Goofs for
Troy (2004)

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• Continuity: When going into formation on the Trojan Beach, Achilles has a flaming arrow stuck to his shield. In the shot from Achilles' point of view, the arrow is nowhere to be seen. It is then directly in the line of Achilles' sight again as Achilles and his army move out of formation to attack.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Achilles introduces his cousin, Patroclus, to Odysseus, King of Ithaca - his wooden training sword is in the foreground. The tip and edges are worn, revealing that the sword is in fact plastic and simply painted to look wooden.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Throughout the film when Hector, Paris, Achilles and Menelaus all draw their swords, we hear the metal scraping as they are pulled from their shields - Yet we can see that the interior of the shields are cloth lined and the loops that hold the swords are leather, not metal.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: Just before Achilles says "You gave me peace in a lifetime of war", thaw camera is focused on Briseis's hair where the netting from her wig/extensions is clearly visible.
  
  
• Anachronisms: There are modern clasps on the necklaces and French hooks on the earrings.
  
  
• Errors in geography: After Achilles rescues Briseis from the Greeks' branding iron in the dark and spend the night together, the next shot shows the sun rising over the sea...to the west.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the sun is shown rising over the sea, there are no shadows. The shot has clearly been filmed at magic hour and the sun superimposed later.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When Briseis is asking Achilles if she is still his captive, the tan line from her bikini is very visible.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: To kill Hector, Achilles uses a spear. When Achilles is dragging Hector back to camp, we can still see the spear sticking out of him. In the next shot, when Achilles is within the camp, the spear in Hector is gone. Hector is dragged for many miles, it is very likely that the spear either snapped off or fell off by the time he reached the camp.
  
  
• Continuity: When Paris first shoots Achilles, half of the arrow goes clear through his heel. Later, when Achilles is dying, the entire arrow is only protruding out of one side of his heel.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: After the Trojans were ordered to push forward after the Greek's first attack, blood can be seen suddenly appearing on a few of the Greeks shields.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the Greek leaders are lining up to offer gifts to Agamemnon, one of them is carrying a red-figure vase shaped like a submarine. Red-figure pottery (made of red clay with a black glaze, from which lines and shapes are removed to make red images) was not made until the fifth century BCE.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In the first scene of Troy, you can see Llamas. These animals are originally from South America and did not exist in Troy.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the boy goes to find Achilles for him to go fight the enormous warrior from Thessaly he tells him that "the Thessalonian is huge". He should have said "Thessalian". A "Thessalonian" would be someone from Thessaloniki, a city that was not founded until centuries later (4th century BC) by Cassander, who became the king of Greece after Alexander's death. Cassander married Thessalonike, Alexander's sister and named the city after her to honor her.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Spartan ships are arriving in Troy, the bells are ringing and everyone is going crazy. Hector hands his child over to his wife and it's a plastic baby doll.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious dummies used for the bodies of the main characters that are burned, such as Hector, Achilles, Menalaus and Patroclus.
  
  
• Continuity: While Paris is fighting Menelaus for Helen's hand, their shadows are opposite. This would mean that the sunlight was on both of their lefts as they face each other. They do not match up and the scenes must have been shot at different times of the day.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the soldiers of Greece are collecting the wood for the Trojan horse, you see bits coming of the wood, revealing the white Styrofoam used for the to make the wood.
  
  
• Continuity: When Paris goes forward to talk to Hector on the ship to Troy, his cloak is wide open at the top. During the rest of the scene, the top closes up without him touching it.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The umbrella used to shelter Paris and Helen during the parade in Troy is obviously modern, as it includes metal spokes like modern umbrellas.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the raid of Troy, several soldiers can be seen as merely acting out the stabbing of people.
  
  
• Continuity: When Paris enters Helen's room after the dinner, he gently pulls her hair so that it all lies on her back, behind her shoulders, exposing her neck. When she gets up, it is around/in front of her shoulders again which could have happened while getting up but then after a quick shot to Paris, Helen once again has her all of her hair tucked back behind her shoulders.
  
