14 GIANT Mistakes You Never Noticed in Major Motion Pictures

Sitting in the dark, listening to your favorite actors inhabit seemingly real characters, making their way through a seemingly real story, it can be tough to forget where exactly the line between reality and fiction falls. After all, who among us are the kind of history buffs with working knowledge of the little cracks and crevices of history. Not even the people charged with filling the film can be counted on to know every tiny little fact about the story they’re trying to tell. So, sometimes mistakes are made. Sometimes, in otherwise amazing films, there are big, glaring inaccuracies.

1. Mel Gibson Should NOT Have Been Wearing Kilts in Braveheart

In Gibson’s 1995 film Braveheart, he portrayed a fourteenth century Scottish hero William Wallace, who was known for his braided hair, blue warrior paint, and woolen kilts. Funny thing is, kilts were not worn in Scotland until the 1600s, nearly three centuries later.

2. No Cookies for ‘The Aviator’

In The Aviator, DiCaprio’s character, billionaire and aviation tycoon Howard Hughes, orders ten chocolate chip cookies during a scene set in 1928. However, chocolate chip cookies were invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield, who owned the Toll House Inn, in 1938.

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3. Tarantino Made A Mistake with Django

In Django Unchained, set in 1858, Django dons some cool shades, but someone better tell Quentin Tarantino that sunglasses weren’t popular until 1929. Before then, only medical doctors wore them.

4. The Hurt Locker Predicts YouTube

At one point in the Iraq War film The Hurt Locker, one character turns to another and remarks that an Iraqi citizen is about to post their exploits “on YouTube.” However, the scene in question takes place in 2004 . . . a full year before YouTube was invented.

5. John Coffey Deserved a Better Death

In Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile, Tom Hanks is a prison guard who witnesses a series of miracles surrounding the gentle giant John Coffey, a man who’s been wrongly accused of raping a little girl. As the overseer on death row, Hanks supervises the electric chair executions of a series of Louisiana inmates in the mid-thirties. Of course, in reality, Louisiana didn’t start using the electric chair until 1940 (which means that Stephen King got that fact wrong in his book too).

6. A Huge Portion of ‘JFK’ is Imaginary

Though Oliver Stone’s three-hour investigation into the death of John F. Kennedy purports to tell a mostly true story, a lot of its evidence is based on information that was debunked two decades before the film premiered. What’s more, David Ferrie’s filmed confession was something Stone himself dreamed up.

7. There’s No Way Russell Crowe Could Have Been the ‘Spaniard’

Ridley Scott’s 2000 masterpiece, Gladiator, sees Russell Crowe’s Roman general reduced to a slave and fighting his way to prominence and revolution as a gladiator in various arenas. To maintain his anonymity, Crowe is given the name, “Spaniard,” a term which wouldn’t be invented for another thousand years.

8. ‘Apocalypto’ Bashes the Wrong Native American People

Mel Gibson’s thrilling chase film, Apocalypto, stars a young man who’s apprehended by desperate Mayan leaders hoping to curry favor with the gods by upping their number of human sacrifices. In reality though, the Mayans rarely practiced human sacrifice (and then it was a punishment reserved for nobles, not commoners). In fact, the Aztec people were known to be fiercer than the largely peaceful — and civilized — Mayans.

9. ‘Argo’ Wasn’t Nearly as Exciting as Ben Affleck Would Have You Believe

In Argo, agent Ben Affleck proposes that the CIA attempt to rescue a handful of hostages trapped in Iran after the 1980 revolution in Tehran. In the film, the heroic American and his cohorts convince a reluctant Agency brass to pull off a series of daring stunts, that just barely gets the hostages on board a plane at the last moment. In fact, the CIA was all for the plan from the beginning. What’s more, a lot of the ideas and the actual effort came on the part of Canadians. Finally, at one point one of the Canadian diplomats pointed out that there was little to no drama during the rescue, and that the fake cover story was borderline irrelevant.

10. Benjamin Martin’s Kids Are Too Young

In The Patriot, Mel Gibson goes savage as he’s reluctantly drawn into the fight for American independence. Along the way, we’re treated to a series of events that tell the story of the birth of the United States. Over the course of five years, Martin and his kids watch as a new nation is forged around them . . . and no one ages a day. At the end of the film, Martin’s surviving kids haven’t aged at all, despite literally years passing.

11. Andy Dufresne Got His Pinup Girls From the Future

In Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne spends more than twenty years carving a hole through the wall of his cell in an ultimately successful escape attempt. Towards the end of his time, he uses a poster from 1967’s One Million Years B.C. which features an iconic image of Raquel Welch. Of course, the poster was a little early considering that Andy escaped from Shawshank in 1966.

12. Forrest Gump Got a Real Head Start on Investors

Remember when Lieutenant Dan sent Forrest a letter from some fruit company? That company was, obviously, Apple Computers. Of course Gump received his thank you letter in September of 1975, eight full years before Apple became publicly traded, and Lt. Dan couldn’t have possibly made such a generous investment in the company.

13. Indiana Jones Travels Through Time

At one point in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Nazis manage to snag Henry Jones’ Grail Diary before transporting it to Berlin. So, Indiana Jones races to Berlin to save the diary, arriving at the same time as a mass book burning in 1938. Here’s the thing though, the mass book burnings took place in 1933, by 1938, Germany was focused on the war and there wasn’t a whole lot of literature left to burn.

14. Malcolm X Dreamed of a Great Public Service

In the Spike Lee joint, Malcolm X — which Denzel totally rocks as the lead character — there’s a scene in which Malcolm X’s house is firebombed. As he gathers his family on the curb and soaks in the disaster, Malcolm X cries for a neighbor to call 9-1-1. Unfortunately for the civil rights leader, 9-1-1 wasn’t established until three years after he was assassinated.