The Manchurian Candidate

Factual error: When Eleanor Shaw tries to convince other members of the senate to choose her son as a candidate for vice president, a map of the fifty states and their corresponding electoral votes can be seen. The map shows Colorado as having 3 electoral votes and Wyoming having 8. Wyoming should have 3 and Colorado 9.

Factual error: Major Marco's uniform in early shots has a Special Forces tab on the left breast pocket. This doesn't appear later. Also, this tab should only appear on the dress blues, where shoulder insignia are not worn.

5thgroup

Factual error: One of the Gulf War scenes shows Marco and Shaw's armored vehicles in the Kuwaiti desert with a skyline of burning oil wells in the background. We later hear that this sequence is set during a reconnaissance in Iraqi-controlled territory just before Desert Storm. Saddam's troops only set fire to oil fields during the end of Desert Storm as they were retreating from Kuwait.

Revealing mistake: In the beginning, there is a scene where Sen. Shaw is watching Raymond make a speech on a TV screen. It was obviously put in in post-production because the aide immediately next to the screen is nodding and clapping in agreement at inappropiate times.

More mistakes in The Manchurian Candidate

Raymond Shaw: I served under him. He was a good man.
Eleanor Shaw: Well, that's what the neighbors always say about serial killers.

More quotes from The Manchurian Candidate

Question: There were two flashbacks of how Raymond Shaw killed one of the soldiers. One scene it showed him suffocating him in the desert with a piece of plastic. In another scene it shows him choking him with his hands in some kind of observation room. Was the desert 'killing', a dream combining the truth with the brainwashing?

Deezul

Chosen answer: Perhaps the piece-of-plastic killing was a "test run" by the brainwashers to see if Raymond would actually react to their commands. You can see other soldiers lying down wearing "halos", hinting that this happened at a different time and place than the observation room choking.

Answer: The plastic bag killing was part of the dream. Many things in the dreams are off. For example in the dream he sees himself handling the pistol while lying in a bed. When we see his actual memory, he is standing, and Shaw hands him the gun, which he immediately uses.

More questions & answers from The Manchurian Candidate

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