Factual error: As the computer repeatedly tries different bombing strategies, all resulting in "WINNER : NONE", one of the strategies it lists misspells "Israel" as "Isreal" and "Palestinian" as "Palistinian."
WarGames (1983)
1 picture
Directed by: John Badham
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, Ally Sheedy
Factual error: At the end of the movie WOPR tries to crack the launch-code using brute force. So far so good. When WOPR finds out one digit of the 10 digit code, the first digit locks and the search goes on with the remaining 9 digits. Then he finds the second one, it locks too and so on. Problem is, brute force doesn't work that way. It would be too easy (26 letters and 10 numbers = only 36 possibilities for one digit). Brute-Force works only "all or nothing", you can't sneak your way to the whole code one by one.
David Lightman: [On the computer] Hello, are you still playing the game?
Joshua: Of course. I should reach Defcon 1 and release my missiles in 28 hours. Would you like to see some projected kill ratios?
David Lightman: Sixty-nine percent of the housing destroyed. Seventy-two million people dead. [Types into computer] Is this a game or is it real?
Joshua: What's the difference?
Trivia: Broderick changes school information from his home computer just as he does in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Both mothers were also real estate agents.
Question: How could WOPR not know the difference between a game and real life?
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Answer: While merely speculation, the WOPR is not alive and knows only what it's been programmed to do. It would have no concept of life or death, and as such would see no difference between the simulation and the real thing. That being said, an easy way to make it see the difference would be to program it to not waste physical resources. It would then see the use of all its actual warheads as less desirable.