Goofs for
Saving Private Ryan (1998) More at IMDbPro »

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Several times when Corporal Upham is seen carrying .30 caliber ammunition belts just prior to and during the holding of the bridge scene, it appears that primers are missing; in fact, they were black, which made them look empty.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The phone cord in the Ryan farmhouse is coiled. Phone cords in 1944 were straight.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When the army car drives toward the Ryan farmhouse, the fields are brown. While Iowa farm fields are normally green in June, there could have been a drought, or the crop could be wheat.
  
  

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: As the squad travels at night, the flashes and sounds of far distant explosions are seen and heard roughly simultaneously. (The sound of an explosion a mile away should be heard some 5 seconds after the flash is seen.) The key is the word "roughly"; there are so many explosions that we may well be hearing one explosion around the time we see the next.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: General George Catlett Marshall is wearing General Staff lapel insignia. This is correct; there are photographs of him wearing these insignia.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the field scene (before they meet the German APC), we can see the camera's square shadow on Corporal Upham's shoulder.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the soldiers arrive at the 101st rally point, the same extra walks by, up to 4 times.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the latter part of the movie, Capt. Miller uses the phrase "let's lock and load." Some have misheard this as "rock and roll, " which would be anachronistic.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: As Upham and Mellish are loading ammo in preparation for the final battle, Upham (who is smoking) is telling Mellish how he told the supply officer he didn't smoke before leaving England. In the earlier scene where Upham is talking with the German soldier, he shares a cigarette with him. He presumably started smoking in the interim.
  
  
• Continuity: When Upham is handed the .30 caliber ammo belt before the final battle, the direction the bullets are pointing changes between shots.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Although the United States Air Force did not become a separate service until September 18th 1947, They were not labeled in general conversation by WWII era GI's as the Army Air Corps. When speaking of the Army's air component they were simply referred to as the "Air Force".
  
  
• Continuity: When Corporal Upham is watching the attack on the radar station through the scope, the scope turns in his hand between shots, but the crosshairs stay in the same position.
  
  
• Continuity: The soldier with a drooping mouth in the back of Miller's transport is seen later at the 101st Airborne rally point as the paratrooper with Ryan's deaf friend.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The waterproof bags holding rifles on D-Day were indeed some kind of clear plastic.
  
  
• Continuity: When the soldiers are about to search through the Airborne's dog tags they head towards a single crate, meaning to use it as a table. When they reach the crate an ammo box has appeared, stacked on top. Jackson knocks the top box off.
  
  
• Continuity: The fuses on the sticky bombs get longer and shorter randomly.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The replica Tiger tanks were built from Russian T-34 medium tanks. You can clearly tell by looking at the running gear. Also, when the track is blown off the first Tiger, it keeps moving, indicating the drive sprocket is at the rear. German tanks had the drive sprocket at the front.
  
  
• Factual errors: When CPT Miller is showing T/Sgt Horvath the location of the German machine gun nest with the mirror on his bayonet the angle they are looking from would not be showing them the machine gun nest as it is far too "obtuse." The machine gun nest is around the corner almost 90 degrees.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end of the movie, before the attack, an American paratrooper is attaching the detonating cord to the detonator, beginning with the right-hand clamp. A little later, we see him again, but now the left-hand wire is attached and he's screwing down the right-hand clamp.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the final battle, we see tanks with open roofs. While similar to the enclosed Panzer, these are in fact self-propelled guns, or "tank destroyers". The SPG that is destroyed with the petrol bombs early in the battle is a Marder III while Sgt. Horvath uses a bazooka to destroy a sav m/43 tank destroyer (both using a new German body and armament on a Czech chassis). The American soldiers probably referred to all German tanks as Panzers.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: In the advertisement for "Suze: L'?me de l'estomach, " the last word is a combination of the English "stomach" with the correct French "estomac."
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When the Tiger tank traverses its turret, you can hear a whine. While the Tiger's turret had hand cranks, these were used only for fine adjustments or in case the hydraulic motor failed.
  
  
• Continuity: When the German tank gets blown up in the final battle, it is clearly mid-way across the bridge, yet in subsequent shots it is still on the other side of the bridge. Also, the number of sandbag emplacements changes dramatically.
  
  
• Continuity: Jackson intervenes when Reiben and Horvath are having a dispute. From the camera angle when Jackson says, "Sir, we got a situation over here, " he has his pistol in his hand and pointed at Sgt Horvath. A few seconds later, from another angle, Jackson's pistol is still tucked in his belt and he draws it and points it at Sgt Horvath.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During the final battle at the bridge, right after Sgt. Horvath fires the bazooka for the last time he starts to run across the bridge with the bazooka. In the bottom right corner, for a second you can see the camera operator and a man in a white shirt helping him.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the end of the movie, German soldiers are throwing hand grenades in a house through a hole in the wall. An American picks it up and throws it back out. A few seconds later it explodes, indicating it is a timed grenade. Contrary to some reports, the Germans did use timed grenades; the grenade shown is the Stielhandgranate 24 ("stick hand grenade").
  
