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Quotes

Arthur: Normality? We can talk about normality until the cows come home.

Ford: What is normal?

Trillian: What is home?

Zaphod: What are cows?

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Mistakes

When Humma Kavula holds up the IID coordinates, his grip on the chain changes between shots. See more...

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As they enter the temple of the Jatravartid people of Viltvoldle Six, at the base of the stairs is a "perfect recreation of Douglas Adam's nose" (DVD commentary) modeled from a cyber-scan of this head that had been previously created for a game and used in the film as an homage to him following his death prior to the completion of the film. See more...

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) - 19 corrections

starring Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Stephen Fry, Zooey Deschanel, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, Bill Bailey (add more)

Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Sci-fi

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 opening song, the dolphins sing: "If we could just change one thing, we would all have lungs to sing". Nothing needs to be changed. Dolphins actually do have lungs. [The line is not "We would all have lungs to sing", the correct line is "We would all have learned to sing".]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
Towards the end of the film after the mice have tried to take Arthur's brain, the Vogons come to rescue Zaphod and they start to shoot at the whole group. While they are firing one can see a white smoke coming out of the guns. When Marvin wakes up and shoots them with the point of view gun, they all stop firing but a few of the Vogons still have white smoke coming out of their guns. [The heat created by firing a gun tends to create smoke, and this can also be a joke about the low quality of the Vogons' guns, since this phenomenon is see at other times during the film.]
Edit
When the mice want Arthur's brain and their brain-cutting-machine comes out of the table, an apple remains on the machine, facing with the top towards the camera. After the cut when the mice sit on it, the top faces upwards. [The apple probably rotates as the arms move slowly out. The un-symetrical shape of the apple would cause it to move with any motion anyway.]
Edit
Whenever the Vogons speak, their lips move in sync with the English that we hear on the soundtrack. They shouldn't do, because the Vogons are supposed to be speaking Vogon, not English - we just hear English through Arthur's babelfish. [Since we have no knowledge of the Vogon anatomy, we can't say what sort of movements they must make with their mouths to speak. Their mouths syncing with English only means that there's a similar number of syllables in the English equivalent of the Vogon word.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
In the scene where Zaphod, Ford, and Arthur are trying to run away from the spatula like creatures on Vogsphere, they constantly get smacked in the face for saying "I think." However, a few scenes later, when the lunchbell on Vogsphere rings, a Vogon says "I think I'll have soup today." He should have gotten smacked for saying "I think," but nothing happens. [They don't get slapped for saying "I think." They get slapped for having an idea. Deciding to have soup is not an idea.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
Just before Arthur and Ford are cast out of the Vogon ship, the chamber pulsates with the same sound effect used for Doctor Who's TARDIS. [No it doesnt. Not at all. It makes a few alarm noises and a whoosh. The tardis has a pulsating whoosh sound, but nothing like the vogon ship.]
Edit
When Ford and Arthur fall into space out of the Vogon ship, the Guide says that one can survive for about thirty seconds in the vacuum of space with a lungful of air. Yet, it takes longer than a minute for the Heart of Gold to appear, by which time Ford and Arthur should have run out of air. [Films are not shot in real time. The frequent cutting back between the Heart of Gold and Arthur and Ford takes up more screen time than a minute because two simultaneous scenes are playing out.]
Edit
When Trillian uses the lightsaber/knife to cut the bread, you can see the blade of the "lightknife" passes through the breadboard without even cutting or marking it. [Given the advanced technology on the spaceship the bread-sabre would obviously be designed to only cut through bread and not inflict damage on the breadboard, anyone clever enough to invent a knife that toasts while cutting would think of such things. Alternatively the breadboard is made of a material that is impervious to the bread-sabre, a fairly obvious requirement for a breadboard in those circumstances.]
Edit Corrected by tw_stuart
When Zaphod and Trillian have picked up the Point of View gun, they hear "mice" coming towards them. However, mice were only the projections into our dimension of the beings who built Deep Thought (and commissioned Earth). Since Zaphod and Trillian are now in the dimension where Deep Thought is, they should see these beings as human adults and children, as they appear on the video shown by Zaphod at the start. [That's true based on the book, but those facts are never established in the movie.]
Edit
