Goofs for
Jaws (1975)

photos

board

trailer

details

• Continuity: Brody's watch disappears when he is lounging on the beach with his wife.
  
  
• Continuity: The cleats that the shark pulls off the boat reappear.
  
  
• Continuity: The chunk of dock that floats in the water, as the shark pulls it, differs from the piece of dock that broke off in the previous shots.
  
  

• Continuity: When the Shark first approaches Hooper in the cage, the above water shot shows the barrels being towed through the water at great speed. However, underwater the shark passes Hooper at less than half the speed of the barrels, and the shark has no (barrel) lines attached.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Quint is in the shark's mouth, you can see a soft white mat, under Quint, to protect him, and to make sure he is comfortable.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the boat scene towards the end of the film, there is a medium shot of the rear of the boat when Jaws comes right out of the water. If you look carefully under the shark model as it leaves the water, you can see the mechanical wheel they used to maneuver the model.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper is gutting the Tiger shark, the order of things he pulls out does not match the order that, when they land at Brody's feet, as Hooper throws them towards him, and some things just appear at Brody's feet.
  
  
• Continuity: On the Orca near the end of the film, there is a shot of Quint aiming the harpoon gun. In this shot the harpoon gun is high, but in next shot he is shooting from the hip.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper is measuring the bite radius of the Tiger shark, he puts his measuring tape away more than once.
  
  
• Continuity: When the three men are in the cabin of the Orca at night, Quint is leaning forward against the table and is drinking something. In the next shot, as Chief Brody feels the cut on his forehead, Quint is turned towards the side leaning on the back of his seat, but in the next shot of Quint, he is leaning forward again in the same position as the first shot.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the old fisherman yells at his friend to swim faster and not to look back, his mouth movements aren't consistent with what he is saying.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Chrissie is attacked by the shark, her mouth doesn't match her screams in many shots of her.
  
  
• Continuity: The word ORCA on the back of the boat continually changes from shot to shot varying from very rusty letters to shiny letters.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper visits Brody's home, he brings two bottles of wine. Brody pours himself a large measure, and then gives his wife and Hooper some. If you look at the bottle, firstly it seems rather full for the amount he's just poured, and secondly the level changes from shot to shot. Sometimes it's above the label, sometimes below.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before the Kintner boy is attacked, when Chief Brody is sitting on the beach watching the water, he speaks with the old man called Harry. In the close-up shot of Harry the chin strap of his rubber cap hangs down loose at his chest, but in the side shots the chin strap is tucked up at his ear.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper runs into the cabin, the amount of black smoke in there, decreases between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Quint throws a large black duffel bag to Hooper, the latter catches it with the open end down. However, in the next shot he is holding the open end up.
  
  
• Continuity: When the shark eats the guy in the red boat in the pond, Brody grabs a red blanket and goes for a brown blanket after exclaiming, "He's in shock," in reference to his son's close encounter with the shark. In the next shot, his wife is laying down blue and brown blankets over Michael.
  
  
• Continuity: Brody asks Hooper to help with the group of men crowding into a small boat. Hooper says that the officer wants him to tell them that they're overcrowding the boat. They show the men climbing in and there's a guy in a blue jacket climbing down the ladder into the boat. He waves his arm and says, "What do you care?" They then show Hooper asking if they know a good restaurant or hotel on the island. When they show the men again, uttering the line "Yeah, walk straight ahead," the man in the blue jacket is on the deck again and is again descending the ladder.
  
  
• Continuity: When Chief Brody and Hooper tie the ropes to the stern cleats, Quint shoots a harpoon under the shark's mouth. When Hooper is in the shark cage, look at the shark's mouth when it passes by. There is no harpoon there.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After the shark has pulled out the stern cleats and the three men are kneeling down in the boat, the film crew on a separate boat is reflected in the window of the cabin door of the Orca.
  
  
• Continuity: When the two old fishermen are fishing for the shark from the pier, the shark takes the bait and you can see the chain getting pulled into the sea. In the next shot you can still hear the chain being pulled into the sea but if you look on the pier, you can't see any chain being dragged in and the wooden post that the chain is secured to changes into a different position.
  
  
• Continuity: On the Fourth of July, Sean (the youngest Brody kid) is wearing a white t-shirt with orange around the collar, and green shorts. But after Michael goes into shock and Sean is seen crying, he's suddenly wearing darker shorts and a plain white shirt with no orange. Later at the hospital, he has his orange and white shirt and green shorts on again.
  
