The Hitcher (1986) - 24 mistakes

Continuity: After Jim picks up John, they see a VW Beetle that's on the side of the road and its position changes in the next shot.

Continuity: When Jim pushes John out the car, in the shot where John is lying on the road, his head is on the road's white stripe, yet when it cuts to a closer view, his chest is on the white line, not his head.

Continuity: When Jim is driving along the road, the car with the boat on the back passes him. When John appears, Jim pulls out onto the other side, and the road is just flat with sand and grass, yet when it cuts to a face shot of Jim there are now large mounds of mud, or something, at the side of the road.

Continuity: Just after John throws Jim's keys back to him, Jim is driving along the road and gets hit from the back by John. Jim spills coffee on his cheek and neck, but in the following shot nothing is there, and he couldn't have wiped it off between shots.

Revealing: When Jim is at the first gas station trying to reach a phone, he walks outside and John crashes through the garage at the side, if you slow it down you can see that the door to the garage is made with cardboard or paper, or some other soft material.

Continuity: When Nash is talking with Jim in the restaurant where she works, she is holding a flask in her left hand the puts the flask down, but in the following shot it appears in her right hand.

Continuity: When Jim eats at Nash's workplace, in one shot there is no napkin, knife or fork in front of Jim's plate. Then when Nash walks away it cuts to another angle, and now there is a knife and fork on a napkin.

Continuity: When Jim is being asked questions in the police station, the cop with the blue denim jacket puts his hands on the chair in one shot, then they're not there in the next shot, but back in the shot after.

Continuity: When Jim is being questioned at the police station, the guy phoning Jim's brother has his hand on the phone or by the phone, then he moves his arm away, but in the following shot his hand is still on the phone.

Revealing: When Jim is sitting in the back of the police car, after taking the two policemen hostage, John shoots at the two cops. When the cop on Jim's right gets shot and the window smashes, blood jets up from behind him - not from his neck.

Continuity: When Jim stops for coffee in "Roy's Cafe," John sits opposite him, and if you watch closely in one of the shots, the plant behind Jim gets knocked over, yet a few shots later it's back upright standing in its container.

Revealing: When the two police cars flip over if you look close you can see that at least one of the people in the car is a dummy. The one dummy is wearing a hat that appears to stay on his head even when the car flips.

Continuity: When John dives from the prison truck into the sheriff's truck through the windshield, the stuntman drops the shotgun as he impacts the glass. We even see it bouncing into the back seat. But in the next cut, John has the shotgun firmly grasped as he lands on the seat.

Continuity: When John has just dived into the Sheriff's truck from the prison truck, and tells Jim to drive, Jim accelerates, then brakes hard, to throw John through the windshield. As Jim brakes, John's left hand is holding the shotgun, and his right hand is holding Jim's lapel. In the next cut, as John goes through the windshield, the shotgun is in his right hand.

Revealing: When Jim hits the brakes in his stolen patrol car, the two pursuing police cars turn and flip over and over. As they roll, the 'roll cannon' is visible on the underside of one of the cars (a round steel tube in a hole in the floor) and at left, the two cannon slugs from both cars bounce down the road. This device fires the slug downward, and the force behind it lifts the car when the slug hits the road, launching the car over.

Continuity: Towards the end of the film, the bus that Jim sneaks on to changes from two rear axles to one.

Continuity: In one scene C. Thomas Howell almost runs head-on with an 18 wheeler, but just misses it. However, the truck clips the car he is driving and clearly takes the bumper clean off. The next driving scene shows the bumper back on the car.

Factual error: Towards the last scene, Howell and Hauer share the same shotgun (Ryder to take pop shots at Jim in the jeep, Jim to ultimately fire three shots to kill Ryder). The shotgun used can hold at most seven or eight shells, not the 12 or more that are fired between Ryder and Jim starting from when Ryder escaped the bus.

Other: The Hitcher reverses his pick-up truck out of the gas station after he drops the lighted match. His wheels, wheel arches and perhaps the underside of the truck would have been soaked in petrol as he drove over the pumps, as would all around them, as they were gushing. He was burning rubber do this manoeuvre. This would have ignited the petrol on his truck.

Continuity: During the scene where Ryder has a knife to Jim's throat and is asking him to repeat "I want to die", you can see through the passenger window behind Ryder that morning is starting to break. About a minute down the highway when Jim and Ryder come upon the construction zone, it is now black as night again.