20 Things You Somehow Missed In Top Gun
18. The Inverted Dive Is Impossible
Although Top Gun has many iconic shots, the one moment which tends to get ingrained in viewers' memories is when Maverick inverts his plane and flips the bird to the MiG below him. When Maverick tells his colleagues about this incident in the hangar, Iceman dismisses it, suggesting this manoeuvre is impossible.
Even though Iceman is acting like a jerk, he is 100% right. It is impossible to fly this close to a jet while inverted for one simple reason - the aircrafts' tails would collide. Obviously, the production team knew this, which is why we can't see the entire jets in this sequence. Nevertheless, it's still a pretty awesome shot.