Goofs for
Catch Me If You Can (2002) More at IMDbPro »

• Anachronisms: The fire alarm system in the hospital dates from the late '80s and early '90s.
  
  
• Continuity: While having lunch with his father, Frank Jr's hand jumps from the table to his side, and on and off his wine glass, between shots.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank Jr. goes to meet his father in a bar, he is wearing a United States Postal Service jacket. The symbol on the patch is correct, but it wasn't known as the United States Postal Service until 1971. In the '60s, it was the U.S. Post Office Department.
  
  

• Continuity: The gauze pad and small retractors Abagnale gets in the ER disappear in one shot, then reappear two shots later.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At the French prison in 1969, Hanratty uses a pop-up mini-umbrella. This type of umbrella wasn't available until the late 1970s. Until then, all umbrellas were of the two-hand, slide-up variety.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Hanratty and Abagnale are aboard a plane at LaGuardia Airport in 1969, a shot of the New York City skyline shows the World Trade Center towers fully built. However, the towers were not completed until 1973.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The green-capped McCormick spice bottles on the spice rack in the apartment were not available in the early 1960s.
  
  
• Continuity: The checks Abagnale gathers up when he's confronted by Hanratty shift position between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank Abagnale Jr. gives the new car's keys to his father at the restaurant, Sr. takes the ribbon off the box, and sets it down to the right of his plate. In the next shot the ribbon is to the left of his plate. The box itself moves around and alternates between partially open and completely closed.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During one of the Christmas telephone conversations between Frank and Carl, Frank's phone has a modular telephone jack connection. Modular telephone jacks did not exist at the time.
  
  
• Factual errors: Stopping a press like the one shown in the movie would not result in a flurry of cut checks flying through the air. Additionally, the cutter would be a machine that could fit the entire width of the paper, and make the precision cuts required for things like checks.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank is watching a court scene to prepare for his stint as a lawyer, the television clearly has a remote control infrared panel and control buttons on the front. Those didn't exist in the 1960s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: As Frank first walks down the street in his Pan Am uniform, a Fedex delivery truck is partially visible in the background. Federal Express wasn't founded until 1971 and the Fedex logo on the truck was designed in 1994 when the company officially adopted the Fedex brand name.
  
  
• Continuity: Frank kisses a girl and smudges her lipstick. In subsequent shots, the lipstick is smudge-free.
  
  
• Anachronisms: We see TWA aircraft several times, all with the famous two stripe logo. That logo was not introduced until 1975, several years after when the movie was set.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Carl flips through Frank Jr.'s high school yearbook looking for his photo, the close-up shot reveals the same names duplicated on multiple pages of the book.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank and his father pull up to the Chase Bank, a Duane Reade drugstore in the background has a current logo.
  
  
• Continuity: When Abagnale has dinner with his fiancé, he finishes the prayer and we see her shaking her napkin at him to let him know to put it in his lap. In the next shot, she is picking up her napkin.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At Miami International Airport, the National Airlines logo should have been the "SunKing" logo, introduced in the mid-1960s.
  
  
• Continuity: When Carl is visiting Frank in prison, the comic books jump around between shots.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The slide projector used by Hanratty in his briefing on Abignale has a carousel, which was not released until Christmas of 1968.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank is arrested in France in the late 1960s, the police car he gets into has an antenna/defroster embedded in the rear window, which didn't exist then.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The map of Europe Hanratty uses to figure out Abagnale's location is from at least the mid-1990s: Germany is unified, and the former Yugoslavia is divided into several different countries.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Hanratty makes a phone call outside Frank Sr.'s apartment, the entire phone booth shakes, as if it is not bolted to the ground.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank interviews potential stewardesses, one of them sings a line from the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane". This scene takes place in 1966 or 1967, long before the song was made popular by Peter, Paul, and Mary in 1969. The song was written in 1967 by John Denver (who made the song famous in 1973), which might have been before the scene in question, but it is highly unlikely that a student would have known the song before 1969.
  
