Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade

Continuity mistake: When the Hatay soldier is decapitated in an attempt to navigate the temple's defences, his head rolls along the ground and Elsa turns her head around and looks over her shoulder. In the next shot, she has now turned her full body around, and in the shot after that, she is looking over her shoulder again.

Continuity mistake: When Elsa's hand slips from its glove whilst Indy is holding on to her, Elsa falls and she is holding the glove in her right hand, but when she falls into the chasm, the glove has gone.

Revealing mistake: During the castle scene, when Indy is swinging outside, the sky is clear and blue and obviously not rainy, yet it is still raining. And yes, sometimes it can rain when it's sunny, but take a look - it is NOT rainy weather.

Continuity mistake: When Elsa is looking out over the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, the sun is low - it is close to sunset. However when Indy is riding through the very narrow canyon, the sunlight reaches the bottom. It is not the same time of day (or later the same day).

Jacob La Cour

Revealing mistake: After the Nazi tank drives off of the cliff and hits the bottom, the upper turret breaks off. As the turret rolls over, you can see there is no hole in the bottom, just in the top.

Revealing mistake: When Indy and Kazim are fighting on the front of the boat, the front of the boat doesn't move at all when the huge propeller hits the rear of the boat.

Factual error: When Indy and Marcus fly to Venice, the route map shows them going from New York to Botwood, Newfoundland, then from Botwood to the Azores to the continent. There were two transcontinental air routes at the time across the North Atlantic: one from New Work to Botwood to London, and one from New York to the Azores to the continent, but none from Botwood to the Azores. (http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/earlyairnetworks.html).

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When Elsa falls through the crack in the hole, she is swallowed by a big cloud of smoke in the void. However, her silhouette is visible underneath the smoke, revealing she never falls any deeper, and thus giving away how shallow the hole was.

Sacha

Continuity mistake: When Senior is rescued from the tank with a whip around his ankle, the whip dissappears a split second later, when he is being mounted on the horse.

Sacha

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When they are first looking over the cliff at the tank, Sean Connery's beard is quite full, and in a shot moments later, still looking off the cliff, it has been trimmed. This is due to the fact that this scene was filmed after principal photography had ended.

Revealing mistake: When Indy is clinging to the side of the tank turret in the desert, to the right of the tank are tire tracks from the vehicle shooting the scene. They appear to just start at a set point. There was likely no way to hide this.

manthabeat

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

Suggested correction: There's no obvious moment in the film where tire tracks are visible while he's clinging to the side. A specific time or shot description is needed.

Visible crew/equipment: By the cliff, Indy's hat comes rolling towards him. Watch closely and you'll see a long shadow a meter above the ground, parallel to that of the crew member throwing the hat.

Sacha

Other mistake: In the scene with the tanks, Indy rides up beside one with a rock. Watch the gun closely. The end of the one that he is supposed to shove the rock into is wobbling inconsistantly with the rest of the gun, or the tank for that matter.

Revealing mistake: When the VW gets stuck on the front of the tank and is shot off, you can see that the car has no engine, no body in the car, and no clutch. Also, when the car is blown away you can see a wire used for the stunt fall right in front of the camera.

Continuity mistake: The back of the boat gets chewed up by the prop in the same place twice.

Revealing mistake: When Henry says "Faster, boy, faster!" to Indy when they are driving into the tunnel to escape the flaming aircraft, you can see the track that the flaming aircraft is sliding on.

Revealing mistake: When Indy shoots three Nazi soldiers with a single bullet during the tank chase sequence, you can see the blood packets inside their uniforms.

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade mistake picture

Revealing mistake: When the car is chased by a plane and enters a cave, check the rocks above the entrance and you'll notice that both the entrance and exit are the same location and the final shot has been flipped.

Sacha

Factual error: When the soldier from Hatay attempts to pass through the booby trap and his head is chopped off there is no blood. Any wound to the head or neck tends to bleed profusely but the head rolls by without a drop.

