Batman (1966) - 94 mistakes in entire show

Revealing: The Batcave was a stage set with no real exit for the car. So in many episodes where a shot is looking into the cave from the darker tunnel as the Batmobile approaches and passes to our right, the rear end of the car jumps upward and tire skid marks appear on the floor as the driver slams on the brakes to avoid hitting the studio wall that is out of the shot, while the audio suggests the car is still accelerating.

Revealing: Most of the first season's episodes follow a standard outline where, after the opening credits, Batman and Robin arrive in the Batcave via the Batpoles, run and enter the Batmobile and drive off, along the winding, dusty roads toward Gotham, then arrive in front of City Hall, exit the car and run up the stairs. But very quickly it becomes obvious that every bit of this is the same footage used over and over. As they get in the car, it's on a black platform which vanishes as the car starts moving. The same cloud of dust appears as the car's rear heads into the distance on the winding road, and the same crowd of people are in front of City Hall, nearly every episode.

Continuity: While the unconscious Robin is being carried away from the Batmobile by one of Riddler's thugs, his cape loosens and appears to completely fall off just before they exit the frame. In the next shot, Robin is still being carried away but his cape is securely back in place.

Continuity: Molly is about to disguise herself as Robin. But the wig she's holding isn't even remotely the same color as Robin's hair. Of course, as soon as she puts it on and transforms herself, the wig darkens and becomes Robin's actual hair.

Deliberate "mistake": Ignoring that its very unlikely all of Jill St. John's copious red hair would fit under a wig that passes for Robin's hair, it's impossible that it would emerge from under that wig looking as full and perfectly styled as it does when she's in the Batcave.

Continuity: Just after the Joker tells the fake Robin to turn on her homing beacon, a quick shot of the Batmobile approaching shows it isn't glossy black with cherise red trim as normal, but is instead flat black with white trim. This footage was from pre-series testing, painting the car different ways to see how it would look best on film, but somehow this footage was actually used in the episode by mistake.

Continuity: When Batman starts the Bat-Turn, the parachutes are shown deploying on a 6-lane major roadway (3 lanes in each direction) in a very open area, but after completing the 180-degree turn, the car is shown driving away from the crumpled chutes on a much narrower side street among tall buildings.

Continuity: When Batman reverses direction of the Batmobile via a "Bat-Turn", the car is shown from above turning counter-clockwise, but the next interior view shows the car is spinning clockwise.

Continuity: When Batman and Robin are in the museum speaking with the director, Batman's chest emblem is high enough on his chest that it nearly touches the bottom edge of his cowl. In the next shot, when he leaves the museum, the emblem has moved down several inches.

Revealing: Joker's TV debut as an opera singer isn't very convincing. Even through the partially-obscuring clown mask, you can see that his lips aren't moving at all.

Continuity: In close-up, Bruce Wayne folds his newspaper in half, leaving the folded edge facing the camera. The shot cuts to a wider view and immediately, the paper has reversed positions in his hand.

Continuity: When Batman and Robin crash through the window, there's no glass left in the frame - at least not until the next shot, when several large shards that weren't there before suddenly appear at the edges.

Visible crew/equipment: During the first scene in Commissioner Gordon's office, the microphone shadow is outlined on the front of Chief O'Hara's uniform.

Visible crew/equipment: The microphone dips into the shot at the end, just as Aunt Harriet is kissing Dick and Bruce good-bye.

Continuity: When Batman and Robin break through Mad Hatter's window, several large chunks of glass remain attached to the wood frame. In the very next shot, they've vanished.

Visible crew/equipment: Batman's plaster-covered costume gets an instant dry cleaning en route as he drives from the sculptor's studio to the batcave.

Continuity: At the end, as Bruce Wayne speaks to Magda, he's standing with his arms at his sides. When the shot cuts, his hands are suddenly clasped in front of him.

Visible crew/equipment: When Mad Hatter is sending Lisa in to butter up Mr. Bowinkle, the microphone shadow is bobbing up and down above their heads.

