There’s one in The King and I that I can’t help but laugh at. Yul Brynner is singing (can’t remember what song now) and he’s wearing an earring. He turns his head away at one point, and when he turns back, the earring is gone. A little bit later, the earring returns. For some reason, this struck me as funny, rather than irritating.
But it gets on my nerves watching Kill Bill, Volume 2–the part when Beatrix slashes Elle across the face twice on each side (you do see the four slash marks), then a few seconds later, there’s only one mark on each side of her face.
The thing that bothers me most about Little House on the Prairie is how they used the same actor for multiple episodes–playing different characters. For example, Leslie Landon appeared in three different roles (at least!): One as the young pregnant woman travelling with Mary and Adam when they had the stagecoach accident, one as a diswasher working with Laura when she and Eliza Jane attended some type of seminar in Arizona (IIRC), and finally, she was Miss Etta Plum, teacher of Walnut Grove school when Laura retired. I suppose this was less noticeable during the show’s initial run (when episodes were a week apart!), but now that it’s in syndication, it’s VERY apparent, and I find it VERY annoying!
I don’t know that you’d call it a continuity error, but an episode of Liberty Kids that showed George Washington mounting a horse from the right side made me unable to concentrate on anything else for like 10 minutes.
I never really noticed any major continuity errors until “The Da Vinci Code” and the ever changing light outside the window during Ian McKellan’s exposition speech.
To my recollection, I’ve only noticed a continuity error once while watching TV. There’s an episode of Seinfeld where George is talking while wearing a shirt with buttons, and as they cut back to him his shirt goes from buttoned to unbuttoned and back again several times.
I can still remember the first ever continuity error I actually noticed: Mr. Hyde’s hat magically returning itself to his head (after falling off) during a fight scene in the Spencer Tracy version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.
I’ve noticed a handful of continuity errors since. They can’t spoil the movie for me if the movie is any good. Now, blatant historical errors and anachronisms, or characters doing stupid things for no reason except to move the plot along–that’s another matter.