The Butterfly Effect

Plot hole: When Evan is in jail with the religious prisoner trying to get him to help him get his journals back he goes to the scene where he is drawing that homicidal picture in kindergarten, but he gets up and puts the spikes that holds documents through his hands, creating a stigmata-style scar. The religious guy in the cell with him is so amazed because of this he thinks Evan is a prophet and he decides to help him. If Evan had gone back in time and got those scars on his hands, he would have changed the original timeline and would have arrived in jail with those scars the whole time. Some people try to correct this using the "If I can create scars, then can I fix them?" statement Evan made to defend the mistake and suggest he can create instant scars but he was using the word "scars" to refer to the negative events; not literal scars on his body. The scar he got when he burned himself in the past didn’t magically appear on him the moment he returned from the past; it became part of a new, slightly altered timeline (just like the scars on his hands should have been) and it let him know he can change history.

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Suggested correction: This isn't necessarily a correction so much as a possible explanation. It's possible that the religious inmate (I think his name was Carlos) just simply didn't see the scars on Evan's hands when he first came to the prison in the timeline where he got the scars or Evan knew to hide them in the scar timeline (due to the fact that it was the sole purpose of him going back) and due to his fanaticism he didn't question him a second time.

Nope, after jamming those things in his hands Evan simply came into the prison with the scars already on his hands and would have never thought of showing the religious guy his powers using that particular moment in the past to convince him, or doing what he did a second time as he already had done it. It doesn't matter if the religious guy didn't see them before, they won't be the object of Evan convincing him. He would have had to try it some other way, each and ever time. That how this time travel works and its definitely a plot hole that it worked as it did, whilst it shouldn't have. Of course, it's a time travel movie and they never make sense.

lionhead

Additionally, the inmate was looking at Evan's palms when Evan traveled back, and when he returned to the present, the inmate remarked that the stigmata marks came out of nowhere.

Phaneron

Continuity mistake: When Evan tries to get his journals back from the bullies in the jail, the object that the guy on the bed is reading alternates from a closed copy of Hustler, to a journal and back several times. (01:18:35 - 01:19:20)

SexyIrishLeprechaun

Continuity mistake: When Evan and his mom go to the psychic for a reading, the position of the money in the glass bowl differs depending on camera angle. (Director's cut) (00:40:30)

Super Grover

Continuity mistake: When Ashton Kutcher convinces his jail bunkmate that he is personally in touch with Jesus, by using his journal to cause stigmata to appear on his hands, a stigmata mark can be seen in his right palm before he changes the past (just as he mumbles "tell me if you see anything weird"). (01:17:05)

Continuity mistake: In the final shot of the hypnosis scene we see Evan from above. The blood on his shirt that was visible in the last shot has vanished.

Plot hole: When the frat boy bursts into Evan and Kayleigh's romantic dinner to tell him his car's been trashed, he says he's been looking all over for Evan. But he was sitting right there watching the whole time Even was giving the pledges their instructions for helping him set up the romantic dinner (which necessarily included the exact time and place), so shouldn't he have known where Evan would be?

Revealing mistake: In the scene where Evan wakes up and notices that he has no arms, right when you see the stubs you can see a faint shadow moving next to his head and moving on the headboard. This shadow is the shadow of his hand before it was digitally removed. (00:29:15)

BillyBlake

Continuity mistake: After little Kayleigh picks up the blockbuster, older Evan is now at Sunnyvale Institution. The blankets are not tucked under the mattress, then they are tucked when he gets out of bed, and in the shot from under the bed, as he searches for his journals, the blankets hang down to the floor, yet in the next shot they are not.

Super Grover

Continuity mistake: At Sunnyvale, when Evan bursts into Dr. Redfield's office the Doctor stands up and in the wide shot Dr. Redfield starts to put his books down on the desk, but the way he holds the books differs in the next close-up.

Super Grover

Continuity mistake: When Evan wakes up in a mental ward, after he killed Kaylee, the camera zooms around him in bed, which is in the middle of the room. When he gets up to get his journals, the bed is on the left side of the room against the wall.

