Continuity mistake: In the beginning while Dorothy is still on the farm, she walks along the pig pen fence and then falls in. When Bert Lahr picks her up out of there her dress is perfectly clean. (00:03:45)
Continuity mistake: When Dorothy slaps Lion on the nose for chasing Toto and shouts, "Shame on you!" in the wide shot, we see Dorothy's right arm with no mark on her skin. It then cuts to the medium shots, and there's an inexplicable long, thin blue mark (it's not a loose thread) on Dorothy's arm near her elbow, while she's holding Toto. This blue mark vanishes in the wide shot when she puts Toto down, and Lion begins to sing. (00:50:25)
Continuity mistake: During the scene when Dorothy and Scarecrow are fighting with the trees, Scarecrow says "I'll show you how to get apples" and he gets hit by the apples. In the very next shot, a quick view of Dorothy reveals she is wearing black shoes, not her ruby slippers. (00:40:15)
Continuity mistake: During the sequence where Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, Dorothy's pigtails are first short (above her shoulders) and as the song progresses her hair gets longer (below her shoulders), then short, and then long again. (00:35:15)
Continuity mistake: When Professor Marvel guesses why Dorothy is running away, she's holding her suitcase with the lid facing Marvel. But in Toto's closeup, as he snatches the hotdog from Marvel's long grill fork, the suitcase is turned the opposite way with its lid facing Dorothy. Then it changes back, so the suitcase lid faces Marvel again. (00:12:10)
Continuity mistake: After Zeke rescues Dorothy from the crowded pig pen, Hickory wipes his face and neck with the rag in his right hand, but then it cuts to another angle, and the rag is suddenly in his left hand. (00:04:20)
Continuity mistake: While Dorothy, Tin Man, and Scarecrow are walking in the dark and creepy forest, just as Dorothy begins to sing "Lions and Tigers and Bears" in the medium shot, Tin Man is holding up the axe in his left hand. But it cuts to the long shot, and the axe is in Tin Man's right hand between shots. (00:48:40)
Continuity mistake: When trying to escape the Witch's castle, the big doors close, and the gang stands in a line and starts banging on the doors. Between shots, Dorothy and the Tin Man switch sides. (01:21:15)
Continuity mistake: When Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion are marching into the Wicked Witch's castle after taking the guards' uniforms, all three of them are shown holding the same types of spears as the guards, so when they go rescue Dorothy out of the locked room and Tin Man chops through the door with his axe, where did the axe come from? (01:22:50)
Suggested correction: I'm with Bishop73 on this one. The Tin Man has his axe with him when they put on the guards' uniforms, and when they get to the room that Dorothy is in, he uses his axe to break the doors, so it's plausible to believe that he tucked the axe in his uniform, then took it out to rescue Dorothy.
Suggested correction: I'm 63 years old and still watch The Wizard of Oz. If I remember correctly, the axe was taken off a nearby wall.
There is no scene of him taking the axe off the wall, nor is there any axe seen on any of the walls. Plus, it's the same axe he had the whole time. But the 3 also take off their coats/disguises while the camera is on Dorothy and it's possible he had the axe tucked away in the coat.
In the books, the Tin Man always has his axe and he uses it often. Perhaps it is the same in the movie.
Continuity mistake: As the chandelier falls on the guards at the witch's castle, all the candles are blown out by the time it lands. The next shot shows some of them relit. (01:24:50)
Continuity mistake: When the Witch melts, the broom is laying several inches from her dress. In the next shot, the broom is practically touching her dress. (01:26:20)
Continuity mistake: When the Wicked Witch scares the Scarecrow, Dorothy, and the Tin Man with fire, after the fire is thrown, not only is the Tin Man's funnel cap on backwards, everything is reversed. In order to keep the characters oriented from left to right correctly, they had to show the film from the wrong side, thus the buttons of the Scarecrow's jacket and everything else are on the wrong side. (00:46:40)
Continuity mistake: After the Tin Man's dance, Dorothy and the Scarecrow shuffle over to a tree trunk where the Tin Man then sits. During this, the oil can in Dorothy's basket clearly falls out, but in the very next shot it is back in the basket. (00:45:25)
Continuity mistake: Immediately after Dorothy throws the water onto the witch, there is a long shot of the group as they observe the Wicked Witch beginning to melt. In this shot you can see that the Scarecrow's arm is still on fire, yet nothing is done about it as they all focus on the Witch. In the next full shot of the Scarecrow the fire is completely out. (01:26:20)
Continuity mistake: The Wicked Witch leaves Dorothy and runs to grab the hourglass. The mortar and pestle on the left of the hourglass disappear between shots. (01:17:50)
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Dorothy and the Lion are asleep in the poppy field as the snow is falling, there is at least one if not two close-up shots of Dorothy's face showing no snow falling around her at all. (00:56:35)
Continuity mistake: Dorothy's hair is long and almost straight in some shots and short and curly when the camera pans back to her. This happens throughout the movie.
Continuity mistake: The blue shirted Lollipop Guilder comes from around the fallen house at the beginning of "Come Out Come Out," but he immediately appears emerging from a jet black manhole (with a black lip where the cover goes) in middle of the yellow brick in front of the house. (00:23:15)
Continuity mistake: The pole that the Scarecrow was on moves out in front of the corn at the end of the scene as Dorothy and the Scarecrow run off and sing, "We're off to see the Wizard". (00:38:50)
Continuity mistake: At the end when the Wizard and Dorothy are in the balloon basket, the tie down ropes on the right side keep going from tied to untied and back to tied again through different shots. (01:34:55)
