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Mistakes

When Will brings the canned drink to his father, the cushion at the foot of the bed keeps changing back and forth from smooth to wrinkled. See more...

Trivia

When Edward Bloom proposes in the field of daffodils, he wears a tie with a swirl design on it. The swirl is strongly reminiscent of an iconic shot from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1994), another Tim Burton film, when Jack Skellington's ridge is unfurling in front of a full moon. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Big Fish (2003) - 25 corrections

Directed by Tim Burton, starring Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Ewan McGregor, Helena Bonham Carter, Jessica Lange (add more)

Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Comedy, Adventure

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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In the scene where Edward Bloom is about to parachute out of an airplane on his secret mission, he checks his watch, which is a Hamilton Khaki. This line of watches by Hamilton wasn't introduced until the early 1990. [The young girl he meets in Spectre is also shown to be an old woman during his childhood. Chronological idiosyncrasies are a natural part of Ed's embellished stories.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
The mechanic hand that Edward sells and sometimes uses bears a lot of resemblance to the mechanic hands in Edward Scissorhands. [On the DVD Special Features, the props masters explained that the hands have no intentional reference to Edward Scissorhands. In fact, they had planned to add scissors to the hands (they're meant to be multi-purpose tools) but decided against it, in case people would assume it was a reference.]
Edit
When Edward and Karl are leaving Ashton, the movie marquee is advertising 1953's "From Here to Eternity". Edward's paratrooper mission would have been prior to the Korean War Armistice of July 27, 1953. This would not have left enough time for his stint at the carnival and Army training as a paratrooper. [The people he meets on the journey of his life are real, but the facts surrounding them are embellished. The movie is one tall-tale after another so there is plenty of time for him to do anything he wishes.]
Edit Corrected by Rlvlk
When the older Edward Bloom is soaking in the bathtub and his wife climbs in with him, he motions for her to come over to his side. She puts her arms into the water, at least up to the elbows, yet in the very next shot, her arms are on the outside of the tub, and completely dry. [I just watched this on DVD, and when she leans into him, her arms stay in the water the entire time, wrapped around him.]
Edit Time
When Edward is parachuting into the Korean entertainment and the conjoined twins are singing there is a shot of the stage from the catwalk he is on and you can plainly tell there is only one girl on stage. [The girl is supose to look like only one person in the beging. Its not supose to be givin away that their twins till later in the song. one was behind the other so from any angle you couldnt see her so it wouldnt be a give away.]
Edit Time
As Edward moves toward his future wife at the circus he moves through airborne popcorn. One of the pieces of popcorn falls before he brushes it out of the way or walks into it. [The piece of popcorn actually touches his chest and falls to the ground, as do a few other pieces that touch his chest and fall.]
Edit Time
After Carl signs his contract with the circus, he stands in the background as Edward makes a deal for a job - his hands are visible in the shot. Carl's height and proportions to the other people in the shot are drastically reduced. Mr. Soggybottom's head is on level with Carl's hips, whereas before he barely reached below his knees. [There are several camera angles at work throughout the shots introducing Karl and the Ringmaster. Most of them are very high angles from Karl's shoulders that look down on the Ringmaster and make him look very short. The shot referred to in the mistake simply removes these special angles and looks straight across, revealing the true proportions of these characters that existed all along but were disguised by the angles used. Also, keep in mind that this is a story being told by a man with a talent for exaggeration, so Karl's height would fluctuate with the intended effect on the audience: Since Karl's height has to impress the Ringmaster, he has to appear even more gigantic than usual.]
Edit Corrected by Phoenix
When Carl's shadow falls over the four sheep when we first see him, the sheep are either drinking or grazing, but also bleating loudly, which they couldn't do while eating/drinking. Seems sound effects went a little overboard. [There are four sheep eating and three sheep wandering around the corral. These three are the ones making noise, because they notice the giant approaching.]
Edit Corrected by Phoenix
In the scene where Ewan McGregor is going through the woods for the first time, his hat is stolen by a crow, who places it firmly on a branch. In the next shot, Ewan picks up a rock and pitches it to hit the crow. The next shot shows the hat missing and the crow flying off without it. [If you look carefully, you will see the hat fall off the branch as the crow flies upward.]