When the spaceship is chased by the two nuclear missiles, Arthur wants to engage the "improbability drive". You can see the "normality counter" is at 21 which doesn't change at all in the next few shots (you can always see the 1 of the 21). [As Trillian states at this moment, the "Heart of Gold" hasn't reached "normality", what makes it dangerous to engage the improbability drive again. Obviously, the improbability drive takes quite a while to reach complete normality (which would be represented by a 1:1 readout on the counter). It seems, that the last bits of improbability take some time to wear off - that's why the passengers aboard the "Heart of Gold" appear as sofas or wool puppets right after the improbability jump.]
Edit
When Arthur is lying down in front of the bulldozer, he says, 'well, I'm going t-' and then it cuts to another shot at a different angle, as he's saying, 'we'll see who rusts first.' [Arthur says, "I'm game, we'll see who rusts first." No continuity error.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
When Zaphod first meets Ford and Arthur, Zaphod says he did not know that Ford was on earth, yet he still knows to call him Ford Prefect, a name Ford gave himself whilst on earth. [According to Douglas Adams, Ford went back in time and retroactively changed his birth name to Ford Prefect, so everybody knows him by that name.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
When Arthur's cellphone is floating in Space you can hear something which sounds like "The person you have called is temporarily not available". This message is generated from the provider/network, not from the phone itself. Without earth there is no network so there would be no message at all. [It is in fact possible, that Vodafone is a galactic (telephone) company, with a branch on Earth. Though Earth hadn't made interstellar contact yet, there were in fact multigalactic companies doing business on the Planet. For example, in the radio play, it's told that the Dolmansaxlil Shoe Corporation sells shoes in Oxford Street.]
Edit
As Ford and Arthur fall out the Vogon airlock, the Guide explains that someone can survive in vacuum for thirty seconds if they hold their breath. Actually, the opposite is true: if one exhales all air one can survive for several seconds. If one holds one's breath, the increased internal air pressure would cause a human to explode. [The Guide contains little or no information on human beings, which is why Ford was on Earth in the first place. This information would have been perfectly accurate with 95 percent of the intelligent space-faring species in the galaxy - it's not the Guide's fault if we're physiologically strange.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
Near the very end of the movie, watch when Arthur finally gets his cup of tea. When poured from the kettle, the tea is black. When he sets it back down almost right away, it has cream added. [The cream was added to the cup before the tea was poured.]
Edit Corrected by Xofer
The Whale and the bowl of petunias should have hit the ground at almost exactly the same time, not at separate times, as gravity is a constant on any given planet. If anything, the bowl should have hit first, due to it having less air resistance. [Gravity is a force of attraction between two objects and is dependent on the mass of these objects. The acceleration of an object due to the gravitational force of a planet is constant, but two unequal masses would only descend at the same rate if a vacuum existed. When the force of air resistance equals the force of gravity, the object ceases to accelerate and continues to fall at a constant speed (terminal velocity). A higher mass = larger gravitational force = faster terminal velocity. The whale would be falling quite a bit faster.]
Edit
When Earth II is finished, it can be assumed that the location in space is not anywhere near that of the original. (Due to the bypass) That in mind, how do the people resolve the fact that all the constellations won't be the same? Now that earth is in a different location, won't all the stars in the sky also be different? [Given that everything, people included, has had to be rebuilt pretty much from scratch, it would seem like a relatively simple task to adjust memories and documentation relating to the constellations to take account of this.]
Edit Corrected by Tailkinker
If you take the letters of of the alphabet and turn them into numbers, A=1, B=2 etc., then covert "D Adams" (the writer of HHGTTG) to numbers, you get 4+1+4+1+13+19. Add them up, guess what you get? 42 - the answer to life, the universe and everything. [That isn't trivia - it's contrived number crunching. The name by which Adams was commonly known - "Douglas Adams", adds up to 117. Obviously this is a veiled reference to the F-117 Stealth Fighter. Indeed, Adams' full name, "Douglas Noel Adams", comes out to 163, obviously a reference to the Messerschmidt 163 "Komet" rocket fighter of WW2. See the connection? No, because there isn't one - it's all contrived number games. Who EVER called Adams "D Adams" anyway?]
Edit
In the scene where Slartibartfast is following Arthur and the crew out of the rebuilt house on the rebuilt Earth, a large white van drives past very conspicuously in the background. Now, it is only at the end of this scene that Arthur gives the go-ahead to restart life on the planet. And it does NOT belong to the fix-up crew - they are probably delivered the same way that Arthur and Slartibartfast are delivered - by the trolley thingy. And anyway, if it was theirs, it would be bright orange like the rest of their gear. [The van that takes the depressed Vogons away at the end is white, and clearly belongs to the cleanup team, so you can't assume everything they use is bright orange.]
Edit Corrected by Moose