Revealing: Batman drives out of the batcave alone. The first bit of stock footage of the car leaving the cave does indeed show him alone in the batmobile. But the very next stock shot of the car speeding down the dirt road shows us Robin sitting in the passenger seat.

Continuity: In the batcave, Batman's cape suffers a case of over-the-shoulder/off-the-shoulder blues, going from one to the other several times between takes.

Continuity: In the bistro, Batman thwarts Joker's booby-trapped juke box by whipping out his bat shield. Afterward, he places the shield on the floor behind him. In the next shot, as he turns around, the shield has disappeared. He and Robin race off without retrieving it.

Factual error: Dick Grayson's mini-camera, which is sitting on the bar, takes several shots of the villains from impossible angles several feet away from its location. And though he conspicuously places the camera in plain view, the crooks never notice it.

Continuity: When Batman surprises Joker and his henchmen in the gym, his shadow is on the wall behind them, his cape spread out and forming a menacing bat shape. But when the shot cuts to him and Robin, Batman's cape isn't spread. He's standing with his arms down.

Continuity: Catwoman dangles an unconscious Robin face-down on a tilting board over her tiger pit. He comes to, pulls his arms free and clutches the board's edges. In the next, closer shot, he's unconscious again, wakes up and repeats the grabbing-the-board motion.

Continuity: Catwoman curls up with a large red book. In the master shot, she's holding and reading the lefthand pages. In the close-up insert, her hands are suddenly grasping the righthand pages instead. Cut back to master shot, and she's again holding the left side of the book.

Factual error: When the Penguin steals the Batmobile, Batman spies on him from a tiny camera he says is hidden behind the car's fuel gauge. But the picture he and Robin are viewing has been shot from several feet away from the car, not from inside it.

Continuity: Penguin loads all his loot into the stolen Batmobile - so much loot that the trunk can't close. Yet in the very next shot, as he drives away, the trunk has somehow shut itself.

Other: Riddler says that his "universal wax solvent" can eat through anything. Which begs the question, just what is that vat he cooks the stuff up in made of? We see the wax burn through solid steel vault doors. So it also ought to be eating through the vat, the floor and the bedrock, and sizzling its way down to the Earth's core.

Plot hole: At the end, Batman mentions "Aunt Harriet's home-cooked meals" to Robin while they're well within earshot of Riddler and his henchmen, who are all restrained, but not unconscious. That's dropping a pretty big clue to their secret identities - a mistake Batman would be much too smart to make.

Factual error: Though he's a bastion of knowledge and a member of the museum board, Bruce Wayne completely mangles Egyptian history - twice. He says that King Tut ruled in the 14th Dynasty, and that the museum's mummy was a 14th Dynasty king who ruled in 1500 BC. Wrong on both counts. Tut reigned from 1336-1349 BC. The 14th Dynasty ran from 1773-1650 BC. Wayne would have known that - and so would his well-educated colleagues, none of whom points out the error.

Continuity: The Joker reveals himself by throwing off his cape, which drops to the floor behind him. But when the shot cuts, the cape instantly disappears.

Revealing: The film can Riddler hands Van Jones supposedly contains his silent movie. But the hollow thump, obvious light weight and lack of the distinctive rattle a film reel would make, all reveal that the can is actually empty.

Continuity: When the Riddler has a blindfolded Robin out on the window ledge, the position of Robin's blindfold changes between shots, from covering his nose entirely to being just above it.

Continuity: The arrow Archer fires into the window frame in Commissioner Gordon's office is, depending on the camera shot, angled up, then down, up, down and up again.

Continuity: When the Archer robs Wayne Manor's safe, an unconscious Dick Grayson shifts positions on the floor between takes. At first, he's lying with both hands folded over his chest. A few shots later, his left arm is stretched out over his head.

Revealing: During the fight in the museum, one of Catwoman's henchmen slams into the wall beside a window. The set wall buckles and caves in, leaving the bottom edge of the window bent and jutting out. A few shots later, though, both wall and window have repaired themselves.

Continuity: When Alfred brings the lunch tray down to the Batcave, Batman is holding a soldering iron, working on the electronic bug. When the shot cuts to a close-up, the soldering iron vanishes, and he's holding a clear plastic probe instead.

