At the end, a victorious Maverick is hoisted on the shoulders of the guys. As he goes up, he isn't wearing sunglasses. His head goes out of the shot, and when he comes down, he's wearing a pair. At the end, a victorious Maverick is hoisted on the shoulders of the guys. As he goes up, he isn't wearing sunglasses. His head goes out of the shot, and when he comes down, he's wearing a pair.
When "Charlie" is first introduced to the class, she struts down the aisle in heels. When she follows Maverick into the building, you can briefly see that she is wearing flats to compensate for Maverick's short stature.
During the briefing before the final scene, the Captain says, "The Migs carry the Exocet missile. They can fire that missile from a hundred miles away." Yes they could fire the Exocet from a hundred miles away, but the Exocet's maximum range is around 40 miles.
At the beginning when Maverick and Cougar are flying back to the ship and they are sweating running out of fuel before Maverick can talk Cougar down, this would not have been that much of a big deal. The carrier would have launched a tanker and refuelled the planes. Even if Cougar was too shaken to land on the carrier, with the help of tankers, they could have diverted to a land based runway which is infinitely easier to land at.
During the whole elevator scene with Mav and Charlie, her earrings change.
The Navy allowed only one live missile shot for the filming of the movie. Maybe that is why we see so many missiles fired from an empty rack.
When Goose and Maverick are in the sea after their plane crashes, look carefully, there's a thin black rope latching onto Maverick and the camera crew's boat. Look carefully and you will see it.
In the elevator scene with Maverick and Charlie, Tom Cruise's hair keeps changing.
Throughout the film Maverick's plane has the number "114" on it. However, at the end when he is waiting on deck, the number has changed to "104". This is actually Iceman's plane, which has already taken off. When Maverick launches, the number has changed back to "114" again.
In the final battle scene, which takes place way out over the water, in some of the F-14 shots, mountains can be seen in the background.
In the last dogfight, we see four MIGs circling around Iceman, trying to get him down. A few moments after, Maverick gets to the scene, and the same shot is being used.
Near the end of the movie, when Maverick's plane is about to be launched, there is a quick closeup of an F14's nose gear, which is quite obviously not hooked up to a catapult or anything else.
In the final dog fight scene, Maverick is flying with Merlin as his co-pilot. Merlin's helmet is purple and can be seen many times behind Maverick. In one scene though, the helmet behind Maverick's is orange, which is Sundown's colour.
In a scene soon after Cruise's partner dies, when he's flying with his new partner, you can see his call sign on his helmet, but when they get on the ground and he's talking to Cruise, all the letters on his helmet are removed.
In the last battle. Mav is ordered to launch his alert five. While hooking up to the catapult we see a man holding his left hand flat and placing two fingers sideways into it. That means you are plugging in an external power source. You would not do that during launch.
When Maverick rides his motorcycle up the hill to Charlie's house, the sun is just about to set in the background. He stays at Charlie's a while, they drink some wine, then he leaves. As he is leaving, the sun is still setting in the background.
In the volleyball scene, Maverick can clearly be seen looking at his watch because he has a hot date with Kelly McGillis, however while they are actually playing, it is easily noticeable that he is no longer wearing his watch.
During the opening sequence of "cat shots" off the carrier deck, an F-14 is hooked into a catapult. As it's being launched, the camera switches to a deck member ducking as it goes by in the background. However, the plane going by is actually an A-6 Intruder.
Every time they show a close up of Maverick moving the throttle (going to burner, hitting the brakes, etc...) he is doing it backwards. He pulls back for burner and forward to slow down. In real life, it is just the opposite.
After the class where they meet Charlie for the first time, and Maverick reveals that he's "the one", he's confronted by Iceman. The Iceman asks him who was watching Cougar, while he was "show boating" with this MiG. If you watch Iceman you'll see that he puts his watch on twice.
In the elevator scene Kelly McGillis's hair is a different colour (I think a shade of red) than earlier or later in the film. Apparently this scene was filmed months after Top Gun filming was complete while McGillis was shooting another film. This explains the baseball cap and ponytail.
In all sequences where Maverick "puts on the brakes", he is shown pushing the throttle quadrant forward and pulling the stick back. This would put him in a full-afterburner climb as the airbrake on the F-14 is actuated by a small slide button on the side of the quadrant itself.
