Raiders of the Lost Ark

Corrected entry: After Marion supposedly dies in the truck explosion and Indy is drinking outside at the bar, watch to the left of him. You can see a man wearing a modern t-shirt and jeans walking through the crowd. (00:42:20)

Correction: Nobody in that scene isn't wearing traditional Arab dress? What about the man in the dark leather jacket, tan trousers and fedora? What about the man in the pale beige suit, white shirt, white hat and black tie? The one in the pale brown suit and hat, white shirt, black tie? The one in tan trousers, white shirt, patterned tie? The four people indisputably wearing out of place Western clothing in the scene? That's right. Indiana Jones, Belloq and Belloq's bodyguards. Not a mistake.

Correction: This is probably the most famous non-mistake of all time. Denim jeans date from 1871. They were first sold by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss in 1873 and the design hasn't changed much since then! Plain white cotton T-shirts date from 1898 and were first issued by the US Navy to their sailors in 1913. The design caught on immediately and they flew off the shelves. In short, there is nothing at all unusual about a man wearing jeans and a T-shirt in the late thirties.

He's the only person wearing that outfit in Cairo. Every single other person is wearing "traditional" clothing. He's clearly not meant to be in shot.

If that's true, then what about the two guys standing in the door/archway and the one guy who is sitting in the doorway next to them - all three of them don't match the rest of the extras either? All three are in the background to the left of Indy before the supposed blooper guy appears and walks right in front of them during the scene.

Highly possible. Unless you know the man's backstory who's to say he can't be where he is?

All of Cairo? I count 12 people (not including Indy) aside from him wearing traditional clothing. So one in 13 people has a different style of dress than the other 12. So what? A woman wearing a niqab in New York City might be different from others; it's not a mistake to have a niqab-wearing extra in a NYC crowd shot. This should be easily resolved anyway because there's one other person not wearing traditional clothes-INDY. And no-one gave him grief for it. Jeans aren't illegal in Cairo.

He could have been one of the few American tourists in the area.

Noman

Correction: There is a simpler explanation of the man's presence and the fact that he is not there in error. This scene was shot on a closed set, and security was very tight. No member of the public would have got within a hundred metres of the place, and no crew member would be stationed in front of the cameras during a shot. It just doesn't happen. He is an extra, doing what he has been directed to do.

This site is filled with mistakes where crew-members are on camera. Whether it's an error, this correction is an assumption not supported by any facts.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: After Indy has left Marion's bar, Marion takes the medallion from around her neck. This medallion is quite large and made of gold. If it's quite big AND made of solid gold, it would be too heavy to hang from around her neck by a small chain.

Correction: It is actually bronze. This is a word for word quote from Indiana Jones while in the bar talking to Marion, "Bronze piece about this size with a hole in it off center with a crystal." Nowhere in the movie is it mentioned it is made of gold.

Corrected entry: At the beginning, when the aides of Indy find the poisoned dart the one who tastes the poison says "they know we're here. They are 3 days behind us." If they were behind, the dart wouldn't be there.

Correction: He says "The Hovitos are near. The poison is still fresh - three days. They're following us." He didn't say they were three days behind, just that the poison on the dart is no more than three days old, and it being there means so are the Hovitos, somewhere nearby.

jimba

Corrected entry: When Sallah and Indiana are sitting and talking on the terrace, with Cairo in the background, you can see a modern TV antenna over Indy's left shoulder. At the time the movie is set televisions were not available. (00:35:10)

Correction: Where? No antennas at all anywhere.

Corrected entry: As they come out of the "mapping room" in the tomb, there is an extra crouched down by the door, apparently hiding. It seems as if it was a quick fix for someone who was where they weren't supposed to be.

Correction: It's a man, who was punched by Indy in a deleted scene. He is lying still and not crouching at all.

Corrected entry: In the cave in the beginning Indy tells his partner to stay out of the light, then his competitor comes shooting out of the wall attached to spears. After the competitor is killed, how did the trap reset? I doubt one of the natives came in and did it.

Family5

Correction: This is a question, not a mistake. The fact that the mechanism is unknown doesn't make it a mistake.