  
• Continuity: At end of the movie, Ryan squares himself at the foot of Capt Miller's grave and salutes, yet the camera immediately moves behind him and he is at 40 degree angle to tombstone.
  
  
• Continuity: Miller places his right hand on top of his left when he sits down with Ryan. His hands switch positions between shots as they talk.
  
  
• Continuity: When running around the French village with the sniper shooting at them, a coiled rope falls from Hill's pack, the next shot, the rope is there again.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After the squad reaches the crashed glider and Miller is shouting Ryan's name, the extras for the scene are visible to the left, being held back and sent in on cue to form the column of airborne soldiers
  
  
• Continuity: When Corporal Upham is running bullets to the gunners, bullets are seen falling out of the belt. Minutes later, the belts have no missing bullets.
  
  
• Continuity: When Sergeant Horvath is explaining his opinion of the Ryan situation to Captain Miller near the end, he gestures with his open right hand in some shots, and is firmly gripping his weapon in other shots.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Camera is reflected in the wet helmets of those on the left side of Miller's landing craft.
  
  
• Continuity: During Rieben and Horvath's heated dispute, the camera often moves to shots of Miller, Upham, Jackson, etc. When it does, you can still hear Rieben and Horvath arguing off-screen. You can hear specifically what they are saying off-screen, but then when the camera moves back to them they say the same thing, so it's as if they repeat themselves. This is especially obvious when Horvath screams at Rieben, "You are a coward, son of a bitch!"
  
  
• Continuity: When the tank comes over the bridge, there's a helmet is lying beside Captain Miller's leg. In the next shot, the helmet is flipped over.
  
  
• Continuity: When Captain Miller and his men decide to stay at the bridge after finding Private Ryan, all of the equipment is inventoried, and Miller is told that they have two .30 caliber machine guns. One of them is seen being hauled up into the bell tower, and later, Mellish tells Corporal Henderson he will go and get him some ammo for the .30 caliber that Henderson has. As Mellish walks away from Hendersons machine gun, another soldier walks by carrying another one, even though that one is supposed to be in the bell tower already. For this scenario to work, there would have had to have been three machine guns.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the 20mm Cannon opens up on the Americans climbing on the disabled Tiger, it is obvious that the exploding soldiers are dummies, as they don't even move despite a five second advanced warning. Also, even the live actors seem to not bother to jump off the tank and disperse despite the said five second warning. This includes the Paratrooper who spotted the weapon and turned to run, but stops for four seconds while Captain Miller announces the same discovery.
  
  
• Continuity: When first discussing Private Ryan staying or leaving the bridge, the shadow of Cpl. Henderson and Captain Miller change directions between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: During the battle at the end of the movie, Jackson and the paratrooper are in the bell tower. Just before they run out of .30 caliber bullets, they are clearly not as close to the end of their ammo belt as the next shot suggests.
  
  
• Continuity: The .30 caliber machine gun that Jackson and Parker use has a solid ammo-belt made of fabric, holding the bullets together (it enters from the left side of the .30 and exits empty on the right). In the next shot the .30 caliber has a disintegrating link type of belt which spits out the broken links through the bottom.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the last shot of the Tiger after Capt. Miller takes his last shot and just before is hit by a bomb, modifications to the tank are visible, most prominently the piece of wood with a black rectangle painted on to represent the driver's viewport.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In Neuville town, there is a car whose license plate number is 241 BG 50, where 50 is for French département of the Manche. But this sort of numbers' attribution on French cars began in 1950 ; number 241 BG 50 must have been given in year 1954.
  
  
• Continuity: When the soldier attempts to place the first sticky bomb on the tank, he is wearing the khaki uniform. However, when he explodes, the dummy is dressed in olive drab, and standing in the wrong position.
  
  
• Continuity: Shortly after medic Wade dies, we are shown two presumably dead German soldiers lying in the fox hole: the one on the right can be seen breathing momentarily.
  
  
• Continuity: When two surrendering German soldiers coming out from the trenches are killed just after the Omaha Beach Battle, they are shot in the stomach, but when the camera gets closer, you can see that the one on the left has been shot in the head.
  
  
• Continuity: When Pvt. Jackson is in the tower at Neuville he fires seven or more shots without reloading. His rifle, the Springlfield 1903, only holds five rounds.
  
  
• Continuity: While stripping down to attack the radar site, Pvt Melish is seen removing his combat vest twice.
  
  
• Continuity: During the D-Day scene when Captain Miller is using his make-shift mirror to spy on the machine-gun nest, he reaches with his right hand. When the camera cuts around to look at it from around the corner it's his left hand that he's using.
  