  
• Continuity: When Michael and his two friends are sitting in their boat, in the pond, in the first close-up they sit on the white wrinkled up sail, but in the next wide-shot two of them sit on the spread out blue tarp.
  
  
• Continuity: When the pump is given to Brody, Quint says, "Pump it out, Chief," and then Quint, with his long blue sleeves, thrusts his machete into the side of the boat. However, in the close-up Quint's arm has no sleeve whatsoever, as the machete meets the wood.
  
  
• Continuity: The dried bloody stains around the tiger shark's mouth, as it hangs on the dock, change and/or disappear, depending on the shot.
  
  
• Continuity: The design showing and thickness of the bandana Quint wears keeps changing between shots.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After hoisting up the damaged cage, when Quint walks over to stand beside Brody and a crewmember's head is reflected in the window behind the ladder.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper and Quint are comparing their scars, Hooper shows him a large scar on his left forearm. Later on (climbing down a ladder), when the boat engine has died and Hooper has his sleeves pulled up, the scar is gone.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Quint hooks something "big" with the rod on the Orca, and we cut to a close-up of him, the line is heard running from the reel, but on the right-hand side of the screen you can see the line hanging loosely in the eyes of the rod.
  
  
• Continuity: When the two little kids who pull the fake shark fin around, finally surface, they find themselves surrounded by the Coast Guard's boats and rifles: the kid on the left then takes his mask off and removes his headgear (a diver's cap). But, just a second or two later, when he's being hoisted into one of the surrounding boats, the cap is back on his head, in its original position.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper causes Ben Gardner's head to drop into the hole in the boat, it falls halfway out of the hole. After a quick cut away to Hooper's reaction, the head next appears further back inside the boat.
  
  
• Continuity: When Chief Brody is talking to Hooper and picking at the B & G wine foil cap, it is peeled off/intact between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: During the beach panic, the position of many of the adults and children change between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When there is a false alarm in the water, a lady screams when she sees the fin. Behind her there are a girl and a boy on a blow-up raft. In the next shot a man is seen in a similar position, and behind him, there is now an extra girl on the raft.
  
  
• Continuity: Chief Brody pulls his son out of the water, who is in shock after a close encounter with the shark. His pants get very wet as he splashes through the shallow water and we see a bunch of wet spots. Cut to Brody laying the boy onto the sand, and the wet spots are in a completely different arrangement. Areas that were wet a second before are now dry and vice versa.
  
  
• Continuity: When Chief Brody is in the hardware store getting supplies to make "Beach Closed" signs, there are two buildings across the street (visible through the shop window), painted dark gray/blue, with large windows trimmed in white. When the chief exits the building and stands on the curb right out front loading the supplies into the deputy's car, the building across the street is a large brick building with small windows.
  
  
• Continuity: When the shark swims under the boat near the end of the movie there are no ropes visible, yet three barrels are supposedly attached.
  
  
• Continuity: The "NO SWIMMING" sign placed on the beach has divots on its top from hammering before the hammer first hits; presumably this is from a previous take.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper, Brody and Quint are preparing the cage for Hooper's confrontation with the shark, overhead shots show that the deck of the boat is dry. But scenes before and after show a few inches of water in the boat, a result of the shark battering in the Orca's side.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper and Brody are tying off the ropes on the back of the boat and Brody traps Hooper and pulls him free, the rope breaks when it snaps back. Yet in the next shot it's still tied around the boat.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Later in the movie the shark is chasing the fishing vessel Orca after the intrepid crew has harpooned it and put "three barrels" on him, which are clearly seen following them in the background of the shot. What is also clearly seen in this shot is the wake from the towline that attaches the barrels to the fishing vessel itself.
  
  
• Continuity: Quint's fishing chair on the Orca disappears and reappears periodically.
  
  
• Continuity: When the shark enters the pond and knocks the guy (Ted Grossman) off the boat, he doesn't have any shoes on. When we see his leg sink to the bottom it has a shoe on it.
  
  
• Continuity: The sunscreen on Chief Brody's nose disappears, reappears, etc. while he is aboard the Orca.
  
