Plan E: General Hospital - S4-E5
Corrected entry: Blackadder makes the joke, "I imagine he went to one of the great Universities, Oxford, Cambridge, Hull." This is probably around 1916, but Hull University didn't exist until 1927. We cannot put it down to the joke either, as he explains later the nurse failed to point out its quality, not its existence.
Plan E: General Hospital - S4-E5
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the scene, Nurse Mary is reading a newspaper. She puts it on the sofa, but few shots later, the newspaper is gone. (00:21:50)
Correction: The end and back of the sofa are open and if you watch carefully when she puts it down, the newspaper slides off the sofa and falls on the floor. We don't see the area where it must have fallen so there's no mistake.
Corrected entry: One of my favorite lines is when Blackadder refers to himself as "The new minister of religious genocide". However, the word "genocide" didn't appear until around the mid-1940's when Raphael Lemkin invented it specifically to describe the events witnessed in the Holocaust.
Correction: 'Blackadder' is written and performed in contemporary English. This is a straightforward film convention, not an error. Only a handful of academics would understand a television show shot in genuine Elizabethan English.
Corrected entry: William Pitt the Elder is heard introducing his "Younger" brother as the new Prime Minister. However, Pitt the Elder was Prime Minister from 1766 to 1767, and Pitt the Younger was from 1783 to 1801, so it's inaccurate for them to follow on from each other like this. It's also worth pointing out that if Pitt the Elder is supposed to be the PM at the start of the episode (something Blackadder attests to), then the Prince Regent would have been around 4 years old at the time.
Correction: At the very start, Blackadder does indeed say about "Pit the Elder" but, the next scene (In parliament) the speaker of the house says "I call upon the new Prime Minister of Great Britain and her empires, Mr William Pitt, the Younger". Pitt the Elder never introduces his brother.
Plan E: General Hospital - S4-E5
Corrected entry: Black Adder says that there are four verses to "God Save the King." There are actually five, and technically there are six. However, the final verse is very anti-Scottish (added after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46), and is very rarely seen and even more rarely performed.
Correction: While this may be true, Blackadder is merely trying to confuse Darling into confessing he's a German spy.
The Witchsmeller Pursuivant - S1-E5
Corrected entry: When Edmund, Baldrick and Percy are put on the fire, Edmund says "Oh (cough) off, Baldrick", but his mouth moves as if he's saying a word at the point of the cough - the cough sound was dubbed in over the original word.
Correction: That's the gag. It was not meant to be Edmund coughing, but a member of the crowd. There are few swear words allowed in a sitcom and f*** isn't one of them (which is presumably what Edmund said). The cough was placed at the convenient place as to drown out the original word. There was a similar gag in series 2, whereby the episode is cut off just as Lady Whiteadder is about to say the 'f' word at the end of 'Beer'.
Corrected entry: Blackadder's house is confusing, particularly the "front" room we spend the series in. In "Potato", Blackadder fires an arrow down on the crowd, and calls down, showing that that room is on the second floor. In "Beer", this room leads into the corridor (which is level with the room), and the front door is level with the street, as shown by the Puritans entering.
Correction: The street that the front door opens out onto need not be at the same level as the street outside the window. The house could be built on the side of a hill so the streets might not be at the same height.
Corrected entry: At the end when Blackadder is talking to the king, you see Hugh Laurie (Prince Regent) moving his hand up and scratching his head when he's supposedly dead.
Correction: The prince later wakes up telling Baldrick that "I had a cigarette case too" (which would have stopped the bullet that supposedly killed him), so him scratching himself doesn't seem like that much of a mistake to me.
Corrected entry: How come 'Mr Key' could open the door? Are Mad Gerald's teeth exactly the right shape to fit or something?
Correction: In 1400's door locks were bigger, so "Mr Key" would fit in the lock and open the door.
Corrected entry: When Edmund goes to see the wise woman, she advises that one option to get out of his predicament would be to "kill Bob". He hasn't told her Bob's name at this point, only that he is in love with his manservant. Although the "wise woman" is a crone and could be thought to have insight of this nature, she's portrayed as far too rubbish.
Corrected entry: How on earth did Edmund know that the party was going to be a fancy dress party? Queenie, Nursey, Baldrick and Percy didn't discuss it until after Queenie wrote to Edmund to tell him that they were going to spend the money on a party so Edmund couldn't have told Prince Ludwig what to go as.
Correction: When Edmund recounts his words to Prince Ludwig they're actually along the lines of 'IF they have a fancy dress party then Nursie always goes as a cow'. Edmund didn't know for certain that the party was fancy dress he was just preparing for that eventuality so they'd still be able to tell who Ludwig was.
Correction: The original question by Blackadder was not a joke, it was a deliberate mistake to trick Nurse Mary. As for the explanation later when he reveals her to be the spy, his exact words are that only two of them are great universities. The mistake is only valid if he had emphasised the word universities which he does not. His words can easily be interpreted as saying that only two of them are universities which was, at the time, true.
tw_stuart