Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

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Juliette
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Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by Juliette »

Hello everyone

After discussing how many of us like to find the little flaws and mistakes that can be found in tv shows and movies, we decided to make this thread in order to collect them.

The goal is simple: If while watching a MacGyver episode you spot any flaw, continuity error, shooting or editing mistake, or any kind of inconsistency you find interesting, post it here with the name/number of the episode.
We are never too many because not everyone pays attention to the same things, so do not hesitate!

Kate has already a lot to do and this way we can all contribute to the MacGyver Lexicon, for the upcoming 'Oops' section ;)

I hope you'll be in, and it gives us a pretty good excuse to watch the show again :D



For example we already spotted:
-In the Pilot, MacGyver and Little Brother wearing the same clothes in scenes that are supposed to be days apart

- The disappearing belt in The Golden Triangle

- The disappearing Jeep doors ( episode(s)? )


Let's go! :)
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by MacGyverGod »

On MacGyver Online you can find mistakes and flaws in almost every episode.

The Jeep doors are from Back From The Dead and actually they appeared. MacGyver leaves without doors and arrives at the stadium with doors.

Here's just a bunch of nitpicks from MacGyver Online.

MacGyver's belt becomes a tube in Nightmares.

In Early Retirement when the explosion happens, don't you think the windows of the control room should be shattered?

When MacGyver crashes the jeep in the Outsiders, the jeep has square lights but when the Amish brings back to jeep to their place, the car has round lights.

In Legend of the Holy Rose you can see a Canadian flag somewhere, MacGyver's right shackle is hanging loose when Zoe is taken away and don't you think that minute or so lasts very long in part 2?

In Black Corsage Pete says he didn't know Frank Colton but in Black Rhino he claims both Jesse and Frank were hired two years earlier to try and catch Ladysmith but MacGyver only met Jesse a few months earlier. There is no way they could've known the Coltons before 1989. I tried to explain this in my timeline.

In Live and Learn a boom mic is visible when the security guards talks to George Frailey in a classroom. Also a couple of odd time jumps in Live and Learn: Tony Milani arrives at the school around midnight and around 3 am in the morning, Tony and Mac goes to the construction site only to return at 3:55 at night and fix the burned piece of paper until almost 7 in the morning. What have they been doing all the time between midnight and three in the morning?

In Passages when MacGyver crashes on the car, you can see the car is empty. Imagine somebody was in there. Also MacGyver tells Harry he fell three storeys to a car but actually he fell from the second floor. Unless groundfloor counts as one.

In the scene in Trail of Tears where Mac shows Whitecloud the maps he found in the cave, Mac takes off his gloves to show Whitecloud the maps and places them on the little brick wall in front of him. Mac explains Whitecloud everything about the maps and at some point you see him folding the maps and putting them back in his pockets. Than Mac says counting coups was okay. He makes this gesture with his right hand when he says that. After that the gloves are gone from the little brick wall though at no point it is shown Mac has took them from the wall. Mac never took his eyes of Whitecloud for the rest of the scene, so Mac didn't even took the gloves without looking. And by the time Mac says: 'Will you let the police handle Johnson?' he has his right hand glove back on and you can see him pulling on the other one straight. Okay, we're talking merely a couple of seconds here. Or Mac is able to take on his gloves blindly and put them back on without taking his eyes of Whitecloud or there was indeed a slight cutting here because when he gets back up his right glove was pulled on straight. Even when sitting crutched, I think we should be able to see him and his arms move while putting the right glove back on and than the other one, though we don't, we just see him pulling the left one straight.

Hind-Sight is full of mistakes. Pete denies any involvement of being brainwashed when they talk about the note they think came from Jack while he himself was brainwashed. And MacGyver says he and Jack flew in to Baracca to save Pete and Sister Margaret, while it was Sister Clara who was with them at the time.

In Honest Abe the place they call San Rochelle is in fact San Perez from Bushmaster. When they leave with the helicopter, you can even see the presidential palace in the corner of the screen.