  
• Continuity: When Brody is filling out the report for the first victim (girl) he has the date the body was found as July 2, 1974. Later, when Mrs. Kitner puts the bounty out for the shark the poster reads that her son was killed on Sunday [sic] June 29. He was attacked after the girl.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Chief Brody is walking down the street of Amity early in the movie, the crew's lighting is seen in the reflection of his glasses.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: On the TV/video version of Chrissie's death scene, a fine wire can be seen connected to the buoy as she is being shaken about by the shark. This was probably used to stop it drifting out of shot. The wire has been removed on the DVD version.
  
  
• Continuity: When the mouth of the tiger shark is first opened on the dock there is blood on the mouth and in the back of its throat. After it has been hung up and when one of the boaters puts his head in its mouth, there is no blood.
  
  
• Continuity: The sea frequently goes from choppy to calm, and the skies from sunny to hazy, as we cut back and forth between characters on the Orca.
  
  
• Continuity: When Chrissie Watkins is found on the beach, her remaining hand has one ring. Later at the Coroner's Office when Hooper is viewing the body, he lifts her arm and she is wearing more rings.
  
  
• Continuity: When Brody boards the ferry and tells them to take him out to the Boy Scouts in the water, Larry Vaughn also boards the ferry. Although the ferry driver has not been given new instructions, he takes them all over to the other side to the ferry terminal, ignoring Brody's initial request.
  
  
• Factual errors: As Brody walks through Amity, the trees are bare, despite its being July.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: After the boat's engine has died and Hooper tells Brody and Quint that he will go into the shark cage, you can see a reflection of the boom mike in the window behind him, moving from left-to-right.
  
  
• Continuity: In the opening attack scene, the position of the sun/lighting changes from shot to shot.
  
  
• Continuity: The sun's position over the water, and subsequently the lighting, often changes from shot to shot - very noticeably when the kid surfaces with his fake shark fin, and in several scenes aboard the Orca.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper finds the shark tooth in the hull of Ben Gardner's boat, the point is sticking up, with the root end of the tooth embedded in the wood. If the shark had lost the tooth while biting into the hull, Hooper should have found the point stuck in the wood, with the root end exposed.
  
  
• Continuity: Before Quint shoots the third barrel at the shark, there are three barrels on the deck of the Orca. After he shoots the barrel and it goes into the water (leaving two behind), we still see three barrels in the background.
  
  
• Continuity: There are five yellow barrels on the Orca. After they get the third barrel in the shark, Quint walks past the barrels with his harpoon gun and there are still three barrels left.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Louisiana license plate which came out of the first shark reads "Sportsmen's Paradise", while the correct motto is "Sportsman's Paradise".
  
  
• Factual errors: The boy playing the clarinet is told that a '3' reed should be softer than a '2'. Reeds get harder as they increase in number value.
  
  
• Continuity: In one of the first scenes scene when Quint stands at the bow of the boat to shoot the shark with a harpoon, he takes aim at eye level with the camera behind him. But when the camera cuts in front of him he is shooting from hip level
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Brody is in his office typing a coroner's report, he misspells "coroner" - he types "corner".
  
  
• Continuity: When the engine of the Orca is blown, you see Hooper jumping into over a foot of water, and the entire engine compartment is flooded. In the next shot, you see Quint reaching for, and using a fire extinguisher to put out the fire in a dry engine compartment.
  
  
• Continuity: Young Sean Brody is shown wearing light green swim trunks in the 4th of July sequence. He is seen sitting on the beach when the shark attacks the boat in the pond and his brother Michael is nearly killed. After Michael is dragged out of the water, there is a cut to Sean sitting on the beach crying, but he is wearing dark blue trunks. The shot was actually taken from the earlier beach scene where Alex is killed on his raft.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In Quint's Indianapolis story, he says the ship was on its way back from delivering the atomic bomb, from the island of Tinian to Leyte. In fact, the Indianapolis, after having delivered a part of the bomb at Tinian, returned to Guam, where it lay over for two days before departing for its next mission to Leyte - an entirely separate mission. Further, Quint states that they didn't see the first shark for half an hour. This is incorrect from statements of survivors, and especially considering the fact that the Indianapolis was hit by torpedoes at 12:02 a.m., July 30, 1945. Even at dawn, the men suffered photophobia from the sun reflecting off the oil which covered them and the water. Further, there was no shark attacks on day one after the sinking. Also, the statement by Quint that no distress signal was sent is wrong, since the Indianpolis, on a new mission after having successfully delivered its cargo to Tinian and returned to Guam, was no longer under radio silence and did indeed send a distress signal. These three errors are commonly misstated, as the urban legend became that the Indianapolis was sunk upon its return from delivering the bomb.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Brody is on the beach during Alex Kitner's death, an island local approaches Brody and asks him to do a favor and the film crew is reflected in Brody's glasses.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: A bar of setlights is reflected in the air tank that Brody sends flying aboard the Orca.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jaws attacks Hooper's cage, there is live footage of a real Great White with a rope hanging from its mouth. This shark's mouth is clearly much smaller than Jaws' mouth when it attacks the boat moments later.
  
