actually lights up. In this particular elevator, the button he pressed is the one that should have lit up.

More mistakes in The Fugitive

Richard Kimble: Do you remember what I told you in the tunnel?
Sam Gerard: Um, yeah. It was noisy, I think you said something like you didn't kill your wife.
Richard Kimble: Remember what you told me?
Sam Gerard: I remember you pointing my gun at me.
Richard Kimble: You said "I don't care."
Tracing tech: He's on the south side.
Sam Gerard: Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Richard. I don't care. I'm not trying to solve a puzzle here.
Richard Kimble: Well, I *am* trying to solve a puzzle.
Cosmo Renfro: Five seconds to location.
Richard Kimble: And I just found a *big* piece.

More quotes from The Fugitive

Trivia: When "Richard" starts to limp it wasn't planned, Harrison actually hurt a ligament in his knee shooting a promo for the movie, a promo that wasn't even part of the movie. He refused to receive treatment until filming was finished and ended up needing surgery.

More trivia for The Fugitive

Question: When Kimble is in the hospital with the boy he changes the diagnosis to what? I have tried to look but it cuts away as he's writing it down on the boy's file.

Answer: Kimble is watching as the doctor, Al, looks at the chest film and states "possible fractured sternum, he's stable," and we can see Kimble's very bothered by that. Then Kimble is told to take the boy to observation room 2. When Kimble questions the boy and looks at the chest film, Kimble ignores what he was told, and instead heads directly for the surgical OR. In the elevator he draws a line over the incorrect essential diagnosis: "depress chest w/ poss fr" (possible fracture), and begins to write "Ao," then he scribbles a signature on the Patient of Dr line. The essential diagnosis Kimble writes is presumably an Aortic trauma - a life-threatening critical injury and requires immediate attention. So when Kimble brings the boy to the OR (instead of observation room 2) for the immediate emergency surgery, he tells the doctor the boy was sent up from downstairs. The child is then taken to operating room 4, STAT, thus saving the child's life.

Super Grover

Its a pneumothorax, is air trapped between the lung and the ribcage and it's very common.

Answer: When Richard changes the diagnosis, the first thing he writes down is "AO" which is medical shorthand for aorta. Many people who have medical degrees and saw the movie speculate that Joel had an aortic tear. This would cause blood to flow into the chest cavity making it difficult to breathe and with the impact from the crash it could have caused the fatal injury. An aortic tear requires immediate surgery and by changing Joel's diagnosis, Kimble was able to save his life.

Answer: The presumption is the boy was misdiagnosed and he changed the chart to the correct diagnosis. The doctor says later that he saved the boy's life. Most likely he changed the charge to order specific tests.

Answer: It's never specified what he changed the orders to, nor is it important to know. This was done only add to the plot where the other doctor noticed him looking at the X-ray, arousing her suspicion, then creating suspense as Kimble barely escapes from the hospital.

raywest

We know it isn't important know, it's just a point of curiosity.

True and if you notice that's the always reliable Julianne Moore as the other doctor. This was the first movie that she did that was lampooned in Mad magazine, the next would be Mocking Jay Part 1.

Rob245

"The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and "Hannibal" were both lampooned by Mad before "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1."

Bishop73

I totally get that you're curious about it. Just saying that filmmakers usually aren't concerned with showing small details like that. They use broader strokes to tell the story.

raywest

A lot of film makers do put in small details into their work. Yes, some are lazy, for example, repeating 1 or 2 paragraphs in a news article too look like they whole page is filled. Others take time to have the whole thing filled out, even adding funny things for the viewer who paused the video to read. This is why there's a lot of trivia entries and questions about what something small was or meant. A casual viewer wouldn't know if what they saw meant something or was the film makers being lazy.

Bishop73

More questions & answers from The Fugitive

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.