Robocop movie corrections

[After ED-209 kills a junior executive.]

Dick Jones: I'm sure this is just a glitch. A temporary setback.

The Old Man: You call this a GLITCH?

Mistakes

After the one bad guy crashes into the giant vat of Toxic Waste, hardly any of the liquid from the container spills out for the first two shots. Then a few cuts later, almost all of it pours from the back of the truck. Judging by the size of the hole it left, more liquid should have been coming out around the truck, not just through it. See more...

Trivia

In 1987, a known criminal who had just committed a robbery ran into a dark cinema to avoid being caught by the police who were chasing him. He became so engrossed in the film on the screen, (RoboCop), he didn't even notice that the police had emptied the cinema. When they stopped the show and turned the lights on he was in such shock, he didn't even resist getting handcuffed and led into custody. See more...

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Robocop (1987) - 47 corrections

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Dan O'Herlihy, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, Nancy Allen, Peter Weller, Ray Wise, Ronny Cox (add more)

Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Sci-fi, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

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Just after RoboCop has arrested Clarence, we see the police officers arguing. There is a shot of Lewis and the doors we see behind her are clear, no one is there or near them. A second later RoboCop and Clarence bust through the doors. How did they get into the hall that fast? [If you watch through the doors during the dialogue prior to Robocop entering, right outside is a hallway immediately to the left and right of the doors (a cop is seen leading a criminal from the right to the left very close to the door). The angle Robocop and Clarence enter is at a slight right, indicating he could've come from the right hallway right outside the door.]

Time

Robocop is seen scanning the police directory for information on Emil. This leads him to Clarence's rap sheet, including the charges for murdering Murphy. When he checks the file for Murphy, the photo shows him wearing his Detroit Police uniform (the OCP symbol is plainly visible on his shoulder). Given that Murphy wasn't even on the Detroit Police force for a day, let alone in the Police HQ for more than an hour, how is a casual shot of him in uniform in the HQ lobby on file possible? [Murphy's been part of the Detroit Police for years. At the beginning of the film, he's simply been transferred between precincts, not from another force altogether.]

Corrected by Tailkinker

Near the film's end, Dick is giving a presentation to the OCP board about ED-209 replacing Detroit Police officers. The board claps midway through his speech, and you can see "the Old Man" start to get up and open his mouth. He then looks to the person next to him and sits down quickly, as if missing a cue and forgetting that Dick has more lines. [Or he got up to say something and then realized Dick wasn't finished speaking. This is a character mistake, not a movie mistake.]

Corrected by Phixius

When Robocop is in the convenience store about to arrest the guy robbing the store, the robber shoots Robocop several times with a machine gun. Robocop walks up, grips the end of the gun, and bends it down. Basic physics dictate that either the robber would be lifted up or the gun would be prised out of his hands rather than the gun barrel bending, unless the robber weighs a ton and has an amazingly strong grip. [Unknown what the gun barrel is made of, but it appears to be very thin (exterior circumference) and would be extremely hot after the robber fired so many rounds. This combination, along with the robber keeping a tight grip on the weapon with both hands and Robocop very quickly bending it, could allow the barrel to bend in the manner portrayed.]

Corrected by BocaDavie

After Murphy dies, the screen goes black and there is a very cool sequence of scenes from RoboCop's point of view. In one of them, though, a female Security Concepts/OCP suit says, "Bring in the LED" and a green light-grid covers the screen. A technician then "secures" each corner with a screwdriver, but as he does each screw, the grid gets progressively closer to the screen, until it has disappeared. What kind of device would move each time a corner is tightened? [Unknown, but this one does. It is a technology of the future; we just need to accept that it works the way it is portrayed in the film. A curiosity, but not a movie mistake.]

Corrected by BocaDavie

During the botched demonstration of the ED-209 in the boardroom near the start of the film the ED-209 should not have been loaded with live ammunition as this was only a demonstration of its ability to recognize criminals. If the demonstration had been on a firing range or outside it would have made sense but to have loaded it for a showing in a board room beggars belief. [This simply demonstrates how overconfident Dick Jones and the scientists who built ED-209 were.]

Corrected by Grumpy Scot

In the scene where the thugs are testing their new heavy weapons, one bangs on the roof of the car and says, "Mount up. "If you watch closely, when he hits the roof of the car, the rear view mirror falls off the windshield. [If the mirror appears in a subsequent shot (not scene) then that's a continuity mistake; but the mirror falling off to begin with is not a mistake at all. It happens.]

Corrected by Phixius

When Robocop tries to arrest Dick Jones in his office, he can't because of Directive 4. Dick Jones then tells Robocop "any attempt to arrest a senior officer of OCP results in shutdown". The shutdown never occurs. [That's because what's left of Murphy was able to fight back against his programming enough to avoid actually shutting down, although the directive still gave him considerable problems.]

Corrected by Tailkinker

When Robocop tries to arrest Dick Jones in the OCP tower, he goes in with his pistol holstered, yet when Robocop tries to shoot Jones, there's no sound effect to show he unholstered the pistol. [Directive 2 ("Protect the innocent") would have prompted Robocop to unholster his weapon the moment Dick Jones took the gun. He doesn't aim the weapon at Jones because Directive 4 prevents him from following through with the action until he's fired. When Dick Jones took and armed the gun and grabbed the Old Man, Robocop was standing across the room. The ensuing chaos - the bustle and screaming - simply masked the sound.]

