2012

Corrected entry: In the scene with the G8 meeting the American President is talking to the G8 members. The Russian President turns to his translator and speaks in clear Serbian language (not Russian!) 'do not go out, stay' (nemoj da izadjes, ostani). Then in the next moment the Russian President tells his translator in clear Serbian 'You can go now' (mozes da izadjes).

davidana

Correction: It's not uncommon for people to be able to speak multiple languages. If the Russian president thought someone could understand Russian, he could easily have decided to speak in Serbian. His choice to change his orders to his translator is not a mistake.

Ssiscool

Corrected entry: When they leave Southern California, they are dressed in summer clothes. but when they are walking in China after getting off the plane, they are all wearing winter coats. Where did they get them from?

Cynthia Gurski

Correction: In the extended version, they are rummaging through luggage.

Corrected entry: When Charlie shows Jackson his video of the 1958 Earth Crust Displacement theory, it states that Einstein agreed with Charles Hapgood's theory, this can't be possible, since Einstein died 3 years earlier in 1955.

Correction: Hapgood worked on his theory for years before his book was published and spoke to Einstein about his theories. Einstein even suggested one of his theories was incorrect. Hapgood's book "The Earth's Shifting Crust", published in 1958, includes a foreword by Albert Einstein.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: As Air Force One is in the air, one of the crew announces to Anheuser that all ground communications are down. Yet after Air Force One has landed in Tibet, Satnam is able to call Helmsley to warn of the approaching tsunami using his mobile phone.

Correction: He uses a satellite phone, not a mobile.

Corrected entry: Throughout most of the film John Cusack listens to a radio program on 745 KHz AM [medium wave]. In the United States, this frequency would almost certainly be impossible to hear in a car, due to U.S. frequency spacing of 10 KHz per station.

manthabeat

Correction: The radio station with 745kHz AM frequency is fictional and need not be scaled with the real word. To comply with the 10kHz spacing, the other fictional stations [even if not mentioned in the movie] could be 755, 765, 775kHz and so on. In the same way the telephone number prefix 555 is unused; hence, almost always used for fiction.

gblontok

Corrected entry: The scene after the earthquake in Washington D.C., when President Wilson is seen coming out of the rubble, we see a giant tsunami heading toward him. On the tsunami is the USS John F. Kennedy with the words "USS John F. Kennedy" painted across the runway deck. On the real USS John F. Kennedy, no such words are printed across the deck.

samuraiSTAK

Correction: If the USS John F Kennedy do not have that markings in its runway deck in present day, it is not impossible that the US Navy will put them on by 2012.

gblontok

Corrected entry: Jackson accidentally pushes Gordon's Porsche into a hole, however, in the overhead shot of the limousine leaving, there is no sign of the hole the Porsche fell into. (00:45:45)

GalahadFairlight

Correction: I thought this as well at first. But he was backing into the driveway when he hit it. The second photo was him already driving away on the road. The hole was further up the driveway.

twstr988

Corrected entry: Why is it that after they claim earlier in the film that all global communication has ceased, an Indian watching an approaching Tsunami can make a mobile phone call to someone in the middle of a mountain in China?

Correction: It's a satellite phone, not a cell phone.

Sereenie

Corrected entry: Yuri brags that enormous Antonov AN-500 cargo plane is of Russian origin. Antonov is a Ukrainian aircraft design bureau and manufacturer.

Ozraptor4

Correction: Antonov's have been built since the 1940s. Kiev doesn't have a facility to built the entire plane, so they've been assembled in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Novosibirsk, Russia, or Tashkent, Uzbekistan under contract. Besides all that, the 500 is a fictional plane for the purposes of the movie. The actual plane is an An-225.

rswarrior

Correction: The Antonov An-225 has a range of 15,400km which is almost 10,000 miles.

Correction: The An-225 at its maximum payload could fly 2,500 miles. Since in the movie it's carrying more than a dozen cars, it's well below its maximum payload, so it could carry much more fuel. Las Vegas to Hawaii would be achievable and then some.

Corrected entry: At the end of the movie, "the waters are receding". Where would they be receding to? The only land mass is Africa.

Correction: Receding back to the oceans. When a big wave comes ashore, it will travel a long way inland, especially a 1500m wave as depicted in the movie. There is a limit to how far the wave can travel inland, and once it reaches that limit, if the land is above sea level, the water will drain back to the sea. A bit like a hurricane storm surge floods the land but drains back to sea after the hurricane has passed, but on a much larger scale. There is more land than just Africa, the Himalayas and other bits of land are still there but lower in altitude. It is stated in the movie the Drakensberg mountains are now the roof of the world because Africa has risen, not that Africa is the only land mass in existence.

Corrected entry: NASA has dubbed 2012 ''The most ridiculous disaster movie ever'', since such small particles emitted from the sun would have absolutely no effect on the Earth's core.

Friso94

Correction: From what I have read, it is indeed the most absurd movie, but not because of the SIZE of the particles, but the effect of them. The particles they say are changing, couldn't possibly change and "mutate" as they are said to in the movie, because they have no DNA or parts to be mutated, therefore they could not be changed by radiation and solar flares from the sun.

Kimberly Mason

Corrected entry: In the scene where the small plane is on the landing strip in Yellowstone park, the engine of it starts and stops between shots. It is seen when the camper van is approaching the plane - when we cut between the van and the cast the engine is started, then stopped, then started again within a very small time frame.

