When Rick turns around on the quay, to get on the train after rain was seen drenching his fedora and coat, both his and Sam's hat & coat are then completely dry. (At around 47 mins)
(at around 11 mins) Right before showing Rick the letters of transit, Ugarte begins lighting a new cigarette with his previous cigarette, but gives up doing so and puts the unlit cigarette on the ashtray in front of him, where it rests partially on the table. Moments later there are two cigarettes in the ashtray, none of which are resting on the table. Moments later, as Ugarte leaves the table, the cigarettes have disappeared from the ashtray.
(at around 16 mins) While chatting to Captain Renault outside the Café Américain, Rick lights a cigarette, then in the next shot, lights another.
Early on in the movie, Sam has his piano facing towards the band. A few moments later, the piano faces away from the band.
(at around 3 mins) The man who is shot escaping from police dies next to an arch where a soldier, a young woman, a stool, and an amphora suddenly have shifted positions.
There was never any such thing as a "letter of transit" (see trivia).
(at around 43 mins) During the flashback scene in Paris, loudspeaker trucks are shown with the Gestapo telling the Parisians not to act when the Germans arrive tomorrow. In fact, Paris issued no warnings about the German advance at all. The German blitzkrieg overwhelmed the French so completely that all communications were either stymied or went astray.
(at around 3 mins) There is a French tricolor with crescent and star in the middle waving over the Police offices at the beginning of the film. Such flag was never used in Morocco. During the time of the French Protectorate the flag of Morocco was the same as today, red with a green pentagram in the middle. The civil ensign used between 1923 and 1956 added a small French tricolor in the canton but never a crescent and star.
Major Strasser is wearing the uniform of a Luftwaffe Major, but his rank insignia and stripes on the trousers are those of a Luftwaffe General.
(at around 1h 40 mins) In the last scene, a bottle of Vichy water is thrown in the dustbin. The label on the bottle is written in English. It seems unlikely that in a French protectorate, under German control, water bottles were sold with English labels.
(at around 37 mins) When Rick is getting drunk he ask Sam, "It's December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?" After Sam replies, "My watch stopped," he goes on to say, "I'll bet they're asleep in New York. I'll bet they're asleep all over America." However, Rick is not referring to the actual time (noted by giving a month and year rather than a time) and is actually making reference to, in pre-Pearl Harbor America, most Americans are "asleep" when it comes to the war and fighting the Axis powers. This is an intentional attempt at a poetic reference, not a statement of fact.
(at around 51 mins) Renault says, "We mustn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918." This isn't historically correct, but Louis was being sarcastic.
At the very beginning a turning globe reveals across the Soviet Union the words "Union of Socialistic Soviet Republics." Although it was not used as frequently as "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," it is an accepted translation of the name and occasionally appeared on maps of that era.
(at around 1h 35 mins) When Renault calls Strasser to tell of the upcoming events at the airport, Major Strasser is in the office of the "German Commission of Armistice" according to the sign on the door. The name should have been in German - or perhaps French, but not in English.
However this is not a Goof by IMDb rules as it is done for the benefit of the audience. A sign reading something like " Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission" would have been incomprehensible.
However this is not a Goof by IMDb rules as it is done for the benefit of the audience. A sign reading something like " Deutsche Waffenstillstandskommission" would have been incomprehensible.
(at around 28 mins) Major Strasser addresses Ilsa as "Mademoiselle," because as explained by Ilsa (when she attempts to get the letters of transit from Rick) her marriage to Victor was kept secret even from her friends.
(at around 1h 27 mins) After police break up underground group's meeting and Laszlo escapes to Rick's café, Laszlo is trying to bandage his arm with a dish towel. The towel falls off several times yet there is no blood on it.
(at around 13 mins) When Signor Ferrari first enters Rick's Cafe and seats himself, the back "stucco" wall to the top and left of Ferrari's head vibrates a few times exposing it as a very flimsy set wall. It occurs once more when it cuts back to the same shot after a cut away of Rick.
There are multiple instances throughout the film where the action of Sam's hands on the piano bears no resemblance to the piano part heard. Especially notable is the first time Sam sings "As Time Goes By" for Ilsa; a rapid treble run is executed that would have necessitated the movement of his right forearm. None is seen.
(at around 1h 12 mins) When the trumpet and trombone players raise their instruments to play "La Marseillaise", the music begins a split second before they start playing.