  
• Continuity: After all the German troops have been shot that were revealed by the wall falling, one of the soldiers is whiter than the others and when he is moved you can see his eyes move.
  
  
• Continuity: While stripping down to attack the radar site, Cpl Upham is assisting Sgt Horvath remove his backpack. In the several previous shots of Horvath he is clearly not wearing any backpack.
  
  
• Continuity: After the last Tiger tank is destroyed in the final battle, Allied reinforcement troops arrive. There is a scene with a Sherman tank approaching the bridge with the troops, and it is raining. The scenes before and after have no rain.
  
  
• Continuity: In the beginning of the film, as the Ryan family is walking along behind old man Ryan, on the path to the graveyard, they pass the same couple twice in two consecutive shots
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: They did have black plastic canteen caps in WWII, made from a plastic like material called Bakelite. Also German snipers did use soft rubber scope caps on their rifles, because often time they would have to lay behind the scope for an extended period of time before making a shot. Original pictures show both of these.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Tiger tank, its treads blown off, targets the building near Ryan, Reiben scrambles to push him out of the way as Miller moves to the front and shoots through the sight. However, Miller moves to the front twice, once in the shot of Reiben running toward Ryan (the shot cuts before he can fire), and again, this time firing.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before Melish is attacked and killed in the Neuville knife fight scene, Cpl. Henderson machine guns one German soldier through the wall at the top of the stairs; blood sprays the wall at the top of the landing, and the body is heard to fall. Mellish and Henderson watch blood flow through the doorway and moments later, German gunfire bursts through the wall from the landing at the top of the stairs, mortally wounding Henderson. Mellish ducks as a German just outside the doorway holds a machine gun around the door frame and fires a burst. Mellish shoots the German as he stumbles into view (this is a 2nd German shot dead on the landing). After the German kills Mellish, the camera turns to Upham's viewpoint at the bottom of the stairs, and the German that killed Mellish is seen standing at the top of the stairs, and there is no blood on the wall behind him and no bodies can be seen at his feet.
  
  
• Factual errors: After the horrific D-Day scene, when Captain Miller gets his mission some days later, a panorama of the seascape shows no ships in view. The area ought to have been teeming with ships bringing more units to the front, supplying those already present, and protecting the supply line.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Just before the final battle when Jackson is telling Miller about the number of incoming Germans using hand signals, Miller says that there are 2 Panzer tanks just before Jackson signals this.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): As Jackson makes a run for the ditch to take out the machine gunner, he clearly passes the wall, in the next shot though he is still leaning against the wall.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the Captain in charge of the typing pool brings the three Ryan telegrams to his Colonel, the map behind the Colonel is a Mercator Projection of the world, split at the International Date Line. Mercator Projections in 1944 would have placed North America in the center and divided the Eurasian continent equally on both sides. The decision to split the map at the International Date line wasn't officially made until the National Geographic Society decreed it in 1988.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: By the time Miller and his squad reach the area with the downed gliders, it is already D-Day plus four. After four days, the brigadier general's body and those of the others scattered around the glider would have been much more badly decomposed than was shown.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the big soldier is first seen approaching Cpt. Miller as he is calling Ryan, he is a few yards away from him. In the next shot where he calls Joe, he is approaching from the same distance as the previous shot.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The "shaven" haircuts of the German soldiers in the movie are not typical of the day. The hair styles were usually longer on top and shaved on the side.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Private Reiben's jacket has a large slogan written on the back. The felt-tip marker pen was not invented until after World War Two and the only alternative material which could produce these marks would be a grease pencil, widely available at the time but the writing would smudge easily, making it unlikely that repeated removal and donning of combat webbing would leave the slogans intact as is seen.
  
  
• Continuity: During the Normandy invasion, Captain Miller is in water that looks as if it is high tide, and other scenes it is low tide.
  
  
• Anachronisms: P-51s at end of movie have black and white checkered pattern on nose showing them to be from the 78th Fighter Group. This group did not receive P-51s until the end of 1944.
  
  
• Continuity: Ryan is said to be (more than once) in Baker (B) Company, 506th PIR, 101st AD. When Miller is calling out for Ryan at the Airborne rally/collection point, the trooper says to another 'Doesn't Mendelsohn hang out with a Ryan from C Company'. Mendelsohn comes forward and is the fellow with the missing ear who knows where Ryan went.
  