Continuity mistake: Now a resident at Sunnyvale, when Evan looks under his bed for his journals, in the shot from under the mattress the blood stains that appear on his white tee differ from the stain in the shots before and after.

Super Grover

Continuity mistake: As the teacher and mom walk by the desk, one of the pink papers is not fully impaled on the spike, but a moment later it is. (00:03:45)

Kristal

The Butterfly Effect mistake picture

Continuity mistake: After Evan beats Tommy to death on the college campus, it shows him kneeling over the body, and there is no blood on his collar. The shot changes to Kayleigh screaming, then back to Evan, in the same position, but now with blood splatter on his collar. He had already finished assaulting Tommy, so there shouldn't have been anymore blood spray. (01:09:25)

Macalou

Continuity mistake: When Evan shows up at Kayleigh's apartment, in the close-up she covers the plate with the newspaper. In the next shot from the doorway the newspaper, bottled water, etc., are positioned very differently. (01:29:35)

Super Grover

Continuity mistake: When armless Evan goes back, the journal, cereal bowl and OJ are visible in a close-up and in the next shot young Evan rushes away from the table. The position of the journal is quite different in the two shots. (01:44:45)

Super Grover

Revealing mistake: Although the film is supposedly set in New York, there is a Canadian speed limit sign in one of the first shots. Across the street which Evan lives on.

Continuity mistake: As Evan eats the burger at the Hilltop Cafe, the bit of burger left in his hand after his last bite differs in the next shot as he puts it down. (01:27:25)

Super Grover

Continuity mistake: When older, armless Evan is sitting in his wheelchair reading the journal entry that says, "Today Mommy is taking me to play with Kayleigh and Tommy." the writing appears to be on the bottom of the journal page. Yet when he goes back to that time, the writing is at the top of the page just as it was in the original scene earlier in the movie. (00:05:30 - 01:44:35)

The Butterfly Effect mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Evan gets his first nosebleed, during the hypnosis session, the blood on his face changes quite a bit as shots change while the doctor is trying to wake him up. One shot shows two streams of blood, another shows only one, and yet another shows hardly any blood at all. (00:18:00)

Jason Treborn: You can't change who people are without destroying who they were.

More quotes from The Butterfly Effect

Trivia: The main character's full name is Evan Treborn. This is very close to "event reborn", which sums up the point of the movie.

More trivia for The Butterfly Effect

Question: I am confused about the second-to-last time travel of Evan where he ends up in the hospital/institution because he killed Kayleigh with the blockbuster. Since Kayleigh died after Evan began journaling (I remember Evan writing about being excited to meet Kayleigh's real dad), what happened to the journals that the doctor says Evan never had them? He must've had a journal with something written in it.

Answer: Yes Evan did write that single entry but this time he was at a disadvantage because in this new reality the younger him had already started the blame game of blaming himself and showing symptoms of being in trauma due to which he was institutionalized that same day the incident in the basement happened. Now about that single entry that he wrote before going to meet Kayleigh's dad, it is shown that in this particular reality as he did not maintain a proper journal after that, it got lost and everybody thought he never even started writing it before the basement incident happened leading to everyone believing there is no journal. This explanation is supported by an incident in the movie where the teenage Evan is making a journal at his attic right after his blackout with the blockbuster and Larry being admitted where he finds a box with his grandfather's death certificate and some weird photos in that attic. Later when he is institutionalized and asks for the journals from the doctor the doctor also tells him how his father kept asking for a photo album, suggesting his father also ended up in that institution by jumping realities and ending up in one where his photo got lost and he couldn't reach them anymore (the same photos Evan had found earlier in that attic). So his father got stuck in that institution and he didn't even have a of his birth like Evan did. Unlike his father, Evan got the video of his birth where he was able to stop himself from being born just like his two earlier brothers who reached the same conclusion and were shown in the movie as still births.

rupal

Answer: My assumption is that Evan didn't have black outs after that incident. In the first "future" he said "seven years with no blackouts." So in that alternate future, he must have stopped having blackouts much earlier (at 7 years old) and stopped the journals earlier too.

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