Goofs for
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

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• Errors in geography: Nearly all the vehicles used in the film have inspection stickers in their windshield indicating registration in Pittsburgh, PA, where none of the action in the film takes place.
  
  
• Factual errors: Clarice claims to have double-majored in criminology and psychology at the University of Virginia. Criminology has never been a major offered at UVa.
  
  
• Continuity: Jack Crawford's collar pops in and out of his vest during a conversation with Clarice Starling.
  
  

• Factual errors: A forensics expert's opinion of the autopsy scene: over 8 errors were made. Among them: the body was fingerprinted without collecting evidence under the victims fingernails, and the ink would have destroyed the evidence. You cannot get fingerprints off a body if it is in that condition.
  
  
• Factual errors: The killer looks right into the headlights of Catherine Martin's car with his night-vision goggles on when she drives into the parking area and is not blinded. In fact, goggles at the timeframe of this movie might have been permanently damaged. Newer goggles do have automatic protection mechanisms.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: U.S. Customs has a record of Buffalo Bill bringing the moths, found only in Asia, from Suriname, in South America. But he may have used a re-shipper to disguise the origins of the shipment.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When they are in the funeral home, Clarice peeks into a funeral taking place and sees/remembers/hallucinates a little girl that is supposed to be her as a child. It's not obvious in the lighting, but the little girl has blue eyes, the same as Clarice.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Gumb's basement, while larger than the "red herring" house in Illinois, is proportional to his house in Ohio.
  
  
• Continuity: As Hannibal escapes, he kicks the cell door onto the guard, causing the door to be in between Hannibal and the guard. Yet in the very next shot, the guard is right in front of Hannibal so he can bite him.
  
  
• Continuity: When the cop holding the flowers is at the front door of the house in Illinois, shadows change direction on the doorframe between shots.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The red herring house is supposed to be in Calumet City, Illinois, and in the background, mountains can be seen. There are no mountains in the vicinity of the actual Calumet City.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the end of the film when Hannibal is telling Clarice about having "an old friend for dinner" a camera crew can is reflected in Hannibal's sunglasses.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clarice is talking to Buffalo Bill in his back room, a moth is filmed landing on a cotton reel. After the moth has settled, a thread is visible attached to it. Presumably the shot was filmed in reverse, and the moth 'yanked' off the reel.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clarice is researching Lecter in Quantico by reading old newspaper articles on microfilm, the same text regarding developments at some vague governmental conference appears over and over again surrounding the Lecter articles in all four separate newspapers she views.
  
  
• Factual errors: Sgt Tate tells an officer to call in the SWAT team. Memphis has no SWAT team, it has a related unit called the TACT team.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The plane carrying agents to Calumet City banks over mountainous terrain, resembling nothing in the vicinity of northern Indiana
  
  
• Factual errors: Jack Crawford says that Clarice graduated "magna" (magna cum laude) from UVA, but this is impossible because UVA does not award such a distinction to psychology majors
  
  
• Continuity: When the FBI team is preparing to deliver the flowers, the ribbon is on both the upper and lower sections of the box. In the next shot, the ribbon appears only on the upper section of the box.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hannibal is imprisoned in Memphis, the sign outside of the Shelby county courthouse is shown in dim light to be a museum.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Clarice opens the music box, it plays and winds down. As it winds down, the musical pitch lowers. Actually, the pitch should stay the same - the music should just slow down.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Clarice is interviewing Lecter, one of the padlocks on his cell door goes from locked to unlocked between scenes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the cut to the scene outside the supposed Memphis Police headquarters, after Lecter has escaped by "stealing" the face of a police officer, an ambulance roars across the screen and stops. The ambulance has Hamilton County tags. Memphis is in Shelby County; Hamilton County is Chattanooga - 400 miles east.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the movie, when Clarice Starling is searching Buffalo Bill's basement, she approaches a door with the doorknob on her right, indicating it would open to her left. When we see the door open from the opposite side, it opens to her right.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When introducing himself and his partner to Clarice, Lt. Boyle says the other man's name is "Petrie." In all other references in the book and movie his name is Pembry.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: The military aircraft heading toward Calument City has California Air Guard on the side. Not very likely considering they were coming from Virginia.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the gunfight, the sound of a piece of ejected brass (probably a .45) hitting a hard surface can be clearly heard. However, both pistols used were revolvers and don't eject brass casings after firing.
  
  
• Factual errors: The night vision goggles that Bill uses are of the old infra-red variety, which require an infra-red light to illuminate the scene. That's why these kind of goggles were eventually phased out by the military, because the enemy could use their own infra-red equipment to zero in on the light and shoot it out - and/or the person holding it! Bill's use of the goggles in the basement scene is therefore impossible, as he's not holding an infra-red light of any kind, just a gun. The implication made by the the film makers is that Bill was using more modern light-enhancing night vision equipment, but again, this would not have worked in the basement. This type of equipment needs some kind of light source, moonlight or even starlight, to function. In a basement it's pitch black. The same error, with the villains wearing light enhancing goggles, was made in Patriot Games (1992).
  
  
• Continuity: The ring of sweat on Clarice's sweatshirt as she is running on the Quantico course in the beginning of the movie covers her body almost from shoulder to shoulder. When she gets called into Crawford's office, it is significantly smaller.
  
  

• Factual errors: SPOILER: While standing in the first victim's sewing room, Clarice recalls the diamond shaped pieces of skin removed from the girl found in the river, which she realizes resemble darts that are commonly used to reduce fabric bulk in the waistline, making a garment more fitted. The problem is, the dart shapes cut from the skin resemble the part of the fabric that is wasted, the unwanted pieces. It is a 'negative' of what this killer would have wanted to keep, if he were making himself a garment. The killer would never have wanted those skin items. Later it shows him sewing on one end, single thickness. He's not sewing anything to anything else, and he's using a piece that is typically cut off and discarded in the process of real garment construction. Although a human skin garment is implied, most of the examples of sewing are factually erroneous as viewed by anyone experienced in tailoring.
  
  
• Factual errors: SPOILER: As Jodie Foster indicates on the commentary track of the Criterion DVD version of the film, there is a mistake in the most dramatic moment of the entire film: when Buffalo Bill cocks his gun and Clarice turns around and shoots him. You can clearly see the shadow of Bill's hand holding the gun on Clarice's back as he raises it to shoot her. However, the basement is supposed to be pitch black, so there shouldn't have been any shadows whatsoever.
  
  

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