  
• Continuity: When Priam meets Achilles in his tent after the battle with Hector, Priam's cloak on his left shoulder repeatedly changes position (folded over or smooth) throughout the scene.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Greeks first charge Troy, soldiers run toward the city walls carrying spears. Some soldiers' spear tips can be clearly seen to be wiggling, indicating soft rubber props.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Helen sutures Paris's wounds after his duel with King Menelaus. Suturing wounds did not become common practice until thousands of years after the movie is set.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Most equipment used by the Greeks, such as the large round shields and Achilles helmet, is from the Classical Period (5-4th centuries BC). At the time when the epic is set, the Greeks used small bowl-shaped helmets and light leather shields shaped like the number 8.
  
  
• Continuity: When Helen is telling Hector that she is going back to the ships, her hair style changes between shots.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Hector removes his helmet right after Achilles does (during their fight scene), you can see the nose bridge and flanks of his helmet move in an obvious rubbery way.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Troy faces west, but the sun can be seen coming up in front of Troy on one of the mornings.
  
  
• Continuity: When Patroclus is fighting Hector in Achilles' armor, Hector quite prominently stabs him in the chest, which would make a hole or a least a cut in the armor. Yet, when Achilles goes to fight Hector in the same armor, no such marks are visible.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the time of the Trojan War (circa 1260BC) the inhabitants of Greece did not refer to themselves as Greeks but as Achaians, Danaans or Argives.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Paris and Helen have arrived in Troy, Helen tells Paris that Sparta was never her home, that she had been sent to Sparta to marry Menelaus. According to Homer, Menelaus was actually from Mycenae (as was his brother, Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae). Helen was the daughter of the previous king of Sparta. The Spartan royal house worked by matrilineal succession and so by marrying Helen, Menelaus became the king of Sparta.
  
  
• Continuity: During the battle of Hector and Achilles, Hector swipes his sword at Achilles's chest, leaving a big scratch on his armour. But when Achilles kills Hector there seems to be no mark on his armour.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When Achilles hits Hector with a broken spear, we see the end of the spear that is sticking out of Hector's chest. It is clearly sawn-off, not broken, like it would after Hector/Achilles broke each other's spears.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hector lifts the helmet off the dying Patroclus, Patroclus' nose is seen to be bleeding. But barely five seconds later, in the shot of the dead Patroclus, there is no sign of a nosebleed.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Greeks are sacking Troy towards the end of the film, you can hear a soldier yell "Aqui" twice. Aqui is Spanish for here. Most of the movie was filmed in Mexico and used Mexicans as extras.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the dead are about to be burned on the pyre - on several occasions - we see coins placed on their eyes. The tradition in these times, however, was to put an "obol" (small bronze coin) in the dead person's mouth for him to pay the ferryman, Charon, for passage over the river Styx to Hades, the kingdom of the dead
  
  
• Anachronisms: When burning the bodies on pyres, they placed coins on the corpses' eyes. As noted by someone else elsewhere, the Greeks placed a coin in the mouth, not on the eyes. But at the time of the Trojan War, coinage hadn't even been invented yet (it wasn't invented until the 7th century BCE), so there wouldn't have been coins at all.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hector is dressing for his final battle with Achilles, there are slippers on the floor next to the foot of the bed. During this scene, the slippers change position.
  
  
• Continuity: During the battle of Hector and Achilles, Achilles kicks Hector to the ground. There is a shot of Hector crawling towards a piece of broking spear. In one shot Achilles throws away his shield and talks to Hector. During this speech, Hector reaches the spear. But after the shot of Achilles walking towards the camera, Hector just reaches the spear and gets up with it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Achilles' ship hits the beach, several men are hit by arrows and fall into the surf. When the warriors move onto the beach and use their shields as cover, the ship can be seen behind them. There are no bodies in the water or on the beach.
  
  

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