Continuity mistake: When Indy is in the cliff reaching for the grail, his hand swaps between clean, dusty and sweaty, between shots.
Continuity mistake: Henry tells Indy "let it go" and Indy takes his left arm to where his father is. Half a second later his arm is away and he repeats the previous movement.
Continuity mistake: When the grail falls down the cliff and Elsa and Indy try to grab it, the ground it lies on is either yellow or brown. This changes back and forth and has nothing to do with lighting.
Continuity mistake: While being chased by the plane, Dr. Jones faces backwards and cries "This is intolerable!", then faces forward and ducks. From the immediate wide angle he is still facing backwards.
Continuity mistake: During the escape from the Nazis the Jones boys pass through a boathouse and Indy sets a small boat loose with the engine running to distract them. When he releases the boat the motor (and boat) is turning to the starboard side (which would turn the boat straight back into the bank), but when the Nazis arrive, the boat is running perfectly straight down the river.
Continuity mistake: When Indy and his father take the car from the old man, you can see that viewed from behind Henry is the driver and Indy is next to him. In the next shot, they have changed positions and Indy is now driving the car.
Continuity mistake: After Indy and Elsa exit the catacombs through a sewer and start to run away, a woman in pink turns her head to watch them leave and then turns around to see Kazim's men run after the couple. A frame later, from a new angle, the woman's head is turned 45° facing downwards.
Continuity mistake: Sallah rescues Dr. Jones from the tank and stops by the cliff. On the next wide angle he's nowhere around.
Continuity mistake: Indy stops his sidecar at a crossroad, meters ahead of a house. When the angle changes he is now several meters behind.
Continuity mistake: During the crashes by the border control the road keeps swapping from sunny to shadowy back and forth in less than 3 seconds.
Continuity mistake: When Marcus watches the carbon copy of the shield, his ice-bag is on the table, but when the angle changes he has it next to his head and seconds later he puts it on the table. Also, the ashtray moves backwards between shots.
Continuity mistake: On the tank, Indy is punched and the gun falls inside. His hat also falls off, but a shot later it's back on, perfectly tucked in.
Continuity mistake: After Dr. Jones fires at the jeep two soldiers fly towards the tank, but when the angle changes they're falling away from the tank.
Continuity mistake: Inside the temple, when Indy is at the cliff, in the close-ups the rocks next to him are round shaped, but in the wide angle they are straight and stripped.
Continuity mistake: By the cliff, Dr. Jones hugs Indy, whose jacket is down at waist level. When Dr. Jones leaves, Indy collapses on his knees and now the jacket is perfectly placed over his shoulders.
Continuity mistake: By the border, when the German soldier's been knocked off by Indy and his bike rides alone, he suddenly disappears from the side of the road. (01:02:10)
Continuity mistake: When Indy leaves the steering wheel to stop the baddie on his motorboat, he passes by a metal turret twice in less than half a second.
Continuity mistake: During the fight on the tank, Indy punches a German who falls on the wheel and whose hat falls near the turret. When the angle changes the hat is in front of him, but when he falls off the tank the hat is gone.
Continuity mistake: The plane explodes at the exit of the tunnel. A frame later the exit is clean and the small remains are scattered around.
Continuity mistake: When Indy and Elsa encounter the rats, hundreds of them block the way, making Indy lift up his legs. However, a frame later, when Elsa starts to walk, those rats have disappeared.
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