Goofs for
A Knight's Tale (2001) More at IMDbPro »

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Eiffel Tower is seen in the long shot of Paris; the London Eye appears in the long shot of London. These are both shots of specially constructed models/mattes and the modern landmarks are there deliberately as jokes.
  
  
• Continuity: Jocelyn sits down twice during the final joust.
  
  
• Continuity: During the final joust, Sir William's armor is removed revealing a large blood stained hole in his padded shirt. Later in the scene the blood stain is visible but the hole is completely gone.
  
  

• Continuity: During the Parade in London, you can see that stand-ins are used for Roland, Geoff, and Kate when they are marching with William's standards in the long shots, rather than the actual actors.
  
  
• Continuity: In the montage of William during his sword of foot fights, you can see that his armor has the line from where it was repaired by Kate. His armor isn't broken until the next joust scene.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the final shot, when Jocelyn embraces William, the back of her dress is seen. The overlap portion of a center back zipper is clearly visible.
  
  
• Continuity: While Adhemar is being prepared for the final joust, his page puts on his helmet and begins to close the visor with his ungloved hand. In the next shot, Adhemar closes the visor again with his own, gloved, right hand which, as far as we have seen, is already holding his lance (he is holding the horse's reins with his left hand).
  
  
• Continuity: Chaucer has cloth stuffed up his left nostril to stop a nosebleed, which switches to the right side in one shot, and then back to the left again. Looking closely, it appears that the film has been reversed to keep the direction of movement constant as Chaucer backs away from Will - leaving it would have created a more jarring error.
  
  
• Continuity: Several shots during the final joust have an over-exposed, milky appearance caused when a camera assistant dropped and split a film magazine on the final day of shooting.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The mirror reflection of Jocelyn's face is obviously composited onto the holy water font at the church and doesn't look very much like a reflection in water at all.
  
  
• Continuity: The dirt on Chaucer's back when William, Wat, and Roland first meet him.
  
  
• Continuity: When Will is knighted, Geoff is sitting between Will and Edward in the normal shots and next to Roland and Wat in the overhead shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Wat is lashing the lance to William's arm, William's necklace is gone. Just before William jousts for the last time, the necklace reappears.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final joust, the horse is wearing his old leather breast plate in a close-up, and in the next shot he's wearing the new metal one.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final joust, Geoffrey sees that they need more time while Wat is strapping the lance to William's arm. He jumps up into the stand to make his introduction, which he does from the arm of the prince's chair. But in a reaction shot of John Thatcher, the arms are entirely Chaucer-free.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final joust, after the first run with Adamar, William's armor is bent where the lance pierced his shoulder. At the next scene, the armor is in perfect condition, then later when he tells Kate to remove it because he can't breath, it is bent again.
  
  
• Continuity: When the starter waves the flag before the first lance in the final joust, his hands reverse positions between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: In the parade over London Bridge Kate is to the right of William's horse in one shot, with other pages to her left, but in the next shot she is on the left next to the crowd.
  
  
• Continuity: When William is being knighted, Chaucer is sitting immediately next to him, but in the next shot, from overhead, he has moved. He then moves back again in the next shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When William first sees Jocelyn and follows her into the church (on horseback) there is scaffolding around the door and men working on it. Two minutes later when he is ejected by the clergy, the scaffolding has gone.
  
  
• Continuity: When Will is in the stocks and the prince revels himself, one of the guards behind him pulls out his sword twice.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: As Wiliam is testing his new armor for the first time, he gets a beam thrown to his chest. In this stunt a stand-in is used. You can see the color of his hair change from blond to brown.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the final joust, the camera comes in for a close up on William, where you can see the bobby pins above his ear holding his hair back.
  
  
• Factual errors: Edward was not called the Black Prince until years after his death.
  
  
• Continuity: In several of the jousting scenes, William's horse goes from being a red roan to a bay and back again.
  
  
• Continuity: The first time William jousts Adhemar, the sky jumps from being overcast to a cloudless sunny day between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Right before William is told, instead of losing, to win the tournament for Jocelyn, William asks Wat if he remembers the church when they were kids. Wat's hair then changes from being down his forehead, to pushed back, between the shots.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: William's horse changes several times during the jousting montages. This is because every time he unseated a knight, he won that knight's horse. It's not unheard of for knights to use several different horses in one tournament.
  