Visible crew/equipment: When Minstrel and his henchmen race down the stairs, the sound pole rigging shadow is moving at the very top of the screen.

Continuity: Between takes at the end of the final fight scene, most of the chairs shift positions around the table, the wooden partition screen that fell over during the scuffle has somehow folded itself, and a white cloth that was draped over one of the chairs has disappeared.

Continuity: While Batman is telling Octavia that she can go free, his hands are either straight down at his sides or clasped together at chest level, depending on the shot.

Continuity: As Tut prepares to re-animate the scarab beetles, his apothecary henchman stands to his immediate right, close enough to touch his shoulder. But when the shot cuts to a wider angle, the man is standing a foot away.

Factual error: King Tut is said here to have been a 4th Dynasty ruler. Just as in the previous Tut episode, Egyptian history seems to have entirely escaped Batman's writers. They previously mis-identified Tut's namesake as a 14th Dynasty ruler, and this time around, guessed wrong again. In fact, Tutenkamen's brief rule was part of the 18th Dynasty.

Continuity: Tut's "pets," which are a little too obviously plastic, are crocodiles (with pointed snouts), and they're sitting on a grassy island in their water tank. The stock footage inserts, however, are of alligators (which have flat snouts) swimming in open water, with no island in sight.

Revealing: When Ma Parker activates her jet-propelled wheelchair, the much younger stunt woman's face is visible as the chair speeds down the hallway toward Batman and Robin.

Continuity: During the fight in the art gallery, the papers on the desk to the left of the screen are scattered. But in some shots of the fight progressing, the same papers have straightened themselves back into nice, neat stacks again.

Continuity: Clock King renders the art gallery patrons unconscious with a high-frequency sound wave. As they fall, one of the men drops his hat. When they come to and get up, the hat has disappeared.

Continuity: Batman tosses a large white box at one of the henchmen. The box lands on the round dais of the clockworks, but as that dais begins to rotate, the box disappears. It pops back up a few shots later, now sitting on the stationary corner of the clockwork platform. But as the fight rages on, it vanishes again between shots.

Factual error: Trapped in the overturned hourglass, Batman and Robin lie flat and begin furiously digging in the sand, making the hourglass roll out the door. But to cause such rapid movement, they'd need to be applying their weight against one of the glass sides (like a hamster in a ball). Just digging in the sand wouldn't get them anywhere, at least not that quickly.

Continuity: Batman and Robin are trapped in the overturned hourglass. They're sitting upright when Batman suggests an escape plan. In the very next shot, they're sprawled face down on the sand.

Visible crew/equipment: During the final egg fight, the microphone shadow puts in an appearance on the wall behind the bad guys.

Continuity: Just before Bruce Wayne tosses the grape to set it off, Egghead's miniature radar bomb moves to a different position on the floor all by itself.

Continuity: Tied to a conveyor belt, Batman and Robin move past a stack of boxes stenciled with the factory's name. Cut to close-up, and they're now back to a position right next to the boxes. Back to master shot, and the boxes are once again several feet away - at least until the next close-up.

Visible crew/equipment: When Harry plots to replace Chandell, the polished grand piano behind him reflects the moving lights on some of the studio equipment.

Continuity: Batman folds up the Bat Shield and starts to tuck it into his belt, which it is much too large to fit into. In the very next shot, the shield has disappeared.

Continuity: Mr. Freeze has frozen the commissioner's office, and when Batman applies plastic explosive to the door, a frost stripe appears that wasn't there in the master shot a moment before. In the next shot, the putty he's just put there disappears. And when the explosion occurs (even though Batman didn't add any detonators), it doesn't emanate from anywhere near the spot where he applied the putty.

Continuity: Toward the end of the fight in the fur salon, one of Joker's henchmen shifts locations instantaneously. In the first shot, he's on the far side of Robin, falling against the wall. In the very next shot, he jumps to a spot between Robin and the camera, where he takes a swing at Batman.

