15 Movie Mistakes You'll Never Unsee
Movies are huge productions--they can involve hundreds or thousands of people, each with specific jobs. Even the most unwatchable film is a complex combination of light, sound, design, writing, and performance. Not only that, but they're also running on tight schedules with strict budgets. With so many people, roles, and constraints, it's no surprise that movies occasionally overlook important details. Maybe the actor they'd cast for a single scene was suddenly unavailable, or a sharp change in weather forced the crew to shoot on an accelerated timeline. Maybe someone forgot that we only had 45 states at the turn of the 20th century, or didn't remember that one of the props didn't exist in the year the movie is set.
And so people pretend to sweep or they forget to set down their coffee cup out of frame between takes. And you know what? It's okay. These movies are made by humans, and mistakes happen. We love to see these misfires in movies occasionally because they ground the movie and remind us that while the story might be fictional, the movie itself is a real thing created by real people.
These are some of our favorite movie mistakes from over the years. You definitely know some of them--like the Stormtrooper who bangs his head on the Death Star. But we hope you'll find a few new ones to enjoy with us along the way.
1. Stormtrooper Head Trauma: Star Wars (1977)
Let's start with one of the best-known flubs in movie history. In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, C-3PO and R2-D2 are on one side of a door, trying to help their good friends escape the crushing death of a trash compactor. The droids hide just in time to avoid being caught, but as the soldiers flood into the room, you can see one of the troopers knock his head on the rising door. When Leia meets Luke for the first time, she comments that he's a little short for a Stormtrooper. This poor guy, on the other hand, seemed to be just a little tall for the job. Director George Lucas liked the mistake, because the notorious tinkerer added a sound effect for a later re-release, accentuating it instead of editing it out.
2. The Other Kind of Airbrushing: Quantum of Solace (2008)
Everything that happens on a movie screen is acting, from the guy who just got shot in the chest to the person running from the gunshot. The janitors aren't really cleaning, either, believe it or not. That's apparent nowhere more than a scene in the second of Daniel Craig's James Bond films, Quantum of Solace. In the background of one shot, a man with a push broom is brushing…nothing. The brush is visibly above the ground. On one hand, this could've been bad acting or a mistake. But the thing about push brooms is that they kick up a lot of dust, and movie sets are made to be as predictable as possible so that the million-dollar shot doesn't end up costing two million. The guy holding the push broom may have had a directive to not actually apply the brush to the ground, and the camera just happened to catch him at a rough moment. Either way, it's funny to see something so obviously fake in a movie that tries hard to make wild stunts believable.
3. Time Travelers on a Doomed Voyage: Titanic (1997)
There's an unmissable line flub when Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) asks Rose (Kate Winslet) to sit "Over on the bed… the couch!" But that's not the one we're focused on, because Cameron spotted that and loved the way it added to the scene. We're interested in the anachronisms. The Titanic sank in April of 1912. During the movie, Jack tells Rose that he went fishing on Lake Wissota in Wisconsin, and another character wields a pistol that gun nerds have identified as an M1911A1 pistol, based on the specific detail of the pistol's hammer. Lake Wissota is a man-made lake that wasn't under construction until at least 1915--meaning that Jack and his dad would've been casting their fishing poles into dirt in a field. The M1911 sounds right at first--it was patented in 1912. However, it wasn't in wide military use at that time. The M1911A1 variant, meanwhile, wasn't issued until 1924. Additionally, the Statue of Liberty, depicted in its classic seafoam green patina, was still in the process of oxidizing following its installation in 1886, and would've had a less green hue to it.
4. Flat Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
As Thanos descends upon Earth, heroes show up to battle him at two crucial points: New York City and the African nation of Wakanda. Marvel's art puts the fictional nation of Wakanda right in the middle of the African continent, between Niger, Nigeria, and Chad. Nick Fury's car, in New York, shows 3:24 on it when Thanos snaps his blinged-out fingies. The time zone in New York is GMT -4 (Greenwich Mean Time), while that part of Africa is GMT+1. That puts Wakanda six or seven hours (depending on Daylight Saving) ahead of New York. If it's 3:24 in New York, it's at least 9:24 PM (or 21:24 if you're fancy/European) in Wakanda. In other words, it should've been, if not pitch black, then at least sunset--unless the Avengers movies were set on a flat earth, which we know isn't the case.
5. Schrodinger's Fender Bender: Commando (1985)
Commando is peak Arnie; his character's name is John Matrix, he uses an M202 Flash rocket launcher, and then attacks a tropical island that's just full of Bad Guys. It's a fun movie, and it's aged better than you might think. Not once, but twice, though, cars end up getting quantum damage. Both a yellow Porsche and a red Sunbeam end up taking damage that is, in the next shot, repaired, and then broken again later.
