Smokey and the Bandit

Revealing mistake: Buford catches the Captain in the trailer, and instructs Junior to take the cuffs off - if you look closely, the cuffs were already undone.

Continuity mistake: When Cletus bashes through the cop cars at the entrance to the fairgrounds, with Bandit right after him, there's only the two cars there. Then suddenly, there's a wrecked Trooper car that a second one bashes into.

Movie Nut

Plot hole: When Buford is talking to Bandit in the diner (unaware he's the Bandit) he says the Bandit nearly killed 20 law officers. How would Buford be aware of any of that, when the only other police Bandit and Buford were involved with before that was Sheriff Bradford and his deputy?

jbrbbt

Continuity mistake: When being chased at the beginning it is raining. When he ducks in behind the building there's no sign it's been raining and T-top convertibles are out driving.

Plot hole: Bandit and Snowman must have special powers to accomplish their round trip 1800 mile journey in the time they do. For starters when they begin the trip in Georgia it's sometime in the afternoon, and we later see them travelling at night before arriving at the Coors facility in Texarkana the next morning. This means the majority of their 28 hour window was spent getting TO Texarkana. So how is it they were able to both make the 900 mile trip back to Georgia while making all the stops they had to make, avoid all the smokies chasing Bandit off his path and give Bandit and Carrie time to be romantic all with only a few hours to spare after leaving Texarkana? At the very least it should have been late event or night time when they got back to their destination in Georgia.

Continuity mistake: When Buford hits the back of Sheriff Branford's car on the bridge the hood of his own car is bent upwards in the middle but the next time we see Buford's car the hood is back to normal.

Plot hole: If the authorities know the Burdettes are putting truckers up to bootlegging beer across state lines then why don't they just arrest them? Aren't they basically contributing to illegal activities by purchasing all the beer that's being brought to them?

jbrbbt

Other mistake: The stop sign at the side road that the van pulls out from is actually facing in the direction that the Bandit is coming from and not the direction the van was coming from.

Continuity mistake: Just after Justice slams his patrol car into the beam in the street you see his head pop up with sunglasses on, an instant later they are off.

Continuity mistake: When Sheriff Justice is talking to the 3 boys there is a scenic view of the road and it appears dry. However when he leaves in the car minutes later the same road has several puddles of water.

Continuity mistake: At the beginning when big and little Enos Burdette show up at the truck races to see Bandit, a KW W925 is racing a GMC Astro 95. They cut away and then back, but this time the KW (still in the same lane) is racing a white cabover. The GMC he was racing in the earlier shot is now behind them getting ready to race a Chevy Titan cabover.

Continuity mistake: As Frog jumps through the shrubbery and onto the field, the rear view mirror is missing. A second later it's back in place.

Movie Nut

Continuity mistake: Sheriff Buford T Justice was supposed to be from Texas, but right as they start trying to find Frog (and before they caught up with Bandit), he passes an interstate sign with Georgia on it. If they were really in Georgia, that would have been one quick trip from Texarkana, and less than 60 miles to Atlanta.

Continuity mistake: At the end of the movie when Bandit, Frog, and Cledus are sitting in Big Enos' red Cadillac talking on the radio to Buford T Justice, a green Cadillac, which has been seen several times during the movie, is seen parked in the upper right portion of the screen. When Bandit pulls out on his way to Boston for clam chowder, Buford takes off chasing him and the green Cadillac is no longer there.

Hawk

Continuity mistake: When the motorcycle patrolman is chasing the trams am with a patrolman in the car behind him, a second highway patrolman crosses the median to join the chase. When the car crosses the median, the left front tire blows out after the car slides onto the highway. In the following scene the car is in the chase with a perfectly good left front tire.

Revealing mistake: When Smokey jumps the ramp into the football field, there are no tyre tracks. When Sheriff Justice drives up to the ramp, there are tracks that stop short of the ramp. Obviously from previous takes.

Ssiscool

Alabama State Trooper: Did you see that? They went right through our roadblock!
Buford T. Justice: You som'bitches couldn't close an umbrella!

More quotes from Smokey and the Bandit

Trivia: Jackie Gleason's character is Buford T. Justice. This was the name of a real Florida Highway Patrolman known to Burt Reynolds' father who was once Chief of Police of Jupiter, Florida.

More trivia for Smokey and the Bandit

Question: Does anyone know if the Trans AM and the truck used in the film are still around?

Answer: The trailer appeared in a recent episode of "The Walking Dead"

The trailer on the walking dead episode is a replica it's not the original one used in the movie as the one in TWD is a standard low slung with air baffles the original one doesn't have those and is also refrigerated.

Answer: The original "Bandit" Trans am no longer exists, but one from the second movie is kept at The Performance Car Museum, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The original "Bandit" Trans Am still exists. Burt Reynolds owned it right up to the time of his passing. It was then auctioned at the Barrett-Jackson auction house in Florida and sold for more then half a million dollars. That Trans AM is now in the hands of a private collector and no doubt very well cared for.

More questions & answers from Smokey and the Bandit

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.