Corrected entry: When Elsa and Jones are in the catacombs, Elsa says that the Christians would have dug their own passages and burial chambers centuries later, so the knight shouldn't be with those tombs. However, the Crusades spread Catholicism, so the knight should be with the Christians.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Indy and Elsa are under an overturned casket in the burning catacombs and Indy is swimming with his eyes open looking for an exit, wouldn't his eye be burning since it is petroleum he is swimming in? When he comes up for air he doesn't seem bothered by it.
Correction: Petroleum floats on water. If all the liquid in the catacombs was petroleum, the entire block would have exploded in a gigantic fireball when the guardians lit it a bit later. So Indy was under the layer of petrol when he opened his eyes.
Corrected entry: In the scene where Indy and Kasim are fighting on the speedboat while it is being chopped up by the propeller of a ship, the windscreen on the boat is upright, and just as Indy says to Kasim " why are you trying to kill us?" the windscreen is lying flat.
Corrected entry: When Indiana Jones picks up the Holy Grail, he says "That's the cup of a carpenter." Harrison Ford was a carpenter before becoming an actor.
Correction: First off, this happens to be more of a coincidence than trivia since the Holy Grail belonged to Jesus Christ, and English translations of the Bible refer to Jesus as a carpenter. Plus, Harrison Ford was an actor before becoming a carpenter. He didn't become a carpenter until the 1970's when he needed to support his family, which he felt he wasn't able to do with his acting career.
Corrected entry: When Indy is desperately trying to rescue his father during the desert tank chase, he successfully explodes one of the tank's cannon barrels, but then becomes (impossibly) entangled on the exploded barrel by his bag strap. Indy even dangles his entire weight from the strap for a couple of shots. For the Indiana Jones films, Indy's bag is and always has been a government-issue gas mask bag, made of raw canvas with decidedly weak cotton seam stitching (the gas mask bags were never expected to last more than a few years in service). For the movies, the bag's actual canvas web strap was replaced with a 60" length of seasoned and durable bridle leather (which can easily support the full weight of an adult human). The problem is not the strength of the leather strap; rather, the problem is the strength of the canvas bag stitching. The bag's strap attachments were never designed or fabricated to support full body weight, so the bag stitching should have ripped out immediately (and fatally) when Indy dangled from the cannon barrel.
Correction: The fact that Indy has had this bag since at least 8 years before they were produced notwithstanding, it's obvious he replaced the strap himself with something more durable due to the rough nature of his work as an explorer and archaeologist. It stands to reason that he used a much more durable thread and stitch when he did this for the same reason.
Corrected entry: In the tank scene, a German fires a bullet which hits the tank driver and he falls on to the controls, turning the tank. As almost everyone in the tank is dead/unconscious nobody would move the body so the tank should go round in circles.
Correction: Henry Jones Sr and Marcus Brody were in the tank when this happened and they weren't killed nor knocked out. It is likely that they moved the body.
Senior and Marcus are consistently depicted as totally useless in practical situations. They get out and there's no indication that they contributed anything like that off camera. The original mistake should stand?
Corrected entry: You can't swim in petroleum. The human body is much denser (and thus, would sink like a brick) when you would try to swim in it. Not only that, but the fumes above it are toxic, so you would also die of poisoning.
Correction: Yes, the human body is more dense than petroleum, however it doesn't necessarily mean you'll sink like a brick. You also need to take into account a person's body mass, fat distribution, and lung capacity, all of which make it possible to swim for short periods of time in oil. As for the inhalation of the fumes, the toxic effects are not likely to manifest immediately. People have been purposely inhaling gasoline, glue, aerosols and other hydrocarbons for years, and it takes long term exposure to cause death.
Although, any ingestion of petroleum can cause immediate affects, such as nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and it would intensely burn your eyes if you got any in them. Speaking from experience.
They were in Venice. It is likely the tunnel was at or below water level. The petroleum is able to float on the surface of water. It is possible they would be able to swim underneath the layer of petroleum.
Corrected entry: When Indie rescues his father and shoots the Germans, the one that he pushed over stayed on the floor. Surely being pushed over couldn't have caused him that much damage.
Correction: He probably stayed down to avoid getting shot, since that's what happened to the others.
I checked the scene just now - the guard who has some lines is taken out without any sort proper fight. I ask you, Mitchell and Webb excepted, when do Nazi henchmen EVER decide to take it easy and live to tell the tale instead? At any rate, he's taking a huge risk that the Joneses won't sway the gun on him for good measure.
I get that it's a grey area, but as mentioned elsewhere it's about plausibility, and whether things get/stay corrected or not is largely governed by up/downvotes in terms of whether people reading the mistakes or "mistakes" think that a correction is plausible or not. Someone's jacket disappearing between shots might be them choosing to rapidly remove it, but that's unlikely. A guard staying down during a fight might be knocked out or woozy or cowardly, or yes, simply a plot convenience, but depending on the context it's hard to state which with certainty. But also as mentioned elsewhere, discussions like this are best reserved for the Discord server rather than the comments, because this area wasn't really built for a back and forth, or question and answer session, not least as it clutters the site a bit - more just meant for corrections/rebuttals for specific entries! So I'll delete this thread in due course, but please do head over there and there'll no doubt be some more input.
@Jon I promise that this is the last comment in this space then - but - what I've seen a few times now, is someone correcting a mistake with great confidence. Only, I had just seen the movie, so I knew it was wrong (right arm IS visible, Brody is NOT in Egypt, etc). But other people might vote it up nevertheless, because it has a nice definite ring to it. In other words, people can really muddy the waters by entering an inaccurate correction. Or if not, then it becomes a back and forth. : (.
