Stand By Me (1986) - 47 mistakes

Continuity: Teddy's hair changes in every shot after being dunked in the swamp. The strap to his bag disappears and reappears as well.

Continuity: In the beginning he mentions Teddy's left ear being burnt by his father on a stove. Notice how his ear goes from looking severely burnt, to not burnt at all, through the movie. Especially the water dunking scene.

Audio problem: At the beginning when Vern comes to the tree house to share his exciting news, when he is climbing up to get inside his lips do not match what he is saying.

Continuity: When the boys are dunking each other in the swamp Gordie starts to wade away, when he passes the camera his hair is dry but when he reaches the bank it's wet again.

Continuity: All four guys are in the junk-yard and they are all about to toss their coins to see who goes to get the food. When Teddy throws his coin in the air he is wearing no dog tag necklace but when he catches the coin he is suddenly wearing the dog tag necklace.

Continuity: When Gordie shoots the garbage cans and runs off, he's still running when they get around the corner and he's not holding the gun anymore. He wouldn't have dropped it because it's in later scenes, and he didn't have enough time to put it in his backpack or give it to Chris because they were trying to get far away from the back of the diner.

Continuity: When the 4 crawl soaking wet from the swamp and pull off the leeches from their bodies, they begin to put their clothes back on. Suddenly, their clothes and themselves are bone dry.

Factual error: Teddy wears army boots that did not exist in 1959.

Factual error: When the two drivers of the teenage gang are playing "Chicken" on a straight section of a two-lane highway, the center lines of the road consist of yellow hashmarks. Though the picture was set in 1959, center lines for passing zones on two-lane highways were painted white until 1971.

Visible crew/equipment: Part of a fluffy boom mike is visible at the top of the screen when they are arguing about crossing the bridge. [Edited in DVD]

Continuity: When the boys get dunked in the swamp, Teddy takes his glasses off, but then while they're thrashing around in the water, both hands are clearly empty. Then, when they get out, he has his glasses in his hand again.

Factual error: Near the end of the movie, when the boys return to town, a garage door in the background is a modern metal roll-up type that was not available in 1959.

Continuity: When Gordie jumps over the fence away from Chopper and they all realise he's not fierce, the boys start to tease him. While Teddy's saying "Bite my ass, Choppy" the dog bites through the fence and Teddy pulls away, and then in the next shot he pulls away again and jumps differently.

Continuity: The train on the bridge is producing black smoke from its funnel, but in one shot it is producing white smoke.

Revealing: When Lardass pukes on the guy to the left of him, he moves his head prematurely, and you can clearly see that the puke is coming out of a jet positioned behind his head.

Revealing: During the pie eating scene when the projectile stream of blueberries starts, the alignment is off for most of them, as it appears to come out of their noses and chins as well. The pie eating contestant next to the radio personality has their stream fall in an arc until it looks like it's coming from beneath their chin directly downward.

Continuity: In the tree-house scene near the beginning, the sleeve on Chris's t-shirt changes from being rolled up to rolled down. The most noticeable example of this is when they lift up the table to let Vern in and it cuts from a close-up to a wider shot.

Continuity: When the boys are up in the treehouse at the start of the movie, at one point Chris blows out some smoke into a cloud in front of him, but in the next shot it's completely disappeared.

Continuity: In between shots of Lardass as Gordie says "By the time he was on his fifth pie, Lardass pretended that he wasn't eating pies.", the crust on Lardass' forehead disappears.

Factual error: After Wil Wheaton fires a warning shot, he points the pistol at Kiefer Sutherland and pulls the hammer back to threaten him. However, this is a semi automatic pistol, the hammer would automatically be in the pulled back position after the shot he fired.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene just after the train dodge attempt by Teddy, you can see something white hanging out of Verne's pants as he walks onto the tracks.  It is probably some part of equipment for his mike.

Factual error: There are aluminium cans in the general store. These weren't used at the time the film was set.

Revealing: In the car race seen with Ace and his gang you can see that it is not Ace driving when the car runs over the wood in the road.

Continuity: At the end of the first shot of Lardass drinking castor oil, the bottle is nearly full, but at the start of the next shot, the bottle is nearly empty. Because of the people talking in the background, they couldn't have cut forward to the part where he is finishing.