  
• Continuity: During the Ranger's charge up the hill to the radar site, the Rangers shout down to Upham that Wade has been shot by the machine gun. When the Rangers strip Wade's upper half clothing to treat the wound, no blood is visible. Yet on the next camera shot, blood is pouring out of the wounds. It takes a matter of seconds for the skirmish to end, the Rangers to call and Upham running up to Wade's position. Wade's clothing is stripped when Upham arrives, he would have been almost certainly bleeding by then.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the Rangers first meet up with US Paratroopers after destroying the Sd.Kfz 250 Half Track, CPL Henderson marks that it belong to a recon element from the 2nd SS-Panzer Division. In early June, 1944, Das Reich was stationed in southwest France outside of the city of Montauban. Elements of the division began moving towards Normandy on the night of June 7th, although the armor did not depart the area until the 9th. The division should have taken approximately three days to reach northern France by rail, but the efforts of French resistance fighters, as well as Allied air superiority, made the move much slower, as the Germans were forced to move overland by road. The Division was not ready for action against the Allies until early July. This makes it impossible for the SS troops and Mk. VI (Tiger) Tanks and Panzers at the end of the film belonging to the Das Reich Division. Also the US Army didn't come up against any Mk. VI in the NW Europe campaign until after the Normandy breakout. Before this there were only three Tiger Tank Battalions in Normandy, and they were where the rest of the vast majority of the German Armoured Divisions were, in front of 2nd British and 1st Canadian Armies.
  
  
• Continuity: During the final battle scene, three American soldiers are seen arming and tossing grenades into a German tank - yet no subsequent explosions are seen or heard.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the company is trying to treat Wade, they give him morphine by jabbing the syrette into his leg. Morphine syrettes were actually administered subcutaneously (directly under the skin) in the abdomen.
  
  
• Factual errors: The driver's viewport on a Tiger I featured 6 layers of armored glass, as well as another sheet just behind them. These systems would have prevented Captain Miller from simply sticking his submachine gun up to the port and spraying the inside of the driver's compartment with bullets.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the assault by Germans on the town at the end of the movie, two German self-propelled guns are shown trying to push through the town. Neither side would have utilized lightly-armed SP guns in this fashion, when a town was being contested in an infantry engagement, for the very reason shown - the crews were poorly protected from small arms fire, and thus they were too easy to knock out. They would have been used for fire support from a safe distance, until the resistance in the town had been subdued.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the final battle scenes the P-51's are supposed to be tank busters but none of them have any rockets, bombs or even bomb racks attached to their wings.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The tins that Sgt. Horvath puts earth in from each continent have the name written on them in felt tip marker (Sharpie). The felt tip marker was not invented until 1952.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the beginning of the movie when attacking the German pillbox. The Germans are running out of the pill box there are no muzzle flashes seen from the American rifles, though they fire several rounds, and the rifles seem to recoil as if fired.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final battle scene, Ryan informs Miller that they can use the mortar rounds like grenades. Many of the rounds they toss, however, explode at different times inconsistent with the angle of the throw and where they would have landed. Some of the explosions occur before the mortar rounds hit the ground.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Some of the paratroopers are shown wearing black jump boots. All Army paratroopers in WWII were issued brown jump boots. The Army didn't start using black leather for boots until the 1950s.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the end, the elder James Ryan is facing the camera with the channel in the background. Ryan's wife approaches, reads the name on the marker. The way the shot is set up, Ryan is facing West, which means the name on the marker faces east. This is wrong: all names at Colleville-sur-Mer American Cemetery face west towards home.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Immediately following Upham's plea to Miller after the attack on the machine-gun nest, there is a shot focusing on the two dead Germans in the nest. The soldier lying supine with a fatal wound is clearly breathing heavily.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Before the last battle, the squad is listening to an Edith Piaf song "Tu es Partout", and Upham seems to be translating the song as she is singing it. But the translation he gives is from a later part in the song, one we don't get to hear.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the last hectic moments leading up to the final battle, Captain Miller incorrectly refers to Corporal Upham's .30 caliber machine gun ammunition as .50 caliber.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Private Capazzo is killed in the town of Nieuville, Private Jackson shoots the German sniper through his rifle scope (and his right eye) and kills him. Even though the German sniper was killed from quite a distance away, the area around the German sniper's right eye turns black with gunpowder as if he was shot at close range only a few inches away from the muzzle of Jackson's rifle. ***I saw this movie tonight and this is obviously not what happened. Look closely, when the sniper is shot, the back of the snipers sight is embedded into his eye, it is not a gun powder burn.***
  
  
• Continuity: When Capt. Miller requisitions Cpl. Upham from the map bunker, Upham clumsily tries to take his typewriter with him, knocking a helmet and other items from a shelf. The camera changes to Miller, who holds up a pencil. When the camera returns to Upham, the items are back on the shelf.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the sniper scene in the French village, Pvt. Jackson is preparing to make a shot against the German sniper. He utters "(so many clicks) left wind..." as he is twisting the objective ring at the front of his scope. The objective only focuses the scope to eliminate parallax, it doesn't change the windage adjustment.
  