In the Prometheus Syndrome when MacGyver is trapped with the second bomb, he opens the bomb up with the filling of a ballpoint pen but don't you think that filling becomes very large when he does so? Also when he leaves Betty, he sees Rachel in a car across the street. The next scene MacGyver arrives at the fire department where Rachel is getting her promotion. Since they both left Betty's house at the same time, don't you think they would arrive back at fire department at the same time?

In Good Knight MacGyver, check out Duncan's lance. It wobbles.
Morgana has polished nails (in the 7th century?) and seems to know what a machine is while Merlin doesn't. Also Merlin seems to get cleaned up real nice after the dog scene. Vanadium didn't exist.

In Deadly Silents there are handles inside the tank when MacGyver and Pinky are drowning.

Split Decision has another odd time jump when MacGyver goes to look for Ronnie. MacGyver leaves when the second round begins and arrives at the shop when the 7th round begins. 15 minutes has passed to simply cross the street.

In Mountain of Youth when Mac, Jack and Mukti sneak into the heavy waterplant, Mac hides the bag with the tracking device in it and when they go through the next door and down the stairs, Mac's right sleeve is rolled down and hanging open while before and after it's neatly rolled up.

In Lost Treasure of Atlantis when MacGyver and Atticus are in the catacombs in the Balkan they're talking about Solon. It's like at one point they seem to have lost each other while you hear Atticus on the background it seems like Mac is looking for him. Mac walks back to the place where he lost him than goes further to the corridor to the right and than comes closer towards the camera and than when Atticus pops up behind him, Mac's startled and hits his head against the ceiling. You even hear a thud. Maybe a weird sound if you're hitting your head against rock.

In Trail To Doomsday during the fight scene MacGyver is wearing a green buttoned shirt. Afterwards MacGyver is wearing a blue long sleeved T-shirt in his hotel when he received the phone call to meet Joseph. When he meets Joseph at the Tower Bridge he's wearing the green shirt from the fight scene again and when he's getting ready to go to Joseph's place, he's putting on the blue long sleeved T-shirt again. And look at Natalia checking him out as he does so. When MacGyver and Plato outsmart the police MacGyver takes place in front of the bike and drives on but when they arrive at Carcroft Castle MacGyver sits back at the back. Maybe not a nitpick, it could've well been they switched for the reason that when they're out of the sight of the police, it would be easier for Plato to drive as he knows where he is going.
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eurmos
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by eurmos »

MacGyverGod wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 5:29 pm On MacGyver Online you can find mistakes and flaws in almost every episode.

The Jeep doors are from Back From The Dead and actually they appeared. MacGyver leaves without doors and arrives at the stadium with doors.

Here's just a bunch of nitpicks from MacGyver Online.

MacGyver's belt becomes a tube in Nightmares.

In Early Retirement when the explosion happens, don't you think the windows of the control room should be shattered?

When MacGyver crashes the jeep in the Outsiders, the jeep has square lights but when the Amish brings back to jeep to their place, the car has round lights.

In Legend of the Holy Rose you can see a Canadian flag somewhere, MacGyver's right shackle is hanging loose when Zoe is taken away and don't you think that minute or so lasts very long in part 2?

In Black Corsage Pete says he didn't know Frank Colton but in Black Rhino he claims both Jesse and Frank were hired two years earlier to try and catch Ladysmith but MacGyver only met Jesse a few months earlier. There is no way they could've known the Coltons before 1989. I tried to explain this in my timeline.

In Live and Learn a boom mic is visible when the security guards talks to George Frailey in a classroom. Also a couple of odd time jumps in Live and Learn: Tony Milani arrives at the school around midnight and around 3 am in the morning, Tony and Mac goes to the construction site only to return at 3:55 at night and fix the burned piece of paper until almost 7 in the morning. What have they been doing all the time between midnight and three in the morning?

