Visible crew/equipment: When Marion is dead, you can see the camera panning back reflected in her eyes.
Deliberate mistake: When the CA. trooper is at the front of her car, the Arizona license plate is shown. In 1989, Arizona began issuing a single license plate and that plate is always on the back of the vehicle. This is deliberate, as the remake follows the original movie shot by shot, and there the trooper checks the front license plate.
Continuity mistake: Marion gets into the bathtub/shower, and unwraps a bar of soap, throwing the wrapper down into the tub. Later when Norman is cleaning the bathtub, the wrapper has vanished.
Continuity mistake: When Marion searches for a place to hide the money, the lamp on the nightstand is over to the left side. However, when Marion places the newspaper on the nightstand, the lamp has moved to the center.
Revealing mistake: As a homage to the original; when Norman carries Marion's dead body, wrapped in the shower curtain to the car, you can see her bra strap through the curtain.
Revealing mistake: When Norman Bates is wrapping up Marion's body in the shower curtain, you can see her feet sticking out. Just before he goes to lift her body, she puts her feet together.
Revealing mistake: In the stabbing scenes of both Marion Crane and Arbogast, as the knife is withdrawn repeatedly, the knife always stays clean and does not receive any blood on it.
Deliberate mistake: The car that Marion buys has a current California license plate with the number NFB 418, which matches the number from the original movie - but at the time, California plates would have had another digit before the letters; probably a 3, i.e. 3NFB418.
Continuity mistake: When Norman is spying on Marion through the holes in the wall, the long shot shows Norman's face about a foot away from the smaller hole. In the closeup, his eyeball is right up against the smaller hole on the outer sheetrock wall. When we return to the long shot, he's back to a foot away.
Continuity mistake: When Norman comes out of the room to move Marion's car, you can hear the room door close but you can see that the door is not closed all the way (you can see light at the top.) He moves the car and now the door is closed tight.
Character mistake: When Marion is calculating how much she spent her math is wrong. The movie shows 400000 - 4036 = 395963. It should be 395964.
Continuity mistake: When Norman shows Marion her room, the bed that is reflected in the mirror (that Norman walks past) doesn't have a nightstand next to it. However, when Norman and Marion stand in front of the mirror and talk, there is now a nightstand next to the bed.
Visible crew/equipment: At the beginning of the movie, you can see the helicopter with the camera reflected in the building.
Other mistake: Norman walks out of his mother's house with an umbrella in his hand in the pouring rain and yet is bone dry when he reaches the motel. The woman as well, despite going back and forth from her car in the pouring rain, remains dry.
Continuity mistake: When Sam knocks down Norman wearing a wig, he crouches in pain yet in the following shot he is standing tall.
Other mistake: When Marion Crane trades cars she drives off the used car lot with California license plates on her newly purchased vehicle. The dealer should have transferred her old Arizona license plates to the new car.
Factual error: At the end of the shower murder, the camera pans back from Marion's eye, one of the most iconic scenes in cinema. If we are to presume she is now dead however, the nature of muscles surrounding her pupil would cause them to relax and her pupil would dilate, not go to a pinpoint as depicted.
Plot hole: Marion rips the paper into pieces and flushes them down the toilet. We see all the paper go into the toilet. Later when Lila lifts the toilet seat, there's one piece conveniently placed under the seat that couldn't have gotten there.
Other mistake: In the scene where Bates leaves her motel room to back her car up to the door, he doesn't use keys to start the car.
Revealing mistake: When Norman is dragging Marion from the bathroom, she is moving her head although she's supposed to be dead.
Answer: His life flashing before his eyes? Snapshots of Norman's fractured psyche? The director's vision?
Alan Keddie
Those are just more questions.
Charles Austin Miller