When the gang are sitting and talking around the campfire, the rifle leaning on the rock between Alpha and Sandusky appears/disappears between angle shots.
During the opening scene, the helicopters are seen from the side and are initially "slicks", and empty. No troops inside, no rocket pods or machine guns mounted at the doors. After diving down and seen from the rear, the Huey's now have rocket pods mounted on the skids and machine guns hanging out of the doors. Further scenes show door gunners and some troops now inside.
When Portnoy is cut down off the water buffalo, he lands on the ground on his back and the stunt double's arms are still bound and are above his head. In the next shot, Portnoy's hands are still bound, but are over his chest.
During the assault on the heroin plant, the actors have 4 M16's but there are only 3 people equipped with M16's at the drop-off - Tugg (captured), Sandusky and Alpa. So they would only have access to 2 M16's a shotgun and a M60, not 4 M16's and no other weapons.
Shortly after Cockburn gets punched in the nose, blood drips down to his chin. Next time the camera show Cockburn, there is no blood on his chin.
The drug traffickers encountered late in the film, despite being in Laos (Sandusky estimates they're not in Vietnam anymore), speak Mandarin Chinese - a fact noted by Kirk, who uses his crappy knowledge of it to attempt to bluff his way into the heroin plant.
Towards the beginning on the movie when the character gets disemboweled with a bayonet in the stomach, when the attacker removes the rifle (supposedly with the bayonet attached) it is obvious there is no bayonet attached to the rifle. However, since this scene is part of a mega-budget movie being filmed, they probably planned to add in a CGI bayonet.
The north Vietnam flag appear early in the film (the read flag with yellow star). But in South Vietnam, it was not used by the VC. However, the Tayback story is set in an NVA (North Vietnamese Army) prison camp, thus it is accurate for them to have a North Vietnamese flag.
In the opening moments, we are told the location is "South East Vietnam." Later the specific setting is Quang Tri. During the Vietnam War, Quang Tri was South Vietnam's northernmost province. However, it is specified that Quang Tri was the location of the "set" of Tropic Thunder, not that it was the location of the events on which the film was based.
The weapons for the actors are supposed to fire blanks, but they do not have a blow back device at the end of the muzzle. This device is needed to provide the expanding gas needed to push back the bolt and load the next round.
However, for movies, there is a "Hollywood" blank adapter which will be mounted inside the muzzle of the weapon, allowing gas pressure to build in the barrel to cycle the weapon, without being obvious from the outside.
However, for movies, there is a "Hollywood" blank adapter which will be mounted inside the muzzle of the weapon, allowing gas pressure to build in the barrel to cycle the weapon, without being obvious from the outside.
When Jeff Portnoy sees the mountain of heroin he runs over and puts his fingers up by it. If you look at his fingers you can clearly tell that he has already dipped his hands into the fixture during an earlier take.
During the opening credits, the helicopters fly past a chalk cliff face with a distinctive pattern. When the four actors later stumble upon the heroin processing plant, the wide shot of the camp shows the exact same cliff in the background, but it's a flipped shot of the opening credits (or the opening credits were flopped to begin with).
When they are distracting the rebels with Jeff, Alpa and Sandusky are treading through the water holding up their guns. A close up shows a normal shot of the guns, but from far away Sandusky's gun still has a plug on it.
In the opening of the movie, Lazarus uses the term Jeri curl to insult Motown, however Jeri curl is a hair product from the 80's and was not available during the Vietnam war.
Both Kevin Sandusky and Alpa Chino are carrying Vietnam War era correct M16A1 rifles, complete with the fixed butt stock, 20" barrel and the three pronged flash suppressor. Tugg Speedman, along with various other characters, uses a 16" barreled AR-15 Sporter II Carbine throughout the film, which is anachronistic for Vietnam.
Tugg Speedman is seen throwing a round M67 "baseball" grenade, which was introduced in 1975. For 1969, the correct grenade would be the oblong M26 "lemon" grenade.
When Lazarus and Alpa Chino are at the hill looking down at the heroin camp, Kurt is using an ACOG scope to look at the camp. This would be wrong since their characters are supposed be using equipment from the Vietnam era. The ACOG scope was issued to troops about 2003.
Mic in closeup of Osiris after he and Tayback each talk to Sandusky about the map, right after "Full Retard" scene.
When Lazarus is talking to Tugg about 'Simple Jack' he claims that an actor should never go "full retard" and mentions Peter Sellers (Being There (1979)), Dustin Hoffman (Rain Man (1988)), Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump (1994)), and Sean Penn (I Am Sam (2001)) as examples. He claims that Sean Penn is the only one of those to go "full retard" and come away without an Oscar after being nominated. However, Peter Sellers did not win an Oscar either. He received a Golden Globe award, while the Best Actor Oscar went to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). (This is rectified in the Director's Cut DVD, where the line about Sellers is removed.)
At one point, Tugg says one actor may win a Teen Choice Award, and claims that "they'll slime you and everything!". Teen Choice Award winners get surfboards. The Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards show is famous for sliming winners.
Les Grossman says that "Speedman is a dying star, a white dwarf heading for a black hole. That's physics. It's inevitable." But a white dwarf does not head for a black hole, a white dwarf is the final state of average and small stars. White dwarfs will eventually become black dwarfs once they cool off, in a very long time, so long that there's no known black dwarf existed in the universe.
During the Access Hollywood (1996) sequence, the map which appears on screen identifies "North Vietnam" and "South Vietnam", even though Vietnam is now one country.
In the news coverage early in the film, "province" (of Vietnam) is repeatedly misspelled "provence".