Goofs for
Forrest Gump (1994) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The feather is visible on Forrest's shoe and floating in the air at the same time, when the camera is approximately ten feet above Forrest's head.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Car tire tracks are visible in the segment remembering Nathan Bedford Forrest's Civil War ties with the KKK. This was a goof present in the original footage which was taken from D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The CG team considered removing them, but decided not to.
  
  
• Continuity: Forrest's hands on the swing ropes when listening to his mother entertain the school inspector.
  
  

• Continuity: The girl behind Forrest and Jenny on the school bus disappears and reappears between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: During the Protest Rally at the Washington Monument, the tree leaves are not consistent. Behind Forrest on the podium, the trees in the background have no leaves as if it were late autumn or winter. The trees surrounding the reflection pool in front of Forrest are all Green as if it were summer, and in a later scene as Forrest watches Jenny board the bus back to Berkeley, the leaves on all the trees are different colors as if it were the heart of autumn.
  
  
• Continuity: When Forrest sits down to watch TV with his son, the iron behind Jenny changes from being down and sitting up between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Forrest leaves the mower with grass in front of it when he goes to meet Jenny. When they cut back to him, the mower is sitting next to the cut grass, not in the middle of it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Forrest first gets on the school bus, the shots from inside the bus show the driver's hand on the door lever, while shots from the outside show it on the gear shift lever.
  
  
• Continuity: Bubba's lower lip when he and Forrest are on their way to Vietnam in the helicopter.
  
  
• Continuity: Bear Bryant stands up to watch Forrest after he was already standing.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During the 1972 New Year's Eve celebration, Forrest drinks a Dr. Pepper with a logo that wasn't devised until the mid-1980s.
  
  
• Factual errors: The moon is shown as waxing, almost full, and is lit from the top right; an impossible situation at night.
  
  
• Factual errors: Forrest claims that Jenny died on a Saturday, and yet her gravestone says 22 March 1982, which was a Monday.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The letter from Apple Computer is dated 21 September 1975 (a Sunday), when Apple wasn't a public company open for investment. Apple Computer was not incorporated until 3 January 1977, and didn't become publicly traded until its initial public offering (IPO) on 12 December 1980.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The woman on the bench in Savannah tells Forrest to go a few blocks ahead to Henry St. though it is actually behind them.
  
  
• Continuity: Forrest can't run with his braces; he can barely walk. When he and Jenny run to their favorite tree, he is running normally. Yet when the bullies from school chase him on their bikes, he is back to his old gait. It is only after the braces are lost that he runs normally.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Forrest sits on the bench by the square and the bus passes him, the traffic is going in the wrong direction. In Savannah, traffic goes counter-clockwise round city squares.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In 1974, one of Forrest's shrimping attempts yields, among other pieces of garbage, a Mello Yello can. Mello Yello was introduced in 1979, and the can bears the revised logo introduced circa 1989.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the montage of Forrest's and Lt. Dan's first successful shrimp catch after the hurricane where they are emptying their full shrimp nets onto the deck of the boat, the shrimp nets are full of headless shrimp. Shrimp caught in nets are complete animals, and they are processed on the boat after they are dumped, at which time their heads are removed. Shrimp boats do not catch pre-processed shrimp from the waters of the gulf.
  
  
• Continuity: The ramp outside the stage door at the Dick Cavett show as seen over Forrest's shoulder is clear of snow, yet moments later it covered with snow as Lt. Dan slides down it.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Forrest is playing ping pong, the computerized ball starts moving very quickly. If you follow it closely, you can see that it bounces off his elbow at one point instead of the paddle (right before the ball bounces and then seems to hit the camera).
  
  
• Anachronisms: During the 4th of July 1976 celebration scene at Forest's house with Jenny, the fireworks show on the television shows the Statue of Liberty after it was restored. The Statue was restored in 1986.
  
  
• Continuity: When Forrest stops running, there are no shadows in the overhead shots (overcast weather) but a clear shadow from his cap in the close-up of his face.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the bullies first throw rocks at Forrest, the second one clearly hits him below his eye, but he starts to bleed up on the top of his forehead.
  
