Goofs

Various characters refer to the murdered police officer as John W. Bundy, but the police record of the case shows his name as W.W. Bundy.

When McNeal interviews Frank in the prison hospital McNeal is sitting down taking notes. After he writes down Skutnik's name McNeal puts his pencil in his suit pocket and picks up his notes. In the following shots from behind he is still holding his pencil and the note paper is still on the table in front of him and in the shots from the front there is no pencil and the note is being held in his right hand off the table.

In Springfield, when the technician who received the fax places the photo paper into the developer, he does so with the curled edges pointing down (so the image would have been formed on the outside of the cylinder. However, when the fax is developed, the edges of the paper curl point up (as if the image is formed on the inside of the cylinder).

When Jim wakes up after a rough night and goes to the living room and sits at the puzzle, he lights a cigarette with his right hand. When the camera changes and shots from the left from his wife's perspective, the cigarette is in his left hand. As the camera changes back and forth, the cigarette changes from his right to his left hand.

When Frank takes the lie detector test, he tells the operative he is 5 ft 9 inches tall. Later, when McNeal finds the arrest card, it describes Frank as 5 ft 8 inches tall.

Part of a story is shown being set in type by a Linotype machine. It may be read correctly, but if it were printed that way, it would show as mirror writing.

The photo is inaccurately said to be enlarged 100 times, 140 times, or more. The enlarged photos aren't zoomed in anywhere near 100 times.

The title is a misnomer. Telephone exchanges at the time of the story were always spelled with the first two letters in caps, i.e. NOrthside, followed by four, not three numerical digits.

In the film's opening narrative, the audience is informed that in 1932 there were 365 murders committed in Chicago: "one for each day of the year." However, 1932 was a leap year and, therefore, had 366 days.

A title card following the opening credits reads: "This film was photographed in the State of Illinois using whenever possible, the actual locales associated with the story." The words "whenever possible" are a qualifying clause and should have been preceded by a comma, but no comma was provided.

When McNeal is interviewing Helen Wiecek Rayska, prior to the arrival home of Mr. Rayska, Helen indicates that she only divorced Frank Wiecek AFTER Mr. Rayska had met and began loving her and her son, Frank Jr. However, when Mr. Rayska and Frank Jr. arrive home after that point in the interview, Mr. Rayska tells McNeal with certainty that he never even met Helen and Frank Jr. until after the divorce was finalized, and that he could provide proof of that.

Frank's ex-wife says that Frank asked her to divorce him for over a year. In the next sentence she says then she met her new husband which can be interpreted as after she finally acted and got the divorce. Her story and her new husband's agree.

When McNeal first visits Tillie, he has no camera nor a photographer with him. The next morning, city editor Kelly is holding a paper with a photo of Tillie scrubbing the stairs.

However, it's possible that McNeal sent a photographer back after meeting Tillie, since when he first met her, he wasn't sure she was the right person.

At some point, someone refers to Soldier Field as 'Soldiers Field' - a mistake that a Chicagoan would not make.

However, there is a feature of Chicago neighborhood slang of adding an unnecessary possessive "s" to the name of local institutions; e.g., somebody going for groceries at the Jewel Food Store chain would say they were headed "by the Jewel's."

Although Frank Wiecek and Tomek Zaleska have been in prison for 11 years, neither show any sign of having aged.

Continually throughout the film, McNeal incorrectly refers to Springfield and Joliet as "up there", when really these cities are southwest of Chicago. Then, when visiting Springfield, he incorrectly refers to Chicago as "down there" while Chicago is really to his north. This is the opposite of how Illinoisans would refer to these areas. Springfield and Joliet are south of Chicago and are always referred to as "down there" or, more often, "downstate," from a Chicagoan's point of view. When visiting Springfield, you'd go back "up" to Chicago. Illinoisans' terminology of "up there" and "down there" always respectively follow the north and south directions of the map. In addition, when Kelly says he stopped at the prison outside Joliet while on his way to Decatur, McNeal suggests this is just an excuse as Decatur is in the opposite direction; in fact, Decatur is in central Illinois, and Joliet would indeed be on the way there from Chicago.

Wanda's Grocery at 1226 S. Ashland is shown to the right of address 1224. This is opposite from how even-numbered addresses are arranged on the south side of Chicago.

There was enough of the newspaper showing by the newspaper boy to identify the issue date without seeing the date due to the images shown below the headlines. They just needed to match the pictures in the newspaper held in the background to a newspaper from the same date and see if the photographs match.

Look at the example from the photographs for the film (slide 93 of 118). There is enough to compare newspapers.

To create a very tense scene, as the final enlargement of the photo is being transmitted, P.J. McNeal says he doesn't know if it will provide the proof they need. However, Brian Kelly already had seen the final enlargement before transmitting it, and he was on the phone with McNeal. Kelly simply would have told McNeal that the enlargement worked and then gone ahead and transmitted the photo as confirmation.

When Reporter McNeal is doing his extensive footwork in searching for Wanda Skutnik in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, he is told to go to an address on Honore Street (a real Chicago street name). However, the guy relating this information pronounces it as "Huh-nor". The street name is derived from a French surname and is correctly pronounced by the locals as "Ahn-oree".

When McNeal first tells the parole board chairman (in the boardroom) that he plans to enlarge a specific area of the photo (showing the newsboy), the chairman, strangely, doesn't ask why, and shows no interest in what McNeal is doing this for. Only in a subsequent scene does McNeal voluntarily explain to the board, what he hopes to achieve by the procedure.

Martin Burns, the newspaper's attorney must have passed the bar, lives, and works in Illinois, which he would know how to pronounce correctly, yet he mispronounces it saying the silent S at the end.