Thor, the Norse god of thunder, has had a pretty good run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with no sign of slowing down. Fans have reveled in Thor’s brash good humor, his prowess in battle, and his ability to grow as a person. He made his debut in 2011's Thor, stumbled somewhat in Thor: The Dark World, and shone in 2017's Thor: Ragnarok. It's been a long and fruitful journey, but it hasn't been without its mistakes.
We’re not talking about the suspension of disbelief necessary to believe that a man can call down lightning or fly. We’re talking about goofs in continuity and writing errors that you’ll only start to notice after your fifth time through the franchise. You might already have noticed some of these, but we found even more for you.
True fans might hesitate to read about any nitpicky criticism of their favorite superhero, but we at Screem Rant believe that it’s the little inconsistencies in a movie that make it lovable. After all, we like to know that the people making movies are just that: people. It helps us imagine that we, too, could have made a movie like these. Also, it’s fun to pepper your friends with little continuity blips and movie secrets that they’ve never before noticed, even when they were right in front of their eyes. If nothing else, it’s an excuse to re-watch the entire Thor franchise in order, just to catch these glitches!
Here are 25 Mistakes Fans Completely Missed In The Thor Movies.
Royal title mix-up
Loki takes the throne in Thor’s first movie, shortly after their father, Odin, slips into a recuperative coma. When this happens, everyone in Odin’s court calls Loki “king.” However, that’s not how most monarchies work, and since Odin ruled by the standards and with the titles of a traditional monarchy, we have to assume that he’s still technically the king as long as he’s alive and hasn’t abdicated.
After all, Odin’s coma has apparently happened before, because nobody in Asgard seems particularly surprised or confused, and everyone’s pretty confident that he’ll eventually wake up and resume ruling Asgard. Loki, therefore, wouldn’t hold the title of “king” himself. Instead, he’d be known as “prince regent,” signifying that his administrative position is temporary.
The wacky physics of Thor’s hammer
In Thor, where we meet the god of thunder and his hammer Mjolnir for the first time, we see Thor’s legendary weapon break the sound barrier with an impressive noise. Everybody who’s ever seen a movie (or taken a high school physics class) knows that objects whose speed surpasses that of sound itself generate a loud sound known as a sonic boom.
It’s not implausible that Thor’s hammer would break the sound barrier, but what’s wrong about this is that the movies always time the boom to correspond to the event itself. If it’s traveling faster than the speed of sound, Mjolnir would generate a boom after we saw it break the sound barrier.
Thor remains impeccably groomed in his cage
Say what you will about Thor: he’s a well-groomed guy. However, he’s still basically a guy, and his beard seems to grow at a fairly standard human rate. He also doesn’t seem to have any pockets on his suit where he might secure a pair of manicure scissors or a razor. Why, in that case, did he remain perfectly groomed during his enclosure in the hanging cage at the opening of Thor: Ragnarok?
We know he was in there for a while because he was talking to a skeleton, something that people who aren’t critically bored tend to avoid. Yet, oddly, he looked like he’d just sauntered out of a hair and makeup session with Hollywood’s best image artists.
Pronunciation woes
If there’s one things Americans know about Brits, it’s that they pronounce things in a certain way. There’s one scene in The Dark World where everybody seems to forget this. In it, a British fighter pilot is preparing to fire a projectile at an enemy. This projectile is known as a “miss-syle” to Brits and a “missal” to Americans, although both groups spell the word “missile.”
Why does it matter how anybody says “missile?” Because the pilot from Englan pronounces this distinctive word in a thoroughly U.S. accent! In the U.S., this mistake went largely unnoticed. Most people weren’t aware that “missile” was one of the words that sounded different in Britain. To UK viewers, on the other hand, this mistake stood out.
Don’t call the Feds because there are no Feds to call
Much of The Dark World takes place in Great Britain, where Thor finds himself in the middle of the film. At one point, Darcy, who is understandably wigged out by the strange inter-dimensional goings-on, suggests calling the police to sort out this entire messy Dark Elf business. Jane reprimands her, saying that the police will just call the Feds.
However, absent a major and extremely overlooked back channel, this is impossible. Jane and her friends are in Great Britain, where there are no Feds. For a police constable in Britain to get ahold of the FBI, they’d have to go through diplomatic channels, giving the group plenty of time to figure out their problems on their own.
