Plot hole: When Marion is being carried in the basket, being chased by Indy, he is hot on their heels the entire time. She's placed on the truck with the ammunition, only to explode when it topples over while trying to get away. Marion's dead. Later, he finds her in Belloq's tent very much alive. Indy concludes they must have switched baskets. When did her abductors have the opportunity to do that, and why would the Germans be in a hot hurry to get the truck out of there if the basket was empty?
Suggested correction: He concludes they switched baskets, but they didn't. He's not in hot pursuit either because he has to retreat and hide behind a wall from the machine gun once he gets to the truck. They put the basket with Marion inside the truck but simply got it out before it started driving. Indy could have never seen that and there is no basket in the truck that explodes. They wanted it out of there because it is full of explosives and possibly as a diversion for where they were really taking Marion.
Corrected entry: In the Well of Souls, Indy and Sallah place the Ark in the box. Indy closes the box with a wooden lid and looks up. In the next shot, a torch has appeared in Indy's hand, a rope has appeared, tied to the four sides of the box, and Sallah has appeared next to Indy's left shoulder. In addition, the box is already several metres above Indy and Sallah in the second shot. (01:09:43)
Correction: There is an obvious time jump between the shots. They simply decided not to spend ten minutes showing all the details of sealing the box and tying the rope around it.
I wouldn't say this was a deliberate time jump, as they show Indy carefully and slowly placing the Ark in the box, then sealing it. In addition, when he looks up, he immediately says, "All right... take it up! Easy!" so it's clear this is a continuity mistake.
He says, "All right. Take it up" after the cut. Yes, he does look up before the cut, but since everything else is different, we are supposed to interpret it as a jump in time.
In fact, almost nothing changes between these two scenes, except for these small but clear details.
There's a deliberate jump in time between these two shots, and this transition is done creatively. First, we're below with Indiana as he places the lid on the crate and looks up toward the top entrance; it then cuts to the entrance POV, and now we're looking down as the tied-up crate is being lifted. The jump in time between these two shots is transitioned using a type of match cut. Absolutely no mistakes regarding these two consecutive shots.
Continuity mistake: Just before they swing over the chasm to retrieve the statue, the man accompanying Indiana Jones (Satipo) is holding a flame torch. When they swing over the chasm, Satipo is no longer holding the torch.
Suggested correction: That's because he simply discarded the torch. He probably dropped it when he saw the corpse come out of the wall or did it later as they were walking further. It's also not "just before they swing"; there is a long time passing between him holding the torch and seeing him without it.
Corrected entry: When the Nazi soldier is killed by the airplane blades, some of his blood splatters on the pilot cabin glass where Marion is, but in the next shot, the blood has totally disappeared from it. (01:20:24)
Correction: This is incorrect. First, the blood splatters on the gunner's turret cabin glass, not the pilot cabin one. Second, Marion crawls from the gunner's turret cabin to the pilot cabin, where there is no blood. Also, this last point is not shown exactly in the next shot, as this mistake suggests.
Corrected entry: As they come out of the "mapping room" in the tomb, there is an extra crouched down by the door, apparently hiding. It seems as if it was a quick fix for someone who was where they weren't supposed to be.
Correction: It's a man, who was punched by Indy in a deleted scene. He is lying still and not crouching at all.
Correction: There is no reason why a worker should not be there, and when he notices someone breaking out of what he thinks is a sealed-off tomb or temple, he hides or faints from fear. So it is not a mistake but a funny extra detail.
Continuity mistake: The position of the Top Secret sign and the whole text is put on the ark's box across vertically laid planks, with a wood crossbar on the right, which only the side panels have. A shot later the sign appears slanted across horizontally laid planks. Though it could be argued that there could be a second sign on the opposite side with horizontal planks, when the warehouse guy turns left to store the crate, we get a glimpse of the left side and it's not painted.
Suggested correction: The other text and the different plank design could be on the base of the box or on the front wall (the wall opposite the man pushing the box), two walls we never see when the box is being pushed. In fact, at one point the camera passes next to a box that has two texts, one on a short wall and one on a long wall.
Factual error: At the beginning of the movie, Indy escapes in biplane with registration OB-CPO (a Star Wars nod, as noted in trivia). However the OB registration is used by Peru, and it should be followed by four digits, not by three letters. (00:12:10)
Suggested correction: Simply not true, as with most countries with two-letter civil aircraft registrations, Peru used the XX-YYY format at this time: http://www.airhistory.org.uk/gy/reg_OA-.html.
