Other mistake: In TV shows when people are gathered around the table, usually because they're eating a meal, the characters do not sit completely around the table. Rather, they sit unnaturally horseshoe-shaped so the characters at the end of the table don't have their backs to the audience.
Mike Lynch
10th Nov 2024
Common mistakes
19th Mar 2024
Common mistakes
Other mistake: The main protagonist in a TV show or movie is being shot at by machine guns, and he somehow manages to dodge the bullets.
13th Dec 2023
Elf (2003)
Other mistake: How was Buddy able to buy the negligee for his father? He has no money.
16th Jan 2023
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Other mistake: When Indy and Marion are sealed in the well of souls, they are completely cut off from the outside world. As such, other than the torches, it should be pitch black, but it is surprisingly well lit in there.
11th Aug 2021
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Other mistake: Peter took the $100,000 bribe White gave him and turned it into $5,000,000 by betting on his team. He did this, so he could buy enough shares of Global Gym stock and take over the company, and in the process kick out White as the CEO. The problem is $5 million wouldn't be near enough to gain control of the company, to be public its value would have to be at least in the tens of millions.
17th Jan 2020
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Other mistake: Taylor believes he is on a planet 300 light-years from earth for most of the movie. However, after spending months there, he would have seen the moon at night a number of times, letting him know where he really was before seeing the Statue of Liberty.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Not necessarily; any astronaut knows that many, many planets have moons, so Taylor could have easily thought that it was simply an odd coincidence that the "other" planet's moon closely resembled Earth's moon.
16th Nov 2019
Common mistakes
Other mistake: Whenever a character travel to a town or village in another country, no matter how remote, they always find someone who speaks English.
28th Oct 2019
Star Trek (1966)
The Gamesters of Triskelion - S2-E16
Other mistake: When Kirk agrees to fight in the arena at the end of the episode, he and the thralls are warned that touching an opponent's color will result in the loss of a weapon. Kirk does this several times during the fight, but isn't penalized in any way.
13th Jul 2019
Common mistakes
Other mistake: When women go to bed they never take off their make-up. Conversely, when they wake up in the morning, their make-up looks like it was just applied, and there are never any smears on pillow cases.
19th Jan 2019
Common mistakes
Other mistake: Characters in movies and TV shows always type things out on the screen without any typos or their flow of thoughts read like a professional writer, not a regular person.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: Perhaps not everyone is as good a writer as the ones you see in the films, but films are meant to bend reality anyway. Good writing is a virtue and wanting to make one's own film character a good writer is not a mistake.
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.