The Butterfly Effect

Corrected entry: After Evan has convinced Kaylee's father not to make the "Robin Hood" Movie his next intervention is when he gives the shard to Lenny, who kills Kaylee's brother with it. In the alternate reality resulting from this killing the "Robin Hood" strangely exists again (as "prostitute" Kayley tells when talking to Evan), although this intervention earlier in the timeline should not have been affected by the second intervention. And strangely, after the third intervention that makes Evan lose his arms (and that is again placed after the basement intervention) Kayley seems happy again as if the movie has not been made.

Correction: Crack whore Kayley never mentions having been molested by her father. All she says is: "Go back to when I'm seven and fuck me in front of Daddy's video camera. Straighten me out a bit. " This refers to the fact that Evan just told her (offscreen) that, originally, she had been molested and then he has undone it in a new timeline. Kayley in the timeline where she's a crack whore didn't experience abuse by her father. (The reason she's so screwed up is because her brother was killed, she got a scar on her face and then interacted with the wrong people.) So, she tells Evan to go back and DO have sex with her in that situation that he once prevented. She sarcastically remarks that maybe this situation would actually make her life better.

Corrected entry: When the children are 13, they go to the cinema to see the film "Se7en". When "Se7en" was released it was given an "R" rating, meaning no-one under 17 would be permitted entry without an accompanying adult. Thus, they should not have been able to see that film.

Correction: Since when does a movie theatre actually enforce that rating? Many kids can also buy for one movie and walk into another. Also, the rating system isn't law, so the theatre doesn't have to enforce it if they don't want to.

moviemogul

Correction: Tommy is a sadistic child at this time. So him going to see a movie that he shouldn't see is probably the least of his worries. Also, he told his sister to get that look off her face before they get busted which could imply that they lied to someone or doing something illegal.

Correction: Also, at the time children under 17 only needed an adult to purchase the tickets, not accompany them into the movie. That changed in 1999, Se7en came out in 95.

Corrected entry: After Evan goes back in time and accidentally causes the death of Kayleigh with the blockbuster, he ends up being placed in a mental institution for the remainder of his life. When he awakes in this timeline and asks for his journal, the doctor explains that he has asked for them before, but that they did not exist. However, the Evan that grew up in that mental institution shouldn't have any memory of traveling in time, and using those journals to do so. After a blackout, young Evan never remembers what happens during the blackout or why those journals are so important so the doctor should be hearing about these non-existent journals for the first time.

Correction: We aren't shown everything that happens in Evan's life when he changes the past. It's quite likely that he does remember what happens after he changes the outcome of a blackout, but obviously doesn't bring it up to anybody, or else they'd think he's crazy. Being in a mental hospital, they already know he's crazy, and the journals are the only way to fix it, so of course he would demand them whenever he could.

Knever

Corrected entry: When Evan is in the prison, he goes back to when Tommy burns his dog. He wakes up a few minutes before the incident and finds something for Lenny to cut open the sack with, however Evan had not blacked out at this point at the beginning of the movie; he had only blacked out later after he lunged for Tommy. (01:16:50 - 01:18:45)

Correction: The whole point of this movie is that Evan can change the past. He typically goes back to times that he remembers having blacked out only because he figured out that's why he blacked out and he wants to see what happened during his memory lapse. This does not mean he is limited to only returning to his past during those periods.

Phixius

Corrected entry: In Evan's final attempt to change the past he scares Kayleigh away and they lived happily. In the rush of new memories it shows what happened to Kayleigh's family. These memories are something he shouldn't have because he never saw them anymore.

Correction: Those are not his memories. The clips are just there to show the audience how Kayleigh's life turned out without Evan.

Andreas[DK]

Corrected entry: Evan is in his prison cell trying to convince Carlos to help him. He goes back in time to when he got in trouble for the picture, to smash his hands on the teachers note holders giving him the stigmata marks needed to convince Carlos. Before, when Evan 'does' get in trouble for the picture when he was 'actually' younger, stabbing his hands never happened. Evan only blacks out when he is young because he goes back in time at that moment in the future when he is older; at no point did Evan go back in time just to draw a picture.

