What Lies Beneath

Corrected entry: Claire's behavior makes no sense and is entirely implausible and unrealistic. For example: Whenever Claire talks about the ghost, she never mentions any of her compelling observations. When she tells Norman about the seance, she incorrectly says that nothing happened. Claire wakes Norman up to look at the Feur driveway after the apparent body-bag is already in the closed trunk. What did she want him to observe? A car? An empty driveway?

Correction: People already wonder if Claire is unstable right now. Her daughter left for college. She sometimes takes anxiety medication (she told the therapist). Her husband is a practical, realistic scientist. Those could all be reasons why she thinks that her observations will be dismissed. Also, reasons to not say much about a seance. Regarding the car, Norman didn't move fast enough see everything before Mr. Feur left. Again, he might simply think Claire is imaginative and nosy at this time.

Corrected entry: When Claire is in the tub after Norman gives her a drug to immobilise her, she stops the hot water valve with her toe, although Norman opened the cold water valve.

Correction: He explained that the water was too cold (he laid in cold water after faking his electrocution) and thus turned on the hot water. But when she turned the water off with the shower hose, the tap turned anti clockwise, so actually opened the tap more.

Corrected entry: After the seance, Michelle Pfeiffer goes to drain the bathtub after it has mysteriously filled itself. Look closely, you can see the ghost moving in the mirror and again in the far right hand side of the bathtub even though Michelle does not see or acknowledge it.

Correction: This is meant to be noticed by the viewer and therefore is not trivia.

Phixius

Corrected entry: When Michelle Pfeiffer looks up the missing women on the database, the picture comes up on the right hand side of the screen with the description on the left side. When she and Harrison Ford look at the print, the picture has moved to the left side.

Correction: The page may have had a "format for printing" option. You can often get this option when printing pages containing pictures.

Hamster

Corrected entry: Towards the end of the movie, when Norman and Claire were in the car and then in the water his face was all covered in blood and cuts. The blood was still dripping as they were being lowered into the water, when it would have dried some. Plus, when you see him in the water, he has no cuts on his face.

Correction: The cut could have opened up and begun bleeding again in all the chaos, and the water could have washed the blood away as it rose over their heads. Plus, the lighting in that final scene is very dim. The cuts could still be there, just not immediately visible.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Norman puts Claire in the tub to try and drown her, he fills up the bathtub to where it is almost overflowing. Well, on the front of the bathtub, there is a device that drains the bathtub at a certain point so the tub couldn't have possibly filled up to the point to where it would be drowning her in the position she was in. The device they used was obviously just a prop.

Correction: It is quite common that the waterflow from the taps is greater in volume than the overflow can deal with. Therefore all it can do is slow down the raising of the water, not stop it or reverse it.

David Mercier

Corrected entry: When Norman pulls up at the house, if you look at the exhaust you can see the water vapour, only visible when a car is cold or warming up. Surely he doesn't work that close to home.

Correction: Thats not true, they live near a large body of water, it could simply be the cold and the hot mixing creating small vapors. It could also be a poor exhaust system.

Corrected entry: When going to the full bath for the first time Claire rolls up her sleeve to pull the plug out. When she gets there she rolls it up again.

Correction: At first, her robe is covering her hand. As she approaches the tub, she rolls her right sleeve to above her wrist. In the next shot from behind, the sleeve is still above her wrist. She just rolls it up even further, above her elbow, before reaching down into the water. So, this is not a mistake.

Corrected entry: When Michelle visits Madison's mother, the lady picks up a cat. As she holds the cat, she talks to Michelle. The camera pans back and forth from her to Michelle. With each camera move, the cat is in a different position. It starts out stretched out like a baby, then sometimes it is curled up on her lap.

Correction: The cat is basically in the same position in each shot. It's just that the cat moves while Madison's mother is petting it ... as do all living things when you pet them. (I know because I used to have a dog.) So, this is not a mistake.

Corrected entry: When Claire and Jody are trying to contact Mary Fewer with the Ouija board, Jody states that the magic indicator is not moving. However, between shots it mysteriously does move from one letter to another.

Correction: Jody does not say that the magic indicator is not moving. She merely states, "Not much happening." Between Jody's laughing and their fidgeting, it's possible that the indicator could have moved slightly. Besides, the "T" and "U" are right next to each other anyway. So, this is not a mistake.

Corrected entry: When Claire is in the bathroom having the séance, "supernatural" light appears and the door starts to open. We come to learn that it was only the dog, but the dog comes in a different door than the light.

Correction: Not everything in the scene was caused by the dog. For instance, how do you explain the mysterious flickering of the candle? Some supernatural things occurred in this scene, but the dog interrupts the seance by coming into the bathroom. This does not imply that the dog caused everything. So, this is not a mistake.

Corrected entry: At the end of the film when the truck goes into the water, the headlights fizzle and go out. In subsequent scenes, the headlights are on again.

Correction: The headlights never fizzle and go out. When the truck goes into the water, the water covers the headlights so they're not seen. In subsequent scenes, it is obvious that the headlights are still on.