In the sceen after Maverick and Goose were told that they would be going to Top Gun the next scene shows Maverick on the runway riding his motorcycle as planes fly by. If you have your DVD settings on full screen you won't notice this but on wide screen you will. You can see the motorcycle that he is riding is strapped down to a trailer with 2 blue tie-down straps. Also, if you listen and watch closely you can tell that Maverick is not shifting and giving gas to the motorcyle at the right time. The only reason I know this is because I have been riding for over 10 years. If you give a sport-bike like that gas, it goes. He gave gas and it never even moves on the screen. Hard to do when you are strapped down to a trailer.
At Charlie's, she and Mav are having dinner and he asks for the wine. Throughout the entire scene the bottle of wine is rotating.
After the final dogfight, how did the drop tanks get back onto the planes before they landed? They sure weren't there during the dogfight.
In the dogfight where Cougar freaks out, when Maverick and Goose fly upside-down to give the MIG the birdie, the names of each pilot are not only upside down, but they are mirrored too. If you look at the names upside down, you can't read them.
When Top Gun first came out, everybody in our squadron made a big joke of the "Deadly Blue Tubes". This refers to the sidewinder missles that were supposedly launched from the Tomcats. Those who are familier with aircraft weapons, would know that the blue tube is a sidewinder simulator. If you was to launch this from the aircraft, all it could do is drop like a rock.
This is the most basic mistake of all, but probably only obvious to those who fly in the Navy. Almost every written reference to "TOP GUN" is wrong. TOPGUN is one word, all caps, always has been... Check it out at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (NSAWC) website. http://www.fallon.navy.mil/NSAWC.HTM
In every in-flight cockpit scene a brass hand wheel is visible on the right side of the headbox of the seat. The only time this hand-wheel is installed on the seat is to disconnect the seat from the aircraft and to disarm the seat. Therefore, the plane and actors in those scenes were on the ground with a moving camera because there is no way that an F-14 would be allowed to fly with "dry" seats.
Before the final dogfight the back wings on Mav's jet say YYY, afterwards they say XXX.
Just as Mav goes into the flat spin, you hear a voice over while looking at the rear of his F-14 (you can see the AB), you hear "Engine 1 is out" and you see the right engine flame out... this is engine 2, engine 1 is the left engine.
The final dogfight scene has a huge error when Hollywood's jet is hit with a missile and he ejects. The next scene shows him manually deploying a small pilot chute to open his main parachute. After seat/man seperation, the main chute automatically deploys depending on altitude and airspeed. He would still be connected to his ejection seat until his chute deploys. Having to manually throw a "pilot chute" to the wind would leave too much for human error.
Reference the dialogue in the hangar where Mav/Goose and Charlie are discussing what was happening when they met the MiG, and Goose says "You know, the finger." In the original 1985 cinema release, Charlie replies "Yes, I know the finger, Lieutenant," but in the video release this has been changed to "Yes, I know the finger, Goose." If you look closely you'll see that her lips don't move when she enunciates the word "Goose," and if you listen carefully you can hear the edit change in the soundtrack between "finger," and "Goose."
During the second dogfight, Iceman shuts down one of his engines, but when they fly past the carrier while returning, there are two lines of smoke coming out of his plane.
When the instructors are out on the flight line discussing Maverick's loss of confidence, in each shot Viper's sunglasses can be seen to alternate between Randolph (square type) and then Ray Ban (aviator style).
The weapons armament on the F-14's keeps changing from one cut to another.
In a hostile situation, there is no way on Earth that carrier would only have had two fighters airborne, not to mention two aircrews that were not even part of their squadron.
In the first flying scene where Goose says he has got contact with the enemy on his radar, the display shown is sweeping in a full circle. The AWG-9 radar of the F-14 is mounted to the front of the airplane and can only see side to side not in a circle.
While in the trailer reviewing Maverick's flying, "put on the brakes and he'll fly right by..." Charlie is wearing a grey skirt. In the next scene while she is out by Maverick's bike she is wearing a black skirt.
In the scene where the guy tells Cruise "Maverick, you and Goose get your butts into Viper's office now", when the scene is close up on his face, the black guy is on the right, but as soon as it goes back to the regular scene the black guy is on the left.
Take notice of everyone's hands during the action sequences. No one is wearing gloves. As standard issue for military pilots, the gloves are made of Nomex and provide protection from fire and allow for a better grip when things get a little hot and heavy.
During the final dogfight, the same shots of missiles flying through the air are used several times.
I don't remember there ever being an Alert 5 aircraft during normal flight operations, like Maverick was at the end of the movie. He should have been up in the air already. The Alert aircraft were normally set up before normal flight operations started in the morning.
