Goofs for
A Christmas Story (1983) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The packing material on the back of father, as he is digging in the box for the lamp.
  
  
• Anachronisms: 1980s cars can be seen passing by the school at the flagpole scene.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The toy wagons in the window of Higbee's Department Store have the 1980s "Radio Flyer" trademark.
  
  

• Anachronisms: The wheels on the wagons in the Higbee's store window have bright red plastic hubcaps. Radio Flyer used larger silver metal hubcaps on their wagon wheels until well into the '60s.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Ralphie is in line to see Santa Claus, the boy named Billy tells Santa that he wants "a toy truck". Santa repeats "A toy truck! Get him off my lap!" and Billy screams as he's pushed down the slide. This exact exchange is seen, but not heard, in the same scene during shots of the interior of the store.
  
  
• Plot holes: After nearly shooting his eye out, Ralphie comes back into the house through the back door. In the next scene, the Bumpus hounds are shown coming through the living room from left to right and moving on to the kitchen. The dogs would need to open the front door for this to be possible.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The Mickey Mouse costume seen in the parade is the kind used in the Disney parks starting in the 1960s.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the lamp breaks it makes the noise of glass breaking, but later Melinda Dillon reveals to her husband that it was made of plastic.
  
  
• Continuity: When the dad first pulls the lamp out of the box, there's no electrical cord attached to it, yet he plugs it into the wall seconds later.
  
  
• Continuity: During Ralphy's fight with the bully, in the wide shot bright red blood is clearly visible on the bully's nose, but in the close up there is no blood visible on his nose/face.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the first scene that has Ralphie's father going down to the basement to do battle with the furnace, you can see a crew member's foot quickly disappear from the shot in the next room just as the father crosses the kitchen and is about to open the basement door.
  
  
• Continuity: Just before the lamp breaks, the furnace controls are visible; in the next shot when the father comes out of the basement, the controls are in opposite positions.
  
  
• Continuity: While dad is unpacking the lamp, mom's necklace repeatedly changes position between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: After the bully hits Ralph with a snowball, the snow suddenly disappears from his face as well as his coat.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Shadows of crew on kitchen chair when Randy is in the cabinet, worrying about Ralph getting killed by their father (for fighting) when he comes home.
  
  
• Continuity: The little girl shown looking out the school window at Flick stuck to the flagpole was actually one of the last to leave her seat and head toward the window in the shot before.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ralphie presents Miss Shields with the fruit basket the arrangement of the fruit changes: the banana rotates.
  
  
• Continuity: The mashed potatoes disappear and reappear on Randy's face between shots during the dinner scene ("show mommy how the piggies eat").
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Black Bart is escaping from Ralphie's backyard, the trampoline that he uses to jump over the fence is clearly visible (it was not there in the previous backyard shots, so it's not part of the "furniture"). This is only visible in the Full Frame version; it gets cropped out of the original Wide Screen movie and the Wide Screen DVD version.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ralph defends the home against Black Bart, he shoots three times, hitting three thugs. Yet when the scene ends, there are four thugs lying dead, complete with x's over their eyes.
  
  
• Continuity: Ralphie's chocolate milk at the start of the film.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dillon first "breaks" the lamp it is in her lap in three pieces. The camera goes to Dad then back to Dillon and the lamp is in one piece but broken vertically. This is reinforced in the scene when he resurrects the lamp in the window.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the end titles, Melinda Dillon's name is misspelled "Dillion."
  
  
• Continuity: When Ralph's mother is dressing Randy up for school, Randy's arms are clearly by his side before he suddenly announces that he can't put his arms down. The camera angle jumps back and forth twice between arms up and arms down before Ralph's mother pushes Randy's arms down, only to have them pop back up.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ralphie is decoding Annie's secret message in the bathroom, the text's case on his writing changes from lower case to upper case between shots (watch the "E/e" in "Be"... (Be sure to drink your Ovaltine)).
  
  
• Continuity: In the Black Bart fantasy sequence and the scene in which The Old Man is getting water to fight the Oldsmobile, there is no cabinet under the sink. In a later scene, this is the location of the cabinet door behind which Randy is crying because "Dad is going to kill Ralphy".
  
  
• Continuity: When we see the Chinese restaurant from the street, the shop owner is standing in front of the table conducting the singing waiters. When we move into the restaurant the song (Faa-Raa-Raa-Raa) has not missed a beat, yet the owner is now standing behind the table.
  
  
• Continuity: After opening presents on Christmas morning, Ralphie goes outside while his mother bastes the turkey in a roasting pan at the kitchen table. In the next shot, a canning jar of pickles has appeared beside the roasting pan. In the next shot, the jar of pickles has disappeared from the table and is in her hand as she comes up from the basement and sets it on the table.
  
  
• Continuity: Santa's dialog and the screams of the visiting children can be heard twice in the same scene (when Ralph and Randy go to visit Santa).
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During Ralphie's dream sequence of soap poisoning, the reflection of the studio lights can be seen in his sunglasses.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Mr. Parker comes home after receiving the telegram telling him that he won the leg lamp, he runs out of the car, leaving it running and never turns it off, yet the car noises turn off by themselves.
  
