Goofs

When Riggs jumps off the building after handcuffing himself to the jumper, a close up shot just after they step off the ledge shows that the rubber trick handcuffs break. When they get out of the air bag, they have connected real handcuffs on.

When Murtaugh challenges Riggs to shoot himself (after the jumper scene), Riggs cocks the revolver before pointing it at his head. While they are staring each other out, the camera cuts to a close-up of a revolver which shows the hammer moving through half-cock by pulling on the trigger.

After rescuing Murtaugh and his daughter, Riggs retrieves his Baretta and then fires it more than 30 times without reloading.

Just before Murtaugh opens the package with Amanda's yearbook and video he grabs a beer from the fridge and opens it. He then opens the beer again after closing the door to the fridge.

In the shooting range, Murtaugh clips a new silhouette in the movable target. It is crooked in the clamp. After Murtaugh takes his single shot, and holds the button to bring the target in again, the silhouette is straight.

In the two times Riggs slowly pulls the trigger to try to kill himself, he pulls the trigger so far back that the hammer would've gone off already and there would be no time for him to reconsider (first time) or for Murtaugh to stop him (second time).

When Murtaugh pull his hands out of his pockets, he states his grenade is 'alive'. Only a first day military recruit would refer to any 'live' munitions as being 'alive'; and they certainly would not do it more than once.

In the hand-to-hand combat fight between Riggs and Mr Joshua, Riggs finishes the fight by applying a jiu-jitsu "triangle choke" with his legs. However, the choke is not locked in enough to actually work in real life.

This may have been intentional and a safety precaution to prevent injuries to the actors.

Joshua shoots Riggs with a shotgun, presumably .00 buckshot. Depending on the vest, Riggs would either be dead or severely injured from the blast, yet he hops right up and is no worse for the wear.

In the Director's Cut, Riggs reports on the police car radio that he is on the way to the sniper call. The next scene draws away from the car showing Riggs en route to the scene. The antenna holes in the roof & trunk are filled with rubber plugs. This is standard for decommissioned police cars after the police radios & antennas are removed.

In the scene with Dixie's house exploding, you can see the yellow prop sticker on Riggs' gun. When they walk to the car right after the explosion and later when Dixie's body is being taken out. That is not a prop sticker its the gold Beretta emblem on the grips . The early 92F were issued with grips with a gold Beretta emblem on both sides. They were later changed to all black grips.

Rigs is supposed to be a former special forces sniper, expert marksman, one of the best shots in the world. Yet every time he fires his Beretta 9mm he blinks. This is not necessarily a goof, as experts are not immune to blinking.

In the scene where Riggs and Murtaugh are having a beer in Murtaugh's boat the engine of the boat appears to be an inboard engine. However, while they step outside of the boat there is an outboard engine at the boat's rear end which doesn't make sense.

When Riggs is being tortured by Endo and Joshua, he is supposedly swinging suspended from a hook, and must later pull himself up to get free. But in the wider shots, you can see his knees bent; his feet are already on the ground, and all he would have to do is stand up (or on the edge of the trough at his feet) to lift off of the hook. Though Martin could have been doing this on purpose as he was wounded and unarmed. He was in no condition to fight Joshua. He kept his knees bent to make it seem like he was trapped, until Joshua left.

In the beginning of the movie when Riggs is attempting suicide he removes the magazine and chambered round then places his "hollow point" in the chamber and closes the slide which would have cocked the hammer however as he is struggling with the decision to shot himself you see him cocking the hammer.

The Beretta 92F/92FS has a safety feature where they can be chambered while STILL being on safety and the hammer is down, that explains why the bullet Riggs chambered didn't cock the hammer and he had turned off the safety AND cocked the hammer while he aimed at himself.

After getting hotdogs, while Riggs and Murtaugh are getting into their car, passengers in a vehicle on the road are staring at the camera watching the scene being filmed.

When McAllister's car is flipped by the bus, the hole in the floorboard for shooting out the section of telephone pole used to flip the car can be seen. The section of pole can be seen rolling down the street as the car is flipping over.

