Shrek (2001) - 32 mistakes

Continuity: In the scene immediately following Fiona's thrashing of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Shrek is holding Donkey and they are staring at Fiona in disbelief. When Shrek drops Donkey and turns to follow Fiona, you can see his entire backside and it's unpierced. In the next scene, Fiona discovers an arrow in his rump that wasn't there before.

Factual error: Lord Farquaad wants to marry a princess to become a real king. The mirror shows him three princesses to choose from: Cinderella, Snow White and Fiona. But Cinderella wasn't born a princess! In fact, her only chance to become a princess was to marry a prince.

Continuity: Sometimes Shrek's front door opens outwards, at other times inwards, yet it can't be "two-way" because whenever it closes, it slams against the frame.

Continuity: The chain around the dragon's neck disappears after Shreck uses it to climb on to her.

Continuity: The dragon flies down without a chain, then there is a chain dangling for Shrek to climb about to go to the castle, and while the dragon is flying, the chain is gone again.

Continuity: At the start of the film, Shrek is painting his "Ogre Beware" sign, you will notice that quite a bit of the top left corner of the board is missing. When he hangs the board on the post it is the opposite corner that is gone. He did not paint on both sides.

Deliberate "mistake": When a glass of milk is poured, if you look closely, the glass is filled but the level of milk in the bottle doesn't seem to lower.

Continuity: In the scene where Donkey and Shrek are crossing the bridge to rescue the princess, Donkey trips and breaks a board. In subsequent shots sometimes you can see a little bit still stuck in the ropes, and sometimes it disappears.

Continuity: At the end of the film, the three blind mice are turned into the horses for the onion carriage but a second later they are dancing on the piano.

Continuity: In the scene where Shrek and Donkey are on the wooden bridge, when Shrek starts rocking the bridge, we see that the castle is still quite a way off. However, Donkey only takes a few steps to get to the end.

Revealing: In the scene where Shrek and Donkey are sitting by the fire and looking at the stars, when Donkey asks Shrek about "our swamp" and Shrek is telling him "there's no we, there's no our". When Shrek blinks, you can see his eyeball slicing through his upper lid.

Continuity: When Lord Farquaad announces Shrek as champion, there are flagposts surrounding them. In the close-up of Shrek and Donkey, these flagpoles have disappeared, as have the shields on the walls that the flagpoles stand on.

Continuity: On the bridge over the lava, when Donkey steps on one of the boards, it breaks down the middle into two pieces. But when we see it falling, it's the entire board as if it had come off without breaking.

Continuity: When Shrek backs into the two barrels at the tournament, they both have taps on them. He then bashes one of these off with the beer mug. But when Donkey rolls the other barrel the tap has vanished on that one as well.

Continuity: During the scene where Fiona pulls the arrow out of Shrek, Donkey faints. When he hits the ground about 6 leaves float up from the ground as if Donkey had fallen into a pile of leaves. When we next see Donkey laying on the ground and when Shrek picks him up, there are no leaves on the ground, they disappeared.

Revealing: When Donkey first meets Shrek, when Shrek confronts the knights, not all the shadows fall the same way. Shrek's shadow is cast forward onto the leader knight, whereas the knights' shadows are off to their left.

Continuity: In the scene where Farquaad's men are chasing after Donkey and run into Shrek, their leader is holding a scroll. In the next shot, it completely disappears without him moving it at all.

Continuity: The sun sets in different directions with respect to the same view of Lord Farquaad's castle.

Continuity: When Shrek is announced champion, there are awnings above the audience which cause parts of the audience to be dark, but when we see a close-up of Donkey and Shrek there is no darkness, meaning that the awnings have disappeared.

Factual error: As Shrek is sitting near the sunflowers field and staring at the Duloc (and day becomes night), we don't see the cathedral anywhere. It should be visible as such a big building, due to how big it is seen later, it should be very distinct over the houses' roofs.

Continuity: When Shrek walks out of his house and finds the fairytale creatures, you can see the three fairies go into one of the tents that were set up. The shot goes back to Shrek for a minute and then goes back towards the crowd and the fairies are back in the place that they were before.

Continuity: In the scene where Shrek falls through the roof of the castle, in the shots where Fiona is in the background you can see the flower pot is on a table next to the pillow on the bed. However when Fiona reaches to get the flowers she reached down to the floor and not back towards the table with the flowers on.

Continuity: When the magic mirror is brought in, we see the chain and hook that it is supposed to go on. Yet after the mirror is hung up, we pan around from the back of the mirror to the front and it appears that the chain has been attached to the back plate of the mirror. Where did the hook go?

Continuity: When Shrek and the prince are talking about the swamp after Shrek has just beaten all of his knights, the flags move across the wall between shots.

Continuity: When Shrek is brushing his teeth, the mirror breaks. Later, when he returns to his swamp, the broken pieces are different.

Continuity: In the scene where the mirror is brought in for Lord Farquaad, Gingerbread Man lies on a tray on the table. When the mirror is shown, and it cuts back to Lord Farquaad, the tray is moved to the other side of the table.

Revealing: When Donkey and Shrek are walking through the garden area, they pass some sheaves of wheat (presumably.) If you look carefully, you will notice that the wheat stalks were cut, not pulled up, but what were they cut from? There is only bare earth.

Continuity: In the scene with Lord Farquaad and the Gingerbread Man, Farquaad crumples one of the Gingerbread Man's legs into dust, and some crumbs fall out of his hand. When he opens his hands again, there is no sign of any crumbs. The only way that this is possible is for every last bit of gingerbread to fall out of his clenched fist.

Continuity: When Fiona tears a piece of bark off a tree to make a door for the cave, the shape of the bark is different from the bare spot on the tree.

Continuity: In the scene where Shrek is tangling the dragon's chain around the pillars, you notice that when Shrek crosses his own path, he jumps over the chain, but the dragon doesn't, so it would've been tripped over by the chain. And to make matters worse, when you see the camera focusing on Shrek, right before he tells Fiona and Donkey to head towards the exit, you can see the chain is high enough to run underneath without having to duck.

Continuity: When Shrek and the donkey are looking at the stars, in one shot Orion's Belt (three bright stars in a row) is right next to the moon, but in the next shot of the stars it's not.

Continuity: When Shrek sits to eat his meal he has a slug on the left-hand side of his plate facing towards him. When he is invaded by the Three Blind Mice the slug is suddenly facing the other way.