Plot hole: When Hooper and Chief Brody are trying to get the Mayor to re-close the beach after finding Ben Gardner's boat, they fail to mention they also found Ben Gardner's severed head. The Mayor would be forced to re-close the beach if yet another confirmed shark fatality had been mentioned, but Hooper and Brody never bring that important detail up. [This is still a mistake, but the explanation for this is that the scene where they find Ben Gardner's head was not in the original script. Originally, they just found his boat. Spielberg felt the scene needed a little more shock value so they shot the part with the head in a swimming pool long after the main filming had been completed.] (00:50:20)
Jaws (1975)
1 plot hole - chronological order
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Murray Hamilton, Lorraine Gary, Carl Gottlieb
Factual error: When Hooper sees the hole in the hull of Ben Gardner's boat, he uses his knife to pry out the shark tooth. The tooth is located at the bottom of the hole, with its flat root side stuck inside the wood and its pointy side facing up. It is completely impossible for the shark's tooth to become wedged in the wood this way, while he takes a nice bite out of the wood hull. (00:49:15)
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Suggested correction: When Hooper uses the knife to pry to tooth out, it took very little effort, suggesting that the tooth wasn't wedged into that spot, but merely just resting in that spot.
The shark tooth was inserted into the wood by the prop crew with its flat root side down, which would have been impossible to have occurred during the attack on the hull. As to the statement that the tooth was "merely just resting in that spot" then Hooper would not have needed to use the blade to remove it from the wood, plus the fact that since it was underwater it would have floated away during the hours after the attack. But it did not float away, so it must have been at the very least snugly fit into the wood hull. Still impossible.
More trivia for Jaws
Question: Instead of going under water and trying to poison Jaws in the shark cage, couldn't he have been harpooned with the poison from the boat just as easy?
Chosen answer: As mentioned in the movie, the posion was in the needle and the shark's hide was too tough for the needle to penetrate. Hooper had to go in the water so that he could get the needle into the shark's mouth, where the flesh was less tough.
Suggested correction: First off, it wasn't a severed head as you can still see the body attached to it, and second, what difference would that make? Two people and a dog already died, with the death of the Kitner boy being witnessed by several people, and the beaches still stayed open because the mayor was too stupid to close them. Not only that, but during the scene you mentioned, I believe it was Hooper who said that THREE incidents had occurred BEFORE the third killing takes place on-screen.
And not only that, but the mayor witnessed Hooper saying that the shark they caught was not the same one, or at least it was possible that it wasn't. Either way, shark attacks were happening, but the mayor did nothing about it.
Brody states that "It was Ben Gardner's boat you should have seen it and it was all chewed up," yet failed to mention that they found his body on board. The whole scenario just doesn't make sense. How does Ben Gardner die? If I remember correctly from the book, his body is never found, and it was assumed that he had fallen overboard. Also, in an earlier scene, Ben Gardner is on his boat heading out from the dock that day with at least one mate on board; what happened to him/them?