6. That Baby Can't Act: American Sniper (2014)
In American Sniper, the biopic following the life of military sniper Chris Kyle, there's an infamous moment in which he's holding a baby, but it's obviously and painfully fake; you can even see him using his thumb to move the arm, puppeteering it in real-time. This is a movie directed by Clint Eastwood, a director known for keeping his movies simple, grounded, and tightly made. So how did this happen? According to screenwriter Jason Hall, they had two real babies lined up, but Baby #1 showed up with a fever, while Baby #2 just didn't show up, giving the doll the Baby of the Year award by default.
"I couldn't believe it, like, I couldn't believe that we were working with a plastic baby," Cooper told Ellen DeGeneres on her show at the time of the movie's release. "I was like, 'I'ma save y'all a hundred thousand dollars and just start doing this (Cooper emulates his on-screen motion to animate the doll's arm)' 'cause you know you have to CGI the hand movements. I was like, 'Watch this, eat your heart out Muppets.'"
7. It Belongs In a Museum!: The Hateful Eight (2015)
While filming Quentin Tarantino's western, The Hateful Eight, the production had rented a guitar from Martin Guitar's company museum. The model was 150 years old. Was. In one scene, Kurt Russell snatches the guitar from co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh's hand and smashes it. The guitar was meant to be swapped out for a visually identical double, and Russell didn't realize that it hadn't. And so the reaction on Leigh's face when he smashes it--that's real.
8. Starbucks, Est. 298 AC: Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
In 2019, everybody was drinking Starbucks. At least, you'd assume that, based on the coffee shop monolith's logo showing up in two major Hollywood productions. All eyes were on Game of Thrones back then as it was working toward its finale. In the episode "The Last of the Starks," about 17 and a half minutes in, eagle-eyed viewers spotted a Starbucks cup sitting on the table in front of Daenerys. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, set in 1969, you can briefly see a Starbucks sign in one scene. This isn't quite so egregious; we had coffee cups in 1969. Starbucks, however, didn't exist until 1971.
9. That Totally Happened: The Goonies (1985)
The Goonies is a 1980s classic, but if you've only seen the theatrical version, there's probably a line that left you confused. Data (Ke Huy Quan) tells a reporter that "the octopus was really scary!" There's a scene explaining this line that was cut from the theatrical version of the movie, though you can still find it on YouTube or in extended cuts of the movie.
10. Turbo Chariot: Gladiator (2000)
If you ever tried to take a bike off of a sick jump as a kid, you know full well how hard it is to make cool stunts look like they did in the movies--and that's assuming you don't break your arm in the process. Hollywood stunt coordinators have developed countless techniques to make people and vehicles look like they're defying the laws of physics. In Gladiator, there's a shot in which a chariot flips on its side and, if you're paying attention you can spot the gas tank used to force the vehicle to topple over. There are a few other ones in Gladiator--an airplane is clearly visible in one shot. When Maximus asks the crowd, "Are you not entertained?" you can see someone just hanging out in jeans and a white tee.
11. Never Done Math: Never Been Kissed (1999)
Many calculators have a π button on them, and when you press it, it gives you as many digits of the infinitely long number as it can fit on the screen. All they needed was a calculator. In the Drew Barrymore vehicle Never Been Kissed, there's a bake sale sign that says that "π = 3.1457869986, Pie = 75 cents." The problem with that is that π = 3.1415926535. Simple as that. You can't even get that number by rounding--it's just incorrect.
12. Clairvoyant Child: North by Northwest (1959)
Kid actors have it rough--they're trying to emulate reality accurately even though they've only had a few years to get used to it. So we're gonna forgive the young actor in Alfred Hitchcocks' North by Northwest. When the main characters are at Mt. Rushmore, where a loud gunshot goes off, a young extra actor in the background can be seen covering his ears a few seconds before the shot goes off.
13. Flag This One as an Error: Oppenheimer (2023)
This even happens in the very biggest movies. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer was one of the most successful movies at the box office last year, and it did well with critics, too. But this movie is set in the '40s, and you can see 50-star flags a few times throughout. Hawaii and Alaska wouldn't join the union until 1959.
14. A Mouthful of Eyes: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
If you were a keen-eyed kid when this movie came out, this was probably pretty upsetting. The Ninja Turtles' initial live-action outing was of better quality and more successful than most anyone expected. But the Turtles were still guys in suits. While Jim Henson's creatures have generally been made to avoid breaking the illusion, that's harder with a costume as close to human size as the Turtles were, and you can see the puppeteers a few times in the movie. One of the worst shots features Donatello, mouth open, with the puppeteer's eyes and mouth clearly visible to the viewer.
15. That's Gotta Hurt: The Martian (2015)
Donald Glover is a skilled musician, writer, and producer. His time on NBC's Community showcased his comedy chops, which were a highlight of the show throughout its run. When he takes a spill in The Martian, though, that's not a pratfall. When Glover's character, Rich, is moving around his office, he slips. "When you see me in the movie and I eat it," Glover told Conan O'Brien in an interview, "that's really eating it." A good actor can roll with the punches, and that's exactly what Glover did.