Correction: Yes, the engines were started, Gordon began taxiing, Kate and the kids convince him to stop, he shuts off the left engine (complaining all the while), and restarts it when the motorhome comes into view at the end of the runway.

rswarrior

Corrected entry: When John Cusack picks up his family (plus the new husband) to escape from the ensuing mayhem, there is a scene where the limo uses a piece of broken concrete in the street as a ramp, so that the whole car is airborne for one or two seconds. In that shot you can see that the front tires are not moving at all.

BlueCell

Correction: The front wheels ARE moving but stop rather quickly a second after the car gets airborne. Since the back wheels are turning normally, however, one might suggest that the car has a rear wheel drive.

Correction: It is a rear wheel drive. The limousine is a Lincoln Town Car, which according to Wikipedia, is RWD.

Corrected entry: After the survivors escape from Las Vegas in the Antonov they are obviously worried about fuel and making it all the way to China. As any fool knows, lightening a plane increases range and yet, oddly, it never seems to occur to them to ditch all the heavy and now useless automobiles into the ocean. Luckily, the cars come in handy to manufacture an exciting exit from the plane at the end of the flight.

Oscar Bravo

Correction: For the first leg of the trip there is no reason for them to ditch the cars, as they fully expect to be able to land and refuel in Hawaii. After they realize Hawaii is gone, there is no point in ditching the cars as they are going to be short by "thousands of miles", and lightening the plane would make no difference.

The Antonov was still well under its maximum payload with all the cars on board. It could have made it to Hawaii and beyond, assuming there's time planned to refuel in Vegas. Seems like they took off with whatever was on board, and that was just enough to get to Hawaii.

Corrected entry: The heavy cargo lifter shown is an Antonov AN-225, developed from the AN-124 to carry the Soviet space shuttles Buran. Different from the original plane, the single AN-225 built doesn't have a rear cargo door. The only access for internal cargo is in the front, where the nose and cockpit swivels up, like in the C-5 Galaxy and many 747 freighters. The second partially built AN-225 would have a rear cargo door, but it'd also have a single tail, not a dual tail.

Correction: The movie is 2 years in the future. A rear cargo door may be added in that time. Also the C-5 Galaxy has front AND rear cargo doors.

dablues7

Corrected entry: The Russian plane has 6 engines, yet there are only controls for 4 in the cockpit.

Correction: There are 6 Throttle Controls seen. When they throttle up the controls are as follows, Engines 1 and 2 are lower left and 3 is left high center, 4 is right high center and 5 and 6 are lower right. The knobs are numbered and can be seen WITHOUT pausing the movie.

dablues7

Corrected entry: There are two scenes in which a plane narrowly manages to take off before the ground collapses into the depths of Earth. The problem with these scenes is that those holes would not only swallow the surface, they would also suck in air. Without enough altitude nor enough velocity a plane would therefore be pulled into the new craters. That's why helicopters and small planes are instructed to avoid open-pit mines. And those are just static holes.

BlueCell

Correction: Already submitted and corrected. The continents are breaking apart because the earth's mantle is heating up. The huge land mass falls into the heated mantle; the heated gasses would rise rapidly, counteracting the effects of the downdraught. Indeed, the plane does lose some altitude immediately after the collapse, then is able to climb again shortly after. As for the velocity, you are making an assumption to say that the plane was not going fast enough.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: High amounts of microwaves hitting the Earth would cause every person on Earth with an implanted pacemaker (or icd) to have extreme heart problems and/or even death (coming from a person with one).

cube60659

Correction: True, but there's no mistake here. We don't see anyone on screen experiencing heart problems, but that does not mean it doesn't happen.

Twotall

Corrected entry: When the actor is driving the RV he and the RV falls into where the earth is giving way.the RV falls backside in first which would make him fall looking up at the sky and the window is not broke but somehow he is able to climb out of the hole. (02:18:25)

choppycho

Correction: No, the window was not broken, but was shattered enough to be easily broken and pushed out. We don't see how he gets out, so only assumptions will make this mistake valid.

XIII

Factual error: In the poster shot and in the film, the wave from the Atlantic carrying the carrier JFK into a collision with the White House comes crashing in from the west because the south portico of the White House is seen. The Atlantic Ocean is east of Washington, so the wave should come from the other direction. And even a wave coming from the east could not have made the JFK (CV-67) crash into the White House because the carrier was retired in 2005 and is berthed in Philadelphia, which is northeast of Washington DC. (01:30:10 - 01:30:40)

More mistakes in 2012

Adrian Helmsley: The moment we stop fighting for each other, that's the moment we lose our humanity.

More quotes from 2012
More trivia for 2012

Question: At the end of the movie, it is stated that the Drakensberg mountain range in South Africa now has the highest altitude in the world, since the "entire plate of Africa has lifted". Isn't this highly unlikely, seeing as the Drakensberg is incredibly far away from any tectonic plate lines? Wouldn't it rather be Mount Kilimanjaro, which is not only already the highest point in Africa (the continental plate of which is implied to have been raised as a whole), but is also a volcano (thereby being more likely to be raised should there be lifting within the plate itself)? I am South African myself, and though I am incredibly proud of our mention, I wonder if it really is plausible.

Answer: It's really impossible to say, given all of the massive land shifting seen in the film. We see the entire coast of California fall into the ocean. It's reasonable (in the film) to assume some cataclysm struck Kilimanjaro to lower or destroy it, or that the continent has been tilted.

In the movie, it was implied that the continent of Africa as a whole remained unflooded. So it stands to reason that the millions of inhabitants of the various countries may have survived intact. And so, the animals and plant life as well. So the question of saving the human species may be moot in this scenario. It's ironic, since most of the scientific community believes that modern humans evolved there first anyway.

More questions & answers from 2012

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