Bad directions at Charing Cross Station
Thor lands in London quite abruptly in The Dark World, and absent any prior experience with the Underground, proceeds to get lost. He knows that he has to make it to Greenwich, but isn’t sure how. Luckily, a helpful passenger tells him that if he goes three stops from his location at Charing Cross Station, he’ll make it to Greenwich. The falsity of these directions is provable with a quick glance at a map of London. Well, maybe not quick - London’s subway system is complicated!
However, after some research, it becomes clear that Greenwich is not three stops away from Charing Cross station. You’d think Marvel could check with someone who knew London for this part of the script!
The miraculous floating buildings
Columns aren’t just quaint decorative pieces. They started as structural supports, and remain so for larger, older buildings. Never underestimate the importance of a nice column - except, of course, if you happen to live in the Marvel cinematic universe.
In The Dark World, Thor and his enemies smash through a fair number of the columns at Greenwich Palace, an enormous and venerable building for which columns represent significant support. Normally, you’d expect large parts of the ceiling to collapse when the columns came down. However, that might have gotten in the way of the action, so the filmmakers conveniently ignored the laws of physics and brought down the columns with no adverse effects to the building.
LOKI REMEMBERS CONVERSATIONS HE DIDN'T HAVE
In the final scene of The Dark World, Odin and Thor have a conversation that references a point earlier in the movie where they spoke about Thor going off to face Malekith with Jane. It’s a heartwarming scene between a father and son, except that it turns out that it actually occurs between brother and brother. Odin isn’t present for this scene because Loki has taken his place and is masquerading as their father.
The problem with this is that Loki wasn’t there for the conversation that he recounts to Thor at this point, so how could he know what Odin said? Illusion magic only goes so far.
FRIGGA BREATHES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
Frigga’s death in The Dark World is both noble and tragic. She’s clearly one of the great heroes of the Marvel universe. However, the impact of her sacrifice is dampened somewhat by the fact that she’s still breathing in the scene where Odin mourns her. The scene appears near the end of the movie, of course, and much has happened already to imply that Frigga is, in fact, deceased. It’s easy not to question that.
However, as Frigga is laid out in state and a distraught Odin laments her fate, she is clearly and observably breathing. If only Odin had noticed that too! Alternatively, Rene Russo could have held her breath until the camera cut away.
GRAVITY ONLY AFFECTS CARS
Dimensional portals cause a great deal of trouble for the heroes of The Dark World. However, car insurance companies must have endured most of the headache, because gravity fluctuations seem to primarily affect automobiles. When gravity fluctuations happen in The Dark World, you can count on some cars getting tossed around. However, the roads, signs, buildings, and many of the people around them don’t seem to be affected.
This might not be as much of a goof as it is a conscious budget choice. After all, gravity fluctuations powerful enough to toss cars around could easily rip up asphalt and tear down cement walls, but in a movie with finite resources, those effects might not be as easily achieved,
The disappearing footprint
Thor’s arrival on Earth is impressive. He gets thrown out of Asgard and lands on our home planet, in the middle of nowhere, right in the middle of a circular “footprint” reminiscent of a crop circle. This imprint is the result of the Bifrost, the Asgardian transportation system that marooned Thor on our planet. The footprint is very visually impressive and provides Jane with a clue that Thor isn’t an ordinary guy. However, it also comes and goes in the scene.
Early in Thor’s 2011 origin movie, this is where Jane finds and rescues him. When she initially comes across him in the middle of nowhere, we see the circle quite clearly. However, soon afterward, it disappears, and then reappears a little while later.
Jane's armor appears too early
The scene where the Aether enters Jane in The Dark World is quite dramatic. She doesn’t just become its host, she gets inundated with red light in a very cinematic way. However impressive the scene itself is, it’s important to pay attention to what she’s wearing here. Notice the fancy breastplate she’s got on? If you follow the movie’s chronology, you’ll quickly realize that the presence of the breastplate in this scene was a major goof.
Jane doesn’t acquire that Asgardian armor until fifteen minutes later. When she’s exposed to the Aether, she’s actually not wearing any armor because she’s not expecting to encounter a threat-- and because Earthlings don’t tend to walk around with breastplates on.
The Hulk’s disappearing belt
The Hulk is a star athlete on Sakaar, and as such, he gets some great swag. One of his distinctive fashion pieces is a heavy belt that the smaller girth of his alter ego, Bruce Banner, could never support. Remember, when the Hulk transforms into Bruce Banner, and vice versa, his clothes don’t make the transition with him.