In Passages when MacGyver crashes on the car, you can see the car is empty. Imagine somebody was in there. Also MacGyver tells Harry he fell three storeys to a car but actually he fell from the second floor. Unless groundfloor counts as one.

In the scene in Trail of Tears where Mac shows Whitecloud the maps he found in the cave, Mac takes off his gloves to show Whitecloud the maps and places them on the little brick wall in front of him. Mac explains Whitecloud everything about the maps and at some point you see him folding the maps and putting them back in his pockets. Than Mac says counting coups was okay. He makes this gesture with his right hand when he says that. After that the gloves are gone from the little brick wall though at no point it is shown Mac has took them from the wall. Mac never took his eyes of Whitecloud for the rest of the scene, so Mac didn't even took the gloves without looking. And by the time Mac says: 'Will you let the police handle Johnson?' he has his right hand glove back on and you can see him pulling on the other one straight. Okay, we're talking merely a couple of seconds here. Or Mac is able to take on his gloves blindly and put them back on without taking his eyes of Whitecloud or there was indeed a slight cutting here because when he gets back up his right glove was pulled on straight. Even when sitting crutched, I think we should be able to see him and his arms move while putting the right glove back on and than the other one, though we don't, we just see him pulling the left one straight.

Hind-Sight is full of mistakes. Pete denies any involvement of being brainwashed when they talk about the note they think came from Jack while he himself was brainwashed. And MacGyver says he and Jack flew in to Baracca to save Pete and Sister Margaret, while it was Sister Clara who was with them at the time.

In Honest Abe the place they call San Rochelle is in fact San Perez from Bushmaster. When they leave with the helicopter, you can even see the presidential palace in the corner of the screen.

In the Prometheus Syndrome when MacGyver is trapped with the second bomb, he opens the bomb up with the filling of a ballpoint pen but don't you think that filling becomes very large when he does so? Also when he leaves Betty, he sees Rachel in a car across the street. The next scene MacGyver arrives at the fire department where Rachel is getting her promotion. Since they both left Betty's house at the same time, don't you think they would arrive back at fire department at the same time?

In Good Knight MacGyver, check out Duncan's lance. It wobbles.
Morgana has polished nails (in the 7th century?) and seems to know what a machine is while Merlin doesn't. Also Merlin seems to get cleaned up real nice after the dog scene. Vanadium didn't exist.

In Deadly Silents there are handles inside the tank when MacGyver and Pinky are drowning.

Split Decision has another odd time jump when MacGyver goes to look for Ronnie. MacGyver leaves when the second round begins and arrives at the shop when the 7th round begins. 15 minutes has passed to simply cross the street.

In Mountain of Youth when Mac, Jack and Mukti sneak into the heavy waterplant, Mac hides the bag with the tracking device in it and when they go through the next door and down the stairs, Mac's right sleeve is rolled down and hanging open while before and after it's neatly rolled up.

In Lost Treasure of Atlantis when MacGyver and Atticus are in the catacombs in the Balkan they're talking about Solon. It's like at one point they seem to have lost each other while you hear Atticus on the background it seems like Mac is looking for him. Mac walks back to the place where he lost him than goes further to the corridor to the right and than comes closer towards the camera and than when Atticus pops up behind him, Mac's startled and hits his head against the ceiling. You even hear a thud. Maybe a weird sound if you're hitting your head against rock.

In Trail To Doomsday during the fight scene MacGyver is wearing a green buttoned shirt. Afterwards MacGyver is wearing a blue long sleeved T-shirt in his hotel when he received the phone call to meet Joseph. When he meets Joseph at the Tower Bridge he's wearing the green shirt from the fight scene again and when he's getting ready to go to Joseph's place, he's putting on the blue long sleeved T-shirt again. And look at Natalia checking him out as he does so. When MacGyver and Plato outsmart the police MacGyver takes place in front of the bike and drives on but when they arrive at Carcroft Castle MacGyver sits back at the back. Maybe not a nitpick, it could've well been they switched for the reason that when they're out of the sight of the police, it would be easier for Plato to drive as he knows where he is going.
Copying the post from another site just takes all the fun out of the thread. The point is to watch the episodes and look for the mistakes and then post them as you find them.
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by MacGyverGod »

