Corrected entry: Indy snaps the staff in half to stop the bad guys figuring out how long it has to be to be used in the Map Room. That's not going to work. They could easily put the two pieces together again. He needs to snap it into three segments and take the centre one with him.
Corrected entry: When Belloq and Dietrich are about to start interrogating Marion, Toht arrives and raises his scorched hand. He says "Hail Hitler", but it surely should be "Heil Hitler". There wouldn't be any need to speak in English, not even for the audience's benefit.
Corrected entry: In the Himalayan bar scene, when Indy comes in to save Marion from The Henchmen, the gun Indy is holding changes from a revolver in one shot to a semi-automatic pistol in the next shot. (00:02:15)
Correction: Although he's never seen using them together in the same shot, the movie implies that Indy has two guns. He's seen using his revolver during the truck chase and the fight with the german mechanic, his automatic when the Nazi's seize Katanga's ship and both at various points during the bar fight. If you watch closely during the bar fight, you can actually see Indy quickly grab at his bag at one point, the implication being, he switched guns when he ran out of bullets.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Indy is rescued by the children, there are two shots of the monkey in the window of the truck. As the monkey stands up the monkey gets an erection. The erection is not present in the second shot of the monkey.
Corrected entry: When Indy is holding Marion in the Well of Souls (after she had been dropped in by the Nazis), watch carefully as they look up as the Nazis seal the entrance. There is some kind of string, cord, rope, or cable visible on Marion's arm (possibly a safety harness for if Harrison Ford dropped her?). The string/cord/rope/cable disappears in the next shot.
Correction: It's actually the cord from Marion's dress that just wrapped around her arm, when she jumped on Indy.
Corrected entry: When Indiana tells the pilot to start the plane the sound the plane makes is the same as the laser sound from Star Wars.
Correction: The sound effect is not the laser effect, but the hyperdrive malfunctions on the Millennium Falcon. Actually, this is the other way around: The winding -down sounds are actually made by a gear-driven generator found in most older radial aircraft engines. In this particular case, the seaplane was a 1941 Waco UPF-7, and with planes this old there are no buttons to start the engine; you had to wind the starter up with a crank before you could press the button and start the engine. When the starter is engaged it groans a bit, hence the laser-like sound. There are no sound effects here; this is how a genuine Waco UPF-7 sounds when you start it.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Indy is with Marcus Brody and the two guys from the army intelligence, Indy is talking about what is in the Ark of the Covenant. He says that the Hebrews put the broken pieces of the Ten Commandments in the Ark. That's not correct. Yes, it's true that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then Moses broke them, but Moses went back up the mountain, and God gave him a new set of the same Commandments. The Hebrews put the new, complete, whole pieces in the Ark, not the broken ones. In Exodus 34:1, God tells Moses to bring new stone tablets so that God can write the commandments again. Exodus 34:29 states: "...Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands,..." (00:17:20)
Correction: Even Indy is not infallible, this is a character's mistake.
Corrected entry: The stunt where Indy pushes the statue through the wall in the Well of Souls happened too quickly. If you watch the stunt man, he slips and almost falls off the statue, because it fell before he was ready. (01:14:15)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Indiana is running away from the Hovitos, you can see tan lines on many of the actors.
Correction: South American natives were (and are) quite pale skinned, and do get tan lines.
Corrected entry: The Well of Souls is a sealed, airtight chamber - the escape of gas when the concrete slab over the entrance is lifted proves that. Indy and Marion can only escape by smashing through a solid internal wall and then pushing a tightly fitted rock slab out of the outside wall. So, what do those snakes eat? More to the point, what do they breathe?
Correction: The internal wall wasn't solid, (it had holes that they showed snakes coming through.) The rock they pushed from the outer wall wasn't tightly fitted because they could SEE that it was loose enough to push. It wasn't sealed and it wasn't gas escaping. In a house with a window open, when you open a door the curtains will suddenly billow around. What you saw was just from the wind blowing in the holes in the walls. Lifting the slab changed the air currents which blew sand and dust from around the slab.
Corrected entry: Raiders is supposed to take place in 1936, however throughout the film, the German soldiers are using what appear to be MP-38 or MP-40 sub-machine guns (No way to tell which model they were, as they both look identical). These guns weren't put into service with the German Army until 1938 and 1940 respectively.
Correction: There was a sub-machine gun that looked very similar to the MP-38 and MP-40 in 1936. It was called the Erma EMP-36.
