30 Funny, Small, And Unforgivable Movie Mistakes You Probably Didn’t Notice (New Pics)

Movie mistakes come in all shapes and sizes. Some you’d need a magnifying glass and the pause button to notice. Others are glaringly obvious. Among the most common mishaps are factual errors. Stuff portrayed in a film that definitely wouldn’t fly in real life.

Like a detective handling a crime scene without gloves. People crawling through an air vent. Or the scene in Charlie’s Angels where Knox is flying a Huey helicopter, and the Angels use a speargun to create a line that they can use to hitch a ride in the sky.

As one post on the Movie Mistakes site points out, “Suddenly adding about 200kg to a Huey in flight like that is going to cause all sorts of problems with the trim and airspeed of the aircraft. The pilot would know immediately that something was wrong.”

No Stairway is a U.K.-based production company, and their Creative Director Rob Marshall kindly agreed to chat to us about the ins-and-outs of movie making.

"In a film I co-produced in 2020, ‘7 Hours on Earth’, the entire cast performed the final dance scene to a well known song. Three years later, the publishers of the song renegade on their agreement, denying us a licence for the music. The cast were teenagers and had all changed appearance so we couldn’t reshoot," he told us, when we asked what his biggest movie mistake was.

"I had to compose a song identical in tempo and arrangement as the original with lyrics that, when mimed, looked like they were singing the original lyrics. Then we re-recorded the cast singing and replaced the famous song with mine. I will never make that mistake again."

Continuity mistakes also aren’t uncommon. That’s basically consistency between shots so that things make sense. For example, if an actor is wearing a red shirt, we’d expect them to be wearing a red shirt in the next shot. Unless they - or the scene - changed.

"When watching content of any kind, the aim is to draw the spectator into the narrative. There are many techniques to do this: Rhythm of the edit, visually and dialogue, the music or lack of music, camera techniques, lighting and many more," Marshall told Bored Panda.

"If an actor's hair changes colour between shots, all this creative work is waisted as the viewer is jolted out of the moment. I provided ADR for a feature film where a scene was shot over a period of a week. In the middle of the week, the actress had some lip filler which rendered the scene somewhat confusing."

It’s easy to make continuity mistakes because a movie scene isn’t always shot in order, and the shots might even be filmed days apart. High budget films will often have a script supervisor, or continuity director, who is in charge of making sure there are no continuity errors. But as we've seen, time and again, that person is only human. And try as they might, mistakes do happen.

"In the good old days of Hollywood (let’s say pre-digital) a continuity director would yield quite a lot of power on set," explained Marshall. "As budgets got squashed and technology improved, this role became the reserve of big budget projects only."

According to Screen Rant, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is filled with regrettable errors "including visible mic wires, hairstyles that change from shot to shot, and vehicles that go from clean to dirty to clean again."

The site even mentions a character's nipples changing colors over the course of the movie. And a "magical moving tattoo," which goes from the top of one character's arm to a few inches lower in the next shot.

"Continuity errors make the Final Cut for various reasons," said Marshall. "Mostly, it’s because shooting has finished and there’s no budget to go back and reshoot. Sometimes the director decides the error isn’t glaring enough to warrant reshooting, perhaps if an actors hair is slightly out of position or the glass has mysterious emptied itself in 5 seconds. And occasionally, the error isn’t spotted or it’s seen too late to stop distribution."

"I have spotted continuity errors that others have not seen and I’m sure many others have done the same," Marshall revealed during our interview. "I know directors who have scant regard for continuity and are even dismissive if their attention is brought to one. And I know directors who cost a project a fortune because of their adherence to continuity."

The classic blockbuster Forrest Gump also blessed us with a gaffe that was pointed out by those who know their Apple history. There's a scene in the movie where the main character, played by Tom Hanks, invests in Apple stock. When he receives a thank you letter from the company, it's dated 1975. However, Apple didn't go public until 1980. Oops!