Plot hole: To play a practical joke on Dade Murphy and other new students, they are told, "There's a pool on the roof." The victims accordingly go there and are trapped by the roof access door being one-way until – we don't see how or who frees them (Janitor? The least-mean of the prankers?). How do the new guys get onto the roof in the first place? I should think that the aforementioned access door would be locked to prevent it.
dizzyd
30th Oct 2023
Hackers (1995)
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Suggested correction: Compared to half the mischief they cause, picking a lock is easy. I, myself, learned how to jimmy my middle school's door locks with my student ID and accordingly let myself in, and even did so in the sight of other students. It's only because I lacked their level of will for mayhem, their imagination for excuses, and, more importantly, their level of powerful parents to perform legal rescue, that I stopped doing so before the teachers got suspicious.
Suggested correction: This is in the form of a question. You can assume they lock the roof door, but they don't have to. Or, the person tricking them has unlocked the door for the prank. Or, they picked the lock. Plenty of possibilities, I'd say.
12th Oct 2023
Stargate (1994)
Corrected entry: For both opening the Earth gate (they mention having never gotten beyond six symbols), then opening the Abydos gate after Daniel Jackson knows the first six symbols from that cavern, why can't they simply use trial and error to find the seventh symbol? For 40-odd symbols apiece on both, it would only take approximately that many guesses by process of elimination.
Correction: This mistake has already been corrected, twice. The military in control of the project might not have allowed them to experiment with different symbols simply because they didn't know what it might do. Not fully far fetched since the entire compound starts shaking when entering the 6th symbol. It might explode for all they know.
Then the Abydos gate alone. Six symbols down. One to go. 40 odd guesses, easy enough, less than an hour.
You missed the point of the correction. It could have been 4 options and still not worth the risk of entering the wrong symbol.
Well, we don't know if the gate on Abydos makes everything shake. So, I'd say there is a point there. But they only discover the symbols on Abydos till later. By then, they are already at the tribe, I think.
3rd Jul 2023
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000)
Other mistake: Despite the city-wide outage from the storm, there's quite a visible glow around the house as Sarah and Nick investigate the grounds, that isn't moonlight.
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Suggested correction: A personal generator? Or (more likely) a generator from the CSI gear?
31st Jan 2023
City Slickers (1991)
Plot hole: Norman, the orphaned new-born calf, could not have survived more than a few days after birth unless he was adopted by a foster-mother cow. The cattle were not dairy cows, and it's obvious the "cowboys" are not providing milk or other sustenance for Norman. Even if he had lived, he would be extremely weak and emaciated and physically unable to run with the herd.
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Suggested correction: We see that they are providing said food for Norman, and secondly, we never see if another cow does indeed do exactly that. After all, they can give milk, just not enough to sell, so Norman could indeed get fed.
19th May 2023
Caddyshack (1980)
Factual error: When Judge Smails lectures Danny in his office after catching him with his niece, he states that he has sentenced boys younger than Danny to the gas chamber. Nebraska has never used the gas chamber for capital punishment.
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Suggested correction: Does Judge Smalls say the state where he does so?
18th Jul 2017
Despicable Me 3 (2017)
Plot hole: After the car is destroyed, Gru is knocked unconscious and Dru enters Balthazar Bratt's robot to destroy the robot's core from the inside. Once Gru wakes up, Balthazar attempts to kill him with the robot's laser and Dru destroys the core causing the robot to collapse. Gru then yells out "Dru!" and runs over to the wreckage of the robot to try and find him. The problem with this is that since Gru was knocked unconscious before Dru entered the robot, and Gru knew nothing of Dru's plan to disable the robot's core, there is no way for him to know that Dru was inside the robot.
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8th Nov 2005
Citizen Kane (1941)
Revealing mistake: When they are inspecting the statues at the end of the movie, somebody touches one of them. It wobbles as if it was made of something else than stone.
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28th Oct 2003
Jurassic Park (1993)
Corrected entry: Right before the scientists see the dinosaurs for the first time, Ellie is looking at this plant leaf and saying, "This has been extinct since the ____ period." If it's an extinct plant, how could they duplicate it? Mosquitoes don't drink chlorophyll - there's no way it could have been preserved if everything worked the way they said. No organic material from an extinct plant from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous period has ever been found, and given that plant material decays very quickly, it never will be. The engineers did not use some magical "other method" to clone plants because there aren't any.