When Mav explains to Charlie his dogfight with the MiG-28, Charlie askes him: "You were in a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28?", "Yes Mam" he replies. Imagine the two aircraft. The F-14 was inverted (the back of the F-14 was "looking" at the ground, and it was pulling 4 positive G's), and the MiG-28 was flying horizontally (belly of the MiG-28 was "looking" at the ground) so it should have been pulling 4 negative G's to keep their distance constant, or more to increase it (otherwise they'd have collided). For the MiG to pull 4 negative g's is almost impossible for two reasons: 1) the negative g-limits of the aircraft are somewhere in the area of 3.5, and 2) the Russian pilot's eyes would have popped out of his head at this g-force. Even the most modern and agile fighter aircraft of the world (like the F-16 and the Eurofighter) have a negative g-limit of 3.5 while their positive limit is at 9, mainly due to human body constraints.
After the final dogfight scene when Maverick and Iceman have landed, we see their two F-14 Tomcats spotted (parked) on the flight deck of the carrier. In the background, you see aircraft already spotted on the fantail (back of the ship) with several blocking the direct path of any aircraft landing on the carrier. While the aircraft directors and blueshirt crews would be fast in moving aircraft, they would not have had the time to spot and tie down all those aircraft on the fantail before Maverick and Iceman had finished parking their jets.
In the scene where Kelly McGillis hands Tom Cruise the note saying "meet me at my house 5:30 sharp" or something like that, if you look carefully you can see when she hands Cruise the note that there is a lot of print on the sheet, but when he looks at it in a close up the sheet is totally white blank except for her writing.
Before "classes" begin, the pilots are told that they would be flying against planes that are faster than their F-14's. The F-14's top airspeed is over 500 mph faster than the F-5's, and more than DOUBLE that of the A-4.
At the beginning of the movie, during the first encounter with the Migs, Goose whips out a Polaroid camera and takes a picture of the Mig while inverted. There is no chance that the other plane would be visible in the photo. Goose used a flash bulb. The glass of the canopy would reflect the majority of that flash right back at the camera. The only thing that would appear in the photo would be a big white flash of light.
When the four pilots are playing volleyball, they have no sand sticking to them even though they are shirtless, sweating, and sometimes diving in the sand.
In the first dogfight, when Cougar freaks out he removes his face mask. When Maverick takes-off again to guide him down the shot shows Cougar and Merlin's plane from the side where Cougar is again wearing his mask. Then it cuts back to a face shot of Cougar and his mask is off again.
In his first flight at Top Gun, Maverick and Jester are seen flying at low level, yet there is a 10,000 foot hard deck, so they must be flying over mountains that height above sea level, in which case the hard deck to be any use would have to be higher.
Scene of Tom's last take off - the Tomcat's tail number changes before he lands OR TC changed planes mid-air.
There is no "Top Gun Trophy." Pilots either complete the course or they don't.
U.S. Navy regulations forbid hair bleaching, as Iceman's.
When Maverick leaves Charlie's house after their first date, there is a For Rent sign in front of her house. It appears to be the same shot of Maverick leaving her house towards the end of the film when she's actually put the For Rent sign up and moved.
In the shot where the F-14 and F5 canopies are only 3-feet apart, you can see that the writing on the side of MAVs F-14 is backwards. Also, if the F-14 was inverted, with the sun more-or-less above, its cockpit would be in shadow, not with sunlight on the nose, as seen.
After the dogfight, when CAG meets Maverick in the squadron locker room, Goose is written on the locker next to Maverick's. They would not have left this on there after his death.
At Top Gun School, when Maverick does his "hit the brakes and he'll fly right by" move, watch close and you will see part of the canopy moulding fly off the cockpit as the nose comes up.
In the final dogfight when Iceman shoots down the MiG, he says "roger, engage" and switches to missiles with his thumb on the flight stick. He then locks on and switches to missiles again. The switch was already in the correct position.
If you notice Charlie's (Kelly McGillis) car, the DoD base's name sticker is blue (on her car, it is in the lower left corner). Blue is reserved for Officers. It should be green (for civilian employees).
In nearly every cockpit scene, regardless of fighter airframe, you can see that half or more of the lights on the caution lights panel on the lower right-hand side of the cockpit are lit. These lights are the illuminated names of all the systems that are not currently operating, ergo if the "Engine 1" light is lit, then Engine 1 is not running. If over half of the lights are lit (as in the cockpit scenes) then the pilots must be flying without half of their systems running, including engines, hydraulics, and radar. None of these lights should be on in flight. This makes it obvious that the scenes were shot on the ground using external power.