  
• Continuity: When Forrest is giving his speech about the war in front of the reflecting pool and he runs down to meet Jenny, he walks by the same guy twice.
  
  
• Continuity: When little Forrest and Jenny are on the bus, the bus seems to be traveling at different speeds, depending on the shot...
  
  
• Factual errors: When Forrest and Jenny watch the fireworks, the sound from the fireworks bursting comes exactly on the same time as they appear.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Lt. Dan falls off the wheelchair, he gets up with the help of his (invisible) legs.
  
  
• Continuity: When Forrest is originally running from the bullies he is in a plaid shirt, the shirt then changes, and he ends up in the same plaid shirt by the end of the shot.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Forrest is playing ping-pong before being discharged, the gymnasium where he's playing shows the 3-point line on the basketball court. The 3-point line was first used 29 November 1980 in a college basketball game at Reid Gym in Cullowhee, North Carolina.
  
  
• Errors in geography: Several times during the movie, road signs for US 17 are visible. US 17 does not run thru Alabama. It does run thru the SC coast where the movie was filmed,
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Forrest sees Lt. Dan on the dock and jumps from his shrimping boat to meet him, the boat is moving right in the point of view of Lt. Dan. However, when the boat crashes, it had been moving left, impossible in such a short amount of time without a person steering it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Lt. Dan meets Forrest after Forrest becomes a shrimp boat captain, Lt. Dan smokes a cigar. The ash on the end of the cigar changes between shots; it's longer when the camera is facing Forrest than when the camera is facing Lt. Dan.
  
  
• Continuity: When the boys are chasing Forrest in their car, from the front it is obvious that they are right on his heels. However, whenever the shot changes to a side view, he is at least ten feet ahead of their car. Then the shot changes and they are again almost running over him.
  
  
• Continuity: In the New Year's Eve sequence, Dick Clark is on the TV in the bar, wearing a brown jacket. When the scene switches to Jenny on that same New Year's Eve, Dick Clark is on her TV, wearing a blue jacket.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The Stroh's neon beer sign shown outside the Times Square bar in the early 70's, is a blue, block lettered logo. This logo did not appear until the mid-late 80's. They used a red-script logo up until that time.
  
  
• Continuity: When Forrest runs Tex out of the Vietnam forest, he is holding onto to a leg in one shot, his arm in the next shot, and then his leg again in the last shot.
  
  
• Factual errors: The original tropical jackets in Vietnam era had a much smaller collar length, more like a shirt collar measuring no more than 3.5 inch, while the jackets appeared in the movie were sewn with a much longer collar.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the scene where Forrest and Jenny are reunited in the reflecting pool in Washington, the Washington Monument is clearly visible in the background, with a reflection in the pool. As the camera pans back for the wide shot at the end of the scene, the reflection is still visible in the pool, but the monument has disappeared completely in the background.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: There's a scene where the Chinese flag appears backwards. Apparently the video frames were reversed in editing.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In a sequence set around 1970, someone is shown reading a copy of USA Today. The newspaper wasn't created until 1982.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The film suggests that Forrest Gump inspired the happy face logo in the late 1970s. Although there is dispute as to when and who originated the smiley face (sometime in the mid 1960s) it was being commonly used in the early 1970s by brothers Murray and Bernard Spain, who used the image in a campaign to sell novelty items such as pin back buttons. The smiley face had already passed its peak of popularity by the late 1970s when the film suggests it was first created.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the number 4 bus arrives for the first woman that Forrest talked to on the bench, the bus takes off right when she exits the frame, clearly not giving her enough time to board it. Since only a small portion of the end of the bus is shown, the bus would have had to wait a couple more seconds for the woman to walk to the front of the bus and then board it.
  