Corrected entry: When the photo frame falls by itself for the first time, Claire picks up the glass from the floor and the leftovers in the frame, yet in the lower right corner she leaves a rather large sized piece of glass. In the next scene she puts it back on the desk, and the piece is gone.

Correction: She doesn't leave it there, she removed that piece last, right before she set it down.

Corrected entry: At the end of the movie Harrison Ford gives Michelle Pfeiffer a drug that supposedly paralyzes all of your voluntary muscles, that way she will not be able to move, but she will be fully conscious as she slowly drowns in the bathtub. The drug he gives her, Halothane, does not do this, however; it is merely an anaesthetic. Furthermore, any drug that does paralyze your voluntary muscles, inevitably also paralyzes your respiratory system, and you suffocate, you don't just remain immobile until it wears off, like the movie leads you to believe.

Correction: Although it is true a drug that paralyzes your voluntary muscles also paralyzes your respiratory system , this is however given a big enough doseage. You can always paralyze someones voluntary muscles without affecting respiratory system, these type of drugs are in use all the time at vet clinics.

entrence

Correction: Halothane is a hepatotoxic anesthetic gas and most certainly would not paralyze her.

Corrected entry: When Claire and her friend are having the seance in the bathroom, the camera goes over the Ouija board the first time and the moving piece is over the "T". The camera then focuses on the two of them and you can see that their hands haven't moved. When it goes back over the board again, the moving piece is over the "U". Keep in mind, this is before they remove their hands and it starts to move.

Correction: You see the board with the piece over the "T". You then see a few cuts between Jody and Claire before seeing the board from overhead. Then, the piece is over the "U". Between Jody's laughing and they're fidgeting, it's possible that the piece could have moved slightly. Besides, the "T" and "U" are right next to each other anyway. So, this is not a mistake.

Corrected entry: The photo in the picture frame that Claire breaks is a newspaper clipping of Norman receiving an award. She turns the clipping around and sees an article about the missing Madison. How could the article be in the same paper as the award ceremony if that was the night Claire discovered Norman was having an affair with Madison?

Correction: Sometimes award ceremonies, etc. are covered some time LATER after the event has taken place at which time, Madison could have been missing already.

Lynette Carrington

Corrected entry: The ghost is trying to contact Claire. She uses Claire's Mac. Claire is walking upstairs and in the mirror we see the computer booting up without assistance. Besides the fact that you can set a start-up and shutdown time on Macs (i.e. that's not supernatural by definition), when it does start to boot up, we don't see a happy Mac in the centre of the screen, and the MacOS splash screen and then the extensions load at triple or quadruple speed. Claire probably has a Performa 6300, which has a top speed of 100mHz. I have a 400mHz G4 and it doesn't boot up HALF that fast!

Correction: The idea was that the supernatural was controlling the computer. They wanted to portray that the ghost could control any thing in any way.

Corrected entry: At the end of the movie when Claire is in the truck trying to escape Norman is slowly chasing after her. To show that he made it onto the boat attached to the truck, they show his white tennis shoe fall off and roll onto the street as Clare is speeding away. Later they show that he was wearing boots because his foot gets caught when he was stuck under water. It's not the phone - that was left in the house.

Correction: It is not a shoe. It was the white phone he had in his pocket. She attempted to pull it from his pocket but he twitched, so she grabbed the cell phone, leaving the white one in his pocket.

Corrected entry: Norman places his call to 911 to report information about the missing girl, but actually dials directory assistance at 411, and tells them about the missing person. Any self-respecting 411 operator, hearing what he heard, would have sent the police to Norman's house anyway.

Correction: Norman was talking to a machine, not an operator.

Correction: Nope. You hear a person say what city when Claire hits redial.

Amy Emerick Tice

What Lies Beneath mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Claire first sees the ghost, Norman rushes in and Claire grabs and hugs him. Her hand was just in the tub yet as she's hugging Norman, her hand is dry. She would have left some kind of a wet mark on Norman's shirt.

Lynette Carrington

More mistakes in What Lies Beneath

Claire Spencer: Norman's father had this old stuffy... stately place on a lake.
Norman: Which we're renovating.
Claire Spencer: Practically gutted.
Norman: No, we didn't.
Claire Spencer: Yes, we did.
Norman: "Gutted"?

More quotes from What Lies Beneath
More trivia for What Lies Beneath

Question: When Norman says the guy "that wrote that book he loves" (Shumway?) congratulated him on Spencer's Theorem, then Claire says "He didn't know your father was dead?" and Norman says "He knew". What does one thing have to do with the other? I've seen this movie at least 20 times and I can't figure out this conversation.

Ingabritzen

Chosen answer: Spencer's theorem was Norman's father's theorem. Norman wants to be greater than his father was, so to be accidentally complemented on something that his father did would be bad enough. To say that the guy knows that his father is dead is to imply that the guy probably insulted him intentionally.

Myridon

More questions & answers from What Lies Beneath

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