Did You Know?

The calendar from 1945 is set in the Helvetica typeface, which was not designed until 1954.
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The Mexican officers who appear in the Sonora Desert sequence wear Federal Army uniforms. Those uniforms were used during early the 20th century but not anymore by the 70s.
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During the ABC newscast, a reporter states that the Devil's Tower National Monument was created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1915. Roosevelt was President from 1901 to 1909 and the Monument was created in 1906.
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Since Walter Cronkite was not allowed to do the film, he was replaced with Howard K. Smith. But the first time Roy is interviewed, he mentions the newscast with Walter Cronkite.
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License plate(s) on the station wagon as Roy and Jillian drive through roadblocks.
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As the 12 people in red selected by the government head for the mothership, the blond woman is two people in front of Roy, and not wearing her sunglasses. In the next shot, she has her sunglasses on, and is now in immediately in front of him.
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When Roy's family are leaving him, his wife locks all of the car doors except her own door. In the very next shot, her door is already locked.
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Toward the end of the movie, when Jillian and Roy are at Devils Tower and the mother ship is descending, Jillian has her jacket tied around her waist. The jacket is present the whole time she is hiding in the rocks, watching what is going on the landing field. But in the next scene that she is in, when she is walking across the field to reach Barry, the jacket is gone.
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The Huey that the "contactees" are to be flown out of the Devils Tower area on is a single engine version from the rear but a twin engine version from the front and on take off.
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The size of the mother ship is incompatible in different shots. When it arrives it's behind the mountain and a lot bigger than the mountain. When it's in front of the mountain it's no longer bigger than the mountain but smaller or at best about the same.
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During the dinner table scene differing quantities of mashed potatoes are on Roy's hands with it disappearing totally from his left hand.
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In the scene where Roy is first shown with his living room creation (model of Devil's Tower made with trash/bricks/chicken wire), looking through the porch door it is clearly raining (most noticeable by the rain dripping onto the can that's on the ground just outside the door). The TV is playing an episode of Days Of Our Lives. As DOOL goes to commercial (Budweiser commercial plays) Roy looks out the window. He looks out at people outside in their yards, and it is bright and sunny out.
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After Roy drives through the fence, one of the posts lands on the hood. We see it fall off after he drives through another fence, but when he stops at the barricade it's back, along with a couple of other pieces of fence that weren't there before.
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During the first scene with the Nearys, Ronnie is sitting in a chair holding items she had removed from the breakfast table. The camera angle changes to Roy asking the boys to choose between goofy golf and Pinocchio. The angle changes back to Ronnie who is still sitting in the chair but is holding Sylvia.
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In the beginning of the scene where the aliens are coming to get Barry, Jillian's hair is tied back. Later, in the same scene, she's in the kitchen and her hair is down.
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Shadow of camera on the screen door of the farm.
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When Roy's family is backing out of the driveway in the station wagon, there is a large camera platform visible on the roof of their house.
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The coordinates received by the scientists (40°36'10" N, 104°44'30" W) aren't very close to Devils Tower at all. The coordinates are very close to Stage Colorado, east of Ft. Collins, Colorado, almost 300 miles (480 km) away from the monument.
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In the scenes at the air traffic control center, the aircraft encountering the UFO are under control of Indianapolis Center, but the controllers check for activity in restricted area 2508. Restricted area 2508 is in the Mohave Desert and includes Edwards Air Force Base, and is nowhere near the area under control of Indianapolis Center, a thousand miles to the east.
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When the numbers sent by the aliens are interpreted as geographic coordinates, there is no indication of the hemispheres of the latitudes nor longitudes. The coordinates as they are sent - 104°44'30" 44°36'10" - actually describe a point in north-central China.
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A close-up of a map showing Devil's Tower shows the intersection of the co-ordinates (44°36'10" N 104°44'30" W) at a point to the south-east of the tower, whereas this point is actually to the north-west of the tower.
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The insignia worn by some of the Navy fliers do not correspond to their ranks.
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While preparing for the evacuation, the military speaks of clearing 360 square miles, which would involve from 35,000 to 50,000 people. Later, a news report states that 200 square miles are being evacuated. Devils Tower is centrally located in Crook County, with an area of 2858 sq. miles and a population of 5887, and is over 15 miles from the nearest city. 200 sq. miles would be a circle of 8 miles radius. 360 sq. miles would be a radius of 11.5 miles. The actual population of the evacuated area would likely be less than a few hundred people, not 35 to 50 thousand.
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Prior to the Howard K. Smith broadcast, a clip from "Days of Our Lives" was playing. However, DOOL has always been broadcast on NBC and the Smith broadcast was from ABC.
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The aircraft used as Flight 19 in the opening scene are all TBM-3 Avengers. The real Flight 19 had only one TBM-3 and four TBM-1C aircraft. In fact, one of the aircraft in this scene is actually a F6F Hellcat.
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Horses, not camels, are used for transportation in Mongolia. If they wanted to show camels, they should have been Bactrians, not Dromedaries.
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The decoy trucks used at the Devil's Tower had the "Piggly Wiggly" store logo on them but there were/are no such stores in Wyoming. The closest states with those stores are Minnesota and Oklahoma.
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The toll collector says that the toll is is 25 cents. The Indiana Toll Road is a ticket system (the toll is based on distance traveled). This would also preclude the sign indicating the price of the toll.
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When Jillian has caught up to Barry on the highway and almost gets hit by Roy, the three stars in a row which appear to be Orion's belt that are visible above a tree to the right of the screen repeatedly change position between shots. In the book, however, the alien visitors are, in fact, described as being from the Orion constellation, so those "stars" could very well be alien ships, as, in the book, they use the ships to show where they came from.
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In the climatic ending the first alien, a tall and spindly creature crawls out of the huge "mother" ship's opening, then stands up spreading its long arms out wide. It's a very memorable and dramatic cinematic entrance with the film's score adding to the grandeur. The smaller aliens come out and stand in line, then greet the humans. We do not see the first tall alien again in the film and in all released versions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, Spielberg's intent was to show a racially diverse group of aliens aboard the ship, as evidenced by the final alien who communicates with Lacombe, who is also a physically different character than the tall and small aliens. The tall alien was not meant to resemble a spider, but was referred to by the production team as the "Jesus alien" because of its arms-out gesture. There were originally supposed to be three of them, joining hands in that position and creating more shimmering lights. The production team simply could not make this work. This alien was a marionette, and it was very difficult to film without the strings showing.
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After Roy's exposure to (and burn from) the bright lights at the railroad crossing, he then meets Gillian after she stops her son from being run over by Roy's truck. At this first meeting, she has no burn, yet when they meet the next evening she has a full-frontal burn. It is never explained when or where she received this burn.
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When Roy is building the clay mountain in his living room, you can see the cut in the clay where he will later pull off the top of the mountain.
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After one of the police cars runs off the side of the road chasing the four smaller UFOs, Roy's truck and two police cars skid to a halt. All three vehicles skid at equally 45 degree angles. (\ \ \) In the next shot, which overlooks the greater Muncie area, you see the UFOs disappearing in the mountains while the city grids start to light up again. Roy's truck is now parked at a -45 degree angle. (/ \ \)
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When the massive mother ship first appears and passes over Devils Tower, stars are visible through hull of the ship in some of the shots from underneath the ship.
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When Jillian has caught up to Barry on the highway and almost gets hit by Roy, a shot shows the two up close with the background out of focus, but the stars in the background sky are in sharp focus.
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