Goofs
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Anachronisms (16) |
Audio/visual unsynchronised (1) |
Boom mic visible (1) |
Character error (4) |
Continuity (19) |
Crew or equipment visible (2) |
Factual errors (1) |
Miscellaneous (1) |
Incorrectly regarded as goofs (2) |
Revealing mistakes (3) |
Spoilers (8)
Anachronisms
Federal income taxes were due on March 15th, not April 15th as they are today.
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When Tommy goes out into the yard to talk to Warden Norton, Warden Norton offers him a cigarette. The pack of Marlboros that he offers him has Marlboro Miles on them, which weren't around until the '90s.
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During the warden's "Inside Out" speech, a CP-16R camera with new style magazine is visible. Additionally, a Pentax k1000 SLR still camera is visible, which was produced in 1975-1997.
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The recording of "Le nozze di Figaro" is from 1968 (recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and directed by Karl Bohm).
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The full-size photo poster of Rita Hayworth that Red procures for Andy in 1949 comes from a series of celebrity posters that went on sale in the early 1960s.
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When they are on the roof during the tar job, Andy tells Hadley that the IRS allows a gift to a spouse tax free. This was supposed to take place in the spring of 1949. At that time, the IRS was known as the Bureau of Internal Revenue, not the IRS. It did not become known as the IRS until the 1950's.
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After Andy escapes, we see him driving alone in a red convertible on a coastal highway. While he escaped in 1966, the car is clearly a 1969 GTO.
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The stamp used by the parole hearings people in 1947 prints in the Helvetica font, which was not invented until 1957.
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Andy's 1955 library letter carries a 1954-series 3-cent stamp, which is correct; but the letter beneath his has a 1923 series, which hadn't been issued since 1938, and the other two have just two cents in postage.
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Andy's library has received donations of 78-rpm albums, and he selects a record from such an album before he locks himself in and broadcasts Le Nozze di Figaro. The record he plays, however, is a 33 1/3 rpm, which is clear from the position of the needle on the disk.
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In the scene where Andy and Red are shown playing checkers outside (after discussing Mr. Stevens in the library) the checker board they are playing on is actually a board manufactured by Pressman in the 1980s and 1990s.
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When Red takes the bus down to Mexico after his release in 1967, the highway shows yellow solid and yellow dashed center markings. In 1967, the dashed markings would have been white. Dashed markings did not start to be repainted yellow until 1971-1974 when MUCTD introduced the new scheme.
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The Colt Detective Special revolver that the warden uses to shoot himself has an ejector shroud and full-ramp front sight, features which first appeared on that model in 1973.
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Near the beginning during the Shawshank Prison fly-over, several later-model vehicles can be seen in the distance.
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The poster of Raquel Welch from the film "One Million Years B.C." would not have been available to be on the wall in Andy's cell if he escaped in 1966. The film wasn't released until the end of December 1966 and the poster became popular only after the film's release.
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Near the end as Red was on the Trailways bus, we are shown a shot of the bus going down the hill and up the other side. On the far right, there was a green bicycle sign on a telephone pole that probably didn't show up until the 90s.
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Audio/visual unsynchronised
When the inmates are at the table discussing the possibility of Andy committing suicide, one of them says "No, no, Andy would never do that." But his mouth movements do not correspond with what he said. His mouth movements actually look like was saying Dufresne, instead of Andy, Dufresne being Andy's surname.
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Boom mic visible
When the warden says the roof of the license plate factory needs resurfacing, the Boom Mic can be seen reflected from the left side of both eyes of his glasses.
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Character error
On the newspaper front page announcing the "corruption" story, the word "indictment" is misspelled as "indictement".
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Andy Dufresne is obviously a very intelligent man and fond of playing chess. However if you take a good look at the shot of the (nearly) completed chess board in his cell, you see that he put up the chess board the wrong way. The board should be turned 90 degrees in order to have the pieces stand right. The square on the lower left should be black, the one on the upper right too, which they are not, they are white. Anyone fond of playing chess would never make that mistake.
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When Andy talks to Red for the first time, several prisoners in the background can be seen wearing khaki trousers. All other prisoners in the movie are wearing dark trousers, possibly jeans.
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When Hadley is talking about his inheritance, he says he inherited $35,000, and that after he payed the taxes on it he might have enough for a new car. While this estimation might be correct for when the film was made, in 1949, when this scene takes place, the average cost of a new car was only around $1,500. He would've had enough money to buy several cars (or even houses: the average cost of a new home in 1949 was around $7,500).