More quotes from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade

Trivia: When Indy asks his father how he knew Elsa was a Nazi, Henry replies, "She talks in her sleep." Sean Connery ad-libbed this line. The cast and crew burst out laughing, which resulted in the scene being re-shot. The ad-libbed line remained in the film.

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Question: They didn't make it out of the cave with the grail because they dawdled... I wonder, would someone be able to make it out running at a dead sprint once they crossed the seal? And if so, does that mean that they're home free? Or would disaster follow them outside of the cave?

Answer: The implication is that disaster would follow them outside of the cave as well. It wouldn't make much sense if you could simply outrun the disaster.

BaconIsMyBFF

"Followed by disaster" is a kind of curse, a thing not common in Christianity. It doesn't make much sense anyhow. A seal is just a dot - OK, so let's at least grant that the seal represents a circle that the grail has to stay in. Who decided where those borders are? The grail was taken there during the first crusade. That was closer to 1938 than it was to 33 AD. The three knights could move the grail about then. Why not afterwards? The knights could have built the traps. But the borders could only have been set by god, in an unusually late and completely atypical miracle.

Spiny Norman

There are several examples of curses in the Christian Bible: Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom, the plagues visited upon Egypt, Adam and Eve are cursed for eating fruit from the tree of knowledge, etc. The knights did not move the grail around after finding it, they stayed in the temple for 150 years and then two left leaving the third behind. The great seal and it's restriction was already in place when the knights got there.

BaconIsMyBFF

Where in the movie is that stated? I interpreted the knight's story as them having made that place. Looks like it isn't actually specified. But if God made it, then I submit that he would have used Greek, not Latin, for the stepping stones. (All of those curses are from the old testament. The book where god kills firstborn children as long as they're Egyptian. Grail is by definition new testament where you turn the other cheek. There simply are no curses in the gospel, that's just not how Jesus rolled).

Spiny Norman

The tests were made by the knights, but the seal had God's power in it. Just like the cup.

lionhead

It's still a bit dodgy. What if you take a shovel and dig yourself a back door? Basically this film really excels at stuff that makes no sense but helps the storytelling, or to be precise, creates dramatic effects.

Spiny Norman

Every fictional story is like that in some way. That's why it's called fictional. It's just a story.

lionhead

Not a particularly convincing argument, "stuff happens for no reason all the time", if I may say so. Why is this website even here then? The fact is that some stories are more coherent than others. (♫ "In olden days, a hole in the plot, would seem to matter, quite a lot. Now heaven knows, anything goes..." ♫);).

Spiny Norman

It's the difference in what story they want told. Is it a fairy tale or based on actual events? A huge difference in plausibility between the two. The site is there to look at mistakes, not how believable the story is.

lionhead

It is not set in another universe so plausibility isn't somehow suspended. Maybe take a look at the categories recognised by this website. Plot holes, factual errors, even stupidity. (They? Who are they?).

Spiny Norman

It is set in a fictional universe because it's not a true story. With "they" I mean the writers/director. Mistakes in a plot (plot holes) have nothing to do with how believable the story is. As long as it's plausible, it's not a mistake.

lionhead

Pretty sure it's the same universe, just with some added characters/events. What about the total lack of spaceships or orcs or talking animals for example? The seal business is not a mistake YET, but it's very dodgy because no-one knows how it works or why. Like all Indys "trapped" secret places, it's (among other things) unclear who resets the traps for the next visitor. We can't brush it ALL off as "the hand of god" every time.

Spiny Norman

Huge amounts of stuff in films isn't exhaustively explained. Doesn't mean there isn't an explanation that's perfectly believable. There's zero evidence either way to say how "followed by disaster" would manifest, and just because there's not a thorough explanation doesn't mean that it's "dodgy", and it's not worth bickering about either, because there's no concrete answer either way.

Jon Sandys

OK but I would like to note that not everyone who offers creative explanations has recently seen the movie; some people just invent their own. E.g. "followed by disaster" is not an actual explanation from the movie, it was just one of the suggestions made here and only here. Or the ones on my own question below. All I'm saying is, it's very hard to tell what the "rules" / "logic" of this place are supposed to be, so I understand what the OP was driving at.

Spiny Norman

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