  
• Continuity: During the town meeting, the shot before Quint scrapes his fingers over a chalk drawing of a man-eating shark on the blackboard shows the back of the meeting room, including the blackboard. There is no drawing, and Quint is not in the shot, even though both are there a split second later.
  
  
• Continuity: In the shot where the shark is blown up, one second before the explosion, the shark is obviously not moving.
  
  
• Continuity: At the Town Hall meeting, just as everybody starts moving from the corridor into the council chambers, the blackboard at the back of the room is clean. It remains clean in some shots later during the meeting, but when Quint scratches it before his first tirade, there is a large shark, water and all, drawn on it in white chalk. No one was seen drawing it, nor was there time for anyone to draw it during the few seconds between the last shot when the blackboard was seen clean and the shot of Quint's nails scratching it.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): During the beach scene when everyone was rushing out of the ocean, there were several medical staff dressed in white to assist the bathers coming out of the water. One of the medical staff (a male with his hair pulled back in a pony tail) can be noticed laughing and joking as the people rush out of the ocean during the Alex Kinter attack. He is located close to the bottom of your TV screen.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: After Chrissy Watkins' remains were pulled out of the cabinet in that little pan, Richard Dreyfuss went on to record his findings of the remains. There is no way all of the remains he described into his tape recorder would fit into that little, shallow pan.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): One of Brody's deputies informs him that a bunch of Boy Scouts are in the bay doing the mile swim for their merit badges. The mile swim is a much prized award in Boy Scout aquatics, but is not required for any merit badges. It's an easy mistake for a non-Boy Scout to make.
  
  
• Continuity: In the "beach panic" sequence, many of the people running out of the water and past Chief Brody are obviously completely dry, despite having just run out of the water.
  
  
• Continuity: When Brody is doing the chum line for the second time you see that his cigarette has been lit for some time, yet when he has just seen Jaws for the first time and tells Quint, "...you're gonna need a bigger boat..." he is clearly smoking a freshly lit, full length cigarette.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper and Brody cut open the caught shark, Hooper throws back pieces of fish. The number and placement of these pieces changes between shots.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the shark starts to pull the Orca backwards, a towline is clearly visible running from the stern of the Orca (to the tow/camera vessel), in spite of the attempted use of the rope lines from the yellow floats to cover it.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): While killing time on the Orca, Brody is trying to learn to tie a bowline; he is reciting the method incorrectly.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper is in the shark cage, his regulator moves from the right side of his mouth (normal) to the left and then back again.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hooper is in the shark cage he removes the cork from his spear that holds poison, then when the shark hits the cage he loses his spear and as it floats through the water the cork reappears, then the next time you see the spear hit the ocean floor the cork is gone again.
  
  
• Factual errors: Like Quint said, "Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then..." So for all those scenes where we see Jaws attack someone, like Quint or the guy in the pond, his eyes should have rolled back as a way to protect them.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Brody and Hooper are out on Hooper's "High Tech" boat, there is a radar antenna rotating on the bow of the boat. A radar antenna should be at the highest point possible on a boat. In the position shown on Hooper's boat, there would be no radar coverage behind the boat as it would be blocked by the cabin and bridge of the boat.
  
  
• Factual errors: A shark's nose is one of the most delicate parts of its body. Any hit on it would disorient the shark's senses for at least a minute. So when Quint was going towards the shark and hit his foot on its nose, it should have sent the Jaws away, giving Quint time to escape.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The corners of Jaws' mouth change throughout the movie, whether we are seeing a footage shark or the mechanical one. When we see a real one, the lines of its mouth are parallel. But when we see the fake one, the top corners of its jaws are overlapping the bottom ones.
  
  
• Continuity: When Brody attempts to make a mayday call on the radio, a liquor bottle is next to the radio. Then Quinn comes in to smash the radio and there is a wine bottle next to the radio.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the shark jumps onto the boat, you will notice daylight shining through his gills. The sharks used for filming included a right and left design. Which meant one side had skin and the other side didn't. This design allowed the daylight to shine through to the other end and through the gills.
  