Correction: As has been pointed out on this site before, inventing deux ex machina explanations for plot holes and factual errors does not invalidate them. No organic material from an extinct plant from either the Jurassic or Cretaceous period has ever been found, and given that plant material decays very quickly, it never will be. The engineers did not use some magical "other method" to clone plants because there aren't any.
Correction: The video they watch (with Mr. DNA) only explains how they recreated the dinosaurs, which were the main attraction of the park. The engineers used other methods to make the right environment for the animals, but as it's not half as exciting, the viewer never finds out exactly how.
Correction: The simplest and most likely explanation, once you accept the logic of this movie in the first place, is that the engineers are removing Plant DNA directly from the amber.
Amber is fossilized tree sap, anything fossilized doesn't hold any DNA. However, it is possible amber holds trapped plant parts (called 'inclusion'), from which DNA can be extracted. Theoretically.
27th Aug 2001
Dumb and Dumber (1994)
Continuity mistake: At the beginning of the movie, Harry's van has bucket seats, yet later on when the "gas-man" rides along, he is sitting on a bench seat in-between Harry and Lloyd. (00:38:00)
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Suggested correction: Mental isn't sitting on a bench seat, it's implied he's sitting on the floor of the van in between the both of them. Although hard to see, the backs of the bucket seats can still be seen behind Harry and Lloyd at certain points. You see a fair bit of it behind Harry whilst he's dancing as Lloyd sings the line "and if that mocking bird don't sing".
26th Oct 2020
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
Plot hole: It seems that after committing 6-odd counts of aiding and abetting, literally right in front of the strict Police Captain father of one of them, Ted and for that matter Bill, would be lucky to only go to military school, regardless of passing or failing one particular class.
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Suggested correction: The threat of Ted having to go to the military academy in Alaska was because he was going to fail. Since they passed and graduated, there's no need to attend the military academy. Some time passes before Rufus brings the babes to Bill and Ted, so we don't know what punishment they were given.
This isn't ordinary misbehavior, it is a felony, what do you think the punishment would be? No TV for a week?
I don't have to speculate what their punishment would be. Certainly neither would be sent to military school (which is a TV and movie trope that wayward children get sent there anyways). Your mistake entry is not a plot hole plain and simple.
1st Oct 2020
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Corrected entry: When Marty was standing outside the giant TV and the announcement was made about the Chicago Cubs winning over Miami, Marty said he put his money on Miami. He had only been in 2015 for a short time, and before that he was in 1985. There is no way he could have bet on anything in 2015.
Correction: Marty says "I just meant Miami." He never says anything about putting money on Miami. Marty was surprised that Miami had a baseball team and the old man thought Marty was surprised Cubs won. (Point of trivia, Miami didn't have an MLB team in 1985).
The Cubs are from Chicago, not Cincinnati.
Further extension of same joke. A) The Cubs have moved and B) they can now win games.
Correction: You misheard. Marty's lines on seeing the sports flash are "Wait-a-minit... Cubs win world series." (then disbelieving) "Against Miami?" The other guy comments on it and plants the idea of betting in the past. Marty, continuing his original thought, starts to explain "But I just meant, Miami..." and abruptly stops, considering what the guy said and asks "What did you just say?"
17th Sep 2005
A Bug's Life (1998)
Corrected entry: How did Dot know where to find Flik and the circus bugs after they left the island? She didn't know where they were going, and never had set foot off Ant Island before.
1st Sep 2020
Congo (1995)
Continuity mistake: On the plane the drug is put into a broken banana half, but when it's time to jump out of the plane Amy is given a whole banana.
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Suggested correction: I think it's safe to say they either put the banana halves back together to help hide the pill or erred on the side of caution and gave two doses in a second banana.
21st May 2020
Common mistakes
Factual error: In movie plots that take place hundreds or even thousands of years ago, the characters have perfectly white, straight teeth. It is a known fact that Queen Elizabeth I was virtually toothless by age 40. Good dental hygiene didn't really exist until after WWII. Some movies get it right, but only for the bad guys.
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Suggested correction: False teeth have been around for centuries; they could be made from a variety of materials including wood, porcelain, or even human teeth taken from corpses or people who willingly sold their teeth to make some quick cash. People with the means to do so could acquire them quite easily, and they were often indistinguishable from a person's own natural teeth.
Your reasoning is very weak. Yes, false teeth have been around for centuries, but even today with much better technology, with close observation you can tell someone has false teeth. Everyone knew G. Washington had false teeth. No, these characters from 500 years ago are not ALL wearing false teeth.
Australian Aboriginals have (had, before colonization) almost perfectly white, straight teeth and it's known that this is somehow related with their foraging diet. If it's true, then most people back ago could have almost perfect teeth too.