  
• Continuity: Both newspapers that Mr. Parker reads are the same for different days.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The BB package is too modern for the time period. The package should be red with black lettering and crimped at the ends like a shotgun shell.
  
  
• Anachronisms: A kid in a classroom scene forgot to take off his Dukes of Hazzard digital watch.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: A modern math book - not one used in the '40s - is seen sitting on the teacher's desk.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the night scenes showing street lights and also on the big ship docked across the road from the spot where Ralphie and Mr. Parker fix the flat tire, purplish mercury vapor street lights are shown, which had not yet been invented at the time.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: At the beginning of the movie when we see Christmas activities in the large town square, there's a red-and-cream "Peter Witt"-type trolley car, as well as an elevated view of a two-car trolley. There are no trolley tracks, nor are there overhead wires to power the trolley.
  
  
• Continuity: After Flick is removed from the flagpole, the teacher then gives the class an assignment to write a theme. While she's saying this, the blackboard behind her says "The brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". Seconds later the blackboard says "A Theme What I Want for Christmas".
  
  
• Anachronisms: Ralphie's mid-1940s-era school class contains both white and African-American students. Indiana public schools were not officially integrated until 1949.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: At the beginning of the movie, a modern TV antenna can be seen on the top of one of the houses. This is only visible in the Full Frame version; it gets cropped out of the original Wide Screen movie and the Wide Screen DVD version.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: When the kids run to their seats in the classroom after putting the plastic teeth in their mouths, a shadow of a boom mic is visible on the wall as the camera pans right to left.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the neighborhood bully is laughing at Ralphie, there is a close up showing the braces on his teeth. The braces are the type that attach to the front of the tooth with adhesive, which were not invented until many years later. Braces at that time would have been the type with a metal band going around the tooth.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Ralphie steps on his glasses outside in the snow after shooting his Red Ryder BB Gun on Christmas morning, a 3 barrel hinge on the temples are clearly visible. This type of hinge was not available until the 1980s.
  
  
• Continuity: Before the radio announcer began to read off the numbers to Orphan Annie's secret message, he instructs the listeners to set their pins to "B-2." The first letter in the message would be the letter "B" in the word "BE" so if the pins were on "B-2," then the first number that he reads off should be "2." Instead, the first number he reads off is 12.
  
  
• Continuity: As the workers are bringing the crate into the house the is a rope tied around the crate. Once they get it into the house the rope is no longer there. The exterior shot was done in Cleveland and showed a rope, while the interior shot was done in a Toronto studio weeks later.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the kids are gazing into the store window Christmas display, the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls are Knickerbocker Toy Company dolls from the 1970s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Some of the Lionel electric trains in Higbee's window are identifiable as 1980s production.
  
  
• Continuity: During dinner just before the Old Man's major award arrives, Ralph's milk glass is full, and a split second later it is empty.
  
  
• Continuity: When the family is eating dinner on the day the Ralphie beats up Scutt Farkas, the bread plate on the table switches position from left of the pickle plate to the right.
  
  
• Factual errors: The song on the blackboard under "name this tune" is Mary Had a Little Lamb. The last two notes on the line should be "G"s, not "F"s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The windup chattering teeth in Miss Shields' confiscation drawer weren't invented until 1949.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the beginning of the movie Mr. Parker enters reading a newspaper distressed that the White Sox had just traded "Bullfrog". Bill "Bullfrog" Dietrich was released from the Chicago White Sox on September 18, 1946. That would place this scene some time in the middle of September - a little too early to be thinking of Christmas lists or for Indiana to be covered in snow.
  
  
• Anachronisms: With the Christmas tree on the roof of their 1938 Oldsmobile, the moving car gets a flat. While changing the tire, Ralphie goes to help his dad, who implores him to hold the hubcap flat to catch the "nuts." We see them in the hubcap. That car used removable "bolts" like all GM cars into the '50s. Even Jean Shepherd mentions "bolts" in his running monologue.
  
  
• Continuity: In the early portion of the film, the space directly under the kitchen sink is wide open. Later in the film, after Ralphie's fight with Scut Farkas, Randy is found hiding in a wood enclosure below the sink with doors.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the early scene where Ralph and his friends are looking at toys through the store window, a pair of Radio Flyer wagons with contemporary (1980s) graphics are seen.
  
  
• Continuity: During the first battle of the furnace, both levers are to the right when Dad yells to open the damper. Mom goes over touches the damper (lower) lever, but then instead moves draft (upper) lever all the way to the left. She then back away. When the view takes in the levers again, the damper (lower) lever is to the left and the draft (upper) lever is to the right.
  