  
• Continuity: During the Ramelle battle, Cpl Henderson and Pvt Mellish are firing through a hole in the wall of a room at advancing German soldiers. Mellish is armed with an M1 Garand. Just before the scene where Henderson fires his Thompson through the wall at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Mellish proclaims that his rifle is jammed. He is not seen clearing it. After Henderson fires through the wall and kills a soldier on the other side, gunfire burst back through the wall and hits Henderson in the neck, mortally wounding him. A 2nd German on the other side of the wall holds his machine gun through the door and fires. Mellish ducks, then fires a last round from his Garand, which ejects the magazine clip. The shot kills the 2nd German. The gun would not have been able to fire if the gun was jammed only moments earlier.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the radar site battle, Capt Miller's men are roughing up a surviving German soldier and pull their weapons in preparation to shoot the soldier. Pvt. Jackson is armed with a 1911 semi-automatic pistol; he removes the magazine to check it, and it is clearly empty of cartridges. He reinserts it rather than replacing it with a loaded magazine.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As Capt Miller and his men assault a pillbox in the D-Day scene, they assemble behind a low wall at the very rear of the pillbox installation. Sgt. Horvath and Pvt. Reiben throw grenades over the wall at the door of the pillbox, about 30 ft away. When the grenades explode, debris showers the men from a position just on the other side of the wall they are crouched behind.
  
  
• Factual errors: Throughout the movie American characters are shown saying "thunder" to identify friendlies, and waiting for the response "flash". But in actuality the challenge word was "flash", and "thunder" the response. The word order is important, as "thunder" was chosen as the password because of its "th" sound. (There is no such sound in German, thus a German soldier would likely be unable to hide his accent if he tried to answer the challenge.)
  
  
• Continuity: When we first see Colonel Bryce, it's clear he only has one arm (missing HIS left arm). But then later, when General Marshall is about to read the letter written by Abe Lincoln, we see for a brief second that he clearly has his left arm.
  
  
• Continuity: When the paratroopers prepare to grenade the tiger, the commander pops up coughing with a bloody nose. It seems odd that he has such an injury when nothing that has happened so far in the battle would appear to have caused it, especially since he was in a tank.
  
  
• Continuity: When the paratrooper yells "there is a 20mm," just after they grenade the tiger, there is only 1 paratrooper an the side of the tank facing the gun. When it opens fire and it is showing the rounds hitting the men, there are at least 5 paratroopers on that side of the tiger. Also right after the 20mm's rampage it goes to Jackson in the bell tower and he leans around the corner to try to get a shot at it, but none of the dead paratroopers are lying on/around the tiger.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the 20mm forces Miller, Ryan, and Reiben to relocate, is shows two paratroopers who survived the initial 20mm shooting crawling away from the tank. In the next few scenes when in shows both of the men getting shot, it is very clear in both cases that the Germans who shoot them aren't even aiming at their bodies, but rather the ground. It's particularly obvious when the second one is shot as the bullet strikes the ground next to him.
  
  
• Continuity: When the machine gunner in the bell tower runs out of ammo, Jackson takes over sniping. The first German he kills is on the self propelled gun and he falls off the side. The second one he kills falls near a big rectangular shaped piece of wood from one of the destroyed buildings. The third soldier he kills falls on top of the piece of wood, but there is no sign of the soldier who had fallen there right before he did.
  
  
• Continuity: Right after the self propelled gun blasts the church tower, it goes to Miller in a hole along with Ryan and Rieben. Miller fires off a clip at the Germans, then reloads as Ryan, who is on Miller's left, fires at the Germans with his rifle. Immediately the camera switches to a side view if Miller and he again reloads his Thompson and Rieben is now sitting next to him in the hole and Ryan is nowhere to be seen. When Rieben puts on his helmet before leaving the hole you can see Miller in the background firing his Thompson, but no sound is heard. then when he gets out and runs across the street, Miller and Ryan, who should have been in the front of the hole firing at the Germans, are at the back of the hole and then move into the front and begin firing.
  
  
• Continuity: Upham should have been with Sgt. Horvath when they ran to the bridge and crossed it because Horvath came and got him when he was sitting on the stairs. But somehow he was still on the enemy side at the end when he pops up and takes the Germans by surprise. Also Horvath has no trouble running when he is falling back with the bazooka even though he had been shot in the leg earlier.
  
  
• Continuity: In the D-Day scene when the soldiers have made it to the seawall, Miller twice tells a radioman to relay info back to HQ. On the third time Miller grabs the man and rolls him over to reveal that the man has had his face shot off. The helmet of the dead man has a red stripe on it that wasn't there before.
  
  
• Continuity: When the soldiers are at the seawall during the D-Day scene Miller explains to Horvath that Dog 1 exit is to the west. Right after that, the soldier behind Miller with the BAR leans up on him and shouts "they're killing us because we don't have a f***ing chance and that ain't fair". When he is saying "chance" the camera changes angles and the soldier who was yelling is facing the seawall and not even talking, even though "and that ain't fair" is still being said.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rieben is starting to tell the story about the lady back home before the final battle, the camera is showing the four soldiers from a side view and Horvath's feet are crossed and Melish is holding his cigarette in his right hand. When the camera angle switches to a front view, Horvath's feet are not crossed and Melish has the cigarette in his left hand.
  
