Goofs for
Batman (1989) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Eckhart's beard when he busts Jack raiding the office.
  
  
• Continuity: A Smith & Wesson turns into a Colt on the fight on the catwalks.
  
  
• Continuity: The name of the museum is spelled differently on the outside and inside.
  
  

• Continuity: Pink handprints on a canvas in the museum.
  
  
• Continuity: The Joker knocks over a statue in the museum that soon rights itself.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the Batmobile first drives itself automatically, a hand is visible on the steering wheel through the tinted windscreen.
  
  
• Continuity: Batman's communicator after telling the Batmobile to stop.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the Joker has killed Grissom, we see his hand move.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The issue of Time Magazine with Vicki's photos misspells her name as "Vicky" Vale on the front cover.
  
  
• Continuity: The port gun door on the Batplane opens twice.
  
  
• Continuity: Tables and chairs vanish after Alicia enters Grissom's meeting.
  
  
• Continuity: The shape of wiped-off makeup on the Joker's face changes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When we first see the Joker as he confronts and kills Grissom, he comes out of the light and a large purple splotch appears on his neck. On the Special Edition DVD of the film, the make-up adviser explains that this was done because some of the white make-up used for the Joker's face got on the coat collar, and rather than taking it off with alcohol, they covered it up with purple shoe polish.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the parade scene when Joker releases the gas, Vicki escapes harm by entering the car. When driving away you can see that the rear passenger side window is open.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Joker releases the gas during the parade scene, Alexander Knox takes a white dust mask out of the car to prevent him from inhaling the gas. A dust mask only protects you from dust particles and not from gas.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Batman goes to blow up Axis Chemicals, he uses pop-up machine guns to cut down a door. We see the guns bouncing up and down with the recoil and with the swaying and bumping of the car, but the bullets still cut a straight clean line without any stray bullets.
  
  
• Continuity: The balloon behind the Joker's car (the clown balloon) is close to the ground on close-up shots, and floating high from the ground on other shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When destroying the paintings in the museum, one of Joker's henchmen puts several hand prints on a painting. Later, we see Joker imitating the statue, and in the background we can see the painting that had supposedly been fingerpainted is not.
  
  
• Continuity: Bruce Wayne pauses the video with Joker's eyes closed, but the next time we see the paused scene, his eyes are open.
  
  
• Continuity: When leaving the dining room, Vicki Vale reaches for her wineglass twice.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the opening fight scene, Batman kicks the mugger Eddie through a door. While Eddie is flying through the air, the wire attached to his back is visible.
  
  
• Continuity: The list of fatal "combined" ingredients in the newspaper does not match the one read by the anchorman later.
  
  
• Continuity: Bruce Wayne is shot in the arm during the sequence with the Joker and the mimes, but a short while later there is no longer a hole in the sleeve of his coat.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The Axis Chemical Plant iron gate opens a little bit before the Batmobile smashes it open.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When stealing the Jokers balloons, Batman hits a number of switches to close the claw, as he does so, three LEDs go off, one of them (the red one) clearly marked "volume".
  
  
• Errors in geography: The film is set in Gotham City, USA, but the bottle the Joker holds up in his "Smilex" commercial is for a "Moisturising" creme (instead of "moisturizing"), a tip-off that the bottle was created in England, where the film was shot.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): On the newspaper that explains the combinations of dangerous products, Odor Eaters is spelled "Odoureaters" (UK spelling in the USA). In the same piece, the first combination is "Deodorant's with Baby Powder" (misplaced apostrophe).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Joker points the gun at Bob to shoot him, Bob jumps before the gun is fired.
  
  
• Continuity: After Jack takes the axe and smashes it into the acid vat, we see the acid on his jacket (very visible when we see him running up the stairs to escape the police shooting at him). But when Jack is on the catwalk, with his back to the camera, his coat is perfectly dry.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bruce is examining the plate in Vicki's apartment, an indentation is visible before the Joker shoots it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Bat-Signal is shone into the sky, the "sky" moves, revealing the sky to be a backdrop.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Bat Signal at the end of the film produces a nice, clean flat image against the sky. A lighted signal such as this, however, would need a backdrop to be cast against to be seen (clouds, for example.)
  
  
• Continuity: When Batman captures the balloons with the Batwing and sets them free, they are clustered together. In the very next frame, they have spread out.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Joker pursues Vicki in her apartment, at one point she grabs a popcorn dish from a shelf. The dish in her hands appears and disappears between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Batman piloting the Batwing takes off with the parade balloons. At first there are only four balloons. In a wide shot, five balloons are being carried, including the infant balloon which was seen during the Smylex gas scare. But when Batman sets the balloons free, four balloons are released, not including the infant balloon.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Joker is at City Hall with his mime gang, the mime gang opens fire on everyone around. In one shot, two police officers are at the top of the stairs of City Hall, but in the aerial shot, the police officers are gone.
  
  
• Continuity: During the Joker's Parade, one of the dollar bills that his goons were throwing out to the crowd gets caught on his throne. However, when he tells his goons to put on their masks, it has vanished. It reappears when the Joker pulls out the remote control.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Joker is throwing his parade, the float that the Joker stands on passes the same building (marked delicatessen) twice.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Batman saves Vicki from the museum you can see a crew members hand holding Vicki when Batman raises them up in the air.
  
  
• Factual errors: The S&W M29 44. magnum with the long barrel that the joker pulls out of his pants would not be powerful enough to take down the bat jet. The size of the barrel would change nothing unless it was a single shot but it isn't.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: The gun the Joker uses to shoot Bruce is a S&W model 1 (22. caliber short) pistol. The gun makes way too loud a bang to be a 22. short.
  