  
• Continuity: The non-speaking role of "stewardess" Miggy is played by Amy Acker for the scene in the hall and when the stewardesses get out of the car with Frank outside the airport. However, for the scenes inside the airport, another (non-credited) actress has replaced her.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank Sr. hugs his son during the pancake scene, his jacket moves about between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank gets to Miami International Airport to wait for his fiancé, a car driven by a man wearing a hat stops right behind him. When Frank looks around searching for potential police, the door of the car behind is opening. In the next shot, the car behind him is gone.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the French police come to catch Frank, the plate number of their car is 44 (number of the state). Montrichard's plate number is 41; Loire Atlantique is 44.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The front-loading washers in the laundromat are Wascomat W74 Front Loading washing machines. The square door handle and rotary temperature control knob were introduced in the 1980s.
  
  
• Continuity: It is sunny at poolside at the Tropicana in L.A., with young ladies sunbathing. When Frank is almost caught in his motel room, he points to the "perp" being escorted to the car by "another Secret Service man." The streets are clearly wet, and the car is covered with raindrops.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the 1960s, French police cars had yellow flashing lights, not blue.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When we first see Brenda at the hospital, she is wearing 1970s-style braces on her teeth.
  
  
• Continuity: En route to Handratty's first confrontation with Frank Jr., Amdursky and Fox are wearing sunglasses in one shot as the car turns into the hotel parking lot (after the "knock-knock joke"), but not in others.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Hanratty is briefing fellow FBI agents about check routing, the first US map has many geographical errors: Kansas City is where Omaha should be, St. Louis is in middle of Missouri, and Boston is in Maine. When the same map is shown again, the cities are correctly located, and the map shading scheme has changed.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Brenda is last seen waiting at the Miami airport directly behind a sidewalk curbcut for wheelchairs which was not introduced until at least the mid-1970s, particularly after federal legislation for the handicapped was enacted.
  
  
• Continuity: When the little girl on the street asks Frank if he's a "real live pilot", she's standing in front of a yellow car. After he speaks to her, he begins to walk away, and the yellow car is gone.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the FBI agents tell Frank's mom how much money he has stolen, she reaches for a pack of Kent cigarettes. The cigarette she lights has a "cork" filter. Kents had a white filter.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Early in the movie, when Frank Sr. attempts to pull off a bank heist with the help of Frank Jr., a 1980s city bus is in the background.
  
  
• Continuity: Frank points out the Manhattan skyline from the plane. They are at a much higher altitude in a subsequent shot, and only clouds are visible.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In several scenes, Agent Hanratty uses the "Weaver Stance" when holding a handgun. This is particularly evident when he first meets Secret Service Agent "Barry Allen" in the hotel room. Most of the movie takes place during the 1950s and 1960s. The "Weaver Stance" was first developed during the 1950s, and not widely taught widely until the late 1970s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The bottle of Tab diet cola in pool scene is from late 1970s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Use of OCR-A character-reader font on letters, driver's license. It was first introduced in 1970.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank tries to escape after printing the checks, he is holding the checks in his arms in a disorganized pile. In the next shot, before he throws them to the floor, they are sorted more neatly.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the beginning of the movie, Hanratty visits Frank in a French prison and notifies him the terms of his extradition "according to the European Convention on Human Rights". France ratified the European convention on 3 May 1974, and would't have applied in 1969, when the scene takes place.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the closing credits, "Saxophone solos" is misspelled as "Saxaphone solos."
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Carl confronts Frank in France, just after he yells "They're going to kill you!" his mouth moves after that, but you don't hear anything.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Carl is sitting in his office watching the checks, the stamp on the back of one check is from 1997. The scene takes place in 1967.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. are entering at Chase Manhattan Bank, a little white truck is shown three times, twice going in the same direction in a couple of seconds.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank is walking down the street with his new co-pilot uniform, the sidewalk is dry. In the next shot, the camera is above his head and the sidewalk is wet.
  