Corrected entry: In real life, Hitler was on a fanatical quest for the Holy Lance, used to pierce Jesus's side during the Crucifixion, rather than the Ark of the Covenant (a Jewish relic).
Correction: Hitler searched for many religious and occult artifacts.
Corrected entry: Go to the scene where Marion and Indy are in Mr. Katanga's boat, in their room. Marion comes in, and takes off the red blanket, and Indy has on his leather jacket and shirt on. Indy still has his jacket on when Marion goes to look at herself in the mirror. Then the shot goes to Indy, looking at his head on the other side of the mirror, leather jacket off. Marion turns the mirror, Indy screams, and she goes over when she sees that Indy is trying to take his shirt off. If he had so much trouble taking his shirt off, how could he have taken off his jacket within a matter of about 2-4 seconds? (01:32:00)
Correction: Leather jackets are heavy, it's easy to let them slide off under their own weight which would hardly take any time at all.
Corrected entry: The character of Indiana Jones is believed to have been based on Roy Chapman Andrews, an American archeologist in the early 20th century. It was Andrews who first discovered the velociraptor, featured in another Spielberg movie, Jurassic Park. Andrews was also a graduate of Beloit College in Wisconsin, which happens to be the arch rival of Harrison Ford's alma mater, Ripon College.
Correction: This is false. The character of Indiana Jones is based on numerous heroes from old movie serials and his look (the outfit complete with hat and jacket) is borrowed wholesale from the 1943 Alan Ladd movie "China". The character was originally conceived to be a pure treasure-hunter, and it was only decades later that Lucas decided that making him an archeologist instead would give him a little extra intellectual credibility. So it's not possible that any real life archeologist could have been the "basis" for the character since the character existed for quite a long time in Lucas's imagination before he had anything to do with archeology.
Corrected entry: As Belloq watches the reflection in the mirror of Marion changing into the evening dress in his tent, she undoes a very modern stretch bra. (01:02:25)
Correction: Women in that era actually did have stretch bras. Only the cups of the bra were more of a cone shaped.
Corrected entry: At the beginning of the movie, the helper that is shot in the back by all the poison darts and dies....he reappears later. Check out the guy with the monkey and the eye-patch in Cairo. Same person. George Lucas had a great way to save money on crew by doing this. (00:09:50 - 00:36:55)
Correction: Several films have one actor playing two or more roles in them. More trivia than a mistake.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Marcus visits Indiana at his house and Indiana starts packing his suitcase to prepare for his trip to Nepal, Marcus warns Indiana about the dangerous powers of the Ark and Indiana says 'I don't believe in magic or superstitious hocus pocus'. But, since Temple of Doom (1935) was set before Raiders of the lost Ark (1936), he should have remembered all the magic that he encountered in Temple of Doom, like hearts being ripped out with bare hands while the victim is still alive, voodoo magic, and magic rocks. Does Indy have a bad memory or was all that magic not convincing enough? (00:22:00)
Correction: There are two things going on here: (1) just experiencing profoundly weird things like in Temple of Doom doesn't mean that someone will be convinced of their magical nature (in fact, many people will over the years after such events, downplay the magical aspects in their memory), and (2) Indy may believe that whatever happened in Temple of Doom wasn't magic, but just some science we don't know about (i.e. there's a perfectly rational explanation, he just doesn't know it). What it comes down to is that Indy is a cynic, and a lapsed Christian, which is important for his overall motivation (esp. in Last Crusade).
Corrected entry: As Indy gets onto the plane and we see Toth for the first time, Indy sits down with his trilby hat resting level on his head and his collar and tie fastened, but in the next shot the hat is at an angle, and the collar and tie are unfastened. (00:22:35)
Correction: It's a fedora, not a trilby. If you watch, you see Harrison raise his hand to his collar to undo the button and tie. that's how they get like that. And as for the angle of the hat, it's because he has leant back into the seat. I have a fedora, and if I look up, even just slightly, before sitting back against a tall chair, like in a car or plane, it tips itself up.
Adding to this, the German spy in the plane is not Toht.
Corrected entry: When Jones and Brody are discussing the Ark and its powers with the two government agents, Brody states "The Bible speaks of the Ark leveling mountains." The Bible says no such thing.
Correction: Brody was using a figure of speech. He said this because he wanted to get the attention of the government agents so that they wouldn't take the matter of the Ark lightly.
Corrected entry: It is curious how the dress and shoes that Belloq gave to Marion are a perfect fit.
Correction: Not really - anyone with the right eye could have worked out her size, maybe even tailored it accordingly.
Correction: Character mistake.
Twotall