In the Director's Cut of the film, Riggs loads his Beretta before going to work. He is seen loading the magazine into the Beretta and racking the slide. The slide sticks as he pulls it back, indicating he is actually loading an empty magazine.

When Riggs starts to chase after Joshua you can clearly see an obvious stunt man jumping on top of a car.

Obvious stunt performers for the explosion: when Riggs and Murtaugh start walking across the street to the hooker's house, Murtaugh is taller than Riggs. In the next shot showing them from the back, just before the explosion, Riggs is taller than Murtaugh.

When interviewing the kids after Dixie's house explodes there is a bulldozer already on site for demolition. There is no way that a demolition crew would be there so fast, especially considering that it is an active crime scene under investigation. A more likely scenario is that the site was slated for demolition beforehand that is why it was chosen for the scene.

When at the pool house of the Playboy type mansion while they're getting dressed after drying their clothes, there's a football game on the television. It is clearly dark outside but at the football game it is clearly daytime. If it is dark in the west it also would be dark back east where there is snow.

At the beginning of the movie when Rianne is coming down the stairs in her New Year's Eve dress she says, "Don't you like it? Isn't it cool?" but her lips do not move.

While chasing Mr. Joshua on foot, smoke blasts can be seen coming from Riggs' machine gun, yet no sound is heard.

When Mr. Joshua orders the helicopter pilot to chase Rianne through the desert, you hear the words "Go get the girl, the girl." However, reading his lips, he does not actually say those words.

During the final chase scene between Riggs and Joshua, Riggs is carrying an HK MP5 submachine gun while Joshua has a CAR-15/M-4 type rifle. In this scene, both weapons have the same firing sound effect, which is not the case in real life as the CAR-15/M-4 has a lower cyclic rate and fires a different round.

When Riggs is on the roof with the jumper, (McCleary), McCleary's safety line is visible in several shots.

When Riggs shoots at Mr. Joshua's car from the bridge there is a flash of the car hitting a telephone pole in which you can see the camera crew with tripod and boom mic visible.

When Murtaugh drives up to the site where Amanda Hunsaker has landed, there is a man in the back seat visible in the rear-view mirror.

As Murtaugh and Riggs pull up to Murtaugh's house after realizing Rianne has been kidnapped, tracks of the camera truck in front of Murtaugh's car are clearly visible in the wet street.

In the opening scene of Amanda jumping to her death, the stunt woman was actually filmed falling onto a tarp that had been printed with a photo of the cars. Just as she hits, the tarp can be seen stretching and wrinkling with the impact.

Hunsaker contacts Murtaugh and adamantly insists that Murtaugh kill the people who killed his daughter, yet when Murtaugh later asks for information about the killers, Hunsaker clams up, not wanting to divulge anything. His behavior makes no sense given that Murtaugh can't find the killers if he knows nothing about them.

The boy who saw the man plant the bomb at Dixie's house, said he was hiding under the porch. When we see the house before it explodes, there is no porch.

Why does Mr. Joshua go after Riggs and Murtagh? There are other officer's on the police force and it's likely that Roger And Riggs would have told them everything they knew. So, it would be useless for them to do anything to Riggs and Murtagh because the police would have already known everything, making the whole end sequence basically filler.

It makes little sense for Dixie to be killed when her killers by that point have no reason to believe that the police suspect her in any way regarding Amanda Hunsaker's murder. It makes even less sense for them to use Mercury switches to detonate Dixie's house and only increase police suspicion about Amanda Hunsaker's death.

Riggs continually references a "hollow-point" bullet when talking about his suicide plan, yet he is clearly holding a bullet with a full metal jacket both times it is shown.

As Martin contemplates killing himself early in the film, his left index finger is placed above the hammer spurs on his gun. Thus preventing his gun from firing.

Murtaugh says he served with Hunsaker in "La Drang Valley" - it was the battle of Ia Drang, pronounced "Ya" or "EE-ah". Actor Danny Glover probably mistook the capital I at the start of the word for a lower-case "L".