The Thing (1982) - 22 mistakes

Factual error: When the infected Palmer starts his transformation into the Thing, he has a series of fits and the creature 'falls', or leaps upward onto the ceiling. Watch closely...you can see a piece of paneling also 'fall' upward, when it should have fallen down.

Visible crew/equipment: When Norris and MacReady are climbing down into the crater that has the spaceship in it, you can see in the right corner of the screen a crewmember climb up, then look startled and drop back down behind the ship. Only visible in the widescreen version.

Continuity: When the crew is outside and they're going to lock Blair in the tool shed, you can see someone nailing wood across the window on the front of the shed. The pieces of wood are horizontal. In the next shot (inside the shed), if you look at the window in the background, the strips of wood are vertical. When Mac goes back outside, the wood is horizontal again.

Visible crew/equipment: After MacReady says, "The generator room," toward the end of the film, he, Garry and Nauls walk down a flight of stairs. Then Garry and Nauls walk down a set of three steps whilst Mac is holding a flare. As they walk the shadow of a guy holding a boom mic is clearly visible on the floor.

Other: The brief chess game (four moves) shown in the beginning of the movie makes absolutely no sense. For instance: There are no white bishops on the board, but after the human player taps a few buttons, the computer says that he just moved one. Within the two moves described first, the positions of the pieces change completely. In addition, some pieces are now gone and there are new pieces on the board. It's like an entirely different game. The final move is said to have been made with a black rook, which is impossible. In the shot shown before this move, there is not a single position available to that chess piece that would result in an instant checkmate. Nothing in the editing indicates that these few short shots are supposed to be viewed as separate games.

Visible crew/equipment: At the end of the film, where MacReady is about to fight 'the thing' you can see the shadow of a guy holding a boom mic, on the ground just behind him.

Continuity: When Mac is locked out of the complex by the rest of the team, who think he may be a 'Thing', Childs uses an axe to try and chop open one of the doors, leaving a HUGE hole in the middle of it. Later Childs returns to that same door and the hole is significantly smaller and at a completely different location on the door.

Continuity: Just a couple of minutes into the movie, Gary shoots dead the crazed Norwegian and the camera returns to MacReady. Now watch closely: When he gets up to help injured Bennings, he and his Jim Beam bottle are covered up to the hilt with loads of snow. But on the next shot, a split second later, his clothes are miraculously clean and the whiskey bottle as dry as you can possibly get it.

Continuity: When the thing is on the lab table, and the severed head starts walking away, Mack torches it with a flamethrower. At one angle, you can clearly see that fire is not coming out of the hose. It is just a fire going off in the doorway.

Factual error: In the kennel scene, MacReady fires at least 7 shots from a pump shotgun. That particular shotgun can only hold 5.

Visible crew/equipment: Just after Nauls is told by Fuchs to turn down the music the film cuts to a tracking shot going towards the rec hall. At the very beginning of this tracking shot keep an eye on the lower half of the medical cabinet, and you can easily see the dolly that the camera is being pushed on as well. If you look just above the dolly you can make out the blue sweater sleeve of the crewmember pushing it.

Deliberate "mistake": When the Norwegian starts shooting at the dog, Childs jumps into the snow and you can see the shape before he jumps in where he's had to do this before on different takes.

Continuity: When MacReady is dictating his log into the tape recorder, in case no one is left alive, he stops the tape player at one point. He then starts the recorder again. If you watch closely, he presses only one button to start it recording. First of all, on these old style recorders, it was necessary to press both play and record at the same time for the machine to record. Not only that, when they show a closeup of him stopping the recording to play it back, both play and record are now depressed, without him having touched the machine again.

Continuity: When Palmer is revealed to be a thing, he shoots up to the ceiling. Windows is ready to use the flamethrower on him. He has the flamethrower pointed up to the ceiling, yet when Palmer falls to the floor, in that split second, Windows changes into a completely different position with the flamethrower.

Character mistake: When MacReady is giving the blood test, the scalpel they are using is not properly sterilized after each person cuts themselves (shown when Nauls cuts himself, then when Windows goes next: all he does is wipe the scalpel on his pants). Using the same scalpel seems like an extremely stupid thing to do as Fuchs told MacReady that even a small particle of the Thing could take over a person.

Continuity: When Childs takes an ax to the supply room door where MacReady has broken into, there is a shot of him hitting the door high up. Then there is the shot of MacReady almost frozen. When the shot cuts back to Childs, the ax marks in the door are not consistent with the shot from a few seconds before.

Revealing: When MacReady burns the one "Thing" with the split head, in one shot it walks by MacReady in the foreground, and you can tell in that shot that it is just a still dummy burning, as it isn't moving at all. It just sort of floats past with its arms at its sides, while in the previous and next shots it is wildly moving around, arms flailing.

Continuity: When the stray dog is placed in the cage with the other dogs and starts to mutate into The Thing, one of the other dogs start biting a hole in the fence. We get a clear view of the hole in one close-up, and in the next shot as The Thing sprays liquid on the dog, and the hole in the fence is much bigger.

Visible crew/equipment: When Nauls is in the kitchen cooking and the camera moves towards to room next door, the shadow of the camera is visible on the right wall.

Plot hole: The second time MacReady and co. visit the Norwegian outpost, they visit the crash site of "The Thing's" massive spacecraft. It has been buried in the snow for millions of years and is some 100 foot beneath snow level. But the ice coffin the Norwegian find "The Thing" in, some distance from the crash site, is buried in, at the most, a few meters of snow.