  
• Plot holes: By the time Forrest begins his marathon running spree, he has already been an All American Football Player, A Medal of Honor Recipient, a member of the U.S. Ping Pong Team in China, and a multi millionaire who appeared on the cover of Forbes Magazine, yet the media covering him seem oblivious to all this and they simply refer to him as "a gardener from Alabama". With all that preceded the run in Gump's life it makes no sense that he was something of a minor celebrity and not some unknown gardener.
  
  
• Continuity: Forrest is standing in Jenny's foyer upon entry to her apartment. While they are talking it's possible to see in the background there is an ironing board with the iron laying flat, as if it had been knocked over. While screen shot quickly focuses on the son watching television then quickly back to Forrest and Jenny,the iron has been stood up correctly. Forrest and Jenny had not moved.
  
  
• Continuity: At the Black Panther office in DC, after Jenny's boyfriend smacks her and Forrest attacks him, the two of them slide off of a table onto the floor fighting. When they cut away, then back to the fight, the now-collapsed table is under them.
  
  
• Errors in geography: Through most of the Vietnam scenes we see groves of palm trees that are not found in Asia. In the foreground shots we see the Sabal palmetto (a.k.a. the Cabbage Palm). Sabal is a genus of New World palms, exclusively. This distinctive palm thrives in its native range where the Vietnam parts of the film were actually shot - in South Carolina, which also bears this palm on their state flag. Background matte paintings or computer graphics may fill in related scenes accurately, but the Sabal palms we see betrays the movie's depicted location of Vietnam.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Jenny is playing guitar at the strip club, The camera pans out and shows her on stage nude. She is clearly wearing a skin tone colored thong and pantyhose.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Forrest and Bubba get off the helicopter upon arriving in Viet Nam, they stare at a big pile of beer cans that someone is stacking up nearby. The tops of the beer cans are clearly visible with pull tabs, a feature that was not available on any cans during the Viet Nam era.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The letter from Apple Computer, dated 1975, uses the 'Apple Garamond' font below the logo. Apple did not use this font before the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Until then, the logo featured the Motter Tektura font. The Garamond font itself was only designed in 1977.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Forrest sees Lt. Dan on the dock and jumps from his shrimping boat, he pushes off on his left foot. In the reverse shot, from the front, he's pushing off with his right foot.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During the scene when they are patrolling along the road in Vietnam, several of the soldiers are seen carrying poncho liners made out of woodland camouflage pattern material. This specific pattern did not appear on U.S. uniforms and equipment until the mid-1980s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene where Forrest and his mother are Christmas shopping, they see Elvis Presley's controversial appearance on the Milton Berle show. The episode aired in June of that year, six months before its presumed date in the movie.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): On seeing Gump on the shrimp boat, Lt. Dan says, "they gave you the Congressional Medal of Honor?" The medal is frequently, albeit incorrectly, called the Congressional Medal of Honor, stemming from its award by the Department of Defense "in the name of Congress." It is correctly the "Medal of Honor".
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Forrest is in the hospital with a butt injury, he is given back all the letters he wrote to Jenny. On the first envelope, the zip code of her address is 39902. On the second envelope, the zip code is 96602. The third and remaining zip codes are again 39902.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Forest states that "after only 5 years of playing football, I graduated." According to NCAA rules, it is impossible for him to have played 5 years of football.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The Army Recruiter's top two ribbons on his uniform - Army Commendation Medal and Purple Heart - are out of order.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Sgt. Forrest Gump receives his LOD (Letter of Discharge), he is only wearing five ribbons - Purple Heart, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, and the Republic of Vietnam Medal. However, he is not wearing the ribbon device for the Medal of Honor for which he was awarded by President Johnson.
  
  
• Errors in geography: While in the hospital, Forrest's letters to Jenny are returned. The letters are addressed to Greenbow Alabama 39902. The zip code 39902 is unassigned and even if it were, it would be in Atlanta Georgia.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Forrest visits his mom when she's sick and the doctor walks out of the room after talking to Forrest, you can see where his wig ends on the back of his head.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: When Forrest jumps of the shrimp boat into the water to visit his sick mother, he carries nothing more than the clothes he's wearing. But when he arrives at his mothers home he carries a suitcase.
  
  

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