Plot hole: The first time they communicate with the "entity" in the spaceship, they find a correspondence between numbers sent by the entity and letters of the alphabet. The entity presents itself as "Jerry". Later on, the entity tells Dustin Hoffman, "Stop calling me Jerry" - and then Dustin Hoffman realizes that the number-letter correspondence was wrong, and the actual name of the entity was "Harry". But if that is true, how could they have communicated without problems before? The very first word that the entity used was "hello", which would have to be displayed wrong, since it begins with an "h" and has an "e".
Sphere (1998)
1 plot hole
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Liev Schreiber, Queen Latifah, Sharon Stone, Peter Coyote
Continuity mistake: When Norman is running through the spaceship, he runs through a doorway and you get a glimpse of his facemask. It's dry. After going through water to get to the spaceship, wouldn't there be water on it? (00:43:10)
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: On the first visit to the spacecraft, we're told there's heat coming from it. There's no water on the masks of the team during that visit either. If there's enough heat for them to feel it at that depth, it's easily plausible that there's enough heat to dry their masks.
Norman Goodman: What is it, Harry?
Dr. Harry Adams: Take a look. It's chipped.
Captain Harold C. Barnes: Alright, it's chipped - so what?
Dr. Harry Adams: Well I thought you said this thing wouldn't damage when it crashed and that this titanium alloy was so superstrong there's no way you can hurt it.
Captain Harold C. Barnes: I did.
Dr. Harry Adams: So how come it chips when this scientist just bangs on it with a hammer?
Question: After what seems like several hours of conversation between the crew and "Jerry", did the letters J and E occur in the text before the sentence "Don't call me Jerry" appeared and Dustin Hoffman realised the translation was wrong? I haven't watched the film a second time but surely we see words that contain J and E and still make perfect sense?
Answer: It's been a while, but as I remember it, this is explained better in the book. If I remember it correctly, since the translation program was made by Harry, he subconsciously added a section that simply mistranslated "Harry" to "Jerry". That doesn't mean every H became a J or anything like that. It only affected that word.
Answer: I did not read the book but I will say from just watching the movie I believe Jerry was changed to Harry during the duration of the movie with the idea that Norman wanted to believe Harry was the cause of all the problems. That is why we do not see a random J in all the words that needed an H earlier in the move. Or it was a giant error on the directors part but there were a lot of unanswered questions in the move.
Answer: The "Harry" is "Jerry" has little to do with transposed letters. Norman is a psychiatrist, so by nature he likes to talk to discover new information. The entire conversation is Norman's subconscious thoughts being projected on the computer so that Norman can do his job of being the psychiatrist and talk to an entity. He has no other reason of being there. Norman is basically talking to himself. So in psychoanalysis Norman has to find a twist, which is My name is not Jerry. Ted and Harry didn't mess up the code they are too smart.