Goofs for
The Shining (1980) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Mrs. Torrance's cigarette ash when she discusses Danny with the doctor.
  
  
• Continuity: The amount of sandwich eaten by Danny at the beginning of the film.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack and Danny are sitting on the bed talking, Jack's left hand alternates between being down at his side or around Danny's shoulders between shots.
  
  

• Continuity: The positioning of Danny's hands and the ice cream bowl when he and Hallorann are talking about Shining.
  
  
• Continuity: Wendy's hand when Jack is talking about his nightmare.
  
  
• Continuity: As Wendy enters the bathroom to escape from Jack, the lampshade beside the bed is crooked. When Jack enters the apartment to break down the door with the axe, the lampshade is straight.
  
  
• Continuity: While Wendy and Danny are in the bathroom hiding from Jack, the interior shots show snow accumulated in the corner of the window pane. There is no snow on the exterior shots of the window as Danny escapes. This keeps alternating between snow and no snow as the scene alternates from interior to exterior shots of the window.
  
  
• Continuity: During the long shot of the Overlook in the beginning (right before The Interview title card), the maze cannot be seen, though throughout the rest of the movie it is rather close to the hotel.
  
  
• Factual errors: There is no way that the huge pile of the Torrance's luggage (as seen when they first arrive at the Overlook) would fit in a VW Bug.
  
  
• Continuity: During Hallorann's phone conversation with Larry, his scarf changes positions from being inside his coat to outside, and then back inside.
  
  
• Continuity: During Hallorann's phone conversation with Larry, the box on Larry's table changes angles between shots (red-blue turns into red-only).
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: The shadow from the camera is visible on Wendy and Jack when they enter the apartment for the first time during the tour near the beginning of the film.
  
  
• Continuity: Dick Hallorann opens the freezer door with his left hand and the door's handle is on the right. When the scene switches to inside the freezer, he is opening the door with his right hand and the door handle switches to the left. When they walk out of the freezer, they walk out of a different door (they first go into a freezer that is next to the chef's office, when they exit, they come out a door which is across from the office).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Wendy brings Jack breakfast in bed, they appear to change sides, but in fact, the first shot is in a mirror.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack is using the ax to break through the door he only breaks through one of the the recessed panels and says, "Here's Johnny". But when he hears the snowmobile and turns and the shot changes, two of the panels are gone without him using the ax on them.
  
  
• Continuity: The position of the knife when Wendy locks herself in the bathroom.
  
  
• Continuity: The first time we see Jack's typewriter at the Overlook Hotel, it is a small white typewriter. Later, when he is actually typing, it is a larger, blue typewriter.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Shadows from camera equipment are occasionally visible on Danny's back when he is riding through the hotel corridors on his tricycle.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jack orders a whiskey from the bartender in the hotel, the amount of whiskey in the glass changes between shots from 3 quarters full to 1 quarter full.
  
  
• Continuity: There are several large windows along a wall in the master bedroom of the caretaker's quarters. However, these windows cannot exist based on the architecture of the Overlook as seen from the external shot when Wendy pushes Danny out the bathroom window and down the snow drift.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: The Steadicam's shadow is briefly visible during the final chase through the maze.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack enters the hotel manager's office to disable the radio, there is a light switch on the wall to the right of the door. Earlier, when Jack enters the office to meet with Mr. Ullman for "the interview," there is clearly no light switch on the same wall.
  
  
• Continuity: When Wendy gets up to run into Danny's room when he's screaming "Redrum", she has a cigarette in her hand. Though, when she gets through the door and into Danny's room to grab him, the cigarette is gone, without enough time for her to discard it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Wendy hits Jack over the head with the baseball bat on the staircase, the bat flexes, revealing it to be made of rubber.
  
  
• Continuity: As Jack is talking to Mr. Grady in the men's room, and Grady puts down the tray, it moves from between the 2nd and 3rd tap to between the 3rd and 4rth tap and back again several times during their conversation.
  
  
• Continuity: The small painting above Jack's/Wendy's bed is missing as Jack is talking to Danny.
  
  
• Continuity: When Stuart Ullman is interviewing Jack, he has a name plate on his desk. When Wendy finds the switchboard is out and has to use the ham radio, the name plate is gone. When Jack goes back into that room to remove the tubes from the radio, the name plate is back in the center of the desk.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The song played in the ballroom scenes is "Midnight, the Stars, and You," which wasn't recorded until 1932, 11 years after the scene takes place.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: There is no visible breath coming out of Jack or Danny's mouths when they are in the hedge maze, where it is supposedly freezing.
  