Correction: It automatically retracts. It's unknown how it works though.

lionhead

Corrected entry: Once Indy & Sallah have descended into the Well of the Souls, they slowly begin to approach the concrete structure that houses the Ark. As they approach, the camera pulls back to reveal the huge scale of the Well of the Souls, and across the top of the screen, in perfect silhouette, is the lighting rig. (01:05:10)

Correction: What you see is an ornamental panel across the lateral beam of the wooden structure over the ark, a bird I think. The panel is visible again from the back side when they are lifting the ark up with the poles, and from the front when Indy and Marion are first trapped and again as the large statue is crashing into the wall.

Corrected entry: The ship on which Indy and Marian flee Egypt with the Ark is not a freighter, but a small coastal tanker, which would not have a cargo hold.

mdwalker

Correction: Captain Katanga and his men are smugglers. Modifying a ship known to not have a cargo hold by putting one in sounds like a smart thing for a smuggler to do.

Captain Defenestrator

Corrected entry: What are all these German soldiers doing in British controlled Egypt prior to World War II. Appeasement aside, I think that the British might be a little worried about a large group of armed Germans being in a League of Nations mandated British Protectorate!

Correction: Egypt was declared an independent nation in 1922 and largely remained neutral. True, the British had a military base in Cairo to protect the Suez Canal as a result of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. But that wasn't ratified until December of that year. The film probably takes place before that.

JC Fernandez

Correction: This is only partially true. The statement about Tom Selleck is accurate, but Harrison Ford was Steven Spielberg's first choice and Tom Selleck his second. George Lucas didn't want to cast Harrison Ford again due to him having been in American Graffiti and being involved in the Star Wars trilogy. After Selleck became unavailable Lucas agreed to cast Ford.

Corrected entry: How could Indy possibly believe that a double handful of dirt scooped outside the cave could weigh as much as the gold idol (to avoid setting off traps related to lifting the idol)? He even takes some dirt out of the bag to try to match the weight. Indy must have experience with the weight of gold from other artifacts, and he already knows how sophisticated the traps at this site are. From the way Indy tosses it and the sound it makes when his assistant catches it, the idol is definitely solid stone or metal, even if it's only gold plated. If Indy didn't know what the internal material was, there was no way he could possibly judge the weight. In any case, dirt is less dense than any solid rock and wouldn't weigh the same. (00:07:55)

Phoenix

Correction: Indy knew what the arifact was that he was looking for, how big it was, and what it made of. So he brought a pouch of dirt in with his best guess of it's weight. It obviously was a bad guess as it didn't weigh the same or the trap would not have been triggered.

The purported weight mismatch isn't the only issue - Indy takes the idol off before tossing the bag of dirt onto the base/sensor, so there is also a clear, if small, interval of time when there is no weight on the base/sensor at all. I always thought that was what actually triggered it.

Corrected entry: Sallah is surprised by the face of the snarling Anubis statue in a flash of lightning. Statues of Anubis were NEVER shown as snarling. They were shown with a closed snout only, whether crouching in their jackal form or standing upright in their head-of-Anubis-with-a-body-of-a-man pose.

Correction: Perhaps that is why he is so startled.

Correction: Actually he said "Adios estúpido", meaning "Goodbye, fool."

He definitely doesn't say "estúpido."

Bishop73

Correction: Satipo was just hired help. He was not a friend, nor even an acquaintance. Totally understandable that Indiana messed up his name. In a situation like that, I'm surprised he remembered it at all.

jshy7979

Correction: Nope. I do believe Harrison Ford was meant to say "Adios Satipo" but made a mistake and said "Adios Sapito." Judge by yourselves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXAIlYlkTo&t=1m12s.

Corrected entry: In the temple scene when Satipo betrays Indy and he leaves with the idol, he is running away from Indy. but when Indy bumps into Satipo impaled on the spikes in the next scene, he is facing Indy.

mikelynch

Correction: Since we don't see Satipo get impaled in the front and then change position, it's not a mistake. When he realised he set off a trap, he could have turned around trying to escape but didn't make it.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: In the scene with the Nazi plane, Marion gets stuck in the pilot seat, then appears in the gunner's seat, then appears stuck in the pilot seat again.