  
• Continuity: In the D-Day scene when the soldiers have made it to the seawall, Miller twice tells a radioman to relay info back to HQ. On the third time Miller grabs the man and rolls him over to reveal that the man has had his face shot off. The helmet of the dead man has a red stripe on it that wasn't there before.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the movie after the soldiers have fallen back to the Alamo, Rieben and Miller are on the left side of the bridge (if we're looking at it from where the Germans are attacking from) with the partially destroyed building where Miller hooked up the detonator. Rieben then shouts "Tiger coming across the bridge" and provides cover fire for Miller as they both run to the right side of the bridge, Miller trailing out the detonation wire behind him. In the next seen, the tiger fires a round at the building, and Miller is shown to still be near it and gets knocked over by the explosion when he should have been on the right side of the bridge.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the movie the second tiger approaches the bridge. the commander, who is sticking out of his hatch atop the tiger, shouts down into the tank to fire at the building the Americans named the Alamo, but in the very next shot when the tank fires, he is not sticking out of the hatch anymore.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the movie, the second tiger advances onto the bridge before being destroyed. It is very clear in the next few scenes up until Upham forces the Germans to surrender that the tank isn't even on the bridge.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Miller takes his last shot at the second tiger and it explodes, it is very clear that the tank is fake, especially because it is not even moving even though we hear the squeak of the treads.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the opening Omaha landing scene, the captain of the boat says, "clear the ramp, 30 seconds! God be with ya!" The last two words, "with ya", are clearly not synchronized with his lips.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the climactic scene at the end of the movie, a P-51 Mustang drops a bomb on an advancing German tank that is crossing a bridge toward the remaining members of Capt. Miller's squad. While the aircraft is not seen until after the tank explodes, it is seen from Capt. Miller's viewpoint as it passes over the tank, along the axis of the bridge, and on toward the rear of the Americans' position. Attacking Allied aircraft would never approach from the rear of the enemy to drop ordinance toward friendly forces - they would mostly likely have attacked from an angle perpendicular to the bridge and the angle of the attacking Germans. Additionally, the P-51's shown in the movie are clearly not equipped with rockets or bomb racks under the wings.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the D-Day beach assault, German machine-gunners are shown firing continuous long bursts from their MG42's. In reality, MG crews were trained to fire in shorter bursts, in order to avoid overheating the barrels of their guns.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The actor playing the part of the deaf soldier knowing Private Ryan appears to be the same as the screaming wounded soldier with the gaping shoulder injury being worked on by the medic on Omaha beach.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Miller's squad first enters the town of Neuville, Jackson's rifle has a short scope. When the squad comes under fire from the German sniper, Jackson now has much longer, narrower scope attached to his rifle. However if you watch carefully, you will notice that for the entire movie so far, Jackson has been carrying a large cylindrical canister on his back, which contains the longer scope. In the town when he says "I wouldn't venture out there fellas, this snipers got talent" you can see him reaching behind him and opening the canister. In the next shot it shows him removing the small scope from the rifle. while it doesn't show him attaching the longer one on, we can assume he did because it is now on his rifle when he is moving into position to take out the German sniper.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Wade is shot, Upham is running up the hill. When he comes through the smoke, Wades' shirt is being torn off, and at the top you can see the prosthetic stomach prop.
  
  
• Continuity: In the beginning of the movie, the camera moves in on the older Ryan's eyes and transitions to the beach assault scene, implying that this is a memory of Private Ryan's. But he was never in the assault on Omaha, he was airborne.
  
  
• Continuity: Miller uses the mirror to examine the machine gun nest and correctly states that there are two MG-42's. However when Jackson moves to get a sniping position it shows the nest with only one MG-42 and another soldier with an MP-40 submachine gun.
  
  
• Continuity: When the soldiers are trying to move up and deal with the machine gun nest in the D-Day scene, Miller tells Reiben, Melish, and Caparzo to provide covering fire. Reiben moves to the right and lays out on a piece of concrete giving him a clear view of the target and it shows him there several times firing as the soldiers move up. When Jackson is sent forward, Sgt Horvath is where Reiben should have been and he, Melish, and Caparzo are gone.
  
  
• Continuity: The ground around the radar site where the soldiers attacked the machine gun nest is relatively flat, but after Wade dies they run up a rather steep hill to help Reiben rough up the German prisoner.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ryan helps Sgt. Horvath after he was shot while crossing the bridge, it shows Reiben in the background for a brief second jumping up and firing his BAR. He repeats the same motion a few scenes later when he tells Miller that the Tiger is coming over the bridge.
  
