X

Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Book mistakes

CanMag

The Daily Column

Daily Stab

Defamer

Double Viking

EHOWA

The Evil Beet

Film Drunk

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Game mistakes

Geek Tyrant

Gone Hollywood

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Am Bored

I Love Bacon

Joblo movie news

Movie Banter

Movie Buzz

Movie spoilers

Movie timeline

Other crap

Screenjunkies

Sky movie reviews

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Unreality Magazine

Virtually Existing

Mistakes

When Neil is looking for the car he hired in the car park, there is a tracking from Neil's POV moving along the backs of the cars. On the car in space V-2 you see the reflection of the camera on the dolly and some crew members moving. See more...

Trivia

In the scene after the plane lands in Wichita, Kansas, when the announcer comes over the loudspeaker look at the destination on the flight info display. It says "nowhere". See more...

Picture

Movie Mistakes blog

Popular blog posts:

Top 15 biggest Harry Potter film mistakes

The biggest mistakes in the Harry Potter movies

15 biggest mistakes in Titanic

The 20 biggest Friends mistake pictures

10 Twilight mistakes in pictures

Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) - 10 corrections

Directed by John Hughes, starring John Candy, Kevin Bacon, Michael McKean, Steve Martin (add more)

Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Drama

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.

Mistakes
Trivia
Pictures
Corrections
Questions
Submit
Neal's wife is shown in bed watching a movie on television. You cannot see the screen but you can hear the movie. It's "She's Having a Baby", also directed by John Hughes. The catch is that "Planes..." was released in theatres 4 months BEFORE "She's Having a Baby", so how could she be watching it on television. [No in that scene , you can tell Steve martin is thinking something COMPLETELY different because his face changes to mirror that thought.]
Edit
Near the end when they are pulled over for speeding the markings on the Troopers squad are for the Wisconsin State Patrol. Driving from St Louis to Chicago would have kept them entirely in the state of Illinios and not north up into Wisconsin. [Unless some of the highways between St Louis and Chicago were closed due to the storm, and traffic was detoured around southern metro Chicago. I've driven semi truck for 15 years in the past, and this kind of thing has happened.]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
Why does it take two days to drive from St. Louis to Chicago?  It's an easy 5 hour drive: less than 300 miles. They take turns driving in the afternoon / night before.   Then, they're going 74 mph the next day. And they apparently still aren't even in the Chicago area. [There's no indication what the timespan was for the events. Don't forget that Dell went the wrong way at one point (and we don't know for how long). Also, they could have checked into the motel relatively early in the evening after the trauma of the crash and subsequent fire. The next day, they probably left the motel fairly early to avoid the day manager. Finally, you can see that Neal and Dell are not travelling on the interstate the next day, so it's possible they weren't taking the most direct route (part of Dell's ineptness).]
Edit
In one scene where John Candy and Steve Martin are in the car, John Candy is adjusting the seat electrically, but later when he is driving he gets his coat caught on knobs. Why does the passenger side adjust electronically and the driver's side is manual? [The driver's side isn't necessarily manual. My car seats adjust electrically, but the lumbar support (which is on the driver's seat only) is adjusted by a lever that looks exactly like the one in this movie. To be fair, I can't think of what the rotary knob would be for, but it must have a function not covered by the electronic controls.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
In the bus when Del suggests everyone sing the theme to "The Flintstones" the audio sounds as if everyone (or at least many of the people) in the bus sings along. But immediately thereafter, a brief shot of the people in the bus (actually, just the people behind Del and Neal) shows everyone sitting quietly, not singing, and not even looking towards Del who is singing. [True, but that does not change the fact that there remains seventeen passengers sitting in front of them (I counted them from the previous shot when they all turned and looked as Neil started to sing "Three Coins in a Fountain") who all could have been singing, thus making the audio of the scene correct after all.]
Edit Corrected by OneHappyHusky
Just after Neal and Dell settle into the hotel room, we see Neal in the shower. He opens the shower curtain and see clothes and towels and the dirty sink, etc. Now wouldn't he have seen all that stuff before getting into the shower? [No, Del made that mess while Neal was in the shower. They were both in the bathroom at the same time.]
Edit Corrected by Phoenix
When John Candy and Steve Martin share the same bed in the first motel scene they argue about exploding beer cans on the vibrating bed. You can see the bed is dry when John Candy gets into it after their argument. [If you listened carefully you would have heard that Dell actually offers to switch sleeping sides, indicating that the beer exploded on Neal's side and not Dell's, so why would we see the bed wet on his side?]
Edit
At the end of the movie, why does Steve Martin ring the doorbell on his own house? [He may have lost the keys.]
Edit
Throughout the film, Dell 'loses' his big trunk. This usually happens after they argue, or Dell has to shoot off to barter with shower curtain hooks. [Neil was probably watching Dell's trunk when he is off selling/bartering the shower curtain rings. Also, Neil and Dell are shown in numerous scenes (i.e. - after the train breaks down, on the highway after the car crash, at the subway station) lugging the trunk around. While Neil probably wished Dell lost the trunk, it appears throughout the film.]
Edit
When Neil finally gets home, he and Dell ring the doorbell and Neil's daughter answers the door. In the background Neil's father-in-law can be seen holding Neil's youngest son. But when he introduces Dell to everyone the baby is gone. Neil even says "...and somewhere around here is my baby boy." [If you watch carefully, the father-in-law puts the little boy down and the little boy runs off while Neil is hugging the other family memebers. So it is acurate when he says his baby boy is somewhere around here.]
Edit