Corrected by JC Fernandez

When the looting in the movie is going on and the villains have to go, one of them says something about getting out of here and pounds on the hood of the car. If you look inside at this point you see the rear-view mirror fall off. [This does NOT claissify as movie trivia at all.]

Corrected by Spaceboy_007

After the cops have gone on strike, and we see the bad guy entourage meet downtown, Clarence gets a call as to the location of Robocop. He slams the door to his 6000 SUX and you can see the rear view mirror fall right off. [And why would this be considered movie triva at all?]

Corrected by Spaceboy_007

In the closing scenes where Robocop pulls up outside the offices of OCP, he fires the rifle (in fact built around a slightly modified Barret Light 50 fifty caliber semi-auto rifle) at the ED209 across the roof of the car and destroys it. As he watches the robot and grins just before putting the rifle down, you can see he has what is known as a "stovepipe", in other words the last fifty caliber blank crimped shell fired has failed to eject fully and is stuck there poking out the side of the action just in front of his face (towards the left of the picture). The crimped end of the large brass case is easily seen. This is common with blanks in a gas operated semi auto which may not cycle the action fully. [Why is this a mistake? A gun jamming isn't a mistake unless the character fires it again without clearing the jam, which he didn't.]

The first time Robocop is revealed (when Bob Morton pulls away the plastic sheet, Johnson says "Go Robo!") he walks forward into clapping crowd. On a monitor to the left you see Robocop turn to the right and walk away to the right, but from Robocop's point of view we see that he is still walking forward into the crowd. [How do we now that the image in the monitor is live feed? I mean, maybe they showed clips of Robo in action to the crowd and the video was still rolling.]

At the beginning of the film, Lewis brings in an insanely violent prisoner - even though he is handcuffed, he is violent and out of control. At least a dozen male cops watch her struggling with him at the risk of serious injury and not one does a thing to help her! In real life he'd be face down on the floor underneath three or four hefty officers in a second - and remember, in this film the police are even more heavy-handed than in real life. [This is, at best, a character mistake based on their decision to not help her. According to the plot, however, her fellow male officers know she has proven herself their equal, including in how tough she is. They simply knew she could handle this one handcuffed prisoner, and likely enjoyed watching him get his butt kicked by a woman.]

Corrected by Jazetopher

Robocop has to weigh at least 500 pounds. So why is it when he gets in his squad car (that wasn't even designed for him specifically) it doesn't lean to the drivers side? His weight should cause significant stress on the cheap Taurus model squad car's suspension. [There's no dialogue in the movie that specifies how much RoboCop weighs. He could be built from lightweight metal alloys. (At one point, he wraps his arm around Lewis and she helps him walk, so obviously he doesn't weigh that much more than a normal human being.).]

When Clarence is in the street, he takes the RoboCop locater out of his pocket and we can see that it's already turned on. He still pushes a button on it though and it beeps to signal it's on. He must need even bigger glasses. [He may not be turning it on, he may be activating a refresh mode or something like that to get the most recent position. The trucking company I work for has satellite location for the trucks, and sometimes I need to refresh the location doing something just like that to get the truck's current position.]

Time

After the criminal who was holding the woman hostage has been shot in the most unfortunate of places, the woman stands in awe looking at her dress. Just after she starts running to hug RoboCop, you can see that the hole in her dress has dropped down a couple of inches. [It's very likely the skirt would have been hiked up a bit, by her being held by the villain, or while leaning up against him. She looks down at her dress, then runs to Robocop, during which time, her movements would have allowed the dress to drop to its' proper length.]

During the fight between ED-209 and RoboCop, Dick rings the police and says something like "There's trouble in the tower.". At this point, look VERY carefully at the triangle-shaped ashtray; a black figure moves slightly to the left, pauses, and moves very quickly to the left again. There's also a few other indecipherable things being reflected, but I think that it's the camera crew... [Being indecipherable things, the reflections could be almost anything, therefore, not a mistake.]

When Robocop goes to arrest Dick Jones, he drives into the basement parking lot of the OCP building and then takes a long ride in a glass elevator to the top of a very tall skyscraper where Jones' office is located. Later, after being driven out of Jones' office by the ED-209, Robocop escapes into a stairwell and down a flight of stairs. The 209 cannot navigate the stairs and ends up falling down them. As the 209 struggles to upright itself, Robocop staggers down what appears to be only one more flight of stairs before exiting a door where he is suddenly back in the basement parking lot. How did he get back down to the basement so fast? [It simply cuts to the last flight of stairs to save time. As you mentioned, the elevator ride itself took a long time, so how pointlesss would it have been to show Robocop decending over 100 flights of stairs? The cut appears to have been made this way as lots of action movies use this technique to keep the action/intensity of the scene going. In this case, for the firefight that insues with the police units once he reaches the garage.]

Corrected by Jazetopher

The hospital scene was shot with real doctors and other hospital staff. They improvised the whole dialogue and everything else as well. [What absolute bollocks. The doctors are played by actors L.J. King (his first acting role) and David Packer, who has appeared in M*A*S*H, St Elsewhere and C.S.I., amongst others. The nurse is played by Deborah Zach, another bit part actor. If you look carefully you can see that the scene is shot on the hospital set used for General Hospital.]

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Robocop (1987) - 47 corrections