Goofs for
The Lion King (1994) More at IMDbPro »

• Errors in geography: Leaf-cutter ants, a gopher and some giant anteaters, all native to the Americas, are shown living happily in Africa. (The gopher should have been a naked mole rat: see trivia.)
  
  
• Continuity: When the young Simba and Nala are walking towards the "water hole" with Zazu flying above his shadow does not flap its wings as often as Zazu does.
  
  
• Continuity: Simba clearly pounces on Zazu's back, but when they are on the ground, Simba's paws are on Zazu's front.
  
  

• Continuity: The number of stripes on Timon's back alternate between shot from five to six.
  
  
• Continuity: We see Simba scratch Shenzi's cheek, leaving visible cuts, but shortly after, Shenzi is healed.
  
  
• Continuity: As Simba climbs a dead tree to escape the wildebeest stampede, he leaves scratches on the bark. In all later shots the tree is intact.
  
  
• Continuity: When Simba finds Mufasa's dead body, his tears leave stains running down both cheeks. When Scar appears, Simba's face alternates between having tear stains on both cheeks in medium shots and only on his right cheek in close-ups. Once Scar tells Simba to run away, the stains disappear altogether.
  
  
• Continuity: When Timon and Pumbaa find Simba in the desert, Timon is frightened and climbs on top of Pumbaa. On the next shot we only see Pumbaa's shadow cast in front of Simba, without Timon. When we next see Pumbaa, Timon is back on Pumbaa's back.
  
  
• Continuity: When Simba approaches Mufasa's dead body, the camera shows Mufasa from the back and his paw is clearly past his nose. But when are then shown him face on, his paw has moved to the same level as his nose.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end of the film when Scar has Simba hanging on the edge of Pride Rock, the camera moves out and the lightning crashes, and we can see Simba is holding on to the rock up to his elbows, yet in the next scene we can see he is only holding on by his paws.
  
  
• Continuity: In one of the final scenes where Simba walks up Pride Rock to roar, it is raining. When we see Timon and Pumbaa briefly, they are dry while the other characters all have signs of being wet.
  
  
• Continuity: The number of Simba's whiskers on each side of his cheek changes from 4 to 5 and back again in some scenes.
  
  
• Continuity: When Banzai the hyena says, "Man, that lousy Mufasa - I won't be able to sit for a week," he has visible cuts near his behind, but in the shot when he wrestles with Ed, they are gone.
  
  
• Continuity: The pads on Scar's paws change from multiple pads to one large pad throughout the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: The hyenas are seen throughout the entire film with three toes on all their paws. But when the hyenas are chasing Simba, Banzai claws at him after he squeezes through a rock, and his paw has four toes.
  
  
• Continuity: Thorns that are all over Banzai's body disappear completely between shots with no time for him to remove them all.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Before assuming the throne Simba walks down Pride Rock. Zazu bows to Simba and although his mouth is moving no words are spoken. This is because Zazu was supposed to say "your majesty".
  
  
• Continuity: When Nala is crouched in the grass right before she pounces at Pumba her eyes are green. When she's fighting with Simba her eyes are blue.
  
  
• Continuity: Grown-up Simba's eyes switch from white to yellow during the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: In the stampede scene, before Mufasa dies, one of the hyenas is snapping at a wildebeest at the bottom of the gorge. In the next shot all three of the hyenas are on top of the gorge.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rafiki smells the dust on the wind and realizes Simba is alive, he dips the tips of his fingers into the red paint in order to adapt his picture. In the next shot, his thumb is red too
  
  
• Continuity: When Simba and Nala are trying to escape the hyenas and fall through the rotten piece of wood, there is debris on the ground. In the next shot when Simba 'roars', the ground is clean.
  
  
• Continuity: During the 'Be Prepared' sequence, Scar knocks a bone out of Ed's jaws, making him sit bolt upright, his tongue hanging out. In the very next shot, it's gone.
  
  
• Continuity: In the 'I Just Can't Wait to Be King' sequence, as Zazu is telling the cubs off, Nala has her front paws in the water. In the next shot, both paws are on the bank, with no time to move.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mufasa and Simba are talking at the top of Pride Rock, facing the sun, their shadows stream out behind them, which is correct. However, as Simba says "Everything the light touches", his shadow is in front of him, which is wrong. It should be cast on his right. Also, in the next shot, when Simba and Mufasa are facing south towards the 'shadowy place', their right sides are in shadow, with the light shining from the left. But it is sunrise, the sun, and therefore the light, should be on their right.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Pumbaa is grovelling before Simba, Timon walks up to him and places his hands on the center of Pumbaa's nose, between his nostrils. In the next shot, his hands are more towards the top.
  
  
• Factual errors: The elephant skeletons would have to come from freakishly large elephants. Hyenas could not pass through the trunk socket of an elephant's skull.
  
  
• Factual errors: Rafiki the monkey appears to be some sort of bizarre mandrill-baboon hybrid. He has the colorful face of a mandrill, but the long, kinked tail of a baboon (mandrills have very short tails).
  
  
• Continuity: The number of whiskers each male lion has changes from scene to scene, and sometimes the whiskers disappear altogether. None of the lionesses in the film have whiskers, though obviously in reality females do have whiskers.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: At the end of the elephant graveyard scene, Scar's shadow on the wall does not match his pose.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Simba and Mufasa view the sunrise, they refer to the "shadowy place" as being on their right. As they were facing the sunrise (east) that would mean that anything on the right side would be south. And yet, Scar refers to it later as the place "beyond the northern border."
  
  
• Plot holes: Who is Nala's father? Mufasa and Scar were the only adult males in the pride. If either was her father, the fact would have to be mentioned at some point, since the three share a large portion of the plot. Yet we have no indication that either of them is her father.
  
  

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