Factual error: Toshiro Mifune's character, Kikuchiyo, travels to the bandits' camp and steals one of their two remaining fuselock muskets. Shortly afterward, the bandits fire twice at the samurai within five seconds with their last firearm. A fuselock takes as much as two minutes to reload, prime, and fire.
Visible crew/equipment: When the samurai are giving battle advice to the peasants, who sit around them forming a circle, the camera does a rather wide circle shot of them. You can see the camera track for the shot in most of scene behind the sitting peasants.
Continuity mistake: Shichiroji throws a spear out the door of Rikichi's hut in anger, it lands obviously in parallel with the door. Later, after Kikuchiyo's outburst he runs outside and picks the spear up, however it's now laying sideways compared to the door.
Revealing mistake: When Kikuchiyo tricks and kills the gunner, he chases him a short way, then stabs him with a sword. Even though there's a tree blocking the action, you can still see he never actually stabs him, he just lightly stabs the ground near him.
Revealing mistake: At the last battle Katsushiro stabs a bandit who's climbing the fence to escape. It's completely obvious that the sword never penetrates the bandit. In fact, Katsushiro just seems to just tap him with the tip and his clothes aren't even torn from it, yet he still dies. Maybe a heart attack?
Visible crew/equipment: During the climactic battle scene in the rain a man is running and takes an arrow in the back. As he falls into the mud you can spot the wire that the arrow travelled along and which is attached to his back.
Plot hole: In the scene for Heihachi's funeral: Gisaku is at the funeral and is seen full face as Kikuchiyo shouts the bandits are coming. Everyone runs for their posts and bent over Gisaku is left standing by the grave. Kikuchiyo runs to dismantle the bridge with his crew when Gisaku's son, his wife and baby come by to get the old man who they say has refused to leave the mill. There is no way Gisaku could have outrun Kikuchiyo to the bridge and there is no way that his son and daughter-in-law could have known he was in the mill"
