Better Off Dead (1985) - 18 mistakes

Revealing: When Lane becomes depressed he goes out to the garage and ties a red cord around his neck and to the ceiling to hang himself. He thinks better of it, but his mother opens the door and knocks him off the steps and he hangs by the cord. If you look closely you can see that there is no cord hung around his neck, he merely holds his hand up and mimics grabbing the cord around his neck. The cord seems to be attached to something on his back.

Visible crew/equipment: The slimy goop Lane's mom puts on his plate at dinner begins to move when he pokes is with his fork. If you look closely, you can see the wheels of the stomper or rough-rider truck used to make it move, when it hops off the plate.

Continuity: For dinner one night, Lane's mom serves the family some strange green goop on a plate. In one shot, the goop lies flat on Lane's plate. In the next, it has become large and structured, like a brain (in order to move off the plate).

Continuity: When the paperboy comes around to collect his $2.00 plus tip, Lane keeps the door only open a crack. But when it switches to shots of the paperboy not only is the door wide open but the color has changed from blue to white.

Continuity: In the classroom scene, Lane is called to the board to demonstrate a math problem. When he draws the first line, it screeches, and cuts to the class hollering with their hair on end. When it cuts back to Lane, the line is half the original length.

Audio problem: Monique runs out of the house, holding Ricky's picture. She sits down and starts to laugh at the picture. Her mouth movements don't match the laugh that is heard.

Continuity: When Lane is about to kill himself with carbon monoxide fumes from the car in the garage, he passes out and backs up out the garage door..if you look close you can see a conscious stunt man sitting up as the car goes backwards.

Visible crew/equipment: When Lane is spraying the deodorant spray into his arm pit and lowers the can you see the aerosol from the can move away from his body while simultaneously being replaced with a large blast of spray from a larger apparatus.

Continuity: Lane goes to his first day of work at "pig burger". A closeup is shown of the owner's mouth as he snarls "Myers...". There's about 1/4 inch of facial hair all over his face. When they cut from the closeup and show the rest of his body you can see that he's fairly well shaven, only some 5 o'clock shadow.

Other: Lane comes home and sees a package addressed to his little brother, Badger. It's addressed to 1636 Virginia St., Greendale, CA 93065. The actual address of that house was 1636 Virginia St. in Glendale, and 93065 is the ZIP code for Simi Valley.

Character mistake: At dinner, native French speaker Monique asks, "Ou sont les toilettes?" which means "Where are the toilets?" which is plural. "Where is the toilet" (singular) would be "Ou est le toilette?"

Audio problem: When Lane plays his sax at the Pig Burger for Monique, the sound was obviously dubbed from a synthesizer.

Continuity: At the end of the movie when the French girl and Lane are at Dodgers Stadium you can clearly see bike tracks in the dirt and grass where the paperboy had ridden in previous takes.

Continuity: Towards the end of the film, during the chase scene between the newspaper boy and Lane, you can see the skis of the camera guy.

Continuity: In the last skiing scene where Lane is being chased by the paperboy, when the camera is on Lane he has the sleeves to his vest on. The camera then goes to someone else and when it comes back to Lane, there are no sleeves on the vest, then they are back on again later.

Continuity: In the final skiing scene, the skiers have different skis on from shot to shot. I have counted a total of four pairs of skis on Lane alone. Obviously that is not John Cusack doing the skiing either.

Factual error: After Lane finishes fencing with Ricky he carries Monique to his car - we see their feet as Monique gets into the car, then a split second later Lane gets into the drivers seat, the car starts and the they drive off. Trouble is, they are both wearing their ski boots, and there is no time in the sequence of shots for Lane to change footwear. Nobody, anywhere, any time, can drive in ski boots.

Continuity: During the various ski scenes, the weather changes frequently between shots - in some shots, the sky is clear and harsh shadows are cast. In other shots, it is heavily overcast and shadows are barely visible.