Correction: The gunner's position and cockpit are connected through a crawl space, which, during the scene, Marion can be seen ducking down and exiting it to move between the two.

Corrected entry: At the beginning of the movie when the temple is falling apart and Indy is clinging to the plant, the stone door is slowly coming down. The implication being Indy will be trapped there forever if he doesn't get out in time. However, there is a shot from the bottom of the pit looking straight up. The scene shows trees and sky above Indy. It would be a simple matter of him climbing up the temple walls to escape.

mikelynch

Correction: From all we see, climbing the temple wall would be anything but a simple matter. In fact, it would most likely be impossible. Even if Indy knew he could try to climb the wall, it would be a last resort. This would be like letting the boulder trap him and Indy hope he can find another way out when it's easier, faster, and safer to escape through the actual opening.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: After Indy climbs out of the pit after being double crossed by the guide, he comes upon the guy impaled on the same trap that Forrestal's body was on when they entered. However, the already sprung trap with the body wasn't visible anywhere.

Movie Nut

Correction: This trap could have easily been triggered by something that they missed on the way in but didn't on the way out.

THGhost

Corrected entry: In the chase through Cairo streets - Indy rounds the corner of the plaza in which the truck (supposedly holding Marion in a basket is kept) - as Indy comes around the corner, a baddie shoots at him with a machine gun - watch this closely, the gun moves in the opposite direction as the bullets on the ground. (00:41:20)

Correction: Actually, the charges set off to simulate the rounds hitting the ground started at Indy's left, proceeding to the left side of the shot and get six shots ahead of the goon, who is just raising the gun and gets the first shot off in the direction of Indy's feet.

Movie Nut

Corrected entry: In the tank chase scene they use a replica of the VIII tank, or the "international tank." It was a replica and not the real deal but the turret they put on it wasn't from that model tank, or a replica of the original. It was a turret that was used on the Matilda type tank.

Correction: Firstly I think you have the wrong movie. The Tank chase scene you mean is from The Last Crusade. Secondly, the tank is supposedly given by the Sultan of Egypt and some sort of Egyptian variant of the Cruiser VII chassis and the Matilda turret, which was a brand new design in 1938. They mixed turrets and chassis all the time.

lionhead

Corrected entry: During the car chase scene, they drive past several cliffs, and one car goes flying off the cliff. One problem with this, there are no big cliffs that close to Cairo. (01:25:30)

Correction: They are not close to Cairo - in the camp (the starting point of the car chase), Belloq says that "on foot, the desert is three weeks in any direction", implying that they are quite a long distance from Cairo.

Twotall

Revealing mistake: While Indy and Marion are in the Well of Souls, and they encounter the snakes, Indy falls to the ground only to be confronted by a hissing Cobra rearing its head. Look carefully and you'll see the snake's reflection on the safety glass between it and Indy. Briefly you can also see the torch's reflection while he's waving it around. You can also see Marion's reflection when she falls in later on and is face to face with the cobra. [This has been corrected in the new DVD set. You can only see it if you have the original VHS. I think it's visible in the "making of" on the DVD as well.]

More mistakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark

Marion: You're not the man I knew ten years ago.
Indiana: It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.

More quotes from Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark trivia picture

Trivia: In the Well of Souls, you can see hieroglyphics of C3PO and R2D2 on the wall.

More trivia for Raiders of the Lost Ark

Question: Considering how powerful and dangerous the Ark is, why would Indy hand it over to the United States government, instead of putting it back where it was found and to ensure it's never located, lie to them and say him or the Nazis never found it?

Answer: Indy and Marcus Brody believed that the Ark needed to be studied. They certainly didn't want to put it back where it was found. They believed that the U.S. government would find the best archaeologists, researchers, and scientists in the world to study the Ark. They are both upset that instead, the government has decided to simply lock the Ark away. This is why Indy says, "Fools. They don't know what they've got there," as he is leaving the building.

BaconIsMyBFF

Answer: To add to the previous answer, there is no way that the ark could have been secretly returned to where it was found and then conveniently forgotten. Too many people already knew of its existence and location. It would only be a matter of time before someone more sinister would retrieve it.

raywest

More questions & answers from Raiders of the Lost Ark

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