  
• Factual errors: Many of the cars in this movie have new style aero dynamic black wiper blades. Cars of that time period had standard silver/chrome colored wiper blades.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Hanratty shows his ID to a frightened maid at the top of a hotel staircase, the badge with the FBI logo is facing the camera and not her, so in actual fact all she would see is the black leather outer of the wallet.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the plane that takes Frank Jr. and Carl back to the States lands, we are shown a sequence where the wheels touch the runway. The exterior shots are of a 767, which did not fly until 1981. The interior shots are of a 707.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Frank Abagnale Jr. flies "deadhead" in the cockpit of a TWA plane, the cockpit windshield has a central pane, without a metal divider in the center. At the time, the only jet airliner with that type of windshield was the Douglas DC-8. TWA flew the Boeing 707, not the DC-8.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Frank goes to the flight deck to ride on the jump seat, the jump seat that is pulled out has no restraints on it.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank's father opens a checking account for him in early 1964, the checks are imprinted with ZIP codes. ZIP codes were introduced in 1963, but they weren't widely used until the mid-Sixties.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During a scene set in 1965, characters listen to the song The Look of Love, first released in 1967.
  
  
• Anachronisms: A lava lamp appears in scene set in 1965, three years before lamp was marketed.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hanratty and his two assistants go to Frank's mother's house, one of the assistants grabs a piece of dessert and tries to reach a fork that is on a plate in front of Hanratty. Hanratty has a paper in his right hand in one shot while he's looking at the lady. In the next shot is right hand is empty and free to instantly grab a fork for his colleague and hand it to him in that comedic stabbing motion.
  
  
• Continuity: Frank calls Carl every Christmas, starting in 1966. In '66 Carl is working alone. The next time in '67 Carl is working with his team. Then the next year, when Carl and Frank are in France, the subtitles say 1967. Shouldn't it be 1968?
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank Jr impersonates the substitute French teacher in order to take revenge on the bullies who bumped into him in the hallway, he shouts for order in the classroom then asks which chapter the previous teacher left off on. Frank Jr then opens his book up to the correct page, and after embarrassing one of the bullies by making him read out loud, he begins to walk to the front of the room. When he is in the aisle in the classroom, he holds the book open as he walks. After the shot changes angle and distance, he completes his walk to the front of the room, but the book is now closed.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene at the Miami airport, which was set in the late 1960s, Checker cabs with impact absorbing bumpers are seen. Impact absorbing bumpers did not appear on cars until late 1972 (for the 1973 model year.) The cabs are at least 1974 models, when impact absorbing bumpers for both the front and back of the car were required.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): During the course of the movie Hanratty's New York accent appeared and disappears. During the very beginning it is extremely thick; but when he's on the plane with Frank Jr. it is nonexistent.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the FBI office, all of the desk chairs are Pollack chairs. Designed by Charles Pollack for Knoll in 1965, it's possible that these chairs might have gotten to the FBI offices by that date. What's not possible is that the FBI would have spent the money on these chairs; they are very expensive and would never have been standard government issue.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): As Frank and Carl are flying back to the US, Frank says that he sees runway 44 at LaGuardia. Runway numbers are based on compass headings ranging from 01-36. LaGuardia does have a runway 04, which would head roughly northeast.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the scene where Frank Abagnale walks through Miami International Airport surrounded by newly recruited Pan Am stewardesses, the stewardesses are wearing their hats wrong. The Pan Am emblem is supposed to show from the front, whereas these recruits wore their hats with the emblem toward the back.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank first walks into the classroom where he impersonates the substitute teacher, one of the students is heard to use the word "frickin'", which is a recent word, and not in use in the 1960s.
  
  
• Continuity: Frank Abagnale Jr.is given a co-pilot's jacket (two stripes) at the outfitters. However, immediately afterwards when he is seen walking away he's wearing a senior co-pilot's jacket (three stripes) and continues to wear that rank throughout the pilot scenes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Hanratty is trying to catch Abagnale at Miami Airport, the driver of the vehicle that was sent to detour them pulls out a sign that reads "Handratty", with a "D"
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the end of the film, when the camera pans out through the FBI office, the last row of file cabinets can be seen being pushed together into place after the camera has passed through. A crew member can be seen on the left side of the screen trying to duck out of the shot after you see him pushing the left file cabinet.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Early in the film in the sequence showing the family's move from a house to an apartment, there is a shot of the apartment building taken from the street outside. As the camera pans upward to show the whole building, a video security camera can be seen in the top right corner of the shot, apparently mounted on a telephone pole opposite the building. Such security cameras did not exist at that time.
  
  

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