Goofs

(at around 5 mins) The chess moves spoken by the computer don't match the ones on the screen; also screens are shown from different games.

All exterior shots of the tool shed where Blair is imprisoned show the window next to the door has been boarded up with the boards horizontal. However, all interior shots of the shed show that same window with the boards attached vertically.

(at around 1h 12 mins) Childs breaks down the door with an ax, doing extensive damage to it, but several scenes later, the door is intact except for one ax hole.

Palmer is tied up on the couch next to Gary when he is revealed to be a Thing. and starts to mutate, with fluids pouring out of his expanding head as he flails around to escape. When MacReady later tests Gary's blood, Gary's clothes and skin are perfectly clean when he should have been splattered with Palmer/Thing's fluids.

(at around 7 mins) Norwegian pulls the same grenade out of the box twice.

Flamethrowers would be useless in Antarctica, especially outside. Gasoline (even in the form of napalm) has too high a freezing temperature to be forced out of a tank without solidifying. While there may be heating torches used, these would probably be LNG (liquified natural gas) and not napalm. They also wouldn't shoot flames out as far as a flamethrower.

This story takes place on the first day of winter. This is on the winter solstice which for Antarctica is in June. At this time of the year, Antarctica should have no daylight hours yet the first half of the film is bright day.

(at around 52 mins) When Blair destroys the radio room, he fires seven shots from a six-shot revolver. The first shot is when MacReady is outside inspecting the destroyed helicopter. Shot two hits the door frame when MacReady runs inside. Shot three is at Childs when he distracts Blair. That is followed by four consecutive shots, and Blair then throwing the "empty" gun towards the doorway.

(at around 44 mins) MacReady says "It's forty below outside." That would be a freakishly warm winter day in inland Antarctica, where winter temperatures are closer to minus 80 Fahrenheit (minus 62 Celsius).

During the many interior scenes where flamethrowers was used, resulting in large fires being started and then extinguished by the characters, the rooms the fires were in would be left with thick choking, blinding smoke, yet the rooms are always smoke-free after the fires are put out.

(at around 8 mins) When Garry shoots the rifle-wielding Norwegian in the eye, the Norwegian's goggles stay on his face. The scene cuts to Garry, then back to the Norwegian falling forward. The goggles are on his face as he falls but come off as he hits the ground. The shot is so brief it looks as if he was not wearing goggles as he fell but a frame by frame check reveals this is not an error.

The UFO is around 60 feet under the ice and supposedly had been buried for 100,000 years, but the creature that crawled from it was found only a few feet under the ice. The heat of the craft's atmospheric entry and engines would have melted the ice, whereas the being got out before it sunk in the 'melt-hole'.

Between the time Fuchs talks to Mac about Blair's notes, calling the snowcat 'the Thiokol' (another brand of snowcat) the logo and model change from a Skidozer 301, with its model name between the headlights, to a 302, with the Bombardier lettering between the headlights and the model name lower down to the left side (screen right). When they take Blair out to be locked up, the snowcat is again a 301. (The blue model-plate can be seen between the headlights, not the black-on-yellow of the 302's Bombardier lettering.)

This is not a goof. It is shown multiple times that they're using more than one snowcat. In some wide shots of the camp the vehicles are visible.

(at around 1h 23 mins) When one of the characters is slammed into the ceiling, a piece of the ceiling breaks off, but instead of falling to the ground, it "falls" upwards into the ceiling, revealing the scene was shot upside-down.

(at around 8 mins) When the Norwegian is firing on the American scientists, it is seen that Childs already has jumped into the snow in previous takes.

The infected Palmer attacks Windows, throwing his bloody corpse against a ceiling lamp and then onto a shelf. As Windows hits the wooden shelf, the top piece bounces like its rubber.

Characters wearing glasses go from the severe cold outside to the apparently toasty warmth inside the buildings without their glasses fogging.

(at around 18 mins) While they are looking at the ice block in the Norwegian base, several of the icicles can be seen swinging.

(at around 1h 23 mins) After Palmer's blood leaps from the dish after being scorched by Mac's flamethrower, Palmer (David Clennon) morphs into a Thing-monster. Several men tied to a couch scream in terror for their lives. Nauls (T.K. Carter) is heard screaming loudly, but when the camera catches some shots of Nauls, he's just sitting placidly while the soundtrack simultaneously reveals him to be screaming.

(at around 4 mins) While the guy in the chopper with the rifle fires several shots at the dog and the sound of a gunshot is heard, at no time is a muzzle flash seen from the end of the rifle.