(at around 1h 1 min) While accompanying Sam on "If I Could Be With You", the guitarist pats her instrument in rhythm, yet the sound heard can only be made when the guitar is actually strummed.
(at around 15 mins) When Yvonne is kicked out of Rick's in the first scene there, the comments she shouts as she walks outside don't match her lip movement at all.
Throughout the movie, Sam is seen playing an upright piano, but the sound is clearly that of a grand piano.
(at around 5 mins) When the German plane approaches the airport the camera pans across a large group of refugees with their passports lined up outside the Police Headquarters. The camera moves close to the crowd, revealing the individual persons. A shadow moves across the wall behind them, which is most likely the camera crane.
Throughout the film, liquor bottles are seen with USA tax revenue stickers across the tops of the bottles.
(at around 47 mins) The railroad car Rick boards in Paris is an American railroad passenger car. French railroad cars of the time would likely board from multiple doors into individual compartments. The two cars shown reveal their American heritage in handrails, side moldings and other minor details. Given the unavailability of French cars at the time of filming, the error is understandable.
(at around 1 min) On the map shown during the titles at the beginning, the area where Poland is shown is too far to the East, and occupies parts of Belarus and the Ukraine, which were part of the USSR at that time. (Technically Poland didn't exist. While the U.S. never recognized this, it had been divided into two by Hitler and Stalin. After Hitler invaded the USSR, the part of Poland not incorporated into the German Reich was given the nondescript name General Government.)
In the initial scene with a map of Africa, Rabat is incorrectly placed at the location of the town of Kinitra and thus is too far north. Rabat is actually about 20 miles further to the southwest at the place where the map indicates a river flowing into the Atlantic. Note that Rabat is correctly placed on the map on the wall in the Prefect's office.
Guillermo Ugarte (Peter Lorre) is not an Italian name (unlike the origin of the character Signor Ugarte) - it is an entirely Spanish name (and he would be "Señor" and not "Signor"). Especially the first name Guillermo (Spanish form for William). In Italian, the name would be Guglielmo.
If Laszlo is such a notorious and hunted character by the Nazis he would not be so foolish as to openly enter a social and political hub like Ricks Café, even in technically-free Vichy Morocco.
(at around 1h 23 mins) Lazlo wanted to keep his marriage to Ilsa a secret because she would be in danger if the Germans learned she was his wife, as she would know information they would want. But she was openly his traveling companion, which should alert the Germans that she probably knew secret information about Lazlo's work, so her life should be in danger anyway.
(at around 1h 30 mins) Rick lets Louis into the cafe to catch Laszlo and as they walk past the first table the shadow of the microphone moves across the tabletop.
(at around 44 mins) When Rick and Ilsa are listening to the sound of German guns out the window in Paris, Rick comments that they are from the "New German 77s". Actually, the German Army used a 77 mm. field gun in World War I, not World War II. Other sources claim that the script change was made from the original "88s", on the basis of a War Dept request, to avoided tipping off the Germans as to America's awareness of the new weapon.
(at around 51 mins) Captain Renault boasts that "I was with them [the Americans] when they blundered into Berlin in 1918." The "Great War's" (WWI) Armistice - that which ceased hostilities, was effective November 1918 but it did not end the war. It did however reestablish the borders back to those at the moment just before the outbreak of war. In other words, the Armistice caused the Germans to retreat from France but never ceded any part of Germany to be occupied by "foreign troops." Sometime later - almost 8-months - the peace was concluded among all but the Americans. The US Congress rejected the Treaty of Versailles and actually the USA didn't conclude a separate peace with Germany (The Central Powers) until the start of 1923 - over 4-years later. While the US may have maintained a 'handful' of troops on the continent after the Armistice, there is no record of them singularly or in concert with their allies ever marching through the streets of Berlin - until 1945 that is.
(at around 1h 35 mins) In the final airport scene, the French guard telephones the radio tower and reports "visibility one and a half miles." France invented the Metric system in the 1790s and are very chauvinistic about its use. No French official would report distance in miles, only kilometers.
(at around 9 mins) In the opening, Rick is at the back of his cafe, playing chess with himself. During a closeup of his hand, he is wearing a wedding ring. Rick is a bachelor.
(at around 1h 35 mins) Rick tells Louie to fill in the letters of transit in the names of "Mr. and Mrs. Victor Laszlo." However, the marriage was kept a strict secret, so Ilsa would not have changed her name to Laszlo; she still would have been legally Ilsa Lund.