In the debrief in Viper's office following Maverick and Goose's first flight at Top Gun (in which they defeat Jester), Viper states that "Commander Heatherly lost sight of you and called no joy." However, during the actual flight scene, you never hear Jester call "no joy." I've always assumed that this part of the scene was accidentally left in the editing room.
In the beginning of the movie when Maverick inverts and gets cozy (canopy to canopy) with the MIG pilot and Goose is taking pictures; could never have happened. First off the Tails of the F-14 are nearly 9 feet tall and the canopies are a mere three feet apart, so this would have resulted in a collision. Second the suction of the air between these two airframes even at stall speed of 120 mph would have cause a violent collision.
In the scene at the beginning of the movie when the Admiral walks into to flight control room on the aircraft carrier and asks "Who's up there. Great Maverick and Goose"; he is only wearing pilot wings on his uniform. As the scene progresses when Maverick and Cougar tangle with the Migs, the admiral is in the control room and his uniform changes to being completely decorated.
In the opening dog fight scene (which took all of a couple minutes) they go from bright sun (Cougar loses his bogey in the sun) to being almost night time when Mav attempts to land on the carrier the first time.
During the volleyball match, Maverick's dog-tag disappears.
In the bathroom, Charlie has a tube of lipstick, next cut it's gone.
You can tell the scene where Goose dies is done in shallow water instead of the middle of the ocean, where it should be, because in the shot right after Goose splashes down into the water, Maverick takes a few steps to get to Goose instead of swimming over to him.
All the scenes with actors in the cockpit were shot in the front cockpit... pay attention to the canopy frame behind the RIO. This would also explain a large gaffe from the movie...Merlin taps on the fuel quantity indicator and exclaims "C'mon Cougar, we gotta land this thing, we are way low on gas"... the fuel quantity indicator is in the front cockpit :-)
When Goose dies, "Sundown" acts as Mav's RIO. On the plane his helmet has a Sun with rays, and walking on the runaway it does not.
When Iceman's plane is hit and begins smoking, the camera is placed behind the firing port for the F-14's gun. The smoke we see is actually from the gun firing, which Ice wasn't doing at the time.
In the scene where Maverick and Slider are studying and Charlie slips Maverick the piece of paper with her address on it, Slider changes seats. First he is at one end of the table near the wall, then at the end of the scene he, and all of his stuff, is at the opposite end of the table.
In the locker room scene after the final dogfight, Wolfman's helmet is seen hanging in Hollywood's locker. Hollywood's helmet is blue.
No part of the Indian Ocean could be described as 'enemy territory' for US ships in 1986.
The flight where Goose dies begins over land - where the pilots are chatting. When they see the enemy they are over water. In the next shot they are over mountains and desert again, until they land on the water. That doesn't add up. There are no places in California where the desert goes all the way to the coast with no towns at all.
In the first dogfight there are several shots where the planes are very close to the ground - especially one flying over a flat desert where you can see the planes' shadows. In those shots they are definitely below 10,000 feet. However it is only later said that they are going below the hard deck.
After the final dog fight where everybody is happily back on the aircraft carrier, Iceman exclaims: You can be my wingman anytime, and Maverick replies: Bullshit - you can be mine. Then they hug, and during that hug Iceman in someway manages to put his sunglasses on, from one cut to another
The class at Top Gun was made up of the current best pilot/RIO air crews which had not previously attended the school, from various squadrons. At graduation, out of all the pilots in the Navy, including all the pilots from Maverick's squadron still on the carrier (some of which would have already graduated from Top Gun), Maverick, Iceman and Wolfman have to rush back to Maverick's aircraft carrier because they are the only pilots available that can go against the MiGs?
At the end of the briefing before the final scene, Iceman questions Maverick's capabilities. He's right to do so as Maverick can't make up his mind what aircraft he's supposed to be flying. First we see him climbing into the cockpit of an F-14, then when the aircraft is placed on the catapult, it changes to an A6 Intruder. When the order is given for Alert-5 launch, he's flying an F-14.
Maverick is shown wearing a black wristwatch, but on the closeup shots of his hand on the throttle, the watch is silver.
In the final battle scene, Slider sees two MIGs dead ahead and Iceman says he will "Take them down the left side." In a front view the two MIGs come towards them, but cut to a side view and the two MIGs pass, suddenly followed by a third.