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Continuity
The blood on Heywood's neck changes from shot to shot as Brooks holds a shank to his throat.
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When they're tossing the cells, Hadley knocks over the small stone-works Andy has made. The bishop is alternately standing up/knocked over between shots.
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When Red and Andy meet for the first time, an extra is seen behind each of them. It is the same scene but as the lines were filmed at different times, the extra is wearing different shirts - one prisoner shirt the day that Red's lines were shot, and a different shirt behind Andy the day his lines were filmed.
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When Red is on the bus, one shot shows all of the windows on the bus open. In fact, Red's arm is hanging outside the window. In the very next shot of the bus (a long shot from a distance), all of the windows are closed.
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When Red is talking to Andy for the first time, he is throwing a baseball between himself and Haywood. Just as Andy stoops down, Red catches the ball and seconds later, catches the ball again without throwing it back.
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In the aerial shot where Andy's bus approaches the prison, next to the gate is a red brick building and it's sidewalk is strewn with debris. As the bus pulls in seconds later and we see the gate and same brick building from the vantage point of guards who hurried from a tower, the sidewalk is clean.
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At one point, one can clearly see Andy aging - his hair becomes more gray - but a few minutes later, there is less gray and he looks younger again.
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At the beginning of the scene when Andy Dufresne's cell is about to be searched, as the warden and guards are first approaching the cell, the shot shifts to Andy sitting in his cell holding an almost new indigo blue bible as if reading it. Throughout the scene Andy holds the bible in his hand as the guards ransack the cell. At the end of the scene, the search complete, the warden enters the cell and, facing Andy, notices him holding the bible then asks him about his favorite passages. As the warden and Andy discuss Mark 13:35, the warden reaches for and Andy hands him a worn and stained, black bible.
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When Warden Norton pushes his arm through the poster of Raquel in Andy's cell, the next shot shows only his hand on the poster.
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When Norton is walking to Andy's cell after his escape, he tells the guards to question "that friend of his... him!" and he points to Red with the index finger on his left hand. The shot then cuts to a frontal shot of Red in his cell, and Norton is now pointing at Red with the index finger on his right hand.
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When Red is sitting in his chair in his apartment with the compass you can tell he has done the scene over and over again. When he opens the compass it does not spin. With that type of compass when it is closes it locks the compass needle in place. So when you open it it spins until it settles on North. When he opens it however it is pointing perfectly north and does not spin.
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After Andy escapes and is celebrating with upraised arms, the clothes he had just taken off (as narrated by Red when he said, "...the only thing they found was a set of prison clothes...") are gone, when he had just stripped them off and dropped them right next to him only seconds before.
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Right before Warden Norton shoots himself, the layout of the bullets on his desk changes between shots. You can see, right before he aligns the bullet chamber with the barrel, that the bullets are a little spread apart from each other, with one of them adjacent to the bottom of the magnifying glass handle. In the very next shot when the bullet chamber is aligned and the gun is ready to fire, the bullets are close together in a single pile, and the one near the magnifying glass has disappeared.
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When Brooks hangs himself, the amount of dust on his shoe and trouser leg disproportionately changes.
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After Andy makes his escape, Red in his narration says that among the only things found was his rock hammer "damn near worn down to the nub". However, a prison guard is then photographed holding up the rock hammer and it is still intact.
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When Andy is assigned to the prison library, Brooks tells him he'll give him a tour. As he says this, Brooks is standing in the doorway to the library. The room is very dimly lit. But when Brooks and Andy walk in seconds later, it is full of sunlight.
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A friend of the warden bribes him with a pie made by his wife which was baked in a disposable aluminum pan. The warden later gives the pie to Andy, who shares it with Red. While Red's eating it, the pan is now made of strong metal.
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When Norton is at his desk loading the revolver the brand of ammunition shown on the box is Remington Kleenbore. However, looking at the cylinder as he is loading it, the cartridges have a WW head stamp indicating Winchester Western ammunition.
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When they show the picture of the search party holding the rock hammer, Red says he remembered thinking it would take 600 years to tunnel through the wall. When he first gets the rock hammer he says he thought it would take 600 years to tunnel under the wall, not through it.
