Saving Private Ryan

The two "German" soldiers who are shot trying to surrender were speaking Czech. They were saying, "Please don't shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I didn't kill anyone, I am Czech!" They were members of what the Germans called Ost [East] Battalions, men, mostly Czech and Polish, taken prisoner in eastern European countries invaded by Germany and forced into the German army. The closed captioning for the film on VHS and DVD/Blu-ray bears this out with the language being labeled as Czech.

Throughout the movie American characters are shown saying "thunder" to identify friendlies, and waiting for the response "flash". But in actuality the challenge word was "flash", and "thunder" the response. The word order is important, as "thunder" was chosen as the password because of its "th" sound. (There is no such sound in German, thus a German soldier would likely be unable to hide his accent if he tried to answer the challenge.)

There are no opening credits after the title is shown.

In the German-dubbed version of the movie, they were unsure how to distinguish dialog between the German and the American soldiers, since they would all be speaking German. In the end, they decided to address all the American soldiers by their English titles, such as "Sergeant" and "Captain".

Featured in Siskel & Ebert: The Mask of Zorro/Polish Wedding/There's Something About Mary/Lolita/Poodle Springs (1998)