  
• Continuity: When Miller is dazed and the movie is silent after the Tiger's shot knocks Miller over, Reiben helps him over to where Sgt. Horvath is laying. Miller's body is facing toward the camera while his head turns to look at Horvath, but in the next shot his body is facing Horvath.
  
  
• Continuity: Right after Miller regains his hearing at the end, he looks at the detonator lying in the middle of the road. the next scene shows German troops running forward to sandbag positions on their side of the bridge and the German prisoner Miller's squad released is now back and he takes position right next to what appears to be a camouflaged artillery piece facing skyward, which would have blocked his right side. In the next shot it shows Upham looking at him from the right, and the artillery piece is not there, not does it reappear for the rest of the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: When Upham is yelling at the German soldiers to surrender at the end in one scene, there is an overturned tank behind him, but all the other scenes show destroyed buildings behind him.
  
  
• Continuity: Miller gets his hands covered in blood when he tries to heal Wade. After he dies, Miller reaches in Wade's pocket and pulls out some papers, but he doesn't get any blood on them.
  
  
• Continuity: Right after the paratroopers take out the self propelled gun with the Molotov cocktails, there are two scenes before Reiben runs to help Ryan get out of the way from Jacksons viewpoint showing the Tiger with its turret already pointing to the left. Later on its turret is straight and it turns left to take a shot at Ryan.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the soldiers approach the disabled Tiger to finish it off, there is a shot from Jackson's viewpoint in the steeple and you can hear his rifle fire although it does not.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Jackson is using hand signals to tell Captain Miller about the approaching enemy tanks, Miller says "Panzer tanks, two of them." Panzer is the German word for tank so saying "tank" at the end would be redundant. He should have just said, "Panzers, two of them."
  
  
• Continuity: When the soldiers are getting ready for the final battle, Upham is shown to be standing right near the church, but a few scenes later he is just coming across the bridge when a soldier yells at him to hustle up.
  
  
• Continuity: When Reiben retuns after luring the Germans down the main street all the soldiers in the foxhole have their guns up at the ready. A few scenes later, Reiben and Ryan look at each other and nod but their guns are resting easy. Immediately in the next shot, Ryan has his rifle at the ready again.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the last battle scene, Jackson is in the church tower and signals to Miller the direction, number of Panzer and Tiger tanks and troop strength approach. The first time he relays the signals, with Miller voicing what they mean, Jackson, among other signals, points five fingers down to indicate 50 troops and Miller says "50". The next time, Jackson tells of the approach of a flanking attack, uses the exact same number of fingers and signs and Miller says "30". Either Jackson got it wrong, Miller got it wrong or it was just an indication of the stress of battle.
  
  
• Continuity: As the opening D-day invasion moves along more and more troops are making it onto the beach from the boats and are shown hiding in groups behind the metal "tank obstacles." Yet, continuous shots that show the viewpoint of the German machine gunners show very few soldiers coming up from the beach and no groups behind the metal obstacles.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the scene where Mellish is being stabbed by the German soldier it is very apparent that the knife is being stabbed into a fake torso given the way Mellish's body seems to cave in and breath unlike a normal person would.
  
  
• Continuity: During the D-Day landing after Capt. Miller puts his helmet back on while in the water the leather chinstrap is almost off of the rim of the helmet. The scene breaks to a soldier asking Capt. Miller what to do next. When the view goes back to miller the leather chin strap is completely on the rim.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the scene where Jackson is firing from the bell tower, he fires 8 shots. The standard Springfield sniper rifle could only hold a maximum of 5 rounds. Jackson never reloads, and if he did, he would have had to take quite a bit of time as each round had to be inserted one at a time, due to the scope being in the way, the rounds could not be inserted using a stripper clip.
  
  
• Continuity: After it shows Miller take a drink in the landing craft the camera moves back showing the soldiers in the boat and Sgt. Horvath is right next to Miller in the back of the landing craft. A few scenes later he is at the front of the boat and is coming toward the back telling everyone to remember to keep their spacing on the beach.
  
  
• Continuity: Miller comes ashore and is just at the edge of the water on the beach when the movie is silent during the D-Day scene. When he regains his hearing and is telling Horvath to move his men up he is waist deep in the ocean.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Right after the soldiers make a run for the seawall in the D-Day scene, it shows a German machine gunner firing his MG-42. There aren't any spent casings being spit out by the gun and in fact there aren't even any bullets being fed into it. The metal link belt is there, but it is empty of bullets.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: It's commonly thought that only two or three tanks landed on Omaha Beach early on D-Day. At the eastern end, only two DD tanks of 741st Tank Battalion landed out of a total of 29 launched. Three more were landed directly onto the beach (one of the four on this LCT was damaged on the run in). 16 of 18 non-DD tanks of the 741st were also landed. At the western end, 28 DD tanks of 743rd Tank Battalion plus 14 non-DD tanks were landed dry. Officers on LCTs carrying 743rd Tank Battalion saw several DD tanks of the 741st founder almost immediately after launching, and decided to land their tanks straight onto the beach.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final battle, Henderson and Melish initially set up their .30 cal between some fallen boards from one of the buildings but in a scene from their viewpoint as it is showing the first tiger coming down the street before the shooting starts, the boards they are hiding behind are gone.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the beginning of the movie during the invasion scenes, Captain Miller (Hanks) has his captain's bars prominently displayed on the front of his helmet. No one with rank wore it on the front lines. Officer's wore a white vertical stripe on the back of their helmets, NCO's wore a horizontal white stripe on the back of their helmets. Officer's did the everything they could to NOT look like officers on the front lines.
  