Factual error: Tsk. After all his lectures to Robin about the importance of education, Batman should and would know better. On the chalk board, where he's written out Joker's message (dictated to him over the phone), the caped crusader mis-punctuates the phrase "a gargoyle's key" by leaving out the apostrophe. Definitely not a mistake that stickler-for-correctness Batman would make.

Continuity: After Alfred pulls out the key, two pieces of the little blue time-shifting box have apparently fallen to the floor. Joker snatches one of them up while struggling with the butler. But when Batman and Robin leap in for the next shot, the second piece has vanished from its spot on the floor.

Continuity: In part 1, Marsha's prisoners included the mayor. Here, Batman rescues Robin, Gordon and O'Hara - but the mayor has disappeared. And oddly, no one mentions his ever having been there.

Continuity: After Annie drops the chandelier on them, Batman and Robin are knocked unconscious. No one's had time to move either of them, but when Andy comes into the saloon in the next shot, Robin has somehow shifted positions on the floor: he's not in the same spot or position he originally fell in.

Visible crew/equipment: When Batman and Robin visit Laughing Leo's Used Car Lot, the side of the Batmobile reflects a whole row of big square studio lighting panels.

Visible crew/equipment: The Batmobile has just pulled away, and as Andy waves good-bye, the camera shadow can be seen moving rapidly offscreen at the lower lefthand corner of the frame.

Revealing: When Bruce, Dick and Aunt Harriet get into what's supposed to be an elevator, there's solid concrete under the sliding doors where there should be a break separating the lift car from the building's floor. It's visible again in Part 2, when Batman and Robin use the same elevator.

Plot hole: Batman proudly tells Robin that he knows Penguin's men are out of ammo because he's been counting all the bullets. But he'd have no way to know how many rounds they had to begin with, so he couldn't possibly know that they've run out.

Visible crew/equipment: Batman tilts the Bat Shield just a little too much when he and Robin are under fire from Penguin's goons, and it captures a pretty clear reflection of the camera rigging.

Factual error: Batman ingeniously deduces that the sympathetic vibration needed to escape Catwoman's sound-trap is the note F-sharp above high-C. What he proceeds to hum, however, is a D, and Robin hums an E. Neither of them reaches F-sharp, but the sound chamber dutifully explodes and frees them anyway.

Continuity: When Catwoman tries to tempt Batman into a kiss at the end, his cape is draped completely over the right half of his chest. Each time the angle reverses, though, it's pulled back over his shoulder in its usual position.

Continuity: In the Batcave, Batman is holding Puzzler's pink balloon while he and Robin deduce its clues. The shot cuts to a wider angle when they turn to race to the Batmobile, and the balloon disappears.

Continuity: Robin is holding an upright 8-foot pole when Venus sprinkles her knock-out glitter on the Dynamic Duo. When the shot cuts and they fall to the floor, the pole has completely disappeared.

Continuity: Joker's floating zap-wand is hanging in the air right in front of Chief O'Hara's face. But when the shot cuts, it's instantly ten feet away, and is now floating behind the Joker.

Factual error: Joker, Penguin and no less than four henchmen all manage to hide in the Batmobile's trunk and leap out when it enters the Batcave. Even for Batman, this is stretching credibility more than a bit. There's no way the Batmobile's trunk could hold six adults and still close (and it was closed). Two might fit, even three in a pinch - but not six.

Continuity: The Batmobile pulls up in front of the Platter-Porium, and you can see that only Batman and Robin are inside the car. When the shot cuts to close-up, though, Venus is sitting in between them. (Tight squeeze: it's a 2-seater and she must be straddling the transmission hump and hand brake - ouch.) The shot cuts back to full for them to jump from the car, and Venus has disappeared again.

Continuity: After all the stow-away baddies jump from the Batmobile's trunk, they leave it open. Between shots, it magically closes itself.

Continuity: After the drugged Robin clobbers Batman with a wooden chair, the broken pieces change their arrangement on the floor between one shot and the next.

Audio problem: At the end, Catwoman falls from the roof into the water below. But we never hear a splash.

Continuity: Penguin's van races by a Gotham City movie theater, passing three cars parked in front of it. In the very next shot, the Batmobile zips past the same spot in hot pursuit - and there are now four cars parked there.