It’s lucky that the filmmakers forgot that the Hulk was wearing this clunky belt, because that might have caused some serious leg tangling when Hulk shifts back into Banner. Of course, acknowledging the belt issue means that we’d have to look at all the times Banner hulks out and shreds his clothes while somehow sparing his shorts. Maybe it’s better if we don’t inspect this problem too closely after all.
Hogun reappears
Fans have had good reason to mourn the fate of the Warriors Three in Ragnarok. After their much-vaunted roles as Thor’s best friends and battle buddies going on millenia, their instant destruction at Hela’s hands was disappointing. Plus, weren’t they supposed to be super-warriors? When Hela kicks Hogun right through a wall, he sure doesn’t seem like a frightening, super-powered war hero.
That said, he does appear in front of her again a couple shots later, none the worse for the wear. It seems pretty obvious that someone missed the fact that this significant side character had just been dispatched, but with a slight stretch of the imagination, we can rationalize this by saying that Hogun is just that tough.
SIF'S DISAPPEARING WOUND
The Asgardians get pretty banged up in The Dark World. Thor acquires some visible injuries, but so does Sif. In fact, she gets a fairly serious-looking wound on her forehead during a battle. However, when she arrives in Asgard later, the wound disappears and Sif’s forehead is once again whole and completely unmarked by her old wound. There certainly wasn’t enough time for the abrasion to heal normally, and considering the fact that Thor’s head wound exists throughout the film, it seems that Asgardians don’t heal much faster than the average human being.
This is a clear-cut case of a makeup department forgetting that one of their stars recently underwent major onscreen head trauma.
Dark Elves' skittish grip
Frigga is a critical component of The Dark World. She’s powerful and ultimately sacrifices herself to save the day. She also gets captured at one point, and the continuity error that happens kind of defeats the illusion that she’s really in the Dark Elves’ custody.
It’s a simple goof, but noticeable: the Kursed Algrim who grabs her starts by taking hold of her shoulder, but in the next shot where we see them, he’s holding her by her neck. It seems unlikely that he let go and took a firmer grip, since Frigga would certainly have used that opportunity to escape. The only explanation is that the crew forgot what position he’d been in when they did another take.
Thor's teleporting injury
Thor may be a god, but he can still get hurt. In The Dark World, he gets hit in the head with a boulder, which will impact anybody’s day negatively. In this case, a boulder that would have destroyed a mere mortal only causes a minor abrasion on Thor’s head. However, this cut becomes a major problem in the film because the makeup department keeps forgetting which side of his face it ought to appear on.
The wound hops back and forth between each side of Thor’s face, sometimes looking fresh and sometimes looking older. It irritates the purists of cinema and delights people who like to watch movies just to spot the goofs.
M16 dust covers
It’s a safe bet that most of the people who went to see Thor: Ragnarok were unfamiliar with the particulars of M16s. That’s probably why the scenes where Skurge shoots his favorite guns, Des and Troy, are so full of errors. From shells that fail to appear during firing to eternal magazines that never run out of bullets, these two assault weapons aren’t depicted in the most realistic way.
One of the most glaring of the errors surrounding Des and Troy is that their dust covers seem to open and close independently. M16s feature spring-loaded dust covers that pop open but have to be closed manually. We never see Skurge perform this routine task, even though the covers appear open and closed several times.
Thor’s muddy shirt gets clean
Thor may rely on his hammer in battle, but it’s clear that he doesn’t necessarily need Mjolnir to win a fight. When he takes on SHIELD to retrieve his lost hammer, he singlehandedly beats a veritable battalion of professional soldiers barehanded. In the process, he completely ruins his nice, clean shirt. By the end of the fight, it’s covered with mud, and so is Thor. However, when SHIELD takes him into custody, his shirt is once again pristine and
Thor looks nothing like a man who just beat twenty guys singlehanded. He may be a magical space god with thunder powers, but this was probably a case of someone forgetting the scene order during filming.
LOKI'S DISAPPEARING HELMET
Loki has quite the wild ride in Thor: he becomes king of Asgard, betrays Asgard, reveals that he’s actually betrayed Jotunheim, and does it all to earn the approval of his father, Odin, who can’t deal and takes a nap. As he’s trying to carry out his plot to destroy Jotunheim, Loki dons his impressive helmet and locks the Bifrost on Jotunheim. However, throughout this scene, Loki’s helmet disappears and reappears.
It’s not exactly a subtle mistake. How do you miss a helmet with four-foot-long golden horns? Nevertheless, the tension of this moment makes it easy to miss the fact that Tom Hiddleston lost Loki’s distinctive headwear at a critical point in the film.