Goofs for
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) More at IMDbPro »

• Crew or equipment visible: When Raoul Duke leaves the Mint Hotel and drives out into the desert, the shadow of the film crew's scaffold is visible to the left of the Las Vegas sign.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Shadow of camera visible when Duke calls Gonzo near Baker.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene in the Mint bar at the beginning of the movie, Duke inspects Gonzo to make sure he is not a monster. In the medium close-up, he turns his right shoulder towards the camera, while it should be his left shoulder like in the full shots.
  
  

• Anachronisms: When Duke is in his hotel room near the end of the movie, the camera pans across the television quickly, showing footage of an M1 Abrams tank. The film is set in 1971, but the first Abrams was not built until 1978.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The highway patrol squad car used to chase Duke was a 1978 Plymouth Fury, but the film was set in 1971.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Duke is going through his drug and liquor collection at the beginning of the film, he points to his bottle of tequila. However, that bottle is clearly labelled "Wild Turkey."
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Duke and Gonzo are in Bazooko Circus, just after the birth of the space baby, the camera is reflected in the fun mirror.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: While Duke is trying to get Dr. Gonzo off the Carousel Bar, the camera can be seen in one of the mirrors on the side of the carousel as it spins around.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Dr. Gonzo takes over driving through the desert in the red convertible during the opening scene, the gear shift for the automatic transmission is all the way up, indicating it to be in PARK.
  
  
• Continuity: Duke's cigarette changes sides of his mouth several times when he is sitting in his car and talking to the hotel desk clerk.
  
  
• Continuity: Duke turns on his turn signal twice during the police chase.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Duke crashes the carriage in the white convertible leaving the supermarket, a cameraman is reflected in the door.
  
  
• Continuity: When Duke spots the patrolman behind him, the pattern on the center line on the road in front of the car is different from that behind.
  
  
• Continuity: When Duke is in the Mint bar, his cigarette is broken when he lights it. While he is smoking it, the broken part falls off. He spins around in his stool looking for his attorney, the broken part is there again.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr.Gonzo hits reverse to pick up the hitchhiker, Duke is thrown backwards.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Duke and Dr. Gonzo sniff the ether, Duke throws out his lit cigarette. A moment later, he has the ether soaked flag to his face and a new lit cigarette in his hand. For a drug connoisseur like Duke, it's highly doubtful he'd be smoking around ether fumes, especially since he had just earlier thrown out his cigarette to sniff.
  
  
• Continuity: In the North Star Coffee Lounge when Dr. Gonzo says he'll wait in the car with the lemon meringue pie, Duke picks up his plate from the counter and then changes his mind after looking at the waitress. The sky behind Duke changes from black to light blue between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before Dr. Gonzo pulls out the hunting knife room service sent up, Duke's sunglasses instantaneously change from the purple-tinted pair that he wore in the previous scene to the yellow-tinted ones he wears throughout most of the film.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During the low-angle tracking shot along the water in the floor in the Flamingo Hotel room, the camera clearly knocks over a syringe and pushes it across the water.
  
  
• Continuity: When Gonzo is in the bath, the watch behind him appears and disappears between shots.
  
  
• Anachronisms: As they drive through Vegas at night, a marquee sign in front of The Plaza advertises a steak and lobster dinner for $11.99 - more of a 1997 than a 1971 price.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first hotel room, Duke is crouching behind the bar when the photographer comes in. The ice bucket on the tray disappears between shots.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Duke and Gonzo are stopped with the hitchhiker and Gonzo grasps the hitchhiker and says, "The truth..."
  
  
• Continuity: When Duke and Gonzo are stopped by the side of the road with the hitchhiker, Gonzo's watch changes between the shot where he says "What the fuck are we doing out here in the middle of the desert..." and "... We need help."
  
  
• Continuity: When Gonzo gets up from the table after Duke receives his initial phone call telling him to go to Las Vegas, his stomach is showing. But when they turn around to leave, his shirt is tucked in.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At the start of the Mint 400, there are motorcycles from the early '80s, while the race is set in 1971.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Duke is pulled over on the side with the patrolman (Gary Busey) and is outside of the car, you can see the radio microphone cable on the ground right behind Duke's car.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Duke is trying to calm Gonzo down with the mace, Dr. Gonzo screams and whines, but his mouth is closed
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Right before and after Duke runs into the dwarf employee, off-set crewmembers are visible to the left of the screen.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr.Gonzo is in the tub, the bottle of booze behind him disappears between shots.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: When Dr. Gonzo is walking towards the payphone, the mic and boom are reflected in the window.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: After Duke has received the phone from the dwarf at the hotel, he looks up while speaking into the phone and the boom mic is reflected in his sunglasses.
  