Well with exception of a few, the most of them were the ones I wrote. ;)
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KateR
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by KateR »

Juliette wrote: - The disappearing Jeep doors ( episode(s)? )
Long, long ago, in 1990 when I first met RDA on the set of MacGyver, we chatted briefly about some of the little continuity flaws. He said, "I love that kind of stuff." I had mentioned then about the Magical Jeep Doors (yes, it was in Back From the Dead), and he paused for a moment as if trying to remember and asked, "Are you sure it was me?" It had never occurred to me that it would have been anyone else, since it wasn't a stunt, but later when I rewatched the episode, I paid attention to MacGyver's face and realized it wasn't RDA in that scene (when he gets back from the church and runs into the houseboat), it was Steve Blalock. So clearly that little insert was done on a different day, with a different actor, and a completely different Second Unit crew, and in those situations it is understandably much harder to maintain continuity.

There are a lot of those throughout the series because MacGyver was needed in nearly every shot, and so sometimes they would shoot closeups or distance shots with a Second Unit to give RDA a bit of a break for the scenes where it had to be him. Just look at how many times the closeups of MacGyver's hands are not really RDA's hands. (You could get drunk on that alone in the Drinking Game!) I finished uploading The Prodigal to the Lexicon, and that one has a Magical Watch when MacGyver is placing the trip line on the stairs in the Bennet house.

These little continuity errors during shooting are the responsibility of the script supervisor, a job I used to think I'd enjoy until I watched them work on the set and realized just how difficult it is. But those little quirks are very different from the STORY continuity errors, which fall under a different department. In those cases I'm never quite sure if they really just forgot or confused what had been established as canon before, or if they decided at some point to go in a different direction and hoped no one would notice the discrepancy. An example of that would be how many different versions there are of MacGyver's birthday. I also just finished uploading Target MacGyver which is very vague about Harry's background. They mention that grandmother and father had died, but it is only later that you learn they actually died together, and the reference to the mother's death is rather confusing at that point - they only established it much later in Madonna. But most confusing of all is when Mac says he hadn't seen his grandfather since he was ten, and that was 18 years ago - which would make him 28 years old, considerably younger than he became later on.

Back during Stargate, the producers used to say they would use my Lexicon as a sort of reference when trying to maintain continuity in the series. Too bad there was no such thing as an online database during MacGyver! :)

Or maybe not too bad, because it gives us something to look for and talk about as we watch. :)

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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by MacGyverGod »

Not to mention Harry lives in Colorado instead of Minnesota. I don't understand they couldn't keep better track of his record, but it also might be because of the many writers. Some writers only wrote one episode like the guy who wrote Runners and claims Mac was 7 when his grandmother and father died while in Passages written by John Sheppard he said he was ten. I think I go with Sheppard on that. He was after all a regular. Season 4-7 had for me the actual writing team: John Sheppard, Rick Drew, Rick Mittleman, Robert Sherman, Lincoln Kibbee...
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by NiLa »

I found a little Oops today while watching " The Gauntlet".

In the scene when MacGyver and Kate make their escape through the river in a barrel, MacGyver pulls the wooden barrel too early down the hill. He pulls some of the other barrels down the hill, than the wooden one, than again some other.
The wooden barrel is the one they escape with, so that is a little flaw.

Did anybody find something else in this episode?

Anja ;)
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by Juliette »

MacGyverGod, the point is indeed to write them down as we watch, which gives us an alibi to watch the episodes once again ;)

Thank you Kate, I love reading about the times you met Rick ;)
It is true that the 'oops' moments are often due to the second unit who are mostly here to shoot and gain time and do not take much time to check the continuity ^^

NiLa wrote: Tue May 01, 2018 9:33 pm I found a little Oops today while watching " The Gauntlet".

