name the biggest continuity error that you can think of.
not just nitpicky little plot holes, big giant things, things that were established many many times very strongly, and then suddenly are diffrent. like topanga on boy meets world, or monica not being able to sing when she meets charloette church on touched by an angle. things like that.
what do you mean? when was topanga an error? you mean how it was always said that her and corey fell in love on a playground when they were 2, but in the early episodes they said that corey never liked her?
I’ve always thought that the original Superman had a GIANT plot hole that no one else seems to care about.
Remember when Lex Luthor launches the missiles at each coast and says something like “Even with your great speed, you can’t catch them both”? Then, when Lois dies, he reverses the rotation of the Earth by flying around it at what appears to be several hundred times per second. So, he can’t cover 3000 miles in 20 minutes to catch both missiles, but he can circle the Earth in less than a second. Even my 8 year old mind didn’t buy that.
Then there’s the whole issue of reversing time by making the Earth spin backwards. If you’re going to complain about that though, you might as well complain about a guy being able to fly, lift a helicopter, see through walls, and melt steel with his vision. 
owl - what about Topanga? or Monica not being able to sing ?
How about Superman 2 when Superman wants to marry Lois Lane? In the Fortress of Solitude the holographic image of his mother says that once he becomes human, he can never ever become Superman again, etc. THEN when General ZOD et al try to take over the Earth he goes right back to the Arctic Fortress to become Superman. Explian THAT one please!! OR explain how he was even able to hitchhike to the Arctic ?
My favorite goof was in the TV show “Wild Wild West” when James West is about to be dropped into a fatal electrical field. The villain says “I’m sure you are familiar with the experiments of Van De Graff”. Probably not because Robert Van de Graff was born in 1900 and the show took place during the Ulysses Grant presidency. As a matter of fact Van De Graff was alive when that show first aired !!!
In the last seasonal ep of a detective show (Martial Law?) starring (IIRC) Sammo Hung we have a cliffhanger ending in which Hung is seen falling off a helicopter to the sea while the female lead is captured by the bad guys and being hauled off in the helicopter.
Between seasons, a new creative team takes over and in the following season’s ep the female lead is vanished and forgotten and Hung is back, but no explanation is ventured for the helicopter fall or how he survived.
I’d call that a bit of an error.
Owl–
A quick tip…when posting something like this, it’s best to assume that your audience isn’t as familiar with your examples as you are. You may be an expert on Boy Meets World and Touched by an Angel, but assume that we aren’t. Can you kindly explain what you mean by “topanga on boy meets world” and “monica not being able to sing”. Thanks much…
In All in the Family*, Archie has a brother and sister in the early episodes. In the late episodes, he says he only has a brother.
In Waiting for Guffman, which is supposed to look like a documentary, there is a scene where Corky shuts himself in his apartment to pout. We see him crying in his bathtub. How did the “camera crew” get in there?
In a related vein, the Cunninghams in Happy Days had an older son Chuck in the early episodes, who disappears and is never referenced in the later ones.
[Annie]
He didn’t jump out of the cockadoodie copter!
[/Annie]
Moreso, in the last episode, Howard Cunningham mentions that they’ve raised TWO great children.
Maybe Chuck hooked up with a bad group of basketball hoodlums and the C’s disowned him.
Hmm, I’ve come to think of this a different way: Superman just flew so fast that he was able to go back in time himself and showing the Earth spinning backwards was just the most convenient way of showing this.
But still, if he could fly that fast in the first place, he should have been able to simply catch both missiles and stop them.
During the making of Bonfire of the Vanities, the crew shot all of the exterior scenes they needed in New York. Then there was a two week break to move all the equipment to Hollywood and film the interiors on a soundstage. During the break, Melanie Griffith had breast implants. Once it’s all edited together, her breasts change size back and forth throughout the film.
In Reality Bites - The shifting alphabet magnets on the fridge next to Winona Ryder as the camera switches between her POV and Ethan Hawke’s.
Not the worst, but it made me wonder if them magnets were trying to spell out something to me.
The WCEE is Citizen Kane - Kane died alone in his bedroom. Who heard him say “rosebud” as he died? The central plot element of one of the most important movies ever made, and it never could have happened.
Two lesser continuity errors that annoyed me (spoilers ahead)
In the final season of the TV series Wiseguy, the original star of the show, Ken Wahl, left the series. There was a major plot line about how he had disappeared while working on a case and the other characters were trying to find out whether he was still alive. It was finally definitely established he had been killed and a funeral was held.
The series didn’t survive Wahl’s departure and was cancelled after that year. But a few years later, there was a TV movie which brought back the characters including Wahl’s. No explanation was given as to how Vince Terranova had returned from the dead.
The other one that annoyed me was in Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin. This is a vampire novel set in the ante-bellum South. Martin’s version of vampires is distinctly different from most fictional vampires. In making this point, one of the vampire characters tells a human character that he is nothing like Dracula.
But the book takes place in 1855; several decades before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. At the time the story was supposedly set in, Vlad Dracula was an obscure medieval warlord and nobody associated his name with vampirism.
One thing about Blade Runner that irritates me is that they miscount the number of replicants.
A lot of the things mentioned so far are not continuity errors.
I’m surprised it took this long to mention this, but…
The worst true continuity error EVER was in the movie “The Jagged Edge.” In one courtroom sequence - just ONE sequence - Glenn Close is seen wearing three different suits. It’s amazing. She asks a question wearing a blue suit, and the camera goes to the witness, and when it comes back she’s wearing a completely different grey suit. Asks another question, back to witness, comes back, and she’s wearing a completely different brown suit. Just a stunning boondoggle.
More famous but less egregious is Richard Gere’s amazing reappearing tie in “Pretty Woman.”
Most of these aren’t really continuity errors.
The one that always comes to my mind (probably because I found it myself) is in “Stripes.” When Harold Ramis catches Bill Murray trying to go AWOL and throws him to the ground the long shot has Bill’s head resting on a duffel bag. When they go in close his head is resting on the ground. They keep switching back and forth between those two shots and it’s kinda funny.
Here is a good site for nitpicks. You wouldn’t believe what some people find.
The only movie I’ve seen that had a continuity error I noticed first time through is Dragonheart. There’s a bit where the priest is being taught how to use a bow and arrow. He nocks the arrow in a long shot, it has white fletching. He draws in a close up and the fletching changes to brown. Long shot just before his release and it’s back to white.