  
• Factual errors: Quint was in the Navy, but yet he wears an Army issued field jacket with his name on it.
  
  
• Continuity: Hooper wears glasses (old fashioned rimless) throughout the film, but the temples (the part that goes from the glasses themselves to the ears) change from time to time, even within the same scene. Sometimes they are connected to the glass part of the frame at the top, and sometimes in the middle.
  
  
• Continuity: In the shark cage, Hooper has a black ring on his left ring finger in one scene, and no ring in the other scenes.
  
  
• Continuity: Prior to Hooper going into the shark cage, Quint asks "You can get this little needle through his skin?" In the next scene, the needle grows from about 2 millimeters to several centimeters, then Hooper injects the sedative into a "Shark Dart" harpoon with a long and thick needle/injector which would penetrate *any* animal's skin.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Real great white sharks do not behave in the manner depicted in this film. In fact, unprovoked shark attacks are very rare, with only a handful of them being fatal and two out of three people survive a great white shark attack. However, this is a thriller/horror movie and many things are intentionally exaggerated to fit the genre.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When Crissy's remains are found on the beach. The initial shot of the remains show crabs crawling on them, and then another crab is dropped on the remains from above, right before Sheriff Brody approaches.
  
  
• Continuity: When Quint throws down his machete into the side of the boat, the ocean water in the background is as smooth as glass. But in all other shots during that scene, the water is very choppy.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Quint tells his story of surviving the Indianapolis, he states that their mission was so secret no distress signal was sent. That is incorrect. In fact, the naval base that received the distress signal ignored it, thinking it was a Japanese trick. Another fact is that they weren't reported until a week over due. That is also incorrect. The Naval Base of the Philippines waited until the Indianapolis was overdue three days before reporting. That also contradicts Quint's story about being rescued five days later instead of a week.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Hooper first meets Quint, Quint asks him to tie a sheep shank. Hooper ties a knot and tosses it to him. However, the knot Hooper ties is actually a trumpet knot, not a sheep shank. They both serve the same purpose (shortening a length or rope) but they are tied differently and have a slight difference in appearance.
  
  
• Factual errors: Great White Sharks cannot move backwards once their gills are under water, as seen towards the end of the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Brody is in the darkroom and they are developing the pictures of the shark's face from the scuba divers, the room's white light is on. When you developing film and pictures in a darkroom a red light must be on. A white light will turn the picture completely black.
  
  

• Factual errors: SPOILER: When Quint was spooking Brody in his boat at nighttime on the first night of the attempt to kill the shark, Quint tells Brody a USS Indianapolis story. In the story, he mentions that sharks' eyes roll back into their heads and only the whites are seen when a shark bites someone. That is true and the shark does it to protect it's eyes. However, it did NOT do that when he was chewing the life out of Quint at the end.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When Hooper climbs into the cage he is not wearing fins, yet when he is lowered in the cage, in the very first shot underwater, he is wearing fins. In the following shots he is not wearing fins, but after the shark destroys the cage and he swims to the bottom of the ocean, he is wearing fins once again.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When Quint first gets bit by the shark you can see blood on his mouth. It disappears until he gets bitten again and he then spits out blood.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: In the close up scene where Hooper is in the shark cage, Jaws attacks and bends the bars on the cage out of shape. After Hooper exits the cage and swims to the bottom of the ocean, the shark is shown attacking an empty cage with all the bars perfectly in line.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When Brody blows up the shark, off in the background there is land in some shots and then no land in others. At one point, there is land about half way across the horizon, then there is land across the whole horizon, and then no land, it varies shot to shot.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: In Quint's final scene, just as the shark is thrashing him from side to side, Quint loses his headband. In the very next shot, where Quint is choking on his own blood, the headband has reappeared.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When Quint and co. are tracking the shark, they use harpoons tied to barrels to tire the shark. When the shark is approaching Brody, who sits on the foremast waiting to shoot it, the surface of the water is visible behind it and the barrels are gone in two shots. The barrels are also gone when the shark blows up.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: Quint removes a cap from one of his teeth when they're swapping stories about injuries below deck. The cap is out for the rest of the movie until he's being eaten by the shark, when the cap is back in place.
  
  

Related Links