Charlie is chasing Maverick in her car to tell him how she feels. Maverick races down the road on his motorcycle, then two cars start to move out of an intersecting road and Charlie narrowly misses them. In the next shot, Maverick starts yelling at Charlie about her 'reckless' driving, but behind them, you see the highway, with no traffic lights or signals. Charlie actually had right of way.
The film makes several references to a 'MiG 28' when in fact all MiG aircraft are odd-numbered. No 'Mig 28" ever did or ever will exist.
In the opening scenes of the movie, they show a number of planes landing and being prepped for takeoff. One of the planes landing has the number 114 clearly shown on the right side. This is Maverick and Goose's plane. Why is it landing when two minutes later they're on patrol 250 miles from the carrier?
In the scene where Charlie is introduced, she conducts a class in a hangar that would be noisy, hot and badly lit, rather than a classroom, where all other military instruction classes are held. Additionally for some strange reason the aircraft are outside, framed by the hangar door, as if set up for a publicity shot, when the proper place for them is in the hangar, out of the sun, or on the flight line.
When Maverick goes to land while Cougar is in fuel trouble, the tailhook is down. He decides Cougar needs help and launches back off the carrier, the tailhook is up. The next view as he flies away from the carrier the tailhook is once again down.
At the end Maverick throws Goose's dogtags off the ship. American soldiers wear two dog tags. When killed, one tag goes to administration for paperwork purposes and the other is given to the family (if any). Goose's personal effects should have had only one tag and been mailed home to his wife, NOT given to Maverick. It is not military policy to let a deceased soldier's friends pick through his stuff after he dies, as we see Maverick do.
Maverick seems to always be able to fly in his own aircraft with LT Pete Mitchell written on the side, yet on an aircraft carrier, the air base pilots are allocated planes according to serviceability, etc and not because it has their name on it.
Towards the beginning of the movie Tom Cruise loses a bet to Ice and must pay up. He extends his hand out with a bill folded. The camera switches back and forth and the bill changes from being folded in half to being folded in quarters.
In the opening scene, we know Maverick and Goose are flying in the morning because the CAG is greeted with a "Good morning, sir" before he asks who is flying. As the scene plays out, it is certainly taking place during the day. However, by the time Maverick is escorting Cougar back to the ship, the sun is setting - by the time Cougar's plane lands on the ship, it is quite dark. First, it seems highly unlikely that the encounter with the MiGs would have taken that long, and the F-14's certainly wouldn't have been able to stay airborne that long without refuelling - which we never see.
When Maverick is inverted on top of the MIG, they are flying (almost) level - not in a dive at -4 G.
The night before graduation, Maverick is parked on his bike at the runway. An incoming jet is seen, with gear and hook down. But in the next shot the jet just keeps flying. And it's not a test landing and take-off. It's two different planes mixed.
During the dogfight with Jester, as both planes are going 'ballistic', from the ground view, the F-14 is in front. Aren't they pursuing?
In the final dogfight scene, the Search and Rescue helicopter lands with rescued pilots very soon after the last F-14 lands. The dogfight took place approximately 250 miles away from the ship. The top speed of an H-3 is 120 knots. It should have taken the helo nearly two hours to return to the ship.
Count the doors opening and closing - Mav walks through a closed elevator door.
At the beginning of the film, the squadron commander enters CATTC with a chest full of ribbons, next shot, all ribbons are gone. There is no smoking in CATTC (for the equipment) and the radar in CATTC cannot be used to monitor air combat movement as they did in the film. The Combat Centre or CIC is used for that.
While Maverick is dogfighting Viper in Top Gun school he is in a F-14, and Viper is in A-4. Viper gets on Maverick's back, but in one scene you see the A-4 flies through the view before the F-14, although he should be behind him...
Maverick and the others are supposedly on the Enterprise (CVN-65), which is a one-of-a-kind ship with a distinctive silhouette, but the movie repeatedly shows the Carl Vinson (CVN-70), a Nimitz-class carrier.
The training was conducted at Miramar, 5 (or so) miles from the beach. When Charlie confronts Maverick about his flying and he leaves on a motorcycle, he zooms up a hill away from the ocean leaving MCRD (not Miramar) with the Coronado Bay Bridge - and lots of ocean water- in the background.
When Iceman confronts Maverick about covering Cougar, Iceman is shown putting his watch on as Maverick is walking up the stairs. In the next frame, when he is standing next to Maverick, he is shown putting it on again.
