Goofs for
Invincible (2006) More at IMDbPro »

• Anachronisms: In the 1975 game between the Eagles and the Bengals - the game clock is shown counting down the time remaining in tenths-of-a-second. These types of game clocks were not introduced until the late '80s.
  
  
• Factual errors: While the Eagles are losing 31-0 to the Cincinnati Bengals at the end of the 1975 season, a fan complains that the Eagles are losing to "a team should've been worse than us. When the game was played, the Bengals were 9-2 and the Eagles were 3-8. The lopsided loss should have come as a surprise to nobody, especially Eagles fans.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the movie timeline, the Philadelphia Eagles hire Dick Vermeil after Vince and the guys play their pickup football game. The movie says the game was played 6 months after the Eagles-Bengals game, which would be early June. However, the Eagles hired Vermeil in February 1976, four months before the pickup football game would have been played.
  
  

• Factual errors: Vince Papale never scored an NFL touchdown. However, the play in the movie in which he scores a touchdown is based loosely on a real play. In the real game against the New York Giants, Papale forced a Giants defender to run into his own punt returner. Papale recovered the fumble, but did not score on the play. NFL rules prohibit players from advancing "muffed" punts. (The actual play is shown in the montage at the end of the movie).
  
  
• Plot holes: While the film accurately points out that Vince Papale never played college football, it omits the fact that Papale played professional football in the World Football League with the Philadelphia Bell before joining the Eagles.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During one of the games, a miscellaneous member of the Eagles is wearing a sweatband on his head with a modern Eagles logo upside down, clearly not the logo of the Eagles at that time.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The movie was filmed on set at Texas Stadium, but the turf in the movie and the actual turf in Texas Stadium in 1976 are far different. Back then the turf was just typical AstroTurf but now it is a newer artificial grass turf as it appears in the movie.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: Veterans Stadium (which was imploded before this movie was made) is depicted correctly externally (including the exterior elevator to the luxury boxes and the ramps that were visible from the outside). However, the real Vet had individual seats, not bleacher style seats as depicted and the real Vet was a "octorad", a rounded octagon shape, and was convertible for both football and baseball, and so could not and did not have an oval track as depicted in the movie. The Vet also had lousy Astroturf with line markings for both the NFL and college football (double hash marks) as Temple played there at the time, while the movie apparently shows a grass field. Images at the end of the movie showing the real Vince Papale playing in the Vet show what it really looked like.
  
  
• Continuity: One scene in the movie shows a wide shot of Veterans stadium with elevators. Elevators were not added to Veterans Stadium until the 1980s, when they added Suites.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During the game against Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium the super bowl banners from the early 1990s are visible.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the bar where Vince works there is an obvious "Yuengling Lager" tap. However, Yuengling (a local Pennsylvanian favorite) did not introduce it's popular lager to the public until 1987.
  
  
• Continuity: After scoring the touchdown to beat the Giants, Vince is standing in the end zone as #57 comes up beside him. The shot pulls back to a long one, #57 is shown coming down the field at least 10 yards back. When the shot cuts back, #57 is once again standing beside Papale.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene after open try outs, where Vince is trying to start his car with a dead battery, the same car goes by behind his car twice.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Vince's friends come in to the Vet for the game against the Giants, a fan a couple of rows behind is wearing a White Eagles #34 Jersey from the Late '80s or Early '90s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During the tryout scenes Papale is wearing Adidas Superstar (shell top) football shoes. Adidas didn't make a football version of this shoe until the new millennium.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the last game Vince Papale is tackled over the sidelines. When he is getting back on his feet you can see that he is wearing a modern Riddell power shoulder pad. That pad was not in production at the time.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the final game of the movie, when the Giants play the Eagles, Vince Papale is knocked out of bounds on one of the special teams play. As he gets up, the shoulder cap of his pads are sticking out of his jersey. Those are shoulder pads currently used today by modern players and did not exist back then. Also, it is only illegal to go out of bounds on your own, not if you are knocked out.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The location of Veterans Stadium in relation to the Walt Whitman Bridge is incorrect in the movie. The Vet was farther west (away from the bridge). Also, The Vet was south of I-76 (the road on the bridge), not north of the road as implied in the movie.
  
  
• Factual errors: Channel 11 isn't a major news channel in Philadelphia. It's always been 3, 6 or 10 for the big networks.
  
