Continuity mistake: The telephone poles close to the gap on the railroad disappear in the wide angles.
Continuity mistake: Inside the cab arriving at the Daily Planet, the fruit stall has no van behind. Immediately afterwards, a van appears.
Revealing mistake: When Lois is at the heliport, watch the wind flag on the left: when the helicopter arrives, the roaring wind from the vanes makes the flag move up and get stiff. In the close-ups, you keep on hearing the sound but the vanes are off screen. Watch and you'll see the wind flag is down, thus revealing that the engine is off and that the sound we are hearing is fake.
Other mistake: When Superman and Lois are flying through the clouds, there are a number of shots in which we see Superman from Lois' point of view. If you look closely, you can see that Christopher Reeve is not being suspended in these shots, but is, in fact, kneeling to look as though he is flying. You can tell by the profile of the red trunks.
Continuity mistake: Liz places her kitty on her right shoulder and on the next shot the cat's gone.
Continuity mistake: In the extended version, when Superman talks with his father in the Fortress of Solitude about being a hero, one shot shows the crystals reaching up to Superman's waist. In the next shot they are at ankle level.
Continuity mistake: At the beginning when Jor-El and the council pass judgement on the three criminals and the huge white dome starts to open, it stops about a third of the way. Long shot of the three criminals, it's completely open. Next shot it's back to a third of the way open.
Continuity mistake: In the football field, all the player pass in front of Clark and leave him alone. In the next angle a player is passing by again.
Continuity mistake: At the police station, behind the fat cop there's a young cop picking up papers who walks to the left and stays there for a while. When the angle changes he reappears in the previous spot, repeating all the movements.
Continuity mistake: When Luthor switches the snow machine off, a wide angle shows the chamber totally covered in snow and ice, but the close-up of the vents and the walls surrounding are spotless.
Revealing mistake: When Superman holds the plane's engine, the "S" on his shirt is looking the wrong way, revealing the angle was flipped.
Other mistake: When the camera pulls back from Superman in his Fortress of Solitude, right after the image of his father wanting to hug him disappears, you can see on the right of the screen that one of Superman's 'crystal' walls is fluttering or shaking like it's made of plastic.
Continuity mistake: When Ms. Teschmaker rests her arm on the file cabinet, a white roll of paper appears and disappears.
Continuity mistake: Right before Superman catches the burglar, he is standing in a steel intersection of the building. A second afterwards, he is in the middle of a window pane.
Continuity mistake: Before Superman lands on the sidewalk looking for Luthor, the aerial view shows no cars around. When he lands, the place is jammed.
Continuity mistake: When the Hollywood sign is falling on the girls, a close view shows a girl very close to a letter while her friends run away. A split second later, from a wide angle, the girl has disappeared.
Revealing mistake: Superman startles a cat burglar who falls from the side of a building. When Superman catches him he is facing upwards yet his cape does not fall back, it stays parallel to his body.
Continuity mistake: When the three villains get trapped by the glass, Ursa's face and haircut are totally different.
Revealing mistake: In the shot of Krypton exploding, you can see creases in the black backdrop in the lower, left hand quadrant of the screen (especially visible on Blu-Ray).
Revealing mistake: In the final shot of the destruction of Krypton several of the people falling into the abyss disappear a split second before the shot of Krypton exploding.
Answer: When Krypton exploded, the resulting debris was chemically altered through nuclear fusion, converting it into kryptonite. Bits traveled through space, some eventually ending up on Earth, where it is now lethal to anyone who was from that planet.
raywest ★
Pieces of Krypton that exploded in the Red Sun were made radioactive, and the Red Sun is one of the weaknesses of the Kryptonians.
I thought the Red Sun was poisonous to Kryptonians and caused the remnants of the planet Krypton to become radioactive and also absorb some of the solar energy from the Red Sun. I was under that impression, maybe I'm mistaken.