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Crew or equipment visible
Towards the beginning of the film, during a beautiful aerial shot of the bus entering Shawshank Prison, the camera flies over the buildings, where we see the prisoners on their way to "greet" in the new inmates. As the camera circles around, at the top of the frame, in an area of green grass, near a building, the shadow of the camera's helicopter is clearly visible.
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Green screen reflected in the warden's glasses when he is in Andy's cell the morning after his escape.
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Factual errors
The narrator says "Five hundred yards. The length of five football fields. Just shy of half a mile." There are 1760 yards in a mile. 880 yards is half a mile. 500 yards is not even a third of a mile, a long way from 'Just shy.'
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Miscellaneous
There is a typo in the credits of the film. The title for "Additional ADR Recordists" is misspelled as "Aditional ADR Recordists."
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Incorrectly regarded as goofs
It's been claimed that when the warden throws the rock through the poster on the morning after Andy's escape, the poster appears to be stuck to the wall at all corners, raising the question of how Andy could have re-stuck the poster from inside the tunnel. However, as shown in a later (flashback) shot, the poster is attached at the top two corners allowing it to be lifted like a curtain while Andy works behind it. With the poster mounted in this fashion, the only requirement for the poster returning to the proper position - after Andy makes his escape - is simple gravity.
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When Andy's climbing out of the hole, just before he's going into the sewer, you see him with his old shoes. But just before that he had put them in the warden's shoebox and replaced them with the warden's. However, at that point, Andy had been in prison for nearly 20 years and enjoyed special privileges. It's possible he had an extra pair of prison issue shoes in his cell, and took the warden's off before making his escape. This makes sense considering that when Andy entered the bank the next day, the shoes were still polished, and clearly had not been worn while wading through a sewage pipe.
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Revealing mistakes
The difference in temperature and humidity between the pipe chase and the cell block would have caused the paper poster to billow and crackle noticeably, making it obvious what had happened. Furthermore, whenever any of the three posters in Andy's cell are shown, they look new, which cannot be the case given that they were removed and replaced almost every night and were switched out only twice during Andy's entire time in prison.
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When the top of the pipe is broken open, it shoots a fountain, indicating that it is pressurized (if only by gravity). But then the pipe drains nearly empty. It should only have drained to the lowest point in the hole broken at the top.
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If you look at the prison buildings in the background of most outdoor shots, you'll notice many of the panes of glass are missing. It's most obvious when Andy is being dangled from the roof of the number plate factory and again in the scene where the prisoners are in the yard listening to the opera music.
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Spoilers
Anachronisms
When Byron Hadley is arrested, supposedly the day after Andy escaped, the arresting officer starts reading him his "Miranda" rights. Miranda vs. AZ was handed down by the U.S. Supreme court on June 13, 1966, but it was not handed down with the wording, the wording would take more months. Red states that "Andy Dufresne escaped in the spring of 1966." Miranda would not have been in effect in the spring as it would have taken months for that ruling to become standard practice nationwide.Share this
Anachronisms
After the library has been well-established, we see Heywood in there listening to a Hank Williams album on a record player. However, he's listening to "24 of Hank Williams' Greatest Hits", which was released in 1976 - at least 10 years after Andy made his prison break.Share this
Continuity
When Brooks hangs himself by kicking the table away, his feet barely lower at all, yet in the next shot we see that he should have fallen a considerably greater distance. Also as he is carving his name in the beam, his head is high enough that he would not have to stand on his toes to put the rope around his neck, as he is shown doing.Share this
Continuity
When Andy is in the bank withdrawing the warden's money, we can see a man standing at the counter talking to a teller. A moment later when Andy leaves, the same man is walking up to the teller's window.Share this
Continuity
The bullet hole under the warden's chin is in a different location than where he placed the gun barrel a moment before he committed suicide. In the 10th Anniversary release, director Frank Darabont admits that this was an error, it has bugged him for 10 years, and they had it fixed in the 2004 release.Share this
Continuity
When Red's hat is blown off by the wind, it tumbles almost into the water, and Red walks quite close to the sea. But the next time we see Red, the hat is farther from the sea than Red originally walked.Share this
Continuity
When Norton is about to load the revolver you can see a black and white photograph in a white frame on the desk. In the next scene when Norton has shot himself, you can see that the picture has now moved across the desk and is leaning against the lamp.Share this
Continuity
When Norton shoots himself, he puts the revolver under the center of his chin and pulls the trigger. A second later, when we see his body from a high angle, the entry wound is clearly on the right side of his neck.Share this