  
• Continuity: In one scene while leaving the hotel room at the Flamingo the numbers on the door clearly read 2075. In a later scene when Duke and Gonzo are leaving the room the numbers on the door say 2073.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The car that Duke drives before renting the convertible is a Ford Maverick with faded paint, mismatched doors, a smoking engine, and rust. The Maverick was introduced in 1970 and the movie was set in 1971, so this would have been a brand new car, and would not have been in this bad condition.
  
  
• Continuity: At the Mint Bar, Gonzo has his sunglasses on, but then in one shot Duke turns to Gonzo when he's mumbling, and he has his sunglasses off. Then it switches back to Duke, then back to Gonzo, and he has his sunglasses back on.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Duke is in the desert, talking on the payphone at the junk yard, on one of the crane shot swoops, the footage was edited in reverse. Notice the smoke going back down into the smoking car, as well as the papers on the side of the phone booth moving quite rapidly.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The song "Lady" by Beck, Bogart and Appice playing when Gonzo is licking the cocaine of his briefcase was released 1974, three years after the movie takes place.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Duke is leaving the first hotel carrying his typewriter, there is a bumper sticker on the side reading "We Got the Dick," a reference to Richard Nixon. However, Nixon wouldn't resign the presidency for 3 more years.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Duke takes Gonzo to the airport at the end of the movie, the blue-tailed airplane beside the one Gonzo boards is a Valujet DC-9. Valujet did not begin operations until 1993.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Duke is talking to Dr. Gonzo from the phone-booth in the desert, a Dead Kennedys’ DK logo is seen spray-painted on the door of the booth. The DK logo wasn't yet in existence in 1972.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In a few shots taking place in the Chevy's interior, you can see the car has white vinyl door panels from a 1973 or 74 Impala (or Caprice convertible), while the main "Red Shark" is actually a 1971 Impala convertible. The Impala had slightly different door panels for 71/72 than the 73/74, but was essentially the same car overall. Apparently another car was fixed up for use in the movie as a backup or secondary vehicle and used for some shots from the inside.
  
  
• Continuity: During the restaurant scene in north Vegas, the lighting outside changes four times. Most noticeably right at the end when Duke is leaving. Its dark outside while he stands at the door, but when after returning the plate, it is much lighter.
  
  
• Continuity: When Duke and Gonzo drive into Las Vegas to the Mint Hotel there is a banner which reads: '$100,000 Mint 400'. However, at the actual race a banner reads: '$50, 000 Mint 400', which can also be heard by the announcer at the race.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the White Rabbit/Bathtub scene, after Duke locks Acosta in the bathroom, he crashes on the bed attempting to get some sleep. He pulls a large cardboard box over himself. There is a blue "closing the circle" recycling symbol clearly visible on the bottom of the box. Though that symbol had been created around 1970, it was not yet used, if at all, on cardboard boxes at the time.
  
  
• Anachronisms: On the way to pick up their rental car, they are slowed down because a stingray corvette hits a pedestrian; it looks in the film like the vehicle (which crashed) has an integrated rather than a chrome front bumper; the chrome front bumper wasn't adopted until 1973, while the movie is supposedly set in 1971.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: While driving down the Vegas strip in the convertible on the way to the Debbie Reynolds concert, they pass Binion's Horseshoe Hotel and Casino twice. However, the scenes outside of the car are not meant to be realistic. It shows lots of casinos that are not in order, but this is from the mind of a drugged out driver - the car itself is floating in air the whole time.
  
  
• Continuity: When Duke is being chased by the cop, one shot shows the cop in the mirror, on the left side of the road, and the road has dotted yellow lines. In the next shot outside the car the police cruiser is clearly directly behind Duke on the right side and there are solid yellow lines one the road.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: (At 1:04:50) When the trooper is saying to Thompson that he should go to the rest stop and sleep, the camera follows him around the front of the car. But if you look at the car door in front of Thompson you can briefly see the shadow of a camera moving from the top of the hood and move backwards across the door.
  
  

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