Best family TV mistakes of all time

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The Gummi Bears picture

The Secret Of The Juice - S1-E10

Continuity mistake: When Tummi goes looking for Zummi, Gruffi and Cubbi, he arrives right outside the barrel room. When first seen, the barrel room door is smooth, but in the next close-up the door suddenly has an iron grill window in its surface.

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Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends picture

Busted - S1-E4

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Mr. H. Makes Bloo wash his hands, Mr. H takes off his gloves and washes his hands then dries them. Notice that as soon as he takes his hands out from underneath the towel his gloves are back on.

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Family Ties picture

Ready or Not - S2-E16

Character mistake: When Alex mentions to Mallory that he's had sex before, he tells her he was 17 and that it was leap year. Not correct, this event occurred in 1982 (during one of the first episodes when Alex was 17), which was not a leap year.

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What's New, Scooby-Doo? picture What's New, Scooby-Doo? mistake picture

Ready to Scare - S3-E5

Continuity mistake: When the gang arrives at the fashion show, they park the Mystery Machine at the end of the walk way. But when the head of the fashion show is shown, the Mystery Machine has vanished. (00:03:05)

Quantom X

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Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman picture

The Abduction (1) - S2-E22

Visible crew/equipment: Matthew is talking to Hank in the saloon about Hank's horse that Brian wants. After Hank agrees to let Brian work for him to pay for the horse, Matthew walks out of the saloon. The camera pans to the left slightly and a microphone can be seen moving behind Hanks head. (00:32:30)

Lindsay LeValley Mackey

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Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons picture

Winged Assassin - S1-E2

Revealing mistake: As Delta Tango 19 takes off from the airport, there is a shot where it is actually landing. This can be seen from the fact that there is no runway behind them, as it is in front of them.

Jcamts

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The Sarah Jane Adventures picture

Sky: Part 1 - S5-E1

Continuity mistake: The baby carrier little Sky is in as the group heads towards the car changes between takes. When they are walking down the driveway, it is open, and Sarah Jane quickly closes it when Gita comes up. Gita opens the carrier, to discover the baby, and Sarah Jane closes it again. There is more dialogue and Gita goes back to cooing at the baby. When did the carrier open again? Then the car alarms go off and if you look closely, you can see it's closed again, which is confirmed when the baby is handed off to Clyde.

Trigger

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Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Not entirely true; although they are rare and may no longer exist now, I've seen traffic lights that followed the red, yellow, green pattern as recently as the mid-1990s.

zendaddy621

Interesting. What state (s) did you see this in? I'm assuming going from red to yellow was to encourage cars to cautiously enter the intersection in case someone was running a red light?

Phaneron

Traffic lights in the UK do this - it's more to give you a second to get ready, in gear, etc., then as soon as the lights turn green you can go. Otherwise you get no warning of when the lights are about to change.

In Illinois; as I said, such traffic lights are rare, but they did exist at least as recently as the time this episode of the series aired, and they may still possibly exist in larger cities such as New York City.

zendaddy621

This traffic light set-up (red to yellow to green) still exists today in the UK. From what I understand, it is to alert the driver that the light will be turning green imminently and to prepare themselves to put their car in gear, as manual cars are still pretty common in Europe. I'd wager this light cycle was phased out of North America due to the abundance of automatic cars today. Could have been different in 1994 though.

critterbonus

It should be noted that traffic lights that go from red to yellow before going green keep the red light illuminated so that both red and yellow are lit up. However, that's not what happens in the scene. I've never seen a traffic light operate the way it's shown. And Massachusetts still has traffic lights that go from red to yellow, however, when red and yellow are lit up together, this allows for pedestrian crossing.

Bishop73

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Mayberry R.F.D. picture

Andy and Helen Get Married - S1-E1

Other mistake: Sam Jones' son, Mike, tells Aunt Bee that the farmhouse has been in their family for 150 years. While showing Aunt Bee a photo album, he points to a photo and says, "That's my great-great-grandfather who started this farm." Pointing to a woman in the same photo, Mike says, "That's my great-grandmother. She lives in Philadelphia." It is very unlikely that the daughter of a man who had started a farm 150 years earlier would still be alive. Assuming the man started the farm when he was in his 20s, he would have had to father a child when he was in his 70s and she would now have to be in her 100s.

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Batman: The Animated Series picture

Heart of Ice - S1-E3

Other mistake: When Batman is watching the security footage of Victor Fries' accident, at first Fries is addressing the camera directly which follows him and pans according to his movements and Ferris Boyle interrupting him, which would suggest a second person was in the room with a handheld camera. But after Ferris Boyle enters the room and orders Fries' experiment terminated, there are several cuts from various angles in the room suggesting surveillance cameras. The surveillance style footage also often conveniently cuts to the face of whichever person happens to be speaking or will cut to a certain angle in order to put emphasis on the action, all of which would require multiple mounted cameras and purposeful editing by either Boyle or one of his subordinates, which would be completely illogical since they don't want anyone to see the footage in the first place. (00:12:20 - 00:13:55)

Phaneron

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Grange Hill picture

Episode #2.8 - S2-E8

Audio problem: When Cathy and Trisha are walking to the post office with Mr Hargreaves walking behind them their mouths are not moving in sync with their dialogue. (00:09:55)

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Laverne & Shirley picture

The Robbery - S4-E4

Plot hole: Towards the end, Jake (Shirley's boyfriend), hangs the girls on a coat rack by the hoods of their coats. They try a few comical ways of trying to escape, when they could have simply unbuttoned their coats and slip away.

Cincydog

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The Proud Family picture

Show generally

Continuity mistake: In the episode when Penny went to work with her mom and the Magician comes in with the tiger that is acting strangely. The tiger is sitting on the floor and has just eaten its food. Penny is standing there next to the tiger, the camera goes to her mom for about two seconds, then it goes back on her and the food has returned in the bowl again. Then it's empty again.

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