  
• Continuity: When Danny has the tennis ball rolled to him in the Hotel, the carpet pattern on the floor changes between cuts.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Wendy is doing the dishes just before Jack calls to tell he got the job, the electricity socket near the sink is clearly a British three-pin socket. A few seconds into the dish washing scene, the scene cuts and shows Tommy in the bathroom, to the right of the sink there is another British three-pin socket. The Torrances don't live in Britain.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Wendy and Danny are watching TV, there is no power or antenna/cable cords connected to the set.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Wendy has locked Jack in the pantry, we hear him slamming against the door repeatedly in an attempt to escape. The door doesn't move an inch, yet, in the interior shot, we see the door giving when he's saying "go check it out" and slamming his hands against it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jack is angry in the kitchen after his argument with Wendy, he knocks kitchen utensils off the worktops, a couple of steel tins hit and bounce back off the camera.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack stares at the model of the hedge maze and it cuts to an aerial view of Danny and Wendy in the maze, the model doesn't match the map of the maze that is posted on the reader board outside the maze (shown when Danny and Wendy enter it).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Throughout the film, "The Gold Room" sign is located at the entrance of the Gold Ballroom. At the very end of the film, the sign is in the inside of the Ballroom as the camera exits while focusing on a picture of Jack. It doesn't make sense why the sign would be on the inside of the room if the sign is meant to be out in the hallway before you enter. (There is a theory that explains the moving sign with the clips/scenes are from different eras showing different Jacks.)
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Jack remarks to Lloyd that he has not had a drink for five months. This is after he has already been in the hotel for one month. A month earlier his wife mentioned he had not had a drink since his episode with Danny, five months previously. However, a only a few minutes later, Jack tells Lloyd that the incident was three years ago, which would imply that he hasn't had a drink for three years, not five months.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mr. Ullman interviews Jack and explains why the hotel is closed for the winter, he finished his sentence while his left hand grabs his right. A second later, it is his right hand grabbing his left - a mirror image.
  
  
• Continuity: When Hallorann and Danny are talking about Shining, the camera goes back and forth between close-ups of them. In one shot of Danny, his hair appears messy and wild, but the next time we see him his hair is neat and his posture is more straight and attentive.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack is being interviewed for the job, there are numerous cuts between him and Ullman. If you look at the desk during the interview, you will see a pen that seems to dance across the desk, it keeps moving on the desk every time there is a cut between Jack and the man.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack enters the room after Wendy and Danny with the ax, the writing on the door (REDRUM) has disappeared. In the next shot, when Jack is taking down the door, the writing is back.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Famously, in some versions of the film, the helicopter's blades/shadow can occasionally be seen in the opening sequence. However, the blades are visible only in the un-matted TV/video print (and thus this isn't a goof). When watched in the correct ratio, the blades are never visible.
  
  
• Continuity: When Danny is writing "REDRUM" on the wall, the knife's cable is turned to him. When he approaches Wendy, the knife's cable is turned to her.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Jack Torrance is at his appointment with Mr. Ullman, he talks about the tragedy that took place during the winter of 1970. Here's a quote of the conversation: Mr. Ullman: "My predecessor in this job hired a man named Charles Grady as the winter caretaker. He came up with his wife and 2 little girls of about 8 and 10." Later in the movie we see multiple shots of Charles Grady daughters "ghosts" talking to Danny. Some viewers are confused because the girls are dressed identically, and thus assume them to be identical twins, and think that the 2-year age gap is a goof. But one girl is taller than the other and has a differently-shaped face, so they are not twins.
  
  
• Continuity: When Wendy goes to look for Jack she leaves Danny alone in the apartment. However the chain on the door is in place. At the time we are supposed to believe he is in a vegetative state so would not have put the chain on the door.
  
  
• Continuity: When Wendy drags Jack into the food storage room we see a bunch of knives on a small wall. Wendy locks Jack in the storage room and Wendy grabs a knife. The knife she grabs was not there before and the other knives have moved around.
  
  
• Continuity: During the scene where Wendy visits Jack in the lobby while he is typing (where he gets very agitated that she has interrupted him, approx. 45 minutes into the film) he rips the current page from the typewriter and never reloads a new one; when she walks away and he resumes typing, (with no breaks in the dialogue/action) there is a new page already loaded.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jack talks with Lloyd the bartender for the first time, you can see 2 errors: the pattern of the bar is lighted glass, wood and then lighted glass again. you can see that at the beginning, Jack sits and the wood part is right in the center of his body, one moment later it's near his left hand, and few moments later it's far away from his left hand.
  
  
• Continuity: During Torrance's second visit to the Gold Room bar, the level of whiskey in the glass goes up between takes, though the bartender hasn't made a move to refill it.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the Gold Room scene, Jack orders a bottle of Bourbon. Lloyd pulls a bottle of Jack Daniels off the shelf. Jack Daniels is a Tennessee Whiskey, not a Bourbon. A bartender like Lloyd should know the difference.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obviously empty boxes fall on Jack when he gets up and stumbles into them after Wendy locks him in the storage room.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the film's final action scene, when Jack is chasing Danny through the maze, there's never any evidence of steam emanating from anyone's mouth from the cold; yet, it's so frigid, Jack actually freezes solid over night.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While Jack and Wendy are being shown around, Danny is in the game room playing darts. He is shown throwing 3 darts, his arms at a normal level, throwing straight out in front of him. When he goes to retrieve the darts from the board, he has to climb up on a chair or stool because of the height of the board. They would have hit the wall from the height he was throwing them.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In his job interview, Ullman tells Jack the name of the previous caretaker which was, as Ullman says, Charles Grady. When Jack meets Grady later, he says his name is Delbert Grady. However, this is purposeful. The names are different to imply both Gradys have been to the hotel before, they are not the same character merely the same "entity" or soul being pulled back to the hotel, much like Jack Torrance's character.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: After Jack kills Hallorann the head of the ax is bloody as would be expected. When Jack is subsequently chasing Danny through the maze we see light reflecting off the ax, and the ax is very shiny where the blood previously was.
  
  

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