Forum.RttP{forrest gump content}

Goofs for
Forrest Gump (1994)

Continuity: The feather is visible on Forrest's shoe and floating in the air at the same time, when the camera is approximately ten feet above Forrest's head.

Anachronisms: Car tire tracks are visible in the segment remembering Nathan Bedford Forrest's Civil War ties with the KKK. This was a goof present in the original footage which was taken from D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The CG team considered removing them, but decided not to.

Continuity: Forrest's hands on the swing ropes when listening to his mother entertain the school inspector.

Continuity: The girl behind Forrest and Jenny on the school bus disappears and reappears between shots.

Continuity: When Forrest sits down to watch TV with his son, the iron behind Jenny changes from being down and sitting up between shots.

Continuity: Forrest leaves the mower with grass in front of it when he goes to meet Jenny. When they cut back to him, the mower is sitting next to the cut grass, not in the middle of it.

Continuity: When Forrest first gets on the school bus, the shots from inside the bus show the driver's hand on the door lever, while shots from the outside show it on the gear shift lever.

Continuity: Bubba's lower lip when he and Forrest are on their way to Vietnam in the helicopter.

Continuity: Bear Bryant stands up to watch Forrest after he was already standing.

Anachronisms: During the 1972 New Year's Eve celebration, Forrest drinks a Dr. Pepper with a logo that wasn't devised until the mid-1980s.

Factual errors: The moon is shown as waxing, almost full, and is lit from the top right; an impossible situation at night.

Anachronisms: During the recreation of the integration of University of Alabama, 1963, a newscaster says "...here by videotape is the encounter..." TV stations didn't use videotape for news reporting in 1963, they used film.

Anachronisms: Jenny dies in March 1982, and yet shows Forrest a clipping from "USA Today" which was first published on 15 September 1982.

Factual errors: Forrest claims that Jenny died on a Saturday, and yet her gravestone says 22 March 1982, which is a Monday.

Anachronisms: The letter from Apple Computer is dated 21 September 1975 (a Sunday), when Apple wasn't a public company open for investment. Apple Computer was not incorporated until 3 January 1977, and didn't become publicly traded until its initial public offering (IPO) on 12 December 1980.

Errors in geography: The woman on the bench in Savannah tells Forrest to go a few blocks ahead to Henry St. though it is actually behind them.

Continuity: Forrest can't run with his braces; he can barely walk. When he and Jenny run to their favorite tree, he is running normally. Yet when the bullies from school chase him on their bikes, he is back to his old gait. It is only after the braces are lost that he runs normally.

Factual errors: When Forrest sits on the bench by the square and the bus passes him, the traffic is going in the wrong direction. In Savannah, traffic goes counter-clockwise round city squares.

Anachronisms: In 1974, one of Forrest's shrimping attempts yields, among other pieces of garbage, a Mello Yello can. Mello Yello was introduced in 1979, and the can bears the revised logo introduced circa 1989.

Revealing mistakes: In the montage of Forrest's and Lt. Dan's first successful shrimp catch after the hurricane where they are emptying their full shrimp nets onto the deck of the boat, the shrimp nets are full of headless shrimp. Shrimp caught in nets are complete animals, and they are processed on the boat after they are dumped, at which time their heads are removed. Shrimp boats do not catch pre-processed shrimp from the waters of the gulf.

Continuity: The ramp outside the stage door at the Dick Cavett show as seen over Forrest's shoulder is clear of snow, yet moments later it covered with snow as Lt. Dan slides down it.

Revealing mistakes: When Forrest is playing ping pong, the computerized ball starts moving very quickly. If you follow it closely, you can see that it bounces off his elbow at one point instead of the paddle (right before the ball bounces and then seems to hit the camera).

Anachronisms: During the 4th of July 1976 celebration scene at Forest's house with Jenny, the fireworks show on the television shows the Statue of Liberty after it was restored. The Statue was restored in 1986.

Continuity: When Forrest stops running, there are no shadows in the overhead shots (overcast weather) but a clear shadow from his cap in the close-up of his face.

Revealing mistakes: When the bullies first throw rocks at Forrest, the second one clearly hits him below his eye, but he starts to bleed up on the top of his forehead.

Continuity: When Forrest is giving his speech about the war in front of the reflecting pool and he runs down to meet Jenny, he walks by the same guy twice.

Continuity: When little Forrest and Jenny are on the bus, the bus seems to be traveling at different speeds, depending on the shot..