Visible crew/equipment: The Batmobile, responding to Batman's remote control activator, is supposedly driving itself through Gotham City's streets. But in one shot, even though he's crouching down, you can see the head of the film crew member actually driving the car.

Continuity: Sitting at the banquet table, Batman has placed his left hand over his chest. When the shot cuts, his hands are instantly both down at his sides.

Revealing: The counterfeit 100 dollar bills that Gordon and O'Hara say look "so authentic" don't actually resemble any known U.S. currency at all. In fact, a close look reveals them to be very bad photocopies of Mexican 100 peso notes.

Revealing: The crowd scenes during what is supposedly a Gotham City University student protest rally are inserts of rather blurry old stock footage. Not only is the mob far too large for a mere college rally, the footage is in black & white, while the rest of Batman is in color. Bit of a dead giveaway.

Continuity: Britt Reid visits Bruce Wayne, and while sitting on the couch, stretches forward and places both hands on his knees. But in the next take, he's abruptly leaning back with his arms folded.

Plot hole: When he abducts Alfred, believing him to be a minister, Penguin suffers a peculiar memory lapse. He's encountered Alfred twice before in previous episodes, even kidnapped him once before (knowing full well that he was Bruce Wayne's butler). Yet here, he fails to recognize Alfred at all.

Revealing: Ethel Merman just can't keep a straight face amidst Batman's campy silliness. Here and in the previous episode, she can be seen cracking up in several of her scenes with Burgess Meredith.

Visible crew/equipment: The stunt rider doubling Penguin in the horse race is pretty easy to spot. He's younger and thinner (despite an obviously padded costume), and his nose is about two inches shorter.

Continuity: When the Batmobile pulls up to the theater where Tut's henchmen are emerging, Batman challenges them while standing at the open driver's side door. You can see his left hand closing the door, as well as hear it click shut - but in the next, reverse angle shot, as he and Robin leap into the fray, the car door is standing wide open again.

Continuity: Lila comes through the bead curtain with the poison lilacs wrapped in green tissue paper. She drops the flowers, and in the next shot of them on the floor, the blooms don't even remotely resemble the ones she was just carrying - and the green paper has disappeared altogether.

Factual error: Gotham City's museum should brush up on its paleontology. Their sign claims the neosaurus egg is 40 million years old. A) Neosaurus lived in the early Permian period, 290 million years ago. And B) All dinosaurs were rendered extinct 65 million years ago, most likely by an asteroid strike. So 40 million years ago, there were no dinosaurs on Earth.

Plot hole: An amazingly precognizant Dick Grayson is already wearing his surfing togs before Commissioner Gordon calls to say that Joker has invaded the surfing community.

Factual error: The British curator from whom Lord Ffogg steals a collection of artifacts needs to go back to school (or someone in Batman's prop dept. does). While most of the signs are correctly spelled and punctuated ("Duchess of Desborough's Diamonds," "Her Majesty's Priceless Snuffboxes," etc.), the one marked "Lady Easterlands Jeweled Easter Eggs" is missing its requisite possessive apostrophe. (The closed captioner noticed, though, and corrected the mistake there).

Revealing: Not only does Batman's solo flute play two music tracks at once, it also keeps on playing after he's taken it out of his mouth.

Continuity: Batman and Robin both leap into the Batmobile and roar out of the Batcave. But the stock shot used after that shows Batman alone in the car.

Continuity: Aboard Joker's flying saucer, Alfred and Batgirl are sitting three feet apart, then shoulder-to-shoulder, then apart again, depending on the shot.

Character mistake: Vertigris tells Joker he planted a bomb in the Batmobile while it was parked in front of City Hall/Police HQ. Only in this instance, it wasn't. It was parked in the alley out back, the better to hide his bomb-planting from public view, so it's strange that he'd forget this.

Continuity: The Batmobile returns to the Batcave by remote control. It's facing left when we get a brief, three-second shot of Batgirl talking to Batman and Robin. In the very next shot, the Batmobile has instantly turned itself around and is facing right. Its turntable (which was actually pushed manually by stagehands under the platform) didn't work quite that fast.