Correction: Incorrect. Evan can go back to any time he chooses to. He just needs to remember a "key event" in his past to go back there. He mainly goes back to times he "blacks out" because he can easily remember those "key events". Getting into trouble for the drawing is one of those "key events" he can recall the memory of easily.

XIII

Corrected entry: In the first scene where Evan is writing his final note before watching the home-made movie and he's reading out loud he speaks the words slowly, but in the second scene, near the end, he's talking much faster. It is supposed to be the same scene both times.

Correction: Yes this is true, but if you noticed that, then you must have noticed that the first time that scene is played, the whole thing is slower. If you have the dvd, listen to the audio commentary and you will here the co-writers/co-directors say that the first time is slower, and that its done on purpose.

Corrected entry: During the scene where Evan kills Tommy, Evan is moving around pretty well for someone who just got bashed in the gut with a steel pipe.

Correction: I could assume that with all of the repressed hate, fear, and anger Evan had against Tommy the pure adrenaline could make him forget about the pain for a few seconds.

Corrected entry: Evan lives his childhood and has several blackouts in which events happen that he does not remember. We later find out that as an adult he goes back in time with the use of his journals and live out said blackouts. Ignoring the problem with his hand scars, he goes back and relives each blackout, except for one. When Kayleigh's father makes Kayleigh and Evan presumptively have sex with each other (thereby scarring Kayleigh in the first timeline), we never see Evan actually go back in time and sleep with her (for good reason). He goes back to that blackout, but he never has sex with her. So how did that happen? Did he live that blackout as a child? He never did that for the others; it was the older Evan acting during those times. Perhaps he accidentally went back while sleeping, thought it was a dream, and had sex with her. And they just gloss over it.

Correction: He does go back. But it is shown prior to anything occurs. He tells Kaleigh's father he is being watched. We can assume at this point he stops whatever he was going to do.

MasterOfAll

Corrected entry: When Evan is awakened from his hypnosis session, he has a nosebleed, which is trickling down his face and around the left side of his chin. When the nosebleed began, he was lying on his back, so the blood should run back towards his ear, rather then straight down his chin. As the doctor is trying to wake him, blood is seen to be moving in this direction, so even if more blood had run down his chin after he sat up, the other path should still be visible. (00:18:00)

Correction: Evan was propped up slightly by the back of the couch he was lying on, explaining why the blood ran down his face instead of across it.

Corrected entry: There are two sorts of black outs in Ashton's youth. Ones that are caused by strong traumatic situations (the exploding mailbox, the burning of the dog) and the others are caused by returning to that spot from the future (the kitchen knife, the interview with the father). So, in the first sort of black outs, Ashton alters the past by returning to them (like in Back to the Future), in the second kind, the past is already altered since it's gone, and it contains Ashton's return and its causes from the very beginning (like in 12 Monkeys). Doesn't this seem weird?

Correction: Every blackout Evan has is due to going back in his own lifetime and either altering it or not. The dog burning scene and the exploding mailbox scene are both scenes in which Evan went back, but essentially didn't change anything at first.

LuMaria 1

Corrected entry: In the scene in the basement when Evan is confronting Kayley's father (when he goes back in time), the camera keeps switching shots back and forth between Evan and Kayley's father. The red light on the camera is on the whole time until the end, when he Evan threatens Kayley's father (when he says he is going to castrate him if he messes up).

Correction: The father has his hand on the camera during the whole conversation, so he could have stopped the recording.

Kristal

Corrected entry: When the young Evan is getting the knife to stop the firework, in one shot he is trying to put the knife in his pocket. However, in the next, he has the knife down by his side and is not moving.

SexyIrishLeprechaun

Correction: This is because he heard his mother coming and froze. Then he blacked out the memory, and did not know why he was holding the knife.

wizard_of_gore

Corrected entry: When Evan goes back in time to destroy the "block-buster," he should have gone back to when he was thirteen, not seven. I doubt the father held onto the device for six years.

