Stranger Things

Season 1 generally

Factual error: When Hopper's daughter is dying in 1978, the staff says that the pulse oximeter is dropping. Pulse oximeters were not commercialized until 1981/1983 and not in widespread use until at least the mid 1980's.

nkeeshin

Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street - S1-E2

Factual error: When Steve and Nancy are making out, the intro to "A Hazy Shade of Winter" by The Bangles plays. While the original version of the song was released by folk-pop duo Simon and Garfunkel was released in 1968, the version heard here was released in 1986, 3 years after the scene takes place. (00:52:30 - 00:55:40)

Chapter Seven: The Bathtub - S1-E7

Factual error: When there is a pan closeup shot of the walkie-talkie the boys are going to finally talk to with the sheriff, there is a book called Great American Ghost Stories by Hans Holzer on the shelf to the left. That book was published in 1990, not in 1983, the year of the episode. (00:18:30)

Chapter Eight: The Upside Down - S1-E8

Factual error: When Nancy shoots the creature the second time, she fires at least 8 shots from a 6-shot revolver without reloading. And that's assuming she reloaded after firing 3 shots at the creature the first time, even though the situation made it seem unlikely. (00:20:30)

Bishop73

Chapter Eight: The Upside Down - S1-E8

Factual error: This error occurs multiple times during the Series but most after 11 and the demogorgon disappear from the class room a modern periodic table is shown. There's at least a 1/2 dozen elements on it that weren't discovered until the 2000's.

Chapter One: MADMAX - S2-E1

Factual error: During the police pursuit in Pittsburgh, the officers are wearing shoulder speaker/microphone handsets. The models are the Motorola Saber radio, which wasn't introduced until 1989, while the season takes place in 1984.

Matdan97

Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer - S2-E8

Factual error: Joyce asks Will if he remembers when he was 8 and she bought him that giant box of crayons for his birthday - the 120 pack. Will is 13 in the show, so when he was 8, it was 1979. There were only 78 colors available in 1979 and the 120 crayons box was not available until 1998, almost 20 years later.

Chapter Nine: The Gate - S2-E9

Factual error: The military convoy has Desert Tan HMMWVs (Humvees). The Army didn't take delivery of the first ones until 1985 and they certainly were not painted Desert Tan until 1991 in the Gulf War.

Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy? - S3-E1

Factual error: When Dustin's toy collection "comes to life" (thanks to Eleven), one of the robots is the Transformer Ultra Magnus. Though it appears to be modified with a motorized engine that the actual toy didn't have, that's not the mistake, as there no reason Dustin couldn't have modified it. The error is that the season is set in July 1985, but Ultra Magnus wasn't released in the U.S. until 1986. (Yes, the toy was available as a Diaclone in Japan, but in a different color scheme. Dustin's has the coloring of the U.S. version, and even if he somehow ended up with the Diaclone version, it's highly unlikely he would have repainted a Japanese toy to resemble a Transformer he wouldn't know about the existence of yet, as the 'Transformers' animated movie wasn't released until August 1986).

Vader47000

Chapter Five: The Flayed - S3-E5

Factual error: When Hopper steals the yellow convertible at the gas station mini mart, the gas pumps have vapor recovery boots on the nozzles. Those weren't in use for another half decade.

Chapter Six: E Pluribus Unum - S3-E6

Factual error: When the Russian requests the cherry flavor and refuses to talk, he gets thrown out. At the back is an oil drum from the French energy company "Total." However that logo was introduced only in the mid 2000s. (00:11:55)

Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt - S3-E8

Factual error: Because of the way radios work, when Suzie and Dustin are singing their duet they wouldn't be able to hear each other and the rest of the party would only hear a garbled mess. Per frequency only one radio should transmit at each time, so all the others can receive. If multiple radios are transmitting simultaneously, the signals will overlap and result in unintelligible noise. (00:35:53)

More mistakes in Stranger Things

Multiple characters: Mouth breather.

More quotes from Stranger Things
More trivia for Stranger Things

Answer: They're both muscle cars, but that's about the extent of the similarities. But the 70's were filled with a lot of muscle cars, so some car models may look a bit like another's. Billy's car is a late 70's Chevy Camaro (probably a ‘79). Mad Max's car is a 1973 Ford Falcon XB GT. Incidentally, the Ford Falcon was produced by Ford Australia and wasn't an American car, or even sold in America (as in not sold at dealerships).

Bishop73

According to the experts its a Camaro '78 with added vented side fenders.

More questions & answers from Stranger Things

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.