Factual error: When they find the dead body, the body looks like it has been dead for only a short while, his face even had a pinkish color to it still. Factually, the body would be a lot more decomposed after a few days, bluish or white in color from the blood pooling.

Continuity: When the boys are at the junk yard and they nominate Gordy to get the food, when Gordy jumps up and starts joking with the boys, Vern and Chris start to fight. Then the shot changes and suddenly Teddy, who was off to the side, is in the middle of the pile.

Continuity: Watch carefully in the scene where the four boys are running for their lives over the railway bridge. Chris and Teddy are in front, and Vern and Gordie are behind. In one shot we see just Vern and Gordie's feet, and quite a lot of the track behind them. You can see that there is no train behind them. In the very next shot, the train is about two metres behind them

Continuity: When the four are deciding whether to cross the swamp, Chris pulls off a nearby tree branch to test the deepness. First the branch is quite flimsy and has two ends like a "Y" shape, and then after Chris pokes it into the marsh it becomes thicker with no split end.

Revealing: Not to say Lardass was thin, but it is very clear that his shirt is stuffed up with something to make him appear very obese, when he is announced for the pie eating contest.

Continuity: In the first shot of the scene where Gordie has a flashback of his family at the table, we see two pieces of corn near his plate. In the next shot of Gordie's plate, the pieces of corn are gone.

Continuity: When Chris gives Gordie the loaded gun and it goes off behind the diner, they run away around the corner and Gordie get really mad Chris tricked him. Chris stops Gordie in front of a pale beige wall, and then when Chris tells him he didn't know it was loaded, they are in front of a glass window.

Continuity: The blood on Gordie's hand change from shot to shot when he finds the leech downstairs, from being over most of his three middle fingers, to the ends of his index and middle, then to being all over again.

Continuity: When the four boys first come to the railroad, Vern shows them his comb. He is holding it upwards, then lowers it a little. Then when Teddy says "Lotta thinking Vern, thanks," his arm is straight down next to his side.

Continuity: During the mailbox baseball scene, Ace is shown with a cigarette in his mouth. Then after he strikes out and says "ah shit, I'm out", the cigarette is gone.

Factual error: When Gordy goes to get supplies at the store, as he is standing there the clerk is talking about Denny, and in the background on the shelf there is a bottle of Soft Scrub. It's supposed to be the 1960s, but Soft Scrub was not around until the early 80s.

Revealing: In the train scene, River Phoenix's voice has suddenly changed and he looks older. This scene was obviously shot last, and he has started going through puberty. But in terms of movie time, he has gone through puberty in two days.

Visible crew/equipment: A reflection of a camera tripod can be seen in Teddy's glasses when Teddy and Chris are arguing on the railroad tracks.

Continuity: In the treehouse, Gordie has a hair dangling over his forehead. But at the end of this scene, when they decide whether or not to go get the body, Gordie says "Sure," and the hair over his forehead is gone and his hair is neat and combed.

Continuity: The amount of blueberries and sauce on Lardass Davey Hogan, before he vomits, changes from shot to shot.

Continuity: In the leech scene when the boys get out of the water, Chris takes off his shirt and there are no leeches on his back. But when Chris says "Gordie there are some on your back man. Are there any on mine." he has about 4 or 5 leeches on his back.

Continuity: About half way through their journey the boys clothes are very dirty, then they become spotless.

Revealing: When Gordie cries after finding the body there are no tears in his eyes and his face is completely dry.

Visible crew/equipment: In a bird's eye view when the boys cross the bridge, there is a camera visible at the end of the bridge.

Continuity: When Gordy returns to the junkyard after getting the food he sees his friends running away. The junkman yells at him and Gordy starts running away towards the fence. In the background he passes the same junk vehicles multiple times.

Continuity: Gordie's hair constantly changes throughout the film from floppy to gelled, i.e. in the scene on the trestle over the water he yells, "Train!" and his hair appears to be quite dry, without a parting. In the next short scene around the campfire, it looks perfectly combed and gelled. He can not have borrowed Vern's comb, since Vern lost it on the train bridge.

Visible crew/equipment: There is a boom mike clearly visible in the billiard scene. [Edited in DVD]

Continuity: When they find the body it is extremely windy (you can see it in the trees) then suddenly it is not windy anymore.