Edit Time
When Bloom meets Carl for the first time outside of his cave there are shots cutting from a close up of Carl to a long shot. The long shots show prominent bruising on Carl's forehead that is absent in the close ups. [The dark spots in the long shots are actually a combination of Carl's wispy hair and the actual small bruise on the right side of his forehead. From a distance, the two combine to look much darker, but the angle in the closer shot reveals that the bruise is consistently light and small and the hair layers over it to make a dark spot.]
Edit Corrected by Phoenix
Edward Bloom, a white baby, is shown being delivered by a black doctor in what's described as a small Alabama town in the 1940's. This would have been highly unlikely. [All the scenes from Edward's past are taken from his stories - therefore, they should not be taken as completely accurate.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
When talking about the fish at the beginning of the film it says he was a dinosaur from the Croaceous period. It's actually Cretaceous Period (there's a "t" in there that was not pronounced). [I always thought this was just to make Ed seem like he doesn't really know all what he is talking about...]
Edit Corrected by Nick N. Time
At the end of the film at Edward Bloom's funeral you see all the characters from his stories there yet most of them haven't even aged at all, for example the twins. Edward's aged enough to be played by a completely different person! [We first meet all of the characters in the context of Edward's stories. To make his stories more interesting, Edward exaggerates people's size, what they did, what was said, etc … So, when we see the characters throughout the film, we are seeing them as Edward wants us to see them in his stories. When we see all of the characters at the funeral, this is the first time we are seeing them in reality not in the context of a story. Which is why Karl appears to have shrunk (his size was exaggerated) and why some of the characters appear to have not aged very much (Edward probably changed their appearance in the stories, as well).]
Edit
Young Will has a noticable mole on his left cheek (we see this as he is laying in bed while Edward tells him a story). Adult Will has no mole and no evidence (mark or scar) that it has been removed. [Moles can be removed without leaving a scar or any other evidence of their existence, and speaking from personal experience I know this to be true.]
Edit Corrected by David Mercier
In the scene where Ewan is falling down onto the Korean stage, there is a man holding a dummy. If you listen to him, he's not speaking Korean, he's in fact speaking Tagalog (a Filipino language). [There were several "mistakes" like this deliberately put in to add ambiguity as to Edward's exact whereabouts.]
Edit
After Edward Bloom gets attacked by the werewolf, he has a large scratch on his right cheek. Immediately afterwards, he hops three trains to make it to Auburn. When he arrives at Sandra's door that same day, the scratch is gone. [This was one of the made up stories, so anything was possible within that context.]
Edit
In the scene where Edward Bloom loses his key, it is deep in a forest. But in the scene where his car is stuck in the tree, he finds the key in a stretch of open land, not the forest. [Considering the fact that someone ran a highway through Spectre, it's not odd that the forests were clear-cut at some point to allow for development that may or may not have eventually occurred.]
Edit Corrected by Phoenix
At the circus when Edward and Karl are talking to the circus leader and his attorney, you can see on the seat behind Edward is his back pack. Seconds later , after Edward says "I have a whole bag full of clothes" he turns and the pack has disappeared. [Moments later, he turns around and comments that he "had" a bag full of clothes. He realizes someone stole his bag. Not a mistake at all.]
Edit
In the scene where Edward Bloom's friend dies of an apparent heart-attack in the bathroom, he is looking at a Playboy magazine issue. Playboy magazine didn't debut until 1953, but this scene takes place in the early 1940's. [No, it doesn't. Edward is in his early sixties when he dies - he would have been a baby in the early forties. From the timeline of the film, Edward should be about 21 at this point, so it ought to be the early sixties - Playboy has been out for several years. He's fighting in Vietnam, not World War II.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
After his fight with the black dog, Edward is shot by Mr. Soggybottom and clutches his right bicep as he falls to the ground. In the very next shot, Edward gets up and is fine, no sign of any injury to his arm. In the shots that follow he uses the same right arm to throw a stick for the dog. [This is because Ed is telling a made up story and the fact that the bullet wound suddenly disappears just helps to reinforce the idea that it is made up.]
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