Factual errors: When Forrest and Jenny watch the fireworks, the sound from the fireworks bursting comes exactly on the same time as they appear.

Revealing mistakes: When Lt. Dan falls off the wheelchair, he gets up with the help of his (invisible) legs.

Continuity: When Forrest is originally running from the bullies he is in a plaid shirt, the shirt then changes, and he ends up in the same plaid shirt by the end of the shot.

Anachronisms: When Forrest is playing ping-pong before being discharged, the gymnasium where he's playing shows the 3-point line on the basketball court. The 3-point line was first used 29 November 1980 in a college basketball game at Reid Gym in Cullowhee, North Carolina.

Continuity: Forrest paints the name "Jenny" on the side of his shrimping boat. However, in just about every subsequent scene, the name is gone from the side of the boat.

Revealing mistakes: When Jenny is playing guitar naked you can see the outline of a skin toned thong.

Continuity: When Lt. Dan meets Forrest after Forrest becomes a shrimp boat captain, Lt. Dan smokes a cigar. The ash on the end of the cigar changes between shots; it's longer when the camera is facing Forrest than when the camera is facing Lt. Dan.

Anachronisms: During the Vietnam sequence, cabbage palms are visible to represent the tropical locale. Cabbage palms do not grow in Vietnam. They grow in the southeast United States, where the movie was shot.

Factual errors: When Forrest gets his Army discharge (before the 1972 New Years), he is practicing ping pong in the barracks' gym. The basketball court has a 3-point arc. Although, the 3-point arc was introduced in the ABA in 1968, they weren't standard until after 1986. So unless his barracks were home to an ABA team, there wouldn't be a 3-point arc.

Continuity: When the boys are chasing Forrest in their car, from the front it is obvious that they are right on his heels. However, whenever the shot changes to a side view, he is at least ten feet ahead of their car. Then the shot changes and they are again almost running over him.

Continuity: When Forrest gets his leg braces, he walks awkwardly (for example, when walking home from the doctor with his mother) because the braces do not bend at the knees. Yet he is shown seated at least twice while wearing the braces (outside the principal's office and waiting on the porch for the principal to leave his home). In order for him to be seated, the braces must bend at the knees.

Continuity: In the New Year's Eve sequence, Dick Clark is on the TV in the bar, wearing a brown jacket. When the scene switches to Jenny on that same New Year's Eve, Dick Clark is on her TV, wearing a blue jacket.

Anachronisms: The Congressional Medal of Honor can ONLY be won during combat. Forrest Gump was a Medal of Honor recipient for his heroic service in the Vietnam War. However when Forrest is in Washington D.C. with his Medal of Honor around his neck, he is not wearing the combat patch of his unit (which would be located on his left shoulder, above his Seargent's stripes), nor is he wearing a purple heart, for being shot in the buttocks in combat, the Vietnam Service ribbon, or the ribbon worn by a Medal Of Honor winner.

Anachronisms: The Stroh's neon beer sign shown outside the Times Square bar in the early 70's, is a blue, block lettered logo. This logo did not appear until the mid-late 80's. They used a red-script logo up until that time.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Any uniform of the United States can NOT be recreated in actual form. There has to be some sort of "mistake" made to the uniform, whether it's the presence of ribbons or medals or if a person is wearing the uniform incorrectly. This is the reason for so many discrepancies to Gump's uniform during the award ceremony.

Continuity: When Forrest runs Tex out of the Vietnam forest, he is holding onto to a leg in one shot, his arm in the next shot, and then his leg again in the last shot.

Factual errors: The original tropical jackets in Vietnam era had a much smaller collar length, more like a shirt collar measuring no more than 3.5 inch, while the jackets appeared in the movie were sewn with a much longer collar.

Continuity: When Forrest gets the returned letters from Jenny in the hospital, Jenny's zip code on the 2nd letter is different from the first and all subsequent letters. This mistaken zip code also appears on every envelope as Forrest's zip code in the return address, but it starts with a "3" when California zip codes should begin with a "9."

Continuity: When Forrest jumps off of his shrimp boat to go home to his sick mother he's empty-handed, but when he's shown running home, he's carrying a suitcase.

Revealing mistakes: Jenny's father's house is clearly a prop. This becomes apparent in the scene near the end of the movie that shows it being "bulldozed to the ground." When the siding falls off and the wall's framing is exposed, one can see that the studs are around four feet apart. Wall studs are normally spaced sixteen inches apart and never over twenty-four inches (two feet) apart.