Plot hole: Roger's initial briefing at the beginning of the film states that 'Tom' goes out from 104 and 'Harry' from 105. Despite this the goons are said to be in 105 when they find the entrance to Tom.

Continuity: After Hilts is dismissed from the cooler for the second time, he tells Bartlett about his escape plan, to which Bartlett replies, "Is Ives going with you?" After he says this, his hands change position in relation to his mug.

Continuity: When Willie is disguising the tunnel by mopping the floor and the Nazi comes in and bothers them, the way that Willie is holding the mop changes between shots.

Continuity: While describing the escape process, Roger says that "Tom will run north from the 105." He is interrupted, then says, "as I said, Tom will run north from 104."

Continuity: In the famous scene when Steve McQueen jumps the fence, the stuntman riding the motorcycle loses control of the motorcycle shortly after landing and he obviously fell off the motorcycle. They then cut to a scene of Steve McQueen riding off.

Continuity: In the scene where Ives attempts to climb over the barbed wire fence, a long shot shows Ives in foreground and a line of men, including Hilts, in the background. In this shot, Hilts notices Ives and begins to run towards him. In the next shot, a close up of the line, we see Hilts still standing motionless, before noticing Ives and beginning to run towards him. Again.

Factual error: As Steve McQueen is making his 'great escape', he drives his motorcycle through a gap which a chasing motorcycle and sidecar can't squeeze through, so it crashes. Cut to a crane shot of the retreating McQueen racing into the distance. Keep your eye on the left of frame and into view, on top of a building, is a distinctly un-1940s TV aerial. It's there for a full 7 seconds.

Audio problem: When the three Americans invite the British to join their 4th of July celebration, Hilts lowers the fife from his mouth, but the music continues for a few beats.

Plot hole: The scene in the outdoor Parisian cafe is too stupid to be attributed to character mistakes. First, the cafe owners call James Coburn's bizarrely-accented New Zealander to the telephone to keep him out of the way as their accomplices assassinate two uniformed German officers seated in the cafe in a drive by shooting. They then toast the killings with champagne. All of this is in the direct view of passers-by in broad daylight. Do they think those two German officers were the only ones in Paris? How did they know Coburn wasn't an undercover Gestapo agent or a French collaborator? Don't they stop to consider that in an occupied city machine gun fire is going to draw some attention from the authorities, who might just wonder what a couple of bullet riddled corpses are doing lying about the place?

Revealing: In the scene where the goons find 'Tom', the water that is poured down the hole is not steaming, even though the water burnt his hand.

Continuity: In the scene where Hilts is first locked in the cooler, he is eventually let out. It shows him walking out from a view that is inside the cooler, and his coat is on one arm (I forget which arm it is). Then it shows a view from outside of the cooler,of him walking out, and his jacket is on the other arm. He didn't switch it while walking, because the clip is about 2 seconds long.

Other: When McQueen is jumping the fence on the motorcycle, it can clearly be seen the machine used for the jump is in fact a modern offroad model, with long travel suspension, in camouflage guise.