  
• Factual errors: Shepherd said the film is set in 1940 and it is usually agreed that the action takes place in 1939 (Wizard of Oz characters) or 1940 (there is no reference to Pearl Harbor or WWII). But in Jan. 1940 Ovaltine dropped the "Little Orphan Annie" radio show and switched to "Captain Midnight." In Dec. 1940 Quaker Puffed Wheat was "Annie"'s sponsor. The announcer, Pierre Andre, also left "Annie" in Jan. 1940 because audiences identified him with Ovaltine, and he too went to "Captain Midnight." These facts would only fit the action of a film set in 1939.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Dillon's hairstyle is completely wrong for 1940. Dillon's hair in the film is permed and frizzy and pulled back with hair clasps on either side with frizzy permed bangs. In 1940, women did not wear their hair like that, WarTime hair was rolled around the head or fashioned in smooth pompadours or some other smooth style. Curled hair was widely used but curls were often controlled, large pin curls and not the frizzy perms of the 1980's.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the fuse blows while the Parker's are decorating the Christmas tree, the room goes completely dark despite the roaring fire in the fireplace behind Ralphie and his brother.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Ralphie and Randy are waiting in line to see Santa, there is a woman with a red coat standing behind them. Moments later, as Ralphie and Randy make it to the stairs leading to Santa, the woman in the red coat is suddenly in front of them. There was no time between shots for her to have moved.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Old Man thanks Mrs. Parker on Christmas morning for a blue bowling ball, yet was unable to distinguish blue Christmas lights the previous evening. This was probably just the Old Man's stubborn refusal to admit that he was mistaken, rather than color-blindness.
  
  
• Continuity: When the parents first come downstairs Christmas morning you can see a roaring fire in the background. Unless they stayed up all night there should not be a fire going.
  
  
• Continuity: Randy's puffy outfit changes from being really puffy to not as puffy.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Davey Crockett hat that Scut Farkus wore didn't come out until the 1950s.
  
  
• Continuity: Even though we are told that Scut Farkus has yellow eyes, the first time we see him, they are dark brown.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Old Man blows the fuse trying to plug in his lamp, he just unplugs on cord and doesn't have to go anywhere to actually replace a blown fuse. The lights even come on again, magically.
  
  
• Continuity: The numbers on the radio to be decoded don't match what is written by Ralphie. The last number spoken is 25 but written down is 11.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Colored bowling balls were not developed until the 60's. In addition the ball already has the holes drilled in it. Aside from the fact that the holes are way too small for an adult, the holes are drilled to fit the user so they wouldn't have been in the ball until after his hand span was measured.
  
  
• Continuity: When the "old man" sends the boys to bed on Christmas Eve he listens for them to go to their rooms. He even points as if tracing their paths down the hall. We hear 2 doors close. However, throughout the movie it is shown that Ralphie and Randy share a bedroom, so only 1 door would have needed to close.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mrs. Parker is getting Randy ready for school and he complains about not being able to put his arms down, the shots of Randy from the back show him with his gloves off; shots from the front of Randy when Mrs. Parker responds show him with his gloves on. The sequence continues for 5 shots, each alternating gloves on, gloves off.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The wall clock in Ralphie's kitchen has no power cord. Battery-powered wall clocks did not exist in 1940.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Before Ralphie and Randy get in line to visit Santa in Higbee's Department store, the Wizard of Oz characters pass by, and the witch tries to talk to Ralphie, who won't interact with her because he's busy 'thinking'. Watch Randy's face in this scene as he comes out of character for a moment and smiles at a scared little girl, who is off camera. She was afraid of the witch during rehearsal, and never really was able to handle her presence.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The BB gun Ralphie finally receives is wrapped in red embossed, solid color paper with a metallic finish. Such paper was not available in the period of the story. Wrapping paper of the era was typically non-metallic paper lithographed with repeated designs, such as Santas, sleighs, snowflakes, and the like.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the end, the family goes to a Chinese "chop suey" restaurant. The wait staff is trying to sing carols with the "L" sound, with which they have trouble. For instance, they sing "fa ra ra ra ra ra....". While the Japanese have such trouble voicing "L's" Chinese do not. Chinese has an L sound in the language, Japanese does not.
  
  
• Continuity: When the old man enters the house fighting the Oldsmobile he tosses his hat on the dining room table and it falls to the chair. Later in the scene as Mrs. Parker goes to open the damper for the furnace, as the camera pans, it can be seen on the table.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Black Bart is escaping from Ralphies' backyard, you can see a crew member's head skimming the top of the fence as they are leading the horse from left to right then again from right to left as they leave the horse for Black Bart.
  
  
• Anachronisms: On Christmas morning (of what is supposed to be 1939 or 1940), the family is listening to Bing Crosby's "Merry Christmas" album while they open presents. That album was not released until 1945 (and reissued in 1947).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the children are taking their seats after they were handed the fake teeth, you see the character of Schwartz look at the camera and smile.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Ralphie and Randy are told by the man waiting in line to see Santa that he was standing at the back of the line, he was supposed to be telling them that he was in the front of the line.
  
  

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