All Roads Lead to Floyd - S1-E13
Factual error: When Floyd is standing by the Cadillac with the vanity FLOWER license plate, on the same plate you can see in the upper right corner that its registration sticker on the license plate is a 76 one. For being a fancy car by a posh golf course, it's quite odd to be 5 years in arrears of the tax - it is, viceversa, a mistake that happens in other car props during the season. (00:04:15)
Factual error: Justice in Hawaii works at a breakneck pace; TC is jailed and goes on trial instantly, which is fine, but also his impounded chopper goes for auction within a couple hours as well.
The Ugliest Dog in Hawaii - S1-E8
Factual error: Wheels stuck in the jungle terrain, the mobsters get out of the car. It's a jungle in Hawaii, but, lo and behold, the first sound they hear is the call of a kookaburra, which is native of Australia and New Guinea (but also one of Hollywood's favourite stock sounds). (00:25:05)
Factual error: For the ballistic test, Higgins goes on to explain in great length that the shell contains 12 pellets, but when he displays the effect on the second target, it's blatant that there are way more than 12 holes in it - and the way the test is done, it is specified that it is the result of a single shell being fired. Incidentally, there are also more pellets than what Higgins states when he empties the shell initially -14 instead of 12 - but this last detail realistically can be assessed only if you pause. (00:29:20)
Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii - S1-E1
Factual error: Magnum manages to lure the dogs outside making them wail in pain as he plays a sound that greatly bothers them. As great and sensitive as dog hearing is, Magnum put in the sand past the perimeter wall of the mansion a little Sony Micro cassette recorder M-202 and played the sound off its in-built speaker. That would hardly produce, especially at that distance, an output worth the kind of reaction displayed here.
Don't Eat the Snow in Hawaii - S1-E1
Factual error: Magnum phones Rick at his Casablanca-like establishment and tells him; "Two guys tried to run me off the Pali Highway. They deep-sixed about a mile past Lanai Lookout." Lanai Lookout is not on the Pali Hwy, it's 15 miles driving south off the east end of the highway, and Magnum was in the Nu'uanu part. (00:40:35)
Factual error: This episode is set during a party happening on the weekend of Spring equinox, which means end of March. but it's also happening during a devastating hurricane. No hurricane (not tropical storm) has ever occurred in Hawaii in that month or anytime close to that; hurricane season in the Pacific starts at its earliest in May, and used to begin towards July in the 1980s climate.
Factual error: It is stated in the episode twice that Rod 'did time' in Camarillo, but Camarillo does not have a penitentiary, just a jail and (had at the time) a State mental hospital, neither compatible with his 18 months sentence for growing weed. (00:25:00)
Two Birds of a Feather - S3-E19
Factual error: When Sam climbs on the plane to give chase to the baddies, the tail number is N64CE. When he takes off though, the control tower announces the clearance for "Sixty-four Charlie Lima." Should have been Charlie Echo. (00:41:35 - 00:42:30)
Two Birds of a Feather - S3-E19
Factual error: No matter how good of a pilot Samuel is, he's chasing a Learjet 24 plane with a WWII design P-51 Mustang (that he does not even know how to start, but of course fictional pilots can just 'wing it' and do amazingly). Assuming that speed is not a factor since the bad guy is not flying at top speed just yet (but still he has a projected arrival time of 6 hours, meaning he'd fly around 700 kmh), they do the chase at high altitude (42,000 feet are mentioned), with Samuel not wearing a mask or anything in a non-pressurized plane! He'd have passed out.
Two Birds of a Feather - S3-E19
Factual error: Sam crashes the plane running out of gas, but just barely. His boss and the client are mad at him, but he actually worked some miracle, since from Van Nuys to Honolulu there's a distance of over 2,200 nautical miles, and even considering additional fuel tanks, that is over 3 times the range of the Cessna 172 plane he was flying, also considering it had headwind throughout the voyage (it's even a plot point).
Two Birds of a Feather - S3-E19
Factual error: In his 'Nam flashback at the beginning, Magnum has (another) fun encounter with a large macaw. Green macaws (or any macaw for that matter) are not something he would have found in a Vietnam war mission, unless he inadvertently crossed the Pacific Ocean and ended up in South America. (00:02:00)
Factual error: Higgins frightens the parrot with his peregrine falcon call, and the parrot flies away. The sky is a fairly big place though, and TC's helicopter is far away, so the fact that it'd be sucked in (that's not how helicopters work), maimed and somehow explode in a puff of (clean) feathers that instantly and calmly float down is borderline cartoon slapstick. (00:45:20)
Factual error: Magnum shows the news of Dr. Karen Harmon on the newspaper to TC and Rick and tells them "She was with the 71st Evac Hospital at Binh Thuy, remember?", but the 71st Evac was at Pleiku, over 600km up north. (00:07:00)
Factual error: The episode opens with a caption "Miami, 1955." However, as Salvatore Marchese sits in the barber's chair, he picks up as his reading of choice a copy of the National Geographic...the April 1982 edition. (00:02:20)
Factual error: When Magnum looks at the collection of tapes and books from Erin, the shelves are stocked entirely with tapes marked L-250, L-500, L-750. A huge collection...for Betamax, but Erin's VHR player is a VHS, as shown by the logo in close-ups. And in fact, Magnum to watch her movie puts in close-up a T-120 tape in the machine, which is the proper format. (00:21:15)
Factual error: The villain holds Magnum at gunpoint with a weapon with a silencer. Which is useless, the gun being a revolver. (00:41:20)
Factual error: Richard Johnson appears in the end credits as "Brigadier General Alistair Ffolkes, Royal Army", and is consistently referred to that way by Higgins and Hooker. The rank was abolished in 1921, the Royal Army would have him as as a Brigadier or a higher rank.
Factual error: At the movies, Magnum is watching a movie with Bette Davis, the first one she played in, "The Bad Sister" and comments "Keep it up, old girl, you just might have a future as an actress." Funny, but the dream is set in 1936, not 1931 when that movie came out. Implausibility of finding it in theaters aside, by 1936 young Bette Davis had already won her first Oscar. (00:30:30)