  
• Anachronisms: One of the shots in the opening of the film shows the rusted hull of the retired ocean liner S.S. UNITED STATES, which is currently moored in Philadelphia. However, in 1976 the UNITED STATES was at Norfolk, VA; she did not come to Philadelphia until 1996.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): There were no players on the 1976 Eagles roster named TJ Banks or Dean German, however they are both mentioned numerous time throughout the movie.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the season opener with the Dallas Cowboys, the coin toss is called "heads" by the Philadelphia Eagles before the coin is tossed in the air. In 1976 the toss was called while the coin was actually in the air. The rule of calling the toss before it was actually tossed by the referee was not changed until after the Thanksgiving Day game between Pittsburg and Detroit in the 1998 season.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the game against the Cowboys, the Eagles are shown walking out of the tunnel on the right side of the field. That is the Cowboys locker room. The visitors walk out onto the left side of the field.
  
  
• Continuity: Towards the end, after Vince scores the touchdown he is shown in close-up with a big grin on his face. It is quite clear that he is not wearing his mouthguard even though it was there just seconds before.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When we first meet Janet near the beginning of the film, she's wearing a t-shirt showing the New York Giants' helmet with the underlined "GIANTS" logo. The team did not adopt this helmet logo until the 1976 season (the team wore a unique linear-style "NY" logo in 1975, prior to which it wore the solid "ny" logo, which it re-adopted in 2000, since the early '60s). A t-shirt showing the "GIANTS" helmet logo would not have been available that long before the 1976 season (especially since NFL merchandising was not nearly as aggressive in 1976 as it is today).
  
  
• Continuity: Towards the end of the movie the announcer says the Eagles are facing 3rd down and 10 yards to go on their own 5 yard line. When the running back is tackled the announcer says that he's very close to a first down. Yet when he gets tackled, the 10 yard line marker is clearly at least 5 yards away. Additionally, when the referee finishes the measurement and shows just inches to the first down, the ball is on the 10 yard line, as the line marker is clearly visible.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Janet is in the bar talking about Sam Huff's statistics, she states that he led the Giants to the Championship games in 1956, '58, '59, '61, '62 and '63. When Tommy challenges her with "How many championships they win?", Vince states "The big goose egg." In fact, the Giants won the NFL Championship in 1956 by defeating the Chicago Bears 47 to 7.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the guys at the bar first learn that the Eagles hired Coach Vermeil, they ask for the television to be turned up. The guy never touches the volume button located at the top of the television, but instead just reaches up and acts like he turns a volume knob at the bottom.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the scene where Vince comes into his room at the training center and finds Dennis Franks sitting on the bed, Franks says that Vermeil is trying to shake things up by "putting veterans with rookies and rookies with veterans". But, Vince Papale and Dennis Franks were both rookies in 1976. Franks was undrafted out of the University of Michigan that year.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the opening kick off against the Dallas Cowboys, the camera follows Vince as he rushes towards the kick returner. During this run, the camera captures several Eagles players getting knocked down in front of Vince. By the time Vince gets within sight of the ball carrier, he himself is blocked/knocked down. If you are counting the number of Eagles players knocked down during the first part of the return, you'll count 13 instances of players getting leveled. Standard NFL Rules, a team can only have 11 players on the field - which leads the film to a gross over exaggeration of the play.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the film, Vince Papale's wife is portrayed as a woman who moved to Philly from New York and was a huge Giants fan. At a recent speaking engagement in Mt. Laurel, NJ, Papale said his wife was born and raised in Philadelphia and is an enthusiastic Eagles fan. He said his wife didn't even watch the Giants' Super Bowl win last year. "My life must have been too boring for a movie so they had to make some things up," he said.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the opening scene when a group of police officers are closing the gate three officers are wearing a 6 point hat while the fourth officer is wearing a round military style hat.
  
  
• Continuity: An obvious screw-up, the handwriting on the disparaging note from Vince's first wife who left him high and dry exactly matches the handwriting on the 3" X 5" note card left with the box from the Janet Cantwell character delivered to Vince's training-camp room. The same hand wrote both notes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Mark Wahlberg is much shorter than the real Vince Papale. Vince Papale is 6 foot 2, while Wahlberg is 5 foot 9.
  
  

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