Best deliberate TV mistakes

As Ray drives the pickup truck, an oncoming vehicle beeps and the marshal heads behind Ray's pickup. In the shot through the cab's rear window facing the bed, as the marshal pulls behind, the bed's side wall interior is seen (note the metal loop tie down on top) and the entire tailgate is gone; yet the tailgate is intact later, when the pickup flips over. The tailgate was removed for the shot to allow visibility of the marshal's vehicle.

The final Auton attack in this episode is supposed to take place in a busy London street, but it is a pedestrianised area, and several shots reveal this. For example, there are no road markings visible, no apparent distinction between pavement and road, and a bus stop appears to sit in the middle of the 'road'.

Every time there is a scene on the beach, the background is so fake - the waves never move.

Special effects of the ship in space were very expensive in the 60s and couldn't be wasted. So when a larger model was built with slightly different nacelles, shots of both versions became common, even within the same episode. This is why the Enterprise sometimes had red needle-tipped nacelles and sometimes lighted "spinning" ones, and in aft views she had either round white balls or perforated vents at the nacelles' ends.

In season 4 episode 7, 'Brian the bachelor'. Cleveland is sitting in a chair in a waiting room and is getting really nervous. Peter tries to help him by tying him to a chair and when that doesn't work, he takes off all of their clothes. Peter ties Cleveland's hands to the arms of the chair and then takes Cleveland's clothes off. He couldn't have taken the shirt off while Cleveland's hands were tied to something without untying him or ripping the shirt, which he didn't do.

When AJ and Chester show Timmy "The Timmy Tuck", AJ says it has a 1400 degree turn. The diagram shows 140°.

When Basil is arguing with Polly and eventually decides to call O'Reilly, he trips over the gnome. However when we see Basil come out from behind the desk, he takes the gnome out of a side gap in the desk, perfectly out of reach of Basil tripping over it.

1-1, "The Magician" (Pilot): The main character is called Anthony Dorian in the pilot. But without explanation, his name becomes Anthony Blake in the first regular episode.

When we see the Dragonzord, Tommy is sometimes standing on top of it. However, it is completely obvious that "Tommy" is nothing more than a small plastic figure.

In this episode Lucy is trying to get Ricky to notice that their anniversary is on Monday the 19th by showing him a large calendar with the 19th circled. However, when they are in California and they celebrate their anniversary and Ricky asks for information to be wired to him, the telegram tells him that their anniversary is on the seventh.

All the mail bombs are delivered in packages tied with knotted string. The USPO hasn't allowed string-tied packages since the mid-90s (they get caught in automated equipment), but since the knots were crucial to ID-ing the suspect in this episode, that fact had to be ignored.

In 4-41, "The Wedding": In the scene where the tow truck guy crashes the car window, notice the glass goes in the car. Later the glass is there, but Josh sits in the car without being cut by it.

Every time the commandos are seen in the early episodes of this season (The Freshman and Fear, Itself) they wear ski masks to protect their identities. Starting in The Initiative, they stop doing this. The reason is that the audience needs to be able to identify the different commando characters, but it's still a discontinuity.

The dying Vantika hides his consciousness away in a portion of Dr. Bashir's mind. At one point, "Bashir" (heavily cloaked in clothing and shadows) comes up behind Quark and makes sure his demands are clear. At this point, it should still be unclear just how Vantika is still "alive", and whose body he is using. However, when he shoves Quark away, for a fraction of a second, Bashir's face can be seen under his hood. They were true to plot in using the right actor (though he shouldn't have been seen), it is possible some might have spied the secret earlier than the show meant to reveal it.

When Scully is shown on her hospital bed, it's obvious she's wearing a bra under her hospital gown. It's doubtful that a patient in a coma would be wearing a bra as it could restrict her circulation.

When the Doctor begins to "fade" in the transporter room his mobile emitter fades with him. Since it's made of solid matter and is not a hologram, this shouldn't be possible.

When Quinn comes back to the hotel room with a large stack of money he'd won at the casino, he waves it, and you can see a 1-dollar bill in the middle. He was supposed to have over $100,000, but since the crew couldn't get that much money for a brief scene, they used a stack of dollar bills.

Lindsay is not at Caleb's funeral in the last episode of season 2, "The Dearly Beloved". It's unlikely that she would have missed it - she is still on good terms with him and he is her father, the only reason she left was to be with her mother, not because she didn't love Caleb.Obviously they didn't want to create another drama with having Lindsay there while they had to focus on the important story-lines - Caleb's death, Kirsten's drinking and Marissa shooting Trey.

When Nandi confronts Rance stealing the baby, it is a plastic doll and not a live child in his arms.

When Homer is being interrogated by the IRS, his package is briefly replaced by a ball of string when the IRS agent sits down in the chair and spins around.

In the episode of 'Androids' which Kryten is watching, a microphone is seen, then quickly pulled out of shot.

When Dale calls Hank from John Redcorn's trailer, the wooden clock behind Hank (in the Hill's kitchen) has no markings or hands to tell what time it is. This is a mistake as it is the exact same shape and object as it was before this episode and I doubt they replaced the clock with an completely exact object as before. A side note on the mistake is that it may be considered deliberate as the clock in previous episodes is shown frequently in the background and will generally change between shots.

When Jill turns off the light to Randy's room, she uses the same switch that Al used to activate the reverse laundry chute.

When Patsy falls into the open grave the whole shot freezes, this may be because the green cloth covering the pile of dirt began to fall into the hole when Patsy fell in.

In the shot where we see the cars in front of Victor's (shortly after Victor gets out of the car and gets back in when the traffic starts moving) you can see that after the white car on the right that there are no more cars even though the episode takes place in a traffic queue! If you listen to the commentary on the DVD, writer David Renwick points out the mistake and informs us that they had a limited number of cars for the shot.

Every time the investigators deal with IP-addresses, the addresses on display are impossible. Each of the four parts of an IP-address has to be between 0 and 255. As they do have to use IP-addresses some time, they could use addresses starting with 10. Those would be real addresses although not used as an official IP-address. This isn't the same as phone numbers using 555 - any IP address over 255 just wouldn't work. It would be like mentioning a phone number which uses the symbol for pi.

In the dorm room, Fry's punch cup appears out of nowhere. [According to the DVD commentary, this was done on purpose.]

When Malcom scares Reese with the horn while Reese is in the shower, Reese falls and we get a glimpse of the shorts he is wearing. Shorts in the shower?

When Jack and that FBI team are looking for Sied Ali in the mosque, Jack finds a burning body in another room. He is led to believe that it is Ali, because the body's clothes matched the description that Kate Warner had given him. It is obvious that the skin is badly burnt, yet the clothes are barely scorched.

The drunk that is always in the bar in New York is the same drunk in Salem that sees Sam twitch the witch on the signs from an old hag to a young witch resembling her.