Corrected entry: When Tommy is murdered the guard fires 2 quick successive shots. The rifle is a bolt action rifle and could not reasonably fire two shots that quickly.
Corrected entry: It makes no sense that everyone believed Tommy was trying to escape when he was shot. There are no guards in the guard towers at night, and if there were, there would be a guard in every tower, meaning another guard would've seen Hadley shoot Tommy.
Correction: Hadley and the Warden wield considerable power at the prison. They didn't need to convince everyone, they just needed a plausible explanation if there was a police investigation. Hadley could easily intimidate the guards and prisoners into remaining silent.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Warden Norton is talking to Tommy, Captain Hadley fires 2 shots but Tommy's back has 4-5 shots in it.
Correction: In the edited for TV version only two shots are heard. The other shots are fired while showing Tommy get shot with blood spilling from his chest. Due to the graphic nature of this scene it is edited in the TV version.
Corrected entry: Andy leaves the torch when he crawls up to the end of the hole. But the torch is seen again after he breaks the drainage pipeline.
Correction: He doesn't drop it, he moves it out of view towards his waist - it looks like he tucks it into a pocket or his bag, for easy retrieval later.
Corrected entry: Andy gets a poster of Rita Hayworth when he comes into his cell after his stay in the hospital, and when Red is explaining how Andy broke out, it shows him digging behind her. However, when it is found that Andy escaped, the warden throws a rock through a picture of a cavewoman (Raquel Welch) and it goes into the hole Andy dug. This poster is not the same as the Rita Hayworth one, and it appears to be on the opposite side of the cell as before.
Corrected entry: The "Archie and Friends" comic the guard is reading on the toilet when Andy starts playing opera over the intercom is an issue from 1993, nearly 50 years after the movie takes place. Archie Comics are thanked in the end credits for providing the comic, and the copyright also verifies that it is from 1993.
Correction: The issue of "Archie's Pal Jughead" that the guard is reading is issue 9. The original run of that title began in 1949, so issue 9 would have been published in either late 1949 or early 1950. This title was retired in 1965 and replaced with "Jughead". In 1993 (the date of the copyright in the credits), the title "Archie's Pal Jughead" was resurrected (as vol.2), and began publication at issue 46. The reason for the date being listed as 1993 in the movie credits is that would be when Archie Comics had to re-copyright the title, however the issue in question was printed in 1949/1950. A summary of the title history can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jughead_Magazine Further, if you freeze-frame and zoom, it is visible that the price of the comic is 10 cents. This would have been a steal in 1993! In addition, the cover layout, font, etc. is identical to the following issue from 1950 (issue 14): http://www.littlestuffedbull.com/images/comics/archiespaljughead14.jpg As well as this issue (66, from 1960): http://home.earthlink.net/~copaceticgallery/Jughead66.html The cover of the first issue of volume 2 (46, June 1993) can be seen here: http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/9365/256532-20115-120035-1-archie-s-pal-jughead_super.jpg The differences are obvious.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Warden Norton is talking to Tommy, he offers a cigarette to Tommy but is not smoking one himself. At the end of the conversation, he drops a partially-smoked cigarette and crushes it out, then walks away. It isn't Tommy's cigarette, because when Tommy is lying on the ground, you can see his cigarette beside his right hand.
Correction: The warden is smoking a cigarette. He has the cigarette in his mouth when he approaches Tommy and takes it out after taking a drag and exhaling.
Corrected entry: When Red finds the metal box in the field, there has been enough time pass for seasons to change. In Maine this means rain, snow and melting snow. How that metal box with one loosely wrapped plastic bag kept all the papers perfectly dry is not easy to believe. Even one year of seasons would cause it to look much less pristine than it looks when Red opens it.
Correction: The package was wrapped in thick plastic. It was protected from the elements quite well and as such would still appear pristine, even after a number of months.
Corrected entry: The poster that Andy has of Raquel Welsh, at the time of his escape in 1966, is from the movie "One Million Years B.C." which was not released until 1967.
Correction: The Hammer film "One Million Years B.C." was released in 1966, not 1967. As a publicity stunt the poster was released well in advance of the film's premiere. See http://lavender.fortunecity.com/judidench/584/onemilli3.html, amongst others.
Corrected entry: It's unlikely that raw sewage would have been permitted to flow directly from the prison into a creek, even in a rural Maine setting. This prison would have been equipped with a rudimentary sewage treatment system of some kind, such as a septic system. The screenplay had to omit the septic system since you can't crawl through it to your freedom.
Correction: I hate to admit it, but in the rural area in which I grew up in the 1970s (ie after the time frame of this film) it was still common practice to send untreated sewage straight to the nearest ocean-bound waterway, and that was from single dwelling homes, not large (and apparently very old) institutions such as Shawshank, for which a septic tank would have to be enormous.