(at around 15 mins) As the camera pans through the empty camp, after Bennings calls Nauls on the intercom, it casts a shadow next to the blood storage.

(at around 15 mins) Right after Bennings yells on the intercom to turn the music down and his request is ignored by Nauls in the kitchen, the next scene slowly dollies from right to left in the empty medical room. The moving wheels of the dolly and a man in a light blue shirt pushing the dolly are seen in the reflection of bottom and top pane of glass of the stainless steel and glass medical cabinet.

(at around 39 mins) When Norris and Mac climb down into the crater and are walking towards the open hatch in the center, a person's head and arm comes into shot and then disappears again on the far right-hand side of the screen.

(at around 1h 30 mins) As the men come down the stairs into the generator room, Nauls and Garry head down a second flight of stairs as Mac holds up a flare. The shadow of a crew member is visible on the floor holding a boom mic. The shadow even moves as the men walk away from the camera.

(at around 1h 15 mins) When the creature comes out of Norris's chest, there is a wide-shot with Mac in the foreground. In the air ducts on the ceiling, a crew members hand can be seen moving.

(at around 10 mins) On the "first day of winter" (June 21st) there is no daylight south of the Antarctic Circle.

MacReady states "I think it rips through your clothes when it takes you over." but there is no explanation as to how the newly 'born' duplicate replaces the victim's torn clothing. If the humans destroyed all clothing in the base (except for what they are wearing) any new mimics would be obvious. Alternatively, clothing is mimic-tissue, which would suggest that a duplicate couldn't take off any article of clothing (or if it could, whatever he removed would be 'alive', which would argue that any inanimate object in the base could be a Thing).

"Regardless of whether he had expert "alien" knowledge, it is ridiculous to assume Blair had time to dig an underground tunnel and half build a spaceship in the couple of days he was locked in the shack. Especially since Macready or one of the others would be checking on him constantly, bringing him food, etc. The rest of the team seem surprised that the ground underneath the floor of the shack was hollow, so it obviously wasn't already there beforehand. It's also implausible that Blair could have acquired so much equipment and parts (supposedly from the helicopter) to make the spaceship without being detected by anybody.

(at around 48 mins) When the characters are burning the bodies of Bennings, the dog monster and the two-headed human, Blair is missing from the group for story purposes. But Clark is conspicuously absent, as well.

While burning the creatures might destroy the outside cells of what they were imitating, it would do nothing to destroy the cells on the interiors of the body. In fact, the body would act as an "insulator" protecting the inner cells from the excessive heat. Doc would have realized that and made mention of it.

At the beginning of the movie when the Norwegians are chasing the dog in the helicopter, it would be almost impossible to miss the dog they'd been chasing for miles using a semi automatic high powered rifle with a scope. The dog could not be moving that fast in the deep snow and all that would be required is to hover stationary above the dog and shoot.

(at around 1h 6 mins) When Mac yells to Norris in the rec room, "Any of them move, you fry 'em," a shadow cast by the crew's boom mic can be seen on the wall above Clark, Copper, and Garry on the couch.

(at around 58 mins) After MacReady asks if the blood test would have worked, it is seen twice above Kurt Russell's head.

(at around 1h 20 mins) Although Fuchs has told them that the alien organism is highly infective, they don't care about sharing the same knife to get their blood samples.

(at around 1h 19 mins) During the blood test scene (before the Palmer reveal), even though there are other chairs available, Childs, Garry, and Palmer are tied up next to each other on the couch. Since the intent was to reveal the Thing without risking anyone uninfected, this move placed at least two of the men at undue risk as being so close to a revealed Thing could have resulted in their immediate infection.

MacReady believes every part of the creature can act as a whole, and thus comes up with the "blood test" to determine who is The Thing. Despite this theory being proven correct, and even though he has a transitioning creature under control with the flame thrower, he inexplicably tosses a stick of dynamite onto the burning Thing after it's outside, blasting it into many smaller pieces, any one of which is potentially an individual creature.

(at around 1h 30 mins) When Mac, Garry and Nauls are underground, they split up and go alone to separate areas to plant the explosives. They do this instead of staying together despite knowing full well "The Thing" usually attacks a human while they're alone.

After the initial attack by the rifle-wielding Norwegian, MacReady says "First goddamn week of winter". This would fix the date as somewhere between June 20 and June 27, which is when winter begins in the Southern Hemisphere. However, the sun is shining. Being almost entirely inside the Antarctic Circle, the sun would not be visible in Antarctica that week. Most of the continent is shrouded in continuous darkness at that time.