The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993)

56 mistakes - chronological order

(32 votes)

Revealing mistake: Just after the opening murder scene, there's a shot of a Chicago Police van responding with blue lights flashing. If you look closely at the roof lights between the beacon on the right side of the roof you can see a sign "FILM2" stuck to the bar. (00:01:55)

Continuity mistake: In the flashbacks seen at the start of the film, Charles Nichols introduces Kimble to Alec Lentz. When this flashback is revisited later in the film, when Kimble breaks into Frederick Sykes' house, the words and actions of Nichols and Lentz are slightly different to what was seen earlier in the film. (00:04:15 - 01:24:55)

mightymick

Continuity mistake: During the bus accident, Richard Kimble is handcuffed. When the bus is falling, you can see that he has no handcuffs on, but then when he asks the guard to uncuff him again, he has them back on. (00:16:20)

Other mistake: When Harrison Ford is being chased in an ambulance by the police, there is a shot of police cars heading towards the waterfalls in the background. If you look closely, the water is not moving. (00:33:15)

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

Suggested correction: The water IS moving, you just need to look closely.

The Fugitive mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Kimble goes back to the hospital as a janitor to check the hospital computer, the lady working in the lab is wearing two different dresses. (01:05:15)

Revealing mistake: During the St. Patrick's Day parade, Kimble removes his coat. In the next scene, he hasn't got the coat anymore, and he HASN'T dropped it. Don't be fooled. If you look to his right in the scene just after he takes it off, you can see a man carrying a coat that is the exact same colour and design. I assume this guy is supposed to be hiding the coat from view, but you can plainly see it. The guy is wearing a green hat. Kimble had no time to give it to him before the scenes changed. (01:23:25)

The Fugitive mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: After Sykes shoots the Transit Cop on the "L" Richard pulls the emergency brake, and in the following shot facing Richard as the train screeches in flashes of darkness, the reflection of a crew member quickly becomes visible on the glass window beside Richard. (01:47:45)

Super Grover

Continuity mistake: When Kimble is on the moving train, Sykes mysteriously appears from a door when he wasn't there before. (02:00:00)

Character mistake: Kimble has just finished talking on the phone with his lawyer when the cops hear the noise in the background. They figure out the sound is that of an El-Train. They then start to list the different places that have an El. One of the cities they name is Milwaukee - there has never been an El-Train there.

Continuity mistake: Kimble dyes his hair very dark to escape detection and dyed hair fades over time. For the rest of the movie his hair noticeably goes from darker shades to lighter shades and back again showing that the scenes were shot non-sequentially on different days with a fair amount of time in between.

Other mistake: When Kimble takes the elevator to the conference to confront Dr. Nichols, he presses a button, but the one beside it is the one that actually lights up. In this particular elevator, the button he pressed is the one that should have lit up.

Continuity mistake: After Richard Kimble first escapes they say he is near Route 15 and Interstate 57 heading towards Berkeley Dam. All these places exist, but Barkley Dam (Kentucky) is around a hundred miles away from these two roads (Illinois), and besides, Berkeley Dam looks nothing like what they show in the movie.

Continuity mistake: When the bus full of prisoners rolls down the embankment, it finishes up lying parallel to the train track. Yet in the next scene, the bus is clearly lying across the train track.

Other mistake: When Dr. Nichols hits Dr. Kimble with a chair, look carefully. As Dr. Nichols swings the chair, it starts falling apart before it even makes contact with Harrison.

Visible crew/equipment: During the chase scene in the access tunnels under the dam, there are several shots where the camera is in front of Harrison Ford moving backwards, showing him as he runs from Tommy Lee Jones. You can see the tracks that the camera dolly is riding on.

Audio problem: If you listen carefully to the conversation Kimble has with his lawyer, he says "St. Louis" differently in the live version and the police recording, indicating the crew may have used two different recordings.

Other mistake: After Kimble has been rescued from the train wreck and unchained, he escapes, running alongside a body of water. As Gerard announces to the other officers that there's a fugitive on the loose and gives instructions, Kimble is seen running again, in a replay of the earlier shot. Not only are all the same landmarks in place, but at the end of both sequences, he moves his arm to shake off a branch that's snagged him.

Audio problem: When the cops are monitoring Kimble's phone call to his lawyer, Gerrard says, "That's a guy on a PA in the background", or something similar. During the actual phone call that Kimble makes, their is no PA audible in the scene at all.

Continuity mistake: When Richard Kimble and the one armed man are fighting in the train, it shows from the outside of the train the one armed man stumbling backward. It shows his "prosthetic" hand grabbing for the pole.

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Trivia: After his escape, it shows Harrison getting on a train marked with the name "Kimball" and then in the next shot, a helicopter flies over a hotel called "Harrison".

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Question: When Kimble is in the hospital with the boy he changes the diagnosis to what? I have tried to look but it cuts away as he's writing it down on the boy's file.

Answer: Kimble is watching as the doctor, Al, looks at the chest film and states "possible fractured sternum, he's stable," and we can see Kimble's very bothered by that. Then Kimble is told to take the boy to observation room 2. When Kimble questions the boy and looks at the chest film, Kimble ignores what he was told, and instead heads directly for the surgical OR. In the elevator he draws a line over the incorrect essential diagnosis: "depress chest w/ poss fr" (possible fracture), and begins to write "Ao," then he scribbles a signature on the Patient of Dr line. The essential diagnosis Kimble writes is presumably an Aortic trauma - a life-threatening critical injury and requires immediate attention. So when Kimble brings the boy to the OR (instead of observation room 2) for the immediate emergency surgery, he tells the doctor the boy was sent up from downstairs. The child is then taken to operating room 4, STAT, thus saving the child's life.

Super Grover

Its a pneumothorax, is air trapped between the lung and the ribcage and it's very common.

Answer: When Richard changes the diagnosis, the first thing he writes down is "AO" which is medical shorthand for aorta. Many people who have medical degrees and saw the movie speculate that Joel had an aortic tear. This would cause blood to flow into the chest cavity making it difficult to breathe and with the impact from the crash it could have caused the fatal injury. An aortic tear requires immediate surgery and by changing Joel's diagnosis, Kimble was able to save his life.

Answer: The presumption is the boy was misdiagnosed and he changed the chart to the correct diagnosis. The doctor says later that he saved the boy's life. Most likely he changed the charge to order specific tests.

Answer: It's never specified what he changed the orders to, nor is it important to know. This was done only add to the plot where the other doctor noticed him looking at the X-ray, arousing her suspicion, then creating suspense as Kimble barely escapes from the hospital.

raywest

We know it isn't important know, it's just a point of curiosity.

True and if you notice that's the always reliable Julianne Moore as the other doctor. This was the first movie that she did that was lampooned in Mad magazine, the next would be Mocking Jay Part 1.

Rob245

"The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and "Hannibal" were both lampooned by Mad before "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1."

Bishop73

I totally get that you're curious about it. Just saying that filmmakers usually aren't concerned with showing small details like that. They use broader strokes to tell the story.

raywest

A lot of film makers do put in small details into their work. Yes, some are lazy, for example, repeating 1 or 2 paragraphs in a news article too look like they whole page is filled. Others take time to have the whole thing filled out, even adding funny things for the viewer who paused the video to read. This is why there's a lot of trivia entries and questions about what something small was or meant. A casual viewer wouldn't know if what they saw meant something or was the film makers being lazy.

Bishop73

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