Furthermore, widespread tooth decay before great age was only a rich person's problem until refined sugar became cheap, so the peasants wouldn't have bad teeth either.
Tooth decay is not caused by refined sugars. Any carbohydrates will promote bacterial growth, which can cause tooth decay. Additionally acidic food and drinks and alcohol (which can be high in carbohydrates) can damage the teeth and promote bacterial growth. And the mistake is talking about movies in general with countless characters, not a few select characters with significant means.
Thanks for your response. You said it better than I could have.
I mostly agree with you, but I am talking about characters who are rich with perfectly white teeth (and more importantly) great gums - no recession. What I disagree is that only sugar causes teeth decay. Not true. Virtually all food breaks down into simple sugars with enzymes in your saliva.
26th Feb 2003
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Factual error: In some stateroom scenes in the October the bulkheads have numerous little lockers installed because storage space on a submarine is at a premium. The latches on the lockers are of a unique design created only by USA Navy ship and submarine construction shipyards.
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Suggested correction: Given the vast step upwards in technology and the power of Soviet Intelligence at the time, there's no reason why they shouldn't know about something as least classified a latch on a locker.
Suggested correction: The Soviets stole from the US like it was a bodily function, to the point where, in anticipation of such, our engineers would put microengravings mocking them "when are you going to stop stealing" in Cyrillic, on the surface of computer chips et al. The only real objection to the presence of those lockers is that the Soviets would have bigger fish to fry in terms of copying.
10th Nov 2008
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Corrected entry: Al mentions that he's going to sell the entire Woody's Round-Up toy collection to a Japanese collector, who only wants the collection if it's complete. When Al first finds Woody at the yard sale, he makes a big deal about the fact that Woody still has his original cowboy hat (because an incomplete toy would be worthless to him). Well, Woody has a gun holster, so doesn't that mean he's still missing his gun? (I'm sure the real reason no gun is ever alluded to is because this is a kids' movie and guns aren't very kid-friendly, but still.).
Correction: Woody never had a gun, even in the old black-and-white movies when he was a puppet. So no gun is ever missing and Woody is complete with no gun.
Correction: We never see Jessie and Bullseye's accessories equivalent to Prospectors pan and pickaxe either, apparently the buyer understands, and counts the toy and the hat, but not the lesser items.
24th Apr 2005
The Green Mile (1999)
Corrected entry: Tom Hanks refers to an Intensive Care Unit, and although a few physicians had already discovered the practice of separating the sickest patients into a separate ward in the 1930's, the term Intensive Care Unit was not yet in use.
Correction: As it was told via flashback, maybe the old man either got the word wrong in his memory or put it in '90's terms?
24th Apr 2004
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Corrected entry: When Al dropped the cheese puffs, they wouldn't have spread across the room like that, most would have stayed under the bowl. (00:32:50)
21st Feb 2005
Jurassic Park (1993)
Corrected entry: When Nedry is seen stealing the embryos from the freezer, in one extreme closeup shot of his hand he isn't seen to be wearing any gloves. This is absurd as some sort of protection is absolutely necessary while holding objects stored at such low temperatures (indeed Crichton puts it at -10 degrees). (00:54:50)
Correction: No 1. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to take out the embryos with cold-protection gloves on, they are just too cumbersome. No 2. He picked up the vials by the plastic cap, which wouldn't have been very cold.
Correction: And he's too wound up to care about a small amount of frostbite on his fingers anyway.
28th Sep 2003
Jurassic Park (1993)
Corrected entry: When we first met Nedry in San Jose Dodgson informs Nedry that he will receive a total of "One-point-five million dollars if he gets all 15 species off the island." Take a closer look at that test tube receptacle. If you look when he is closing the test tube receptacle after he steals the the DNA you can see that there is only enough room for ten species.
Correction: The money Nedry receives at the start of the movie is for the five embryos he had supposedly already gotten off the island. He is now getting the remaining ten.
Nedry most certainly did not get five embryos off the island prior to the start of the film. Nedry and Dodson set up a fairly intricate plan in order to get the 15 embryos off the island, it is unfathomable they would need to do this if Nedry had already successfully smuggled 5 viable embryos previously without anyone ever noticing. The mistake is valid and this explanation is completely wrong.
Correction: Also, if Nedry had already gotten some OFF, why show him the smuggling device NOW, he could just use whatever method he'd already used, and or just need a replacement shaving cream can with no need to be briefed as to its abilities.
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