Goofs for
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) More at IMDbPro »

• Boom mic visible: [top]: a black mike standing out against the white ceiling.
  
  
• Continuity: When the doctors bring back Randle McMurphy from his treatment, they walk in, one doctor puts down his doctor bag, they lay Randle down, and as they walk out the doctor bag has disappeared and neither one is carrying it out.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During the basketball game, McMurphy runs to the edge of the court, the camera follows and, for a moment, reveals an assortment of film production equipment including lighting stands, C-stands, lighting gels and even a crew member. Only visible in the wide screen version.
  
  

• Continuity: In the "Voluntary/Involuntary" scene, McMurphy goes from having a "five o'clock shadow" to being clean shaved, then back to having stubble.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: As McMurphy dances with one of the patients while trying to convince more people to vote in favor of watching the World Series, the shadow of a camera is plainly visible on their backs.
  
  
• Continuity: In the voluntary/committed scene, the writing on the chalkboard behind nurses Ratched and Itsu is different in three different shots of them (widescreen version).
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When McMurphy is "announcing" the baseball game, his reflection in the darkened TV set does not match the audio track.
  
  
• Continuity: Differences in clothing between McMurphy and his stunt double when McMurphy drops to the ground on the other side of the fence.
  
  
• Anachronisms: After McMurphy hijacks the bus and is driving through town, there are some 1970s automobiles, including a Plymouth Duster and Chevy Nova, and a store with lots of color TVs in the window. The movie is set in 1963.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Just before McMurphy climbs over the fence to hide in the bus, what looks to be a Ford Pinto can be seen in the hospital parking lot.
  
  
• Continuity: After McMurphy, Harding drinks the medicine with his right hand. In the next shot he is finishing to drink with his left hand and holding a newspaper with the right hand.
  
  
• Continuity: When Cheswick is spilling the drink from the bottle to the jar, it is colorless. But when he is dumping the drink, with the hose, in the mouth of the patients, it is red.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During their road trip on the bus, they pass a "DUCK XING" road sign. Those did not exist in 1963.
  
  
• Factual errors: Towards the end of the movie, there are multiple references to it being winter, the most obvious are: the television announcer mentions the "upcoming holiday season", and the morning after the party, a sign saying the date is December 11th can be briefly seen. However, in shots of the outside, there are leaves on the trees, birds outside, and other small details that would not be in winter in Oregon.
  
  
• Continuity: During the meeting scene, when the men are tossing the cigarette around, it changes length in between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When fishing, the condition of the water changes as the scene shifts from one person to the other. Sometimes it is wavy with whitecaps and other times it is flat.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When it is a first person view of McMurphy looking through the nurse's room, you can see the reflection of the camera man in the glass.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the Chief smothers McMurphy, and he is apparently dead, his tongue clearly moves in his mouth. (This may be a reflex action, however.)
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): After the voting for the change of the TV time, McMurphy tells Nurse Ratched at one moment that the voting was ten to nine, while it was actually ten to eight, like he said before.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: McMurphy's hat when strangling Nurse Ratched.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: SPOILER: Randall nearly chokes Nurse Ratched to death after she treats Billy so cruelly, yet when he is pulled away there are no marks or bruises at all on her throat.
  
  
• Factual errors: SPOILER: In the final scenes when McMurphy is brought back from his lobotomy there is a distinct line across his forehead which appeared to be an incision. In a lobotomy (at least for the time period) no cranial incisions were needed as the prefrontal cortex is accessed through punctures placed behind the eyes. He would have only appeared to have bruises around the eyes.
  
  

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