Corrected entry: In the motorbike chase after the rescue of Indy's dad from the castle, you can see how they pass the border between Austria and Germany. The guardhouse is waving the Austrian flag. Austria however ceased to exist as a sovereign state after the annexation by Germany in March 1938. Looking at the weather it rather seems to be spring than winter. Therefore there would no longer be a guard at the border nor a guard house waving the Austrian flag.
Correction: The "anschluss" of Austria didn't happen overnight, although it did happen rather quickly. However, the people of Austria were not immediately integrated into Germany, for example the Jews were first to be subjected to the Nuremberg laws. Its safe to assume border guards stayed put during all of 1938 to prevent attempts of "unwanted" people entering Germany. The flag of Austria also couldn't have been replaced by the official flag of Ostmark until later in 1938. So during spring, which the movie probably takes place, the Austrian flag is still used on various places, especially unimportant ones like a small border post.
Corrected entry: When Indy kicks the near-skeletal form of Donovan against a wall, you can see that Donovan has part of his shirt on his arm. When Donovan smashes into a wall in the next shot, there is no shirt.
Correction: As you even said, he had part of his shirt on his arm. He is very quickly decaying and you see his clothes deteriorate and fall apart. There is also a strong wind blowing, that is pushing the clothes off his body. So, it's quite plausible, that when they switch to the scene where he's flying back, against the wall, that his clothes have completely dissolved and all that remained was his skeleton.
Corrected entry: When Indy gets on the plane to go to Venice, the map traces his route from New York City. But when he first set out in Raiders of the Lost Ark - when he was working with Denholm Elliot at the same university - the map showed him starting out from California.
Correction: The fact that the map starts tracking his journey from a different starting point doesn't make it a mistake. He could have gone to New York for any number of reasons before setting out.
Corrected entry: Three people involved in this film have won the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. They are George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and Sean Connery.
Correction: So what? I'm sure that it's not unique in that regard. Trivia is about the film, not about coincidences relating to those who made it.
Corrected entry: When Indy and Elsa are back at the hotel after the boat accident, Elsa's room is wrecked. How did Indy not know she wrecked it herself or hear her wrecking it? He was only 2 doors down. He could hear the music playing in the bathroom but not her trashing her own room. He should have known she did it when she came out the bathroom surprised. Seriously, how can you be in the bathroom and not hear someone trashing your hotel room?
Correction: If the music was loud enough for him to hear it, it would have been loud enough to cover up the noise.
Corrected entry: When a second "volunteer" gets to the first challenge, he looks down and sees a body lying on the floor with its head lying next to it. Yet when he gets decapitated, his head flies off and rolls about 10 meters, before finally being stopped by a rock. (01:40:55)
Correction: Considering that this "Booby Trap" was built about 1000 years ago and was powered by gears, you could assume that it wouldn't be precise enough to cut at the exact same speed each time it was tripped. So, each time someone walked through the trap and their head was sliced off it wouldn't land in the same place each time.
Corrected entry: When Indiana finally breaks through the giant 'X' on the library floor, he simply pops out the remaining marble in that area. In reality, the marble "tiles" would have been held together by some sort of cement joint, rendering it impossible for him to remove a neat square of marble without using some sort of cutting tool first. (00:29:55)
Correction: the pieces were meant as a secret door.
Corrected entry: In the library scene, the Grail Protectors hit Marcus in the head and drag him. What kind of spies/soldiers/agents are they if they didn't find the grail diary on Marcus's pocket? Surely the book would be interesting to them, since it contains lots of directions to find the grail...
Correction: The Protectors have a much higher priority - eliminating Indy and Ilsa before they can find the directions to the Grail. They've got no reason to search the unconscious Marcus - it would simply waste time. There's no indication that they know about Henry's Grail diary, so they wouldn't know to look for it.
Corrected entry: Both this movie and the first one revolve around Hitler's fascination with the occult. In reality, Hitler only had a mild interest with spiritual matters. Heinrich Himmler was the one with the strong interest in such things.
Correction: We never see that it is literally Hitler ordering these missions, though the non-German characters generalize that Hitler is pursuing them. Someone within his administration, like Himmler, could be carrying these out without specific approval and the Americans would assume that it is Hitler's orders. Actions of a country are attributed to that country's leader.
Corrected entry: How did the Coronado-guys manage to come after Indy so quickly? He had a horse, while they had a car, and they certainly couldn't drive it in that rocky landscape, so they would have to run some distance on foot.
Corrected entry: When River Phoenix first finds the whip in the car with the lion. He uses the whip, hits himself in the chin and is bleeding, the camera flashes to the lion, and when it flashes back, he is bleeding down the other side of his chin.
Correction: In both of these shots, and the others in the lion's car, he is bleeding from a diagonal cut that runs down the left side of his chin.
Corrected entry: Once Indy gets past the blades, he stops them and shouts that he is through, once past the "Leap of Faith", he throws sand on the bridge to make it visible. But what about the "Word of God" device? Indy does not shout what to do, and as pointed out, Donovan & Elsa didn't know what else was in the book (about the final challenge). They didn't even know that the second device was called the "Word of God". Unless she took a wild guess that they had to spell Iehovah...
Correction: After Indy climbs back up after mistakenly stepping on the J, and as he figures out he needs to step on the I, Elsa and Donovan can be seen watching him from behind, next to the blades from the first challenge. He didn't need to tell them how to get through it because they were standing right there.
Correction: When they go in Elsa sees pagan symbols on the catacombs. She says that the Christians would have dug their own passages, and Indy says that the knight will be with them, meaning the Christians. There's nothing wrong with what they say.