Cast Away (2000) - 38 mistakes

Continuity: I've now seen this for myself and am making an executive decision. Towards the end of the film, when Helen Hunt runs after Tom Hanks, she definitely does shout "Jack! Jack!" It's not Chuck by any stretch of the imagination. Regardless of whether they could have corrected it or not, it's a mistake that could have been avoided.

Continuity: When Tom Hanks cuts his hand and loses his temper, he picks up the volleyball with a bloody hand and throws it. When he picks it up, you can see that his fingers are spread. When you see the handprint that he makes "Wilson" with, you can see that the fingerprints are together and parallel.

Continuity: When Chuck is attempting to start a fire his hands are so badly scratched/blistered that he ties a piece of fabric around one of them. Once he has started the fire and is doing his little dance on the beach his hands face the camera and there is not a mark on them.

Factual error: In the scene where a boy runs on the streets of Moscow, he passes by the famous Moscow landmarks: St Basil's cathedral, Moscow State University, Big Stone Bridge etc. In reality it would have taken him a good four or five hour run to do that.

Continuity: When Chuck finds the dead pilot, he buries him and marks his death as 1995, so we can assume the crash was in 1995.  His Jeep is a 1999 model - you can tell by the wheels and the roof rack.

Factual error: As the plane hits the water, Chuck falls backward, toward the rear of the plane. This violates the physical law of inertia. He actually would have continued traveling forward toward the incoming water.

Continuity: The final sequence of the film has a whole load of stuff different. Just before Chuck walks into the crossroad, we see there's a solid double yellow line on the main road, a dirt track to one side, and another road on the other side - that one has one solid & one dashed line on it. It cuts to a wider shot, and the dashed line has suddenly become solid, the Texas state sign has moved closer to the stop sign, and a big shadow (of a telegraph pole or similar) has appeared next to the stop sign. There's then another cut looking down the adjoining road - Tom Hanks' shadow's done a complete 180, the shadow of the telegraph pole's disappeared, the line's gone dashed again, and the Texas sign's moved away. Basically, in one 20 second clip at least 4 things change significantly - they used two very similar, but not identical junctions, for no good reason. A veritable spot the difference competition!

Continuity: Throughout the film, Tom Hanks has a dark lump above one of his eyebrows. This seems to come and go from scene to scene.

Continuity: After becoming stranded, Chuck discovers the first package to wash ashore. While he is walking towards it, you can clearly see some of the stretch of beach behind him (as well as some in front of him) This shot is somewhat of a tight one. When the camera "seamlessly" cuts back to a shot of him bending over to pick up the package, you can clearly see that the beach is now covered with dozens of jagged rocks. The rocks would have been seen in the shot before this. But in this case, the shoreline was cleared of them in the first shot. (The beach is not cleared of the rocks; they are underwater. Still a good continuity error submission, but caused by filming the shot at high tide and low tide - it is the same section of beach)

Continuity: When Tom Hanks opens the FedEx packages he finds the ice skates. When he decides to cut a bandage for his cut leg he uses the skates to cut the material to wrap his leg. If you look at the skate while he cuts the material there is no shoe tie on it but when he drops the skate to get the shoe tie it is back on it.

Continuity: When Chuck first lands on the island he gets up and looks around.. he starts to walk down the beach and after a little while he looks back and sees his own footprints. He turns back around and the camera cuts to a wider shot.. you can clearly see his footprints get washed away by the waves. The camera zooms in as he picks up a FedEx box and zooms back out as he turns around again and his original footprints are there.

Continuity: The scene where Tom Hanks goes inside the cave for the first time during the storm, he has the flashlight from the dead pilot with him. The flashlight is in front of him when he sits down, but you can see shadows on the rock wall beside him in the wrong places.

Continuity: When we first see Chuck washed up on the island in daylight, as he gains consciousness and awakens inside the life raft, he is clean shaven. A moment later when he is walking down the beach collecting the FedEx boxes, he has grown a full day's worth of beard stubble.

Revealing: When Chuck is writing on the rock waiting for the wind to change direction, you can see that when the wind changes direction the trees behind him are duplicates.

Audio problem: In the scene where Chuck is throwing coconuts at the rock, the sound of the coconut hitting the rock comes after the coconut actually hits it.

Continuity: Near the end of the movie Chuck and Kelly are standing in the street in the pouring rain. Chuck leads her to the passenger door of his car and she gets in, still dripping wet from being in the rain. Then Chuck goes around to the driver's side and gets in the car, but amazingly he is not dripping like Kelly; his face and hair are somewhat dry for someone just coming in out of a downpour. (Tom Hanks must have a problem with doing his lines with his face wet because, ironically, he did the same thing in a scene in Forrest Gump after jumping off his boat to meet Lt. Dan.)

Visible crew/equipment: When Chuck is crawling on the floor of the plane to reach the watch, the compartment behind him where the raft was stored, you can see the stairs leading down into the set.

Factual error: Since the can that breaks through the net is an AMJ on the right side of the plane, they must be in either a DC-10 or a MD-11, as those are the only 2 planes that are wide enough to fit AMJs on the right side. However, when Hanks is in the ocean looking back at the plane, it shows the tail as it is sinking into the water. It shows enough of the tail (which has suddenly lost all its paint, in particular the FedEx logo) to determine that there is no intake on it, which signifies that they were on an AirBus.

Continuity: It already shows us that the wings of the plane are submerged in the sea. When Hanks surfaces, he turns around to see an engine (attached to a wing) bearing down on him. Physically this would be impossible even if it didn't show the wings, as the aft part of the plane would have been too heavy to hold that much of itself above the water.

Revealing: When Chuck is lying on the raft, and sees the giant cargo ship that rescues him, there is a closer shot of him and the raft as he stretches his hand out. He's supposed to be out in the middle of the deep ocean, but the water below him is pale green and very shallow. You can even see the bottom. It's obviously the water tank they were filming that scene in.