Death Hits the Jackpot - S11-E1
Corrected entry: Unfortunately for the grieving widow, Columbo's advice to her at the end of the episode - that she will automatically inherit the $24,000,000 won by her late husband and appropriated by Leon Lamarr - is wrong. Columbo has proven (on his standards) that Lamarr murdered Freddy Brower, the rightful winner of the lottery funds, but he has not proven that Brower bought the ticket in the first place. In fact, he doesn't even know he did, he just suspects that he did and that is why he was murdered. He's right, but legally speaking that is irrelevant. The money belongs to Lamarr and will be there waiting for him if and when he gets out of prison, or will go into his estate if he dies while inside. Brower's widow may file a wrongful death suit against Lamarr, but that is a separate legal matter entirely.
Corrected entry: During the opening credits, the film of a fountain in front of a mansion is running backwards. The water is flowing upwards from the pool back into the water jet.
Correction: The film is not running backwards. It's called the "wagon-wheel effect" where the camera's film rate isn't fast enough to capture the flow of the water. This is a natural phenomenon and not a movie mistake, you can simulate the same effects with strobe lights or blinking rapidly.
Corrected entry: On the phone with Columbo, Graham McVay says he's "at the Bay Leaf Restaurant, on Kelsey east of Wilshire." There is no such location. Wilshire Boulevard is an east-west street.
Correction: There are times when Wilshire Blvd will run in a SW to NE or NE to SE direction where you can have streets east of it.
Corrected entry: Lauren Dayton has a package sent to Columbo. It contains a bed for his basset hound. Later when she meets Columbo at a restaurant and sees the box, she says, "You didn't open it." Since the box and the lid were each separately wrapped in red paper, there is no way she could have known if the box had been opened.
Columbo Goes to the Guillotine - S8-E1
Corrected entry: Twice, Columbo says he read a researcher's "curricular vitae." The Latin term for a résumé is "curriculum vitae."
Correction: Columbo's technique usually includes him saying and doing things to make people think he's a bumbling fool. He frequently mispronounces words, uses the wrong words, and pretends he doesn't understand things.
Corrected entry: When Columbo and the staffer are looking through the orders from MAC supplier, they mention tweezers. Hospitals use "forceps", not tweezers.
Correction: There is a difference between tweezers and forceps, and many hospitals, if not most or all, use both.
Yes, forceps are used medically for grasping or holding larger objects, while tweezers are used mainly for manipulating or moving tiny ones, and also for dissection. Interestingly, in many surgical suites, the staff will use the term "pickups" instead of forceps.
Corrected entry: When Columbo arrives at the murder scene at the start, Anderson says that the victim was struck twice. When you see the villain committing the murder, he hits the victim more than twice.
Character mistake: In the grocery store scene Robert Culp sits on a display of pumpkins but there are 2 signs that say watermelons.
Suggested correction: As a retail worker of 18 years, I know that POS (signage) mistakes happen in supermarkets, for example a product is moved and the correct POS is not replaced. This scene seems to be filmed in a real supermarket meaning this is not a mistake made by the show's producers, however if this was filmed in a studio, "Character Mistake" would be the wrong category as the mistake would have been made by the set designers.
While I've never seen mislabeled items I know mistakes can happen. But since the characters aren't real, every mistake they make is the fault of someone on the crew, whether it's the actor, writer, or set designer. For example, misspellings are considered character mistakes (unless intentional), even though it would have been made by the person who created it.
Plot hole: When Columbo presents the flipped photograph to Dick Van Dyke in the final scene, Columbo insists it is correct and proves DVD guilty. But Columbo already showed him the rejected fireplace photo, which shows the room arranged correctly. It also shows the victim's wedding ring, which would be on the wrong hand according to Columbo.
Suggested correction: It's all part of Columbo's bluff: Galesko wants to get rid of Columbo as fast as possible and believes himself to be too smart, thus falls for it. Galesko might have forgotten about the fireplace photo or underestimated its importance. Even if Galesko points out the rejected photo: Columbo is already bluffing about the first photo, he can very well just claim the second photo never existed or is destroyed too, leaving Galesko in the same position as he is before he incriminates himself.
Corrected entry: When Columbo has Galesko at the station, Galesko picks a camera off the shelf and opens up the back to show that the original negative is still in there (as proof of his innocence). But since none of them are in a dark room, opening the back of the camera would damage the negative, something Galesko should know since he's a professional photographer.
Correction: The film has already been developed and printed - Columbo has a huge blowup of the print. It cannot be further damaged by exposure to light. In fact the whole scene is nonsensical - there is no camera in the world which retains the film strip in the way shown here, and there is absolutely no reason for anyone to put the film back into the camera either - and no easy way of doing it. A professional photographer would know that.
The camera is an old Polaroïd of the 60s (model 800). The film used consists of two rolls : the positive one and the negative one. After taking a picture, the photo is extracted and the negative part may remain in the camera.
Plot hole: In the last scene Columbo convicts Hanlon of murder by playing back the recording of Hanlon's final call to the victim Wagner (the phone-box call near the crime scene is Hanlon's alibi. He is pretending to be in his VIP-box in the football stadium, which is too far away at the time he murders Wagner). The point is that the recording is missing the loud clock chimes from a little clock inside the VIP-box, which means Hanlon's alibi is "destroyed", he was not in his VIP-box, he must be somewhere else at that moment. Problem is the missing clock chimes are not hard evidence. Hanlon could say the clock was not working that day or the battery was empty and so on. Beside that it would be much easier to catch Hanlon if Columbo would check the outgoing phone calls asking the telephone company.
Suggested correction: He very likely will. As we've seen, Columbo is very thorough. The missing clock chimes aren't meant to be definitive proof, just enough to warrant an arrest. Columbo will continue to work the case and gather evidence.
Columbo will continue to work the case and gather evidence? Well with that sentence they could stop every Columbo episode after 5 minutes. Hey guys, Columbo has nearly nothing against the murderer but he will continue to work the case outside this episode be sure.
It's the detective's job to investigate the crime and gather sufficient evidence to warrant an arrest and potential conviction. Yes, this would apply to every episode, and yes it applies to all detectives. Many of Columbo's investigations result in him using circumstantial evidence to arrest the killer. In one episode he arrests a man based on how the victim's shoes were tied. That wasn't his only evidence, however. In many cases a preponderance of circumstantial evidence is enough.
It's a TV show, Columbo was made for entertainment, not to be used as a script to prosecute a potential criminal.
No judge would allow this "evidence" to even be presented to a grand jury. Just because Hanlon wasn't in his booth at the time doesn't mean he was at the murder scene.
Character mistake: This episode opens with James Ferris typing the final chapter of a mystery novel. He is using all-capital letters, No professional writer would do that.
Suggested correction: It's not meant to be all capital letters, but block letters. Just look at the title card and credits in the opening - they're block letters too.
Correction: Columbo is perfectly aware of that. He tells Nancy Brower - the widow - that she will get the money instead of Lamarr in order to provoke him into revealing her involvement in her husband's murder. It works. In fact neither would retain any legal right to any of the money as in the United States a criminal cannot profit from his or her crimes. The money would be confiscated by the state or added to Freddy Brower's estate if and when it is definitely established that he bought the ticket.