Continuity mistake: When Lisa moves to a different train carriage near the end, she opens two doors. She tries to slam the second door as Akeem is following her, but it bounces back and remains completely open. In the next shot, however, the door is completely closed, forcing Akeem to open it.
Continuity mistake: At the end when they are leaving the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, people are dropping rose petals by the limo, but when the limo and the line of cars pulls away from the curb, there is not one rose petal in sight.
Continuity mistake: At the very beginning of the film when Akim is being awoken, he gets out of bed and rose bearers can be seen from above dropping rose pedals on the floor, but they are fairly sparsely scattered. When it's cut to them walking out of the bedroom, you can see in the background, a LOT of rose pedals in the floor.
Continuity mistake: When Akeem and Lisa show up at the apartment and see the rose petals they're all in neat piles and a lot more of them than previously dropped.
Answer: How would Akeem's parents know what they were up to? They think he's taking an American vacation, and in the pre social media days, it was hard to keep track of people. As for McDowell, what sort of background check did you expect him to do on a fast food employee in the 80s? McDowell seems like a guy who would cut corners anyway.
Brian Katcher
There aren't exactly a lot of people lining up to work at McDowell's, so Cleo gives the applications a once over and hires them on the spot. I'm in my 40's and I've had plenty of jobs that didn't even call my references, let alone perform a background check.