In the scene when MacGyver and Kate make their escape through the river in a barrel, MacGyver pulls the wooden barrel too early down the hill. He pulls some of the other barrels down the hill, than the wooden one, than again some other.
The wooden barrel is the one they escape with, so that is a little flaw.
Yes I saw that one too! I was like "how are you pulling it down the hill when you are supposed to be in it?" :lol:
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by KateR »

Does someone want to help me out with this? I'm working on Deathlock right now, and I'm up to the scene where Mac makes the smokescreen.

In the kitchen, Mac grabbed a bottle of vinegar and a yellow box of white powder from under the sink, a bucket, and a fire extinguisher and put them on the counter. Then he confronted Karen about working for Quayle. When they left the kitchen to go make the smokescreen, he took the bucket and the yellow box with him, but he left the fire extinguisher and the vinegar behind on the counter, and there was never a moment for him to (for example) pour some of the vinegar into the bucket.

They go to the hallway and he empties the white powder into the bucket, which makes all the smoke. Now, my question is, how, exactly, did he make the smoke?

He never says what is in the yellow box. It looks like it could be a (large) box of baking soda, although I can't make out the words on it. And mixing vinegar and baking soda together is indeed a "thing," but I always thought the mixture made foam (like in kids' science projects making volcanoes). I've never heard of it making smoke. He got the box from under the sink where you would be likely to find cleaning products, so I tried searching for what happens if you mix vinegar and soap powder, for example, but I couldn't find anything. Although I'd imagine that would just make more bubbles.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to describe this MacGvyerism. I guess we're meant to assume that there was vinegar in that bucket, even though he never poured any in, and at one point he was carrying the bucket with the yellow box inside, which would have presumably been pretty soggy if he had already poured vinegar in there. But was it meant to be baking soda he added to it? Has anyone ever mixed vinegar and baking soda and gotten smoke? Any chemists out there? I tried searching for how to make smoke in your science project volcano, and I only found the suggestion to add dry ice to it, and he clearly didn't have any of that.

I'll probably have to list it as vinegar and baking soda, but it just feels like something is missing. Any ideas?

Kate, who's probably overthinking this...

A little PS: I finally got a clear enough image to be able to read the yellow box, and it is indeed "Bicarbonate of Soda." So, since he never poured vinegar into the bucket, and since vinegar and baking soda make foam and invisible carbon dioxide anyway, what the heck was in that bucket to make baking soda into smoke??

I am definitely overthinking this...
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Juliette
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Re: Oops... Spotting the little flaws in MacGyver

Post by Juliette »

KateR wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 10:00 pm I'm up to the scene where Mac makes the smokescreen.
I just watched that scene and there is indeed a problem with it..
I think there is a deleted scene here which creates a continuity problem

From what I see, when he takes the bottle of vinegar under the sink, it's almost full, and after the confrontation between Mac and Karen, you can see that there's less vingar in the bottle (we only see the top of the bottle but we don't see the vinegar in it anymore)
Same for the fire extinguisher, it seems to have been opened
So I think there was a scene where we see him do the mix between the end of their talk and the moment they leave the kitchen, but it has been deleted.

The fact that Mac puts the yellow box in the bucket makes it easier to carry but it looks like a flaw to me, since as you said Kate, there's supposed to be vinegar in there.


So to me the experiment is made of vinegar and dry ice (which is what you can find inside the fire extinguisher!) which he put in the bucket in the kitchen, to which he adds baking soda at the moment he needs to create the smoke

Dry ice is actually solid CO2 at an extremely low temperature and goes straight from solid to gas at ambient temperature, therefore creating smoke.
We have another flaw here since it should have been slightly smoking right from the moment it was taken out of the fire extinguisher
Since Mac wants lots of smoke, he combines two smoking elements: the dry ice and the baking soda+vinegar, and the three elements together smoke a lot and enough to allow them to escape


In short, this MacGyverism is made of vinegar, baking soda and dry ice ;)
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