Corrected entry: During the search for Andy a guard finds the rock hammer. While he is holding it up a reporter takes a photograph. In the picture the guard is holding the hammer in a totally different way than we had seen before. (01:48:00)
Correction: The movie camera first shows the man holding the rock hammer, then moves to the photographer, who takes the picture a few seconds later. That's enough time for the man holding the rock hammer to switch positions.
Corrected entry: When Red is doing the voice-over of how Andy escaped from the cell, it shows Andy undressing to reveal the warden's shirt and tie. The cell clothes Andy is wearing at this point are a shirt and jeans. Yet the next morning when the search crew finds Andy's clothes in the river, they hold up dungarees on a stick. (01:50:10)
Correction: Andy does not escape wearing the wardens clothes - he puts them on under his own to smuggle them back to his cell, and then takes them off, and puts them in the waterproof bag we see tied to his feet. Then, once he is safely away, he can put them on, so he can go to the bank to claim the money from the account.
Corrected entry: When Red gets released he is put up in the same room where Brooks had stayed 10 years earlier. When he scratches "So was Red" into the same beam the plaster pieces caused by Brooks's inscription are still lying on the table. (02:09:05)
Correction: The pieces of plaster on the table were of Red's inscription, not Brook's. I believe they were there to show that Red had just left the room after doing the same actions as Brooks.
Corrected entry: After Andy has escaped, we see a shot of his and the neighbouring cells. There simply is no room for any hollow wall between the cells - which is the wall where the poster is hanging. The basic premise of the movie does not hold.
Correction: Andy is not escaping through a 'hollow wall'. His cell is on the end of the row and the wall where the poster is hanging is on the other side of piping, etc.
Corrected entry: Before Brooks hangs himself he scratches "Brooks was here" into a wooden beam. While he is doing that plaster pieces fall on the table he is standing on. (01:00:00)
Correction: The lower part of the beam (the vertical poles, moulding, etc) is wood, but the upper part where Brooks (and later Red) carved their names *is* plaster, as you can see when Red first walks into the room towards the end of the movie.
Corrected entry: When Red goes to the hay field in Buxton to find the mysterious item Andy had told him about he uses a compass, even though Andy's directions didn't include any cardinal points. (02:05:05)
Correction: Andy does use a cardinal point, he says the tree is on the north end of the wall.
Corrected entry: When the guard shoots Tommy in the yard, he fires twice. But when Tommy is shown lying on the ground, he has four bullet holes in his back.
Correction: There could be a difference between different editions. I've seen the movie on DVD and heard four distinct shots.
Corrected entry: When Andy is carving his name in the wall towards the beginning the "A" is different when they show it at the end.
Correction: The first A Andy starts to carve results in a lump of cement being torn out of the wall, giving him the idea of digging the tunnel. He starts carving his name on the wall elsewhere later, and that's the one you see at the end of the film.
Corrected entry: Right before Tommy talks to the warden, an officer comes and gets him while he is mopping. The sun is shining through a window on him while he is mopping but when he goes outside it is night time.
Correction: All light looks artificial, like the ceiling light in the hallway.
Corrected entry: When placed in solitary confinement Andy tells the warden that "everything stops", meaning that he intends to stop working on the corrupt financial schemes in operation at the prison. Why on earth would an intelligent man like Andy Dufresne make such a threat? There is no hint that he is bluffing, even though he must surely know that he cannot meaningfully threaten the warden, a man who has absolute power over life and death in the prison and even that is beside the point! The financial schemes operated by Andy are there to ensure HIS prosperity, not that of the warden. "Stopping everything" would deprive him of the key to his new life in Mexico. By the time he is sentenced to solitary confinement Andy's escape plans are very advanced; he must be at least two thirds of the way through the prison wall by that stage. His picking up the funds deposited in false names in banks throughout the area is an absolutely essential part of his escape to Mexico and it would be pointless and stupid for him to endanger it in any way, or even to threaten to do so. It is essential that he stays in his "one bunk Hilton" and maintains his access to the warden's financial dealings, and he would know that.
Correction: Rubbish. Andy is a highly intelligent man who has made complex and far reaching plans for his future. The warden has already arranged one murder - why stop there? Andy would keep his mouth shut.
Correction: It's not just because he was thrown in solitary. His friend was also just killed by the guards and Andy knows it was a set up. He was helping Tommy get an education and taken a mentor role over him. They had grown close and he was legit making a difference in someone's life. Only to then be thrown in solitaire and have this friend killed. He was emotionally destroyed by this and was the tipping point.
Correction: This is the edited for TV version. The original version cuts to graphic shots of blood coming from Tommy's wounds. When these scenes are edited out for television, the gun seems to have been fired more quickly.
Phixius ★