Continuity mistake: In the flashback to the death of the headless horseman, when the horseman's steed gets shot and falls to the ground, the blood and the wound are on the right side of the horse...later in the scene when the horse is seen again, the wound is on the left side of the horse. (00:16:45)
Continuity mistake: We are told that the horseman's sword cauterises the wounds it makes. Earlier on in the film, however, the cuts cause squirts of blood to fly into the air, such as when the scarecrow is sprayed with blood. (00:03:40)
Continuity mistake: When Ichabod and young Mazbeth are in the shop looking for information and they find the boy's father's will, Ichabod's hair changes from a neat bob to really messy and scruffy three or four times each time the shot moves away from him then back again. (01:05:25)
Continuity mistake: When the little boy is playing with one those revolving lamps (that are supposed to cast shapes and such on the walls of a dark room), you can see that the light source for the lamp is a candle flame. Candles, as you know, aren't extremely bright, and they flicker. Yet, the images and shapes being cast on the wall behind the boy are extremely bright and never flicker once. They're also not much like the shapes cut in the lamp. (00:53:00)
Continuity mistake: When that boy lights the spinning lamp that casts shapes on everything, we can clearly see the shapes on the wall behind him, but they never shine on him or his mother. (00:53:00)
Continuity mistake: In about the middle of the film where Ichabod Crane is writing doing process of elimination. He writes "Baltus" in cursive. Watch the tail of the "s" on "Baltus." One or two shots after that the "s" on "Baltus" is clearly different than the one we watched him write. The "l" in Baltus changes too. (01:04:30)
Continuity mistake: Near the end of the movie, when Ichabod, Katrina and the young Masbath are in the windmill, they closed the door with flour bags. They put 4 in place, but in the shot later, there are only 3. (01:28:55)
Continuity mistake: When Catrina's father is being violently pulled out of the church window, the horseman drags him in to a fence where his head is stuck in the fence. If you look at the man whose head is caught at first, his head is not all the way sticking out of the fence. The next shot, it is. (01:18:10)
Continuity mistake: At the church scene, the Horseman hauls a piece of fence through the church window and through Christina Ricci's father. After much screaming and amazement, the old man is ripped back through the window. However when he is torn from the church back out the window, the window breaks before he hits it. And wouldn't some of the window have broken when the spear was thrown through in the first place? We don't hear breaking glass or see any broken window panes. (01:18:00)
Continuity mistake: When Ichabod Crane and young Masbath are riding to the Tree of the Dead for the first time, watch the boy's horse carefully. The camera pans behind a tree and when it comes out from behind it, for a second you can only see Gunpowder's haunches (Gunpowder being the grey that Ichabod rides) and not the chesnut's. Very hard to spot if you are not watching carefully.
Continuity mistake: Crane sprinkles a powder on the ground under the severed neck of Masbeth. Smoke comes up and he says something about a chemical reaction. Masbeth was running at full speed when killed, his body must have traveled at least his body length forward and maybe a few feet more, so there would be no blood under his neck as the Horseman decapitated him while he was standing and his blade cauterized all the neck tissue, veins and arteries.
Continuity mistake: When Ichabod arrives at Jonathan Masbath's murder scene, he selects a small bottle full of green powder to begin his investigation. The amount in the bottle changes from half-full to full in between shots.
Continuity mistake: When young Ichabod jumps back from the sight of his mother in the iron maiden, he punctures his hands on a spiked chair. The hand area of the chair shows approximately six rows of four spikes and would be very hard for his small hand to have gotten more than seven or eight punctures at the most, rather than the twenty or so he sees on his hand after he wakes up. (01:00:20)
Continuity mistake: When Ichabod first sees the cut on the Widow Winship's stomach, it looks to be quite shallow, but when he is performing his autopsy, the cut is much deeper. (00:27:55)
Continuity mistake: When Ichabod is chopping the tree of the dead, you can see that a few of the blood spurts are coming from straight across and not from below, where he is chopping. (00:49:25)
Continuity mistake: During the sequence where Ichabod and The Horseman are fighting on top of the carriage, it's quite obvious that the two horses Masbeth and Katrina are riding keep changing colour. Sometimes they are both dark brown but sometimes Katrina's is dark brown and Masbeth's is white.
Suggested correction: Some horse breeds, like an appaloosa, waere used in the film - like the horse 'Gunpowder'. They have darker colored front halves and legs while their back end is white. Most likely Gunpowder is one of the horses used in this scene. There is one shot, taken from the side of the horse during this chase segment, where you can see this marking, his front is dark and his back end is white. Horses aren't changing, just the camera angles on the horse.
Continuity mistake: When Peter Van Garret's son gets his head chopped off Peter Van Garret looks out of the window. In the close-up his mouth opens in a gasp. Then it goes to a long shot showing the son with no head and Peter Van Garret's mouth is suddenly closed and then he gasps again in the exact same way.
Continuity mistake: At the end of the movie, after Ichabod gives the Horseman back his head, he and Katrina are shown standing next to each other, and her hair is completely down around her face. It then goes to a shot of them from behind, watching the Horseman, and her hair is pulled back. Next shot of them from the front, it's all down again.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Crane and the Headless Horseman are fighting atop the moving carriage, Crane shoots at the horseman, leaving a mark on the roof of the carriage. In the next shots, the mark is gone.
Continuity mistake: When Ichabod is with the young Masbath discussing conspiracy, he writes down key words such as 'conspiracy', 'the secret', '5 to 4' and 'points to'. The handwriting, its size, and position on the paper differ significantly in following shots. (01:04:00)
