How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Revealing mistake: After the Grinch burns down the Christmas tree in the middle of town and right before they bring out the new one, the Grinch is about to make his escape in the Dump it to Crumpit. The Grinch makes a wide eyed face and you can see he isn't wearing his green and yellow contacts. (00:59:15)

Revealing mistake: When the mayor has his head shaved by the Grinch, Clint Howard grabs the clippers and shaves his own head down the middle. His hair is yanked off his head before he even moves his hand. Even better in slow motion.

Revealing mistake: When the Grinch is powering up his sled, he's turning on switches. The circular display is dark, then turns on during the process. If you look closely, you see the grid and the big black arrow on it before it is lit up.

Movie Nut

Revealing mistake: When the Grinch is accepting the Holiday Cheermeister award, Jim Carrey holds up his hand and his palm is facing the camera and you can see the piece of his suit has been slipped over his thumb to make it green and furry.

Revealing mistake: During several of the scenes on the mountain you can tell that the rocks are made of some sort of soft material because you can see them crumple when the Grinch gets near them.

Revealing mistake: As the saw cuts around the Christmas tree, before it falls through the floor, you can see a faint line where the saw tracks around to cut the floor.

Movie Nut

Continuity mistake: After the Grinch unscrews the light bulb in the town Christmas tree, all the lights in the town go dark and the Grinch starts to take off in his sled-thing. When they show a close up of him, the lights are on. Then a few seconds later, the lights are off again.

More mistakes in How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The Grinch: Those Whos are hard to frazzle, Max. But, we did our worst, and that's all that matters.

More quotes from How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Trivia: When the Grinch takes the table cloth from the table, everything on the table was supposed to fall off. When Jim Carrey yanked out the cloth however, everything stayed in place. Jim immediately walked back to the table and improvised knocking everything off and then knocking the table over.

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

Suggested correction: There is no evidence this was a mistake.

There's an apparent scan of an original script on scriptslug.com that indicates the scene, as written, had him pulling the cloth without disturbing anything, then kicking the table over.

Direct link to the page of the script referenced: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/how-the-grinch-stole-christmas-2000.pdf?v=1729114926#page=81.

More trivia for How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Question: In the beginning, there is a watchman that announces "Another minute closer to Christmas!" as each minute ticks off a countdown clock. Assuming that each panel (days, hours minutes) is on a revolving wheel of some sort, how can the three wheels work correctly in such close proximity to each other? Granted, only the minutes part moves for the sake of the story, but it still begs the question.

Movie Nut

Answer: By machine.

The clock in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is designed for cinematic effect; a real-world counterpart would rely on precise gearing and engineering to allow three separate wheels to operate in close proximity without interfering with each other. The key would be in the gear ratios and the alignment of the gears to ensure smooth operation of each panel.

More questions & answers from How the Grinch Stole Christmas