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Mistakes

When they perform the autopsy on the three victims, Metcalf is all grey and stiff, whereas the two exhumed victims look alive and fresh. See more...

Trivia

Near the start of the film, when Atherton is examining the spider after returning from the valley, several butterflies are seen pinned up in front of him. Several of these are not South American butterflies - the top left one (blue with long tails) is Papilio Ulysses, a species of tropical Australia, and the big green-and-black one near the bottom right is Ornithoptera priamus or O. euphorion. Whether this qualifies as a mistake, I don't know - Atherton is supposed to be an expert, so they may not be the most geographically accurate 'colourful' butterflies to use. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Arachnophobia (1990) - 5 corrections

Directed by Frank Marshall, starring Jeff Daniels, John Goodman (add more)

Genres: Comedy, Sci-fi, Thriller, Horror

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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When Dr.Atherton determines to test the toxicity of the venom, he extracts a sample from one of the 3 tiny poison sacs on the (now) deceased spider. However, the distance he retracted the plunger on the syringe would have been sufficient to obtain 10-15 cc's, far more than the sac could hold. [So he drew air in after the venom was extracted. The syringe is not shown to hold 15 cubic centimeters of pure venom, so there's no mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
When Jeff Daniels is in bed and he thinks he sees a spider on the wall across from him but it turns out just to be a clothes peg, look carefully, they did use a fake spider then swapped it with a peg. The easiest way to tell is because the top left leg disappears when he gets closer to the spider. [The first shot with the spider is a "perspective" shot. It's what Dr. Jennings sees, not what's actually there.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
The deaths as a result of the spider bite are quite inconsistent. The old lady bit off her own tongue because the reaction to the bite was so severe - there are also signs of her struggling because phone off the hook, table knocked over etc. Yet when the couple watching Wheel of Fortune are BOTH bitten, they appear to have just died nice and quietly, his arm still casually draped over her shoulder, and the big popcorn bowl was unspilt. [This is entirely consistent with medical science. The 'old lady' may have had an epileptic fit as a result of the shock of being bitten. She may have been allergic to spider bites (not only the venom; they use other chemicals like anticoagulants which can trigger severe reactions) and gone into anaphylactic spasm. She was standing when bitten and may have injured herself post mortem as she fell. The couple watching television were relaxed and seated, and would leave no evidence of their struggles as they would fall anywhere or dislodge anything. There are dozens of explanations; they all work.]
Edit
In the scene where the main character is fighting the second big spider with a home made flamethrower, you can see that the fire is coming out of the Spraycan itself instead of the fire source. [Because the spray coming out of the can is flammable, of course the flame spreads all the way back to the tip of the can. But it is still the fact that the character is holding the fire source to the can that is causing the fire spray.]
Edit
The spider specialist should have known that when he vibrated the web he would be attacked by the giant spider, but still he did it. [The spider specialist wanted to get the giant spider out in the open so he could take a look at it. He expected it to come out and walk along the web so he could study it, not leap out and kill him like it did. The spider attacking him was an accident.]
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