  
• Continuity: After Batman blows up Axis Chem. he is standing in front of the car as it stops. When the Joker arrives in the helicopter he shines a light at Batman. Then they cut to a shot of the copter leaving with the light off, but when they cut back to Batman it's on again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the fight in the alley after the chase, a goon with two swords appears, and Batman knocks him out. The actor in the Batsuit is clearly not Michael Keaton - the jaw is slightly offset. After this, it is Keaton again.
  
  
• Factual errors: At Bruce Wayne's party the craps game stick man is shown throwing dice to Gordon with his hand. In real craps games the stick man moves the dice with his stick only.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: During the Prince "Partyman" music video included on the special edition Batman DVD, there is a single frame displaying the editing time-code on the screen.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The purple mask that Vicki Vale uses to protect herself from the Poison Gas in the Museum has no filters attached to it. She is breathing unfiltered air, so the mask is totally useless.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the movie, on the rooftop, Batman pulls out a batarang to catch the fleeing crook. The batarang is matte black, ridged, and hinged in the middle. Once it's around the crook's ankle, though, it's shiny black, smooth and all one piece.
  
  
• Plot holes: At the end of the movie, the Joker instructs his henchmen to meet him at the top of the Gotham cathedral in ten minutes. Not only does the Joker (and other characters) manage to climb the 500-foot staircase in less than two minutes without showing any visible signs of fatigue, it still takes nearly fifteen minutes for the Joker's goons to come pick him up.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the initial scene after the family is robbed, the scene cuts to the top of a building, where Batman is watching. It is obvious as the figure turns around and walks away, that this is not a real person, but instead an animated image.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final fight seen with the Joker, he cuts down the bell in the church tower. Later when Batman is fighting the villain right before he fights the Joker, the bell is there.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Joker interrupts Bruce Wayne and Vivky in her apartment, he smashes Alicia's mask on the mantelpiece. Later as Bruce is walking around the room we see a long shot with Bruce standing in front of the mantelpiece. There is no debris from the shattered mask either on top of the mantelpiece, or on the floor in front of it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the wealthy Wayne family is robbed, the pearls all fall separately. But pearl necklaces of any noticeable value invariably have a knot between each pearl to hold them in place and keep from rubbing on and damaging each other. Only the cheapest dime-store version would fall apart that way.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Batman comes through the window in the museum you can see the stunt wire that lowers Batman down.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: During the initial fight scene, when Batman kicks Eddie The Thug, there is for an instant, a flash going off as if a picture is being taken when Eddie hits the door.
  
  
• Plot holes: During the final confrontation with The Joker in the bell tower Batman says "you killed my parents, you say I made you, you made first", then Joker says "I was just a kid when I killed your parents". There is some argument as to how The Joker could respond in that way, given that he doesn't know that Batman is Bruce Wayne.
  
  
• Plot holes: Only Joker, Vicki, and Batman ascended the cathedral stairs, and Joker's helicopter wouldn't arrive for quite some time. So how did the Joker's henchmen get on the roof?
  
  
• Continuity: At the very end of the film when the camera is climbing the buildings, the final image is of Batman standing on the ledge with the bat signal next to him, though he doesn't seem to have any ears.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: As Batman follows Joker in to the cathedral, he stumbles and knocks a row of seats over, causing a domino-effect on the rows behind knocking those over. The next shot shows Joker looking over his shoulder listening to numerous thuds as four or five rows fall. When we see Batman pull himself up, only the two first rows have fallen and the four or five rows tilt over again.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: SPOILER: The Joker's revolver should not have been strong enough to bring down the Batwing (it's a holdover from an earlier version of the script, in which the Joker had a tank hiding in one of the parade floats which shot the Batwing down. They weren't able to film it this way for budget reasons though.)
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: Blood on the Joker's chin vanishes in the final scene.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: Obvious animated "stand-in" for the Joker when he falls to his death.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: When Batman climbs out from the wrecked Batwing, he climbs out from the rear of the plane - obviously not the cockpit he was flying from.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: Vicki Vale and the Joker are ascending the stairs of the Cathedral and the shoe slips off of her left foot but when it lands it is the right foot shoe.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: When Batman punches the Joker and he falls over the Cathedral ledge, the mat on which the stuntman fell on is visible on the left of the screen for a split second.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: As Batman and Vicki hang from the ledge atop the Cathedral, Joker dances around, causing the "stone" parapet to wobble.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: In the flashback the young Jack Napier has blue eyes, but the adult one has brown eyes.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: SPOILER: When the Joker grabs hold of the ladder attached to his helicopter when he is trying to escape off the top of the cathedral, it is apparent that he is being held up by a wire as he momentarily takes both hands off the ladder. You can see the wire attached to the front of his belt.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: SPOILER: In the cathedral, when Joker throws away the fake "bang" gun, the gun is never heard hitting the ground.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: As the camera spins around the "dead" Joker lying on the pavement, we can see his eyes blink twice, once at a distance and again as the camera gets a bit closer.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: When the bell prop "falls" (Joker corroded with his squirt-flower acid), Jack Nicholson clearly jumps in reflex to the jolt it causes, as he is turned away from it.
  
  
• Plot holes: SPOILER: When Vicki examines the platter Bruce used to stop the Joker's bullet, the dimple is on the wrong side. If the platter had been under Bruce's clothes facing that way, its large rim would have created an obvious bulge.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): SPOILER: At the first Axis Chemicals square-off, Commissioner Gordon orders the police to take Napier alive, as opposed to Eckhardt's "shoot to kill". Yet, they still open fire directly at him.
  
  

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