Continuity mistake: The two guards approach Hannibal's cage and put down the tray with the lamb dinner. Lt. Boyle murmurs "Wonder what he wants for breakfast." He is passing the club to Sgt. Pembry holding it with his right hand on the tip. In the next shot, when he finishes quipping "Some damn thing from the zoo?" his hand is on the opposite end of the baton, past the handle. (01:15:10)
Continuity mistake: Lecter asks for a lamb chop dinner, rare, and when they arrive, they are rare. When we see them later, they look well done. (01:15:50)
Suggested correction: They don't look different in any of the shots. It's the same lambchops, same temperature. They are cooked as is, so they have a dark outside but inside they are probably rare. They do look darker in the last scene but that's probably because they have gone cold and dried out.
Suggested correction: How would a mistake like that come to be? Someone cooked them in between shots? Too much time elapsed and the substance oxidized? The potato and everything else on the plate look the same, and so do the chops, shape-wise. They might be of a slightly darker color in the very last shot with Boyle on the floor, but the plate has also been sprayed with blood, so that could account for this - mostly perceived - change.
A mistake like this would come to be if they're using real food and not props and had to do a cut, change camera position, do a reshoot, etc and had to set the scene again and redo the cooking of the food, or remake the props for some reason, but now the food looks different. What we see as a continuous scene in a movie or TV show is not always done in one take, which is why the site is filled with countless continuity mistakes.
Continuity mistake: When Lecter is in the Memphis jail cell, trying to escape, there is a shot of him eating the face of Sgt. Pembry, and a nano-second later, you see Lecter trying to completely shove the jail door on him. No way these two events could have transpired so quickly. (01:15:50)
Continuity mistake: On ground floor in Memphis, the female police officer says "No, nobody went up." Sgt. Tate at this point starts to croak something, and behind him as shots as heard one of the men behind him is walking forward. The feet of that person are in the circular section of the floor decoration, but in the next shot both policemen coming from that direction are a couple steps behind that spot. (01:18:50)
Continuity mistake: When they find out Lecter is on the elevator, they look down the shaft at him and there is quite a lot of blood on his back, so much that it even reaches down to his belt. However when they open the elevator shaft and the body falls down, there is only a small amount of blood on his back. (01:23:40 - 01:24:50)
Continuity mistake: Before Lecter takes the towel off his face in the ambulance, a bunch of tubes suddenly appear all over his chest and waist, between shots. (01:24:55)
Continuity mistake: In the ambulance, after Lecter escapes, the towel on his face swaps from slightly bloody, to completely covered in blood between shots. (01:25:00)
Continuity mistake: When Lecter is in the ambulance, wearing another man's face, as the ambulance officer has his back to Lecter, Lecter takes the large dressing off his face and pulls the oxygen mask down, then sits up, but when he does, the oxygen mask would be in the way; it is around his neck, he would have had to pull it over his head to get rid of it, but he didn't do this - the oxygen mask vanishes. (01:25:05)
Continuity mistake: Before Clarice chases Buffalo Bill down the basement steps, she quickly slips off her green overcoat, letting it fall to the floor. (I wasn't able to see if the green/red checked blazer and/or the grey scarf she almost always wore were slipped off at the same time - the view was obstructed by a table.) After Bill is killed, Clarice exits the house and comes down the front steps wearing the green/red checked suit jacket (blazer), but does not have the green overcoat or scarf with her. (01:43:13 - 01:50:17)
Continuity mistake: When Clarice is searching the basement, the first door she approaches is hinged on the left and opens towards her. She opens it, and it turns into a door that has the hinges on the right and opens away from her. (01:43:50)
Suggested correction: There are two doors in that part of the basement. The one she enters is hinged on the left and opens inward. But the other door - the one she exited through to look for Jame Gumb - is hinged on the right and swings outward.
Continuity mistake: At the beginning when Clarice is jogging through the woods, the sweat on her sweatshirt varies from shot to shot.
Continuity mistake: At the graduation ceremony, a woman cuts a slice of cake and passes it to someone and then, without slicing the cake again, she somehow has another slice to pass to someone else.
Suggested correction: She actually hands the person an empty clear glass dish (the kind used to serve the first piece of cake); the person must have wanted the dish to get something else, not cake.
Continuity mistake: At Chicago, when Crawford and his team are about to break in to the empty house, the red ribbon on the flower box covers both the lid and the box when the agent takes it out of his car. When he rings the bell, the ribbon only covers the lid.
Continuity mistake: When Lecter is about to kill the two cops guarding him, he kicks the cell door preventing one of the cops from entering the cell. Just a moment later he is in front of the guard and there is no metal door in between them.
Continuity mistake: When Hannibal is moved to another city, and shots are heard, 5 police officers go up to investigate, but when they burst into the room, now there are 6.