Cougar would not have a photo of his wife and kids in the cockpit as seen in the opening scene, as it would fly around when maneuvering. It could also obscure instruments and before he took off each day he would need to put this photo in place, as pilots don't have their own private planes.
In describing the first encounter with the MiG, Maverick tells Charlie he saw a MiG do a negative 4G dive. However, in that scene, the two planes are flying straight and level - neither one climbs or dives at any time.
The aircraft the American pilots are fighting against are described as being "MiGs", but they are American F-5 jets, called tigers, which the USAF is still using for the training of young pilots.
When Cougar lost the edge after, he wouldn't have given his wings to his Commanding Officer. Handing in your wings is merely a phrase, not something people do.
In the scene where Maverick is in Top Gun flying against Jester. In one scene he says he's going to hit the brakes. He hits the brakes and goes up so it look like Jester should fly underneath. In the next shot you can see Jester fly over Maverick.
In the opening dogfight, Cougar says "I'm gonna break high and right, see if he's really alone". When Cougar breaks he is only armed with 2 sidewinders and 2 sparrows. Any F-14 on patrol would at least have 4 sparrows under the fuselage, but most likely would have the pallets and 4 phoenix missiles.
When Maverick is doing the fly-by at the end of the movie, you can notice the crew watching for the F-14's to fly by the carrier. It's obvious the fly-by was set up, otherwise the crew wouldn't be waiting to watch them fly by.
After the graduation at Top Gun, the next scene shown is an aircraft carrier and the caption "24 hours later." To allow pilots time to overcome the effects of jet lag, they are grounded one day for every three times zones they crossed. Maverick wouldn't even have been on the flight schedule within 24 hours of having left California.
When Maverick and Goose are launched off the enterprise, the dogfight in which Iceman is in trouble takes place many hundreds of miles out. Despite this Maverick reaches it in "30" seconds. The F14 is fast, but not that fast...
In the last dogfight, Ice says "two MiGs passing between us." It then shows the two passing between either Ice or Maverick and a single tail jet. The Grumman f-14 Tomcat is a twin tail.
In the first scene where the pilots are introduced to Charlie, Iceman's RIO is has blue Walkman earphones around his neck. You see him put them on and then the next scene you see him with them around his neck.
The helicopter on an aircraft carrier is usually one of the first aircrafts airborne during flight ops. The helicopter should have been airborne already when they call to launch the rescue helicopter when Iceman was shot down.
Pretty much everyone who fires a missile in this movie uses the stick's trigger. In a fighter aircraft, the trigger controls the radio/intercom. The red button on the far left fires weapons after the hat or castle switch selects them.
In the final dogfight, Hollywood and Iceman are up against 5, count them, 5 Migs. Hollywood is shot down and Maverick is launched. Maverick takes out one Mig, Iceman takes out the next. That is two. Maverick takes out a third. For the finale, Maverick hits the brakes and lets him fly right by for a total of FOUR kills. Then the remaining Migs bug out. Two Migs are shown leaving. That adds up to 6 Migs, not 5. [Initially 5 Migs do show up on radar. But just after Maverick launches, Slider tells Iceman "We've got four on our tail. That makes 6 of them". So there isn't actually a continuity error when the remaining two Migs "bug out".]
When Maverick is riding his bike to get away from Charlie, he comes over a hill. There are no hills near NAS Miramar (Home of Fighttown USA/Top Gun).
While in the opening air scene, the names of the pilot and his RIO are backwards.
At Top Gun, Maverick does a fly by of the tower. He flies by, the camera cuts to the guy drinking coffee who spills it on himself. Then the camera cuts back to the sky and Maverick flies by again.
In the two dog fight sequences, when Maverick uses his speed brakes to "bleed off" air speed to cause the MIGs on his tail to overshoot him, the nose of his Tomcat pitches up and the MIGs pass beneath him. When pilots do this maneuver to evade pursuit by faster aircraft, loss of airspeed results in loss of lift which cause the aircraft to nose down and lose altitude, and the pursuer to pass above them. Closing the speed brakes and applying afterburner then brought the nose back up in a position to fire missiles into the opponent aircraft's exhaust pipe.
When Maverick does the flyby past the towers in Miramar and at the Enterprise, WHY does the controller in the tower spill his coffee over himself? Who would do such a thing? Isn't it a human reaction to spill coffee on the other side of the mug? NOT on yourself?