Goofs for
Waterworld (1995) More at IMDbPro »

• Revealing mistakes: Land visible on the left-hand side of the screen, just before the smokers turn up.
  
  
• Continuity: When the balloon starts inflating it is already above the roof, yet after rising 30 feet, roof panels are broken out.
  
  
• Continuity: When the line to the plane is released the Mariner has the bone gun, but it is gone as he is catapulted off.
  
  

• Continuity: Mariner drops a sail on Helen, but the next shot of the boat shows both sails raised.
  
  
• Continuity: After the Mariner throws Enola off the boat, Helen runs past him to jump off the boat and simultaneously the Mariner gets up from the place where he sat. Again you can see him standing (in the right corner) in the next two shots on Helen jumping from the boat and on Enola shouting for help. Then in the following shot the mariner is still sitting in his "chair" and holding his aching cheek.
  
  
• Continuity: The machine gun fire that destroys the Deacon's boat comes from a turret pivoting horizontally towards it; however, the bullets striking the waves as they approach the Deacon's boat contradict the turret's movement.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Gas bubbles from breathing apparatus when Mariner is teaching the girl to swim.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Support divers visible when Mariner is diving to the bottom of the ocean[widescreen only].
  
  
• Continuity: The size of the anchor that Mariner uses to slide down the cable.
  
  
• Continuity: Mariner gains a shotgun when he dives off the supertanker.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Everyone on the tanker is smoking, even though there's no land to grow tobacco. There's a huge stash of pre-cataclysm cigarettes onboard.
  
  
• Continuity: During the seaplane attack, when the mariner is trying to free the rope at the top of the mast, he pulls a Gurkha style kukhri knife to do so. He then puts it between his teeth, while trying to shoot the plane. It is still in his mouth as he is catapulted off the mast. However, when he surfaces, the knife is gone. He climbs aboard his boat, then takes the same knife out of its scabbard at his waist to cut the woman's hair.
  
  
• Factual errors: The "smokers" ship is the Exxon Valdez, which had an unloaded displacement of 211,469 tons (214,862 metric tons). Oars would be completely useless as means of propulsion.
  
  
• Factual errors: After being repaired, the Exxon Valdez was renamed the "Sea River Mediterranean," later shortened to "S/R Mediterranean," then to simply "Mediterranean".
  
  
• Continuity: When Mariner is leaving on the jet ski to rescue the little girl there is a mountain/cliff visible on the right.
  
  
• Continuity: When Deacon is giving his speech to the masses on the oil tanker, the whiskey bottle at the beginning is virtually empty. However, later in his speech it appears half full.
  
  
• Continuity: At least twice, the point is made that the Mariner has webbed toes. Several times, though, the camera shows his feet and his toes are spread apart.
  
  
• Continuity: Helen claims Enola draws "only what she sees" and she is "like a mirror" yet later on, when the Mariner and Helen argue about Dry Land, instead of saying mirrors like she had before, she says "reflecting glass" when asking him where he got everything if it wasn't from dry land.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Mariner is in the cage and Old Gregor is asking him about dry land, Gregor shows him a slip of paper with the dry land markings on it. The paper goes back and forth between being torn and intact between shots.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the three jet skis are speeding towards each other they explode before they touch
  
  
• Continuity: Deacon is talking to Enola and asks her if she wants a cigarette and says she is not too young to start. He lights his cigarette and it appears he has smoked half of it but when camera shots change it's bigger again.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: At one point, Mariner eats some Tomato leaves. Tomatoes are part of the Deadly Nightshade family, and eating the leaves could make a person very sick or kill them.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Mariner ties a rope onto his leg at the end he is wearing boots but when he jumps off he is barefoot.
  
  
• Factual errors: The "smokers" are supposed to power their skis and the seaplane off of the oil contained in the tanker. Oil tankers transport only crude oil and there would be no way for the smokers to refine gasoline for the skis or the even higher octane gas required for the seaplane.
  
  
• Plot holes: Judging from the trading scene between the Mariner and the crazy drifter, paper appears to be a highly rare and valuable commodity. However, the fact that the Smokers consume a large amount of paper as a part of their cigarettes is never addressed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the seaplane shows up to capture the girl and the Mariner dives inside the hull of the boat to grab a gun, fog/misters can be seen on the wall next to him producing the 'smoke' from the gunfire of the plane.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: At the latter end of the film Mariner picks up a piece of paper from underwater to the distinct sound of dry crackling paper.
  
  
• Factual errors: To show Helen what is below, Mariner puts her in a dome with air in it. First, the ballast needed to bring down this amount of air would have had to be much greater. Second, the air would have compressed to a fraction of the volume (they descended at least a few hundred feet), and Helen would not have been able to breathe. Finally, she came up much too fast, and would have died from the bends. (Nitrogen gas expanding in her bloodstream as the pressure of the deep ocean lessened.) Furthermore, the Mariner (having gills) would have no reason to own an air dome already - especially with the current rarity of resources.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the seaplane is tied to the Mariner's trimaran by the harpoon cable, it is forced to fly in an ever-decreasing circle around the boat. The seaplane pilot leans out and shoots back along the fuselage, trying to sever the cable - so his line of fire is a tangent to the circle. Yet the shot hits the trimaran sail close to the Mariner - at the centre of the circle! Very bad geometry!
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Throughout the movie the smokers use guns and a variety of machinery. It is entirely possible that they could have a very large cache of ammunition (ammunition keeps for many years properly stored), especially if they also have a large cache of cigarettes. Additionally, while the multitude of boats and other watercraft they launch from their "mother ship" is a bit far fetched, it is also plausible that they might have a shop inside that huge ship to maintain these craft.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The scene where the Mariner takes Helen down in the glass dome to see the ruins: towards the end of the shot covering their initial descent the Mariner can just be seen letting go of the dome and returning to the surface.
  
  
• Plot holes: Because of the scarcity of fresh water, it is highly valued. This is clearly demonstrated very early in the film as the Mariner uses a device to purify his own urine to make it drinkable. However, any device able to purify the salt and wastes from urine would certainly be able to be used to purify ocean water (since the major "contaminant" is also salt).
  
  
• Factual errors: Even if the polar ice caps melted, the earth would not be completely covered with water.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Mariner offers Enola the eyeball of the fish he has just caught the eye is no bigger than a human eye. Just seconds earlier we see him catch the monster and it is huge, it would obviously have large eyes. You can even briefly see its eyes and they are large and yellow.
  
  

Related Links