  
• Anachronisms: If the Geoffrey Chaucer character truly IS Chaucer, then all the knights in the film should be wearing chain-mail, not plate armor, as knights did not begin to wear plate armor until after Chaucer's death.
  
  
• Factual errors: The film claims that it was not acceptable for a peasant to become a knight. While it is true that knights were eventually considered to be a position of high social standing, in the middle ages it had always been perfectly possible for a man of any class to become a knight, however, less and less peasants became knights over time because of the cost of equipping oneself to do this.
  
  
• Continuity: In William's final joust with Adhemar, when his horse starts charging, Kate, Roland, and Wat run along behind his horse for a short period of time. As the shot changes you can see Wat standing still in the background. Then the shot changes back to the three running.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene for the final joust, between long shots and close ups, Jocelyn's arm changes from being through the father's arm to resting beside it several times.
  
  
• Factual errors: In every scene where knight's collide on the lyst, you see their lances in one hand and the reins to their horse in the other. When knight's jousted, they would drop their reins before impact so that a severe impact would not cause them to jerk the reins or become entangled in them causing more damage to themselves or the horse.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: At the time the movie is set, Gelderland was called Gelre. Since William fabricated his whole noble history, it could be assumed that he invented the name Gelderland himself.
  
  
• Continuity: When William is in the stocks and Prince Edward makes himself known, Roland is shown with his head bowed and stick held down. A close up shot then shows Roland with the stick on his shoulder, as if he is ready to strike the Prince. Then, a wide shot is shown, as the Prince is approaching the stocks, Roland is shown in the original, docile position.
  
  
• Continuity: Before William begins his last run in the final joust he lashes his lance to his forearm, but before he starts the run he is holding his lance upright in his fist.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When taunting the French in the tavern, Wat calls one "Quasimodo." While one might assume this to be a reference to the main character of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, published some 500 years after the story takes place, the character's name came from the first words of the introit of Quasimodo Sunday (the first Sunday after Easter): "Quasi modo geniti infantes" (in the way of newborn infants). It's likely Wat was referring to this when he made his insult.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Mid way through the film, Chaucer refers to a text he wrote the previous year about pilgrims, a clear reference to the real Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'. However, at the end of the film the characters comment that he should 'write it all down' is also supposed to be a reference to his writing of 'The Knight's Tale', the first text of the Canterbury tales, which by his chronology, has already been written.
  
  
• Plot holes: In tournaments, William is known as Ulrich Von Lichtenstein of Gelderland, yet when betting against French peasants in a tavern, Roland and co take the bet that an Englishman will/will not win the tournament - Ulrich is not considered English in tournaments.
  
  
• Continuity: In the very first joust the lord's daughter is seen looking bored with her hair styled in very large buns. A few shots later she is seen again, this time clapping her hands with the music and with significantly smaller hair. During the joust itself she is seen again with her in its original style.
  
  
• Continuity: After the lord of the fist joust presents the golden feather on the pillow to William, he continues holding the pillow out as William shows it to the crowd. In the next shot of him, his hands are empty and he is clapping them.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The expression "it's sixes and sevens" (which now means a state of confusion, but admittedly is quite old) is used in a gambling context (Simon the Summoner to Chaucer) in apparent allusion that this was how the modern expression came into existence. In fact, while the story takes place somewhere in the middle of 14th century (because Chaucer died in 1400), this phrase was coined about 1495, and in a rather different context. Two London guilds were quarreling over the order of precedence among London guilds, each claiming their right to be sixth in rank. Eventually the Lord Mayor decided that they should take turns, one year the Merchant Taylors would be sixth and the Skinners seventh, and the next year they would switch places - a rule which is observed even now. This was considered complex enough, hence the expression "in sixes and sevens", meaning in utter confusion.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final joust just before the first run, Adhemar shuts his helmet and you see a close up of his eyes through the slit. On the bottom right of the screen in this shot, you can see the top edge of his throat guard armor (and therefore its already attached to his helmet and shoulder). In the next shot however, his servant is seen affixing the throat guard to Adhemar.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: In the final pass of the final joust of the film, William takes the joust with no chest armor. However, his opponents' lance shatters - meaning it struck something. There is nothing there to strike.
  
  

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