Goofs for
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) More at IMDbPro »

• Errors in geography: Nearly all the vehicles used in the film have inspection stickers in their windshield indicating registration in Pittsburgh, PA, where none of the action in the film takes place.
  
  
• Factual errors: Clarice claims to have double-majored in criminology and psychology at the University of Virginia. Criminology has never been a major offered at UVa.
  
  
• Continuity: Jack Crawford's collar pops in and out of his vest during a conversation with Clarice Starling.
  
  

• Factual errors: A forensics expert's opinion of the autopsy scene: over 8 errors were made. Among them: the body was fingerprinted without collecting evidence under the victims fingernails, and the ink would have destroyed the evidence. You cannot get fingerprints off a body if it is in that condition.
  
  
• Factual errors: The killer looks right into the headlights of Catherine Martin's car with his night-vision goggles on when she drives into the parking area and is not blinded. In fact, goggles at the timeframe of this movie might have been permanently damaged. Newer goggles do have automatic protection mechanisms.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: U.S. Customs has a record of Buffalo Bill bringing the moths, found only in Asia, from Suriname, in South America. But he may have used a re-shipper to disguise the origins of the shipment.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Gumb's basement, while larger than the "red herring" house in Illinois, is proportional to his house in Ohio.
  
  
• Continuity: As Hannibal escapes, he kicks the cell door onto the guard, causing the door to be in between Hannibal and the guard. Yet in the very next shot, the guard is right in front of Hannibal so he can bite him.
  
  
• Continuity: When the cop holding the flowers is at the front door of the house in Illinois, shadows change direction on the doorframe between shots.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The red herring house is supposed to be in Calumet City, Illinois, and in the background, mountains can be seen. There are no mountains in the vicinity of the actual Calumet City.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the end of the film when Hannibal is telling Clarice about having "an old friend for dinner" a camera crew can is reflected in Hannibal's sunglasses.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clarice is talking to Buffalo Bill in his back room, a moth is filmed landing on a cotton reel. After the moth has settled, a thread is visible attached to it. Presumably the shot was filmed in reverse, and the moth 'yanked' off the reel.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clarice is researching Lecter in Quantico by reading old newspaper articles on microfilm, the same text regarding developments at some vague governmental conference appears over and over again surrounding the Lecter articles in all four separate newspapers she views.
  
  
• Factual errors: Sgt Tate tells an officer to call in the SWAT team. Memphis has no SWAT team, it has a related unit called the TACT team.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The plane carrying agents to Calumet City banks over mountainous terrain, resembling nothing in the vicinity of northern Indiana
  
  
• Factual errors: Jack Crawford says that Clarice graduated "magna" (magna cum laude) from UVA, but this is impossible because UVA does not award such a distinction to psychology majors
  
  
• Continuity: When the FBI team is preparing to deliver the flowers, the ribbon is on both the upper and lower sections of the box. In the next shot, the ribbon appears only on the upper section of the box.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hannibal is imprisoned in Memphis, the sign outside of the Shelby county courthouse is shown in dim light to be a museum.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Clarice opens the music box, it plays and winds down. As it winds down, the musical pitch lowers. Actually, the pitch should stay the same - the music should just slow down.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clarice is interviewing Lecter, one of the padlocks on his cell door goes from locked to unlocked between scenes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the cut to the scene outside the supposed Memphis Police headquarters, after Lecter has escaped by "stealing" the face of a police officer, an ambulance roars across the screen and stops. The ambulance has Hamilton County tags. Memphis is in Shelby County; Hamilton County is Chattanooga - 400 miles east.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the movie, when Clarice Starling is searching Buffalo Bill's basement, she approaches a door with the doorknob on her right, indicating it would open to her left. When we see the door open from the opposite side, it opens to her right.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When introducing himself and his partner to Clarice, Lt. Boyle says the other man's name is "Petrie." In all other references in the book and movie his name is Pembry.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: The military aircraft heading toward Calument City has California Air Guard on the side. Not very likely considering they were coming from Virginia.
  
  
• Factual errors: The night vision goggles that Bill uses are of the old infra-red variety, which require an infra-red light to illuminate the scene. That's why these kind of goggles were eventually phased out by the military, because the enemy could use their own infra-red equipment to zero in on the light and shoot it out - and/or the person holding it! Bill's use of the goggles in the basement scene is therefore impossible, as he's not holding an infra-red light of any kind, just a gun. The implication made by the the film makers is that Bill was using more modern light-enhancing night vision equipment, but again, this would not have worked in the basement. This type of equipment needs some kind of light source, moonlight or even starlight, to function. In a basement it's pitch black. The same error, with the villains wearing light enhancing goggles, was made in Patriot Games (1992).
  
