Other mistake: When Cary Grant steps down from the bus from Chicago prior to the crop-duster scene, naturally the bus is heading away from his departure point. Later, when he hijacks the car to effect his getaway, he makes a U-turn so that, instead of returning to Chicago, he is heading in the opposite direction.
Other mistake: The second bus in the scene before the crop duster has no license plate.
Other mistake: At the train station, the same red-haired woman in a green dress with two distinctive suitcases appears three times in different places despite her walking the opposite way. Sometimes she has a hat and others not.
Chosen answer: The original title for the movie was "In a Northwesterly Direction", as it was originally detailing the flight of a man from New York to Alaska, according to writer Earnest Lehman. According to Alfred Hitchcock, however, he took the title from a line in Hamlet, another work of fiction that is concerned with the slippery nature of reality. It is also worth noting that North by Northwest is not a direction on the compass at all. The nearest to it would be Northwest by North.
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