Continuity mistake: After becoming human, Ariel swims and rest on a floating rock amidst the sea. A frame later she is laying on a rocky wall by the shore.
Continuity mistake: When Ariel is swimming back home from her treasure collecting trip at the sunken ship, she has her pink bag. Then the eels' eyes merge from watching her to Ursula's bubble globe thing Ariel doesn't have it anymore. Then when the scene switches back, she has it again. (00:10:45)
Continuity mistake: When Flounder swims through an anchor at the start the anchor has round edges, but when the shark bursts in the anchor has flat edges.
Continuity mistake: The bookmarks in the Minister's bible keep changing colour between shots.
Continuity mistake: The bowl in which the chef dips Sebastian swaps from grey coloured to blue.
Continuity mistake: When Ariel and Eric kiss during the wedding ceremony, the wedding barque is thronged with people, but when Louis the cook chases Sebastian, the deck is suddenly bare of any and every person, including the happily married couple. Quite a flash-wedding.
Continuity mistake: When Ariel is at dinner with Eric and Grimsby, her fingernails are painted pink when she picks up the fork in the close-up, but are not painted when she combs her hair.
Continuity mistake: When Eric first washes up on the beach and Ariel is singing to him, she looks to her left when she hears Max barking, but Max and Grim are actually coming from her right.
Continuity mistake: In the first scene involving Ursula, the shrimp don't appear in her opened case until she reaches down for one.
Continuity mistake: When Grimsby is presenting the statue of Eric, the huge ribbon around it disappears between shots.
Continuity mistake: When Ariel is at dinner with Eric and Grimsby, she begins to brush her hair with a fork. The prong number of the fork changes from shot to shot. Sometimes three, sometimes four.
Continuity mistake: When Ariel is crying and Sebastian comes to comfort her, there's a vase, two planks and a small bottle behind her. When the angle changes, every object is different, even the area looks much wider.
Continuity mistake: When Ariel and Flounder are going into the shipwreck at the start, Ariel goes through the porthole and Flounder follows. In the frame where he gets stuck, his front fins are trapped firmly outside the porthole but in the next shot inside the boat, they appear inside instead of outside.
Continuity mistake: When Ursula turns King Triton into a seaweed thing, his crown is a normal crown design. When Ursula then picks it up it has turned into a tiara and stays like that for the rest of the film.
Continuity mistake: When we first meet Max, his front paws swap from white in the front angle, to grey in the angle shot from behind.
Continuity mistake: The lettuce under which Sebastian later hides, wasn't on the table in the first place.
Continuity mistake: The chef throws flour on the dip where Sebastian is, turning it from brown to half brown-half white. A frame later, the whole mix is white.
Continuity mistake: The maid brings 3 dishes with the food. Leaves one for Grimsby and walks behind his chair towards Eric. A frame later, she has magically disappeared, yet Eric and Ariel have their plate right in front.
Continuity mistake: In the scene when Ariel saves Eric after the ship has exploded he has boots on yet when Ariel has brought him up onto shore they are off, they couldn't have fallen off since they in that time period men wore boots that have to be taken off to at least to the heal and Ariel is tying to save him so she wouldn't take the time to get them off, and leather tends to tighten up when thoroughly soaked so that is another factor to why they shouldn't have come off this also happens at the end of the film after Ursula has been killed.
Continuity mistake: When Ariel is singing to herself in the bathroom, she swims to a mirror on the wall and plays with her hair and there's no flower next to the mirror on the wall. But in the next shot there's a flower on the wall which she puts in her hair and then gives to her father.
Chosen answer: They are all throughout the film but the biggest one is when Eric is steering the ship to stab or skewer Ursula.
Disney-Freak