  
• Continuity: In the D-Day beach scene where Sgt. Horvath (Tom Sizemore) asks Pvt. Reiben (Edward Burns) where is his BAR, Pvt. Ruben says: "I lost it in the channel, the b**** tried to down me". You can clearly see that he and his uniform are completely bone-dry.
  
  
• Continuity: During the Ramelle battle, Cpl Henderson and Pvt Mellish are firing through a hole in the wall of a room at advancing German soldiers. After Henderson fires through the wall and kills a soldier on the other side, gunfire burst back through the wall and hits Henderson in the right shoulder, then the left shoulder as he's falling. Yet we then see him clutching his bleeding neck as if he had been hit in the neck, even though he wasn't.
  
  
• Continuity: When Melish and Hederson leave there initial machine gun position the belt of ammo is fairly short but when they relocate and start firing through the hole in the wall they have a full belt of ammo in the gun.
  
  
• Continuity: When the ramp first drops on the landing craft, the first soldier we see gets shot in the head. The next scene is filmed from the back of the landing craft facing the beach and it shows nearly every man in the boat getting hit. The camera then goes back to the front of the boat and it again shows that first soldier getting shot again.
  
  
• Continuity: When Miller is wading ashore he comes to a beach obstacle and leans on it when the movie is silent during the D-Day scene, but for the rest of the silent part whenever it shows Miller he seems to be out in the open not near any obstacles.
  
  
• Continuity: When the man is explaining the situation of the four brothers to the General, he says that the brothers had been together but were separated when the Sullivan brothers died. Later, when Matt Damon is improvising Ryan's memory to Miller, he says that night was the last he and his brothers were together.
  
  
• Factual errors: Dennis Farina plays LTC Anderson, the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. The real Commander of the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Normandy was LTC James Earl Rudder.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Jackson (the sniper) is using a right-handed sniper rifle although he is a left-handed person.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the church tower, right after Pvt. Jackson utters "Blessed be the Lord, my strength, which teach my hands to war, and my fingers to fight..." he fires his sniper rifle at a German tank. The round hits sandbags on top of the tank, but the machine gunner three feet to the left of the impact falls dead.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Capt. Miller is firing his M1911 pistol at the advancing German tank on the bridge, after his second shot, the slide locks halfway open, indicating a stovepipe or similar jam, but he continues firing without clearing it.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Cpt. Miller picks up Cpl. Upham in the beginning of the movie, Upham says his German "is clean" and had "a touch of the Bavarian". But actually there's nothing like a Bavarian accent in Upham speaking German. Though he speaks it very well and he certainly does not have a strong American accent (judging by the few lines he says in German), you can definitely hear that it is not his mother tongue.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: During the final battle, several of the paratroopers jump on the stopped Tiger tank. Lyle's position during the attack on the tank is easy to see, and when the flak gun fires on the tank the soldier in Lyle's position is riddled with shells and his head explodes. Later we see him crawling away in pain (with a head) and he is shot by a German soldier.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: SPOILER: In the final graveyard scene, as picture rotates to show the elder Ryan looking at Captain Miller's grave, a boom mic is briefly visible in the reflection of one of the white crosses.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): SPOILER: At the end of the movie, Private Ryan is comforting a dying Captain Miller, when a German tank comes barreling down on them. The tank is destroyed by a bomb released by an allied fighter, a P-51 Mustang. Ryan refers to the plane as a "Tank Buster," when in fact this was not the nickname for a P-51, it was the nickname for a P-47.
  
  
• Anachronisms: SPOILER: When James Ryan destroys the SDKFZ251 with his bazooka, they identify it as belonging to the Reconnaissance Platoon of the 2 SS Division, which didn't reach the front until June 16 and then only on the Mortain area. Capt. Miller died as written in his grave, on June 13.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: After Miller & Co. leave the paratrooper rally point, there is an establishing shot showing them walking in a field. There are eight men in the field, when there should be only seven since Pvt. Caparzo has already been killed.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: In the scene right before seeing the radar site, there were 8 soldiers moving through the field instead of 7 who were still alive. (They started with 8 and were down to 7 after Adrian Caparzo shot by a sniper.)
  
  

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