Correction: The father did keep it for 6 years. That's how the kids got it when they were 13. They remembered where it was from when they were 6.

Corrected entry: When Evan and Thumper are in their dorm room, Evan decides to try going back in time using his journal and Thumper warns him not to because he says that he "might wake up more f*cked up than he already is." Then later in the movie he goes to visit prostitute Kayleigh and tells her that she is the first and last person he has ever told. He must have told Thumper, otherwise he wouldn't have known that Evan could "wake up" after reading his journal.

Correction: Thumper does NOT necessarily know why Evan is reading his journals. He thinks Evan is trying to conduct some kind of therapy or hypnosis, etc., and that is why he says Evan might wake up more F*cked up etc. With Evan being a weird psychology student (growing mice in the dorm room), Thumper might expect some strange behaviours. He does not know that Evan is literally going back in time.

Corrected entry: Evan manipulates people's actions, but nothing in the world around them changes. The only people who seem to be affected are the protagonists. If their lives had changed, even if it was minor. When in the film, it seems to be major lifetime changes that occur. Then there would be a large number of differences to the world that Evan eventually ends up in.

Correction: Not necessarily. If these people were changed it wouldn't have a huge effect on the world since the people aren't very influential to what goes on in the world. If however, he had killed a world leader or someone of high power then it would cause a huge effect.

Corrected entry: After the romantic dinner with Kayleigh, Evan ends up killing Tommy in self defense. The next scene shows Evan in jail. Given the rich crowd he was with and Tommy's criminal past, Evan would have most certainly been able to get out on bail. Even if they held him without bail, he would have been in a holding cell for a few days, where his mother could have easily given him his notebooks.

Correction: As for the comment that the rich crowd he was with would have helped...they all seemed like selfish (expletive deleted) so I doubt they could be counted on....And they obviously fast forwarded past the trial and everything anyway, but he just killed someone so he could have been distraught and not thinking straight, not to mention trying to figure everything out from jumping through time.........

Corrected entry: In the scene where Evan, now in prison, heads towards the gang leaders cell to "make a deal", you can see him walking past several gang members outside, obviously watching over the leaders. Yet when he stabs one of the leaders, picks up his journal and calls for Carlos to help, Carlos runs into the cell from the same side as Evan went in. Surely the gang members outside the cell would have seen Carlos follow Evan towards the cell and stopped him from entering after seeing Evan stab their leader?

Correction: Carlos had been in prison a long time, was a religious man, and wasn't seen as a threat. There was also mass confusion, they probably just didn't see him or pay attention.

Nick Bylsma

Corrected entry: In the scene where Evan wakes up as a frat boy in bed with Kayleigh he falls out of bed; as he hits the ground and in the following second his white boxer shorts move to the side and the result for a second is quite revealing. This was noticed on the DVD and is even more obvious if the film is slowed down slightly. (00:53:00)

Correction: Where is the movie mistake? This is what happens when a guy wears boxer shorts.

Phixius

Corrected entry: According to Tommy's tombstone, he died in April 1995. However, the movie they saw days before his death, Se7en, was not released until September 1995.

Correction: There is no month on Tommy's tombstone, just the years.

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.

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

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

More mistakes in The Butterfly Effect

Kayleigh: Hurry up, I want a quickie before school!

More quotes from The Butterfly Effect

Trivia: When Evan is a frat boy and sees his jacket on the ground before Tommy arrives,. the arms are folded exactly the way his arms are blown up later.

More trivia for The Butterfly Effect

Question: What is the song when Evan is in the lecture room talking with his professor and then he rides his bike to his dorm? Not the Ap2, but it sounds like an electric guitar with distortion and an acoustic guitar.

Answer: The Shazam app on my phone didn't recognize it, so it is probably just some nameless incidental music composed for the movie.

Phaneron

Hear You Me, performed by Jimmy Eat World.

More questions & answers from The Butterfly Effect

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