  
• Continuity: The ring of sweat on Clarice's sweatshirt as she is running on the Quantico course in the beginning of the movie covers her body almost from shoulder to shoulder. When she gets called into Crawford's office, it is significantly smaller.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the forensics come to take photos of the victim's body, the "corpse" visibly blinks as the hands touch its face.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: In flashbacks, young Clarice Starling has brown eyes. However, when she is older, Agent Starling's eyes are pale blue.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Sgt.Pembry is preparing to handcuff Dr. Lecter to the bars of his cell while bringing in his requested second supper, he has him sit with his back to the bars and his arms thrust behind him in order secure the shackles. In this scene it is apparent that Dr Lecter has been waiting for a fair amount of time between his first meal and his second serving because we see his drawings and magazines spread over the entire desktop surface. A closeup of the Drs arms, however, reveal that the cuffing procedure must have been repeated several time during the filming process in order to get a good take as there are already red, discolored areas on actor Anthony Hopkins wrists from the multiple donning and shedding of the handcuffs before they are even applied in film.
  
  
• Factual errors: Lecter refers to the moth pupa as a "chrysalis", a term that specifically refers to the pupae of butterflies, not moths. A moth pupa is properly called a "cocoon".
  
  
• Factual errors: Crawford tells Clarice that Miggs died by swallowing his tongue. Despite tales of people suffocating this way, swallowing one's tongue is impossible.
  
  
• Factual errors: West Virginia State Police uniforms are not brown as shown in the movie. The uniforms are Forest Green and have been that way since the early 1900's. Also the WV State Police vehicles are not Grey as shown in the movie, they are Blue with Old Gold and the State Seal is the emblem on the door. The WV DPS (State Police) were originally asked by the director to have some of the Troopers in the movie, but he did not like the colors of their uniforms and when he requested they change to the Brown uniforms, the Troopers rightfully refused and left the movie set with their cruisers and proper uniforms.
  
  
• Factual errors: Regarding the sweat stains on Clarice's sweatshirt from the course to Crawford's office. The course she was running is located on a Marine Corps Base in Quantico, which is also home to the FBI Academy. The course (Endurance Course) is about 5 miles long throughout the Quantico highlands, on the Marine part, not the FBI part. At the Cargo net obstacle, she was nearly at the end of the course, about 2-3 miles from the FBI academy. There is a road to the left on the screen, and nothing but miles of woods on her right, which is where the FBI agent came out and told her that Crawford wanted to speak to her. Geographically, it would have been faster and more logical for her to finish the course, than run back toward where she just came from, which is about a 3-4 mile run back through the woods, to the FBI academy.
  
  
• Factual errors: The moth found "behind the soft palate of a murder victim" is identified by the biologist as Acherontia styx, the deaths-head moth, however the moth used in the poster is actually Acherontia atropos, also known as the deaths-head moth. (There is a third deaths-head moth called Acherontia lachesis.) While A. styx is native to Asia, as identified by the biologist, A. atropos is native to the Middle East and Mediterranean.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Hannibal escapes from his temporary cell in Memphis, the police have who they believe to be Dr Lecter, cornered, injured and unconscious, on the top of an elevator. When the officer is told to shoot him, non-lethally, in order to determine whether he is alive or not, he wounds him with his police issued 9MM handgun in the back of the knee. Since the body showed no reaction to the shot, this person was ultimately determined to be dead. However, this shot was also revealing in that it showed that the movie makers used a dummy or a very low-yield explosive "squib" when filming this scene. If a person was hit with a bullet of such caliber, even if he is deceased, there would be some movement of the limb away from the direction of the shot.
  
  
• Continuity: During the autopsy scene, they remove the bug cocoon from the victim and insert it into a small jar with the bug antenna pointing to the bottom of the jar. The next next shot shows Clarice pouring fluid into the jar with the antenna pointing up.
  
  
• Continuity: As Clarice is looking through the microfilm, the pen in her mouth switches places several times.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: During Clarice's first visit to see Hannibal, she wore a skirt with belt on waist when she was in Dr. Chilton's office and before entering the final corridor leading to Hannibal's cell. The belt was gone when she was entering the corridor, however, entering a prison (especially the maximum security part), she would have probably had to remove her belt before entering particularly if it had a metal buckle.
  
  

• Factual errors: SPOILER: While standing in the first victim's sewing room, Clarice recalls the diamond shaped pieces of skin removed from the girl found in the river, which she realizes resemble darts that are commonly used to reduce fabric bulk in the waistline, making a garment more fitted. The problem is, the dart shapes cut from the skin resemble the part of the fabric that is wasted, the unwanted pieces. It is a 'negative' of what this killer would have wanted to keep, if he were making himself a garment. The killer would never have wanted those skin items. Later it shows him sewing on one end, single thickness. He's not sewing anything to anything else, and he's using a piece that is typically cut off and discarded in the process of real garment construction. Although a human skin garment is implied, most of the examples of sewing are factually erroneous as viewed by anyone experienced in tailoring.
  
  
• Factual errors: SPOILER: As Jodie Foster indicates on the commentary track of the Criterion DVD version of the film, there is a mistake in the most dramatic moment of the entire film: when Buffalo Bill cocks his gun and Clarice turns around and shoots him. You can clearly see the shadow of Bill's hand holding the gun on Clarice's back as he raises it to shoot her. However, the basement is supposed to be pitch black, so there shouldn't have been any shadows whatsoever.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: SPOILER: In the final phone call, as Lecter says "I have no plans to call on you, Clarice. The world's more interesting with you in it", his facial movements don't match the spoken words.
  
  

Related Links