Character mistake: They find the DeLorean and the licence plate is shown: LFM-26W1. Esposito calls in and says the car needs towing: "'81-'82 DeLorean, New York plates, JLD..." Nothing like the actual licence plate.
Jon Sandys
20th Mar 2023
Castle (2009)
1st Nov 2022
Bones (2005)
The Pain in the Heart - S3-E15
Character mistake: Bones says the remains are from someone about 180cm tall, and when asked for the "English" version, says "approximately 5'8." But 180cm is nearly 5'11" - 5'8" is only just over 170cm. Not a simplification someone as pedantic/accurate as Bones would make.
15th Aug 2022
Boston Legal (2004)
Character mistake: Lorraine mistakenly tells Denny to "call 999" instead of 911, and when asked about it by Katie, denies having ever spent time in the UK (later revealed to be a lie). But this isn't some high-pressure slip of the tongue, she's highly intelligent and has been in America for a decent length of time, is working hard to maintain her facade of being born and bred American, so there's no way she'd slip up over such an obvious thing.
13th Feb 2022
Titans (2018)
Character mistake: One character says a concentration of 0.09 parts per million in the water is bad: "if it were salt it'd taste like you were drowning in the ocean." Rubbish. The concentration of salt in seawater is about 35,000 parts per million.
10th Jan 2022
The Punisher (2017)
One Bad Day - S2-E7
Character mistake: The robbers are all trained, they practice, they wear masks...and none of them wear gloves, despite all being ex-military so their fingerprints will be easily traceable.
26th Mar 2021
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021)
Character mistake: Bucky says he read The Hobbit in 1937 when it first came out. But in 1937 he was still living in New York, and The Hobbit was only available in the UK at that time, with fairly limited numbers printed. It wasn't available in America until 1938.
11th Feb 2021
Leverage (2008)
Character mistake: Upon finding the Spanish flu virus missing, Hardison freaks out about it killing 50m people 100 years ago, saying it would be even more deadly today due to the higher population. There's no reason to think so - the death toll in 1918 was massively exacerbated by the aftermath of WWI. Not to mention today we have vaccines, plus most deaths then were actually caused by bacterial pneumonia, which today is easily treated with antibiotics.
4th Aug 2019
Elementary (2012)
Unfriended - S7-E11
Character mistake: Odin Reichenbach talks to Sherlock about "doing the irrevocable", but pronounces it "irrevOWEcable." It should be pronounced "irrevacable" in both British and American English. He's supposed to be a highly intelligent, highly educated person - not a mistake he should make.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Not necessarily. A lot of people have strange vocal tics where they pronounce a certain word in a certain way, usually without even realizing it. My grandfather was a smart guy, and he always mis-pronounced "toilet" as "ter-let."
16th Jun 2019
Jessica Jones (2015)
A.K.A I Have No Spleen - S3-E3
Character mistake: Jeri asks Kith what an open marriage is. She's a sexually promiscuous experienced New York lawyer, middle aged...there's zero chance she needs that defined for her.
25th May 2019
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
Such Sweet Sorrow: Part 2 - S2-E14
Character mistake: When Tyler arrives in the Klingon ship, Captain Pike says "calvary arrived just in time." The word is "cavalry." The subtitles show "cavalry."
25th May 2019
Common mistakes
Character mistake: In many space-based action sequences, all the craft involved act like space isn't 3D. Ships fly at each other head on, surround other vessels in a circle, not a sphere, attack with a pincer movement from the left and right, rather than above/below, etc. Most of the time the action is all broadly on one plane. Makes things easier to understand from an audience perspective, makes zero sense tactically speaking.
24th May 2019
Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Hana Mao 'ole ka ua o Waianae - S9-E25
Character mistake: The bad guy escapes on a private jet, narrowly avoiding being run off the runway, and he breathes a sigh of relief, thinking he's got away with it. But anyone with half a brain would know full well that given the cops know the plane he's in and where he started from, it's no challenge at all to track him, and at an extreme scramble a fighter to escort him back / shoot him down.
9th Jan 2019
The Orville (2017)
Primal Urges - S2-E2
Character mistake: The radiation on the planet's surface is a problem, and the exposure between the shuttle and the entrance to the underground caverns is specifically highlighted as the main risk. And yet when landing the shuttle, they land facing towards the entrance with the ramp behind them, making the exposure time much longer than it has to be.
6th Jan 2019
Hellboy (2004)
Character mistake: Tom Manning criticises Hellboy for using a lighter, (correctly) telling him to use a wooden match instead. But he then lights a match and immediately puts it to the cigar, instead of waiting for the sulphur to burn off and using a pure wood-fuelled flame to light it. He's not as well informed as he thinks.
30th Sep 2018
Elementary (2012)
Character mistake: When they've worked out that the kidnappers were changing flood maps, Harlan says he "doesn't get why anyone would mess with flood maps in the first place." Looking at the maps it's blatantly obvious that the reworked flood zone excludes a chunk of land, and given property prices in New York it doesn't take a genius to figure it's at least connected to real estate, insurance, etc. Harlan is demonstrably a genius, and could certainly have figured that out for himself.
30th Jan 2016
Creed (2015)
Character mistake: In the final fight at Goodison Park, the commentator says 100,000 people are in attendance. Capacity of Goodison Park is 40,000, and even allowing for people in the "pitch" area around the ring there's nowhere near space for that many, unless there was another layer of fans standing on people's shoulders.
22nd Apr 2013
Elementary (2012)
Character mistake: When looking at the car near the start, Sherlock says he can tell by the pattern of the bullet holes that the gun was fired in 3 round bursts. But when we saw the attack earlier, the gun fired in bursts of different lengths.
8th Dec 2003
The West Wing (1999)
Character mistake: During the face-off about religion/politics, they get into a shouting match about commandments, both groups being equally convinced that "honour your father and mother" is the 1st or 3rd commandment, respectively. In actual fact it's the 4th or 5th, depending on which version (Catholic or Protestant) of the 10 commandments you go by. See http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm.
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