Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

14 corrected entries

(5 votes)

Corrected entry: As soon as Bill, Ted and Billy the Kid arrive in Greece, Billy is holding a modern day Nerf ball. Where did Bill and Ted get this ball? They didn't bring anything else with them when they first went back in time.

Correction: First of all, Billy the Kid didn't start playing with the ball until after Bill and Ted picked up Socrates and arrived in Medieval England, second, if you look closely at the backround when Bill and Ted are talking about princess babes, you can see Billy the Kid searching through a bag that Bill and Ted brought with them, and pulling out the Nerf ball.

Corrected entry: In the garage, just before they go to school, you can hear a crew member yell "Alex.". To his credit, Alex Winters (Bill) doesn't flinch.

Correction: That is actually Ted saying, "I liked it." as you can see by the subtitles.

Corrected entry: No consumer synthesizer, especially in the 1980's, could imitate a guitar as well as the one Beethoven uses does.

Correction: The only time we actually hear the synthesizer is when Beethoven plays a few chords of what sounds like church music. When he's jamming in the mall later on, and then giving his concert during the report, all his music is covered by the soundtrack which is the guitar music we hear.

Krista

Corrected entry: If Rufus is from the future where Wyld Stallyns music has changed why did he have to make sure Bill and Ted passed their report. If the world was like that then they obviously passed it.

NyQuil

Correction: But NOT until Rufus actually goes back to help them. It's what's called a "causality loop;" Rufus's future doesn't become firm until Rufus assists Bill and Ted.

Corrected entry: One of the guys says at one point says something like "Look it's the Goodrich blimp" while looking towards the sky. This was in reference to a commercial popular in the 1980s for Goodrich tires where people would be faked out by others after being told to look up at the Goodrich blimp. The fooled one would then say "Hey, Goodrich doesn't have a blimp" after looking up and being tricked. The point was Good Year had the blimp but not Goodrich.

Correction: Hey says Goodyear, not Goodrich. Since there were obviously no blimps in the old west, the cowboys all turn to see what he's talking about.

Brian Katcher

Corrected entry: When Rufus is jamming with Bill and Ted at the end of the movie, you will notice that when the camera switches shots and shows the close-up of Rufus's hands, his hands are black. Rufus is white throughout the movie.

Correction: I rewatched that scene, and Rufus's hands remain white.

Cubs Fan

Corrected entry: Toward the end, just before Bill and Ted's presentation in the auditorium, there is a shot of the stage, with the podium front, centre stage. After a cut to the teacher, it cuts back to the stage, and the podium has disappeared.

Correction: The camera cuts away for more than enough time for someone to have moved it offstage. After all, everyone thought that Bill and Ted were not going to show up, and that the presentations were over anyway.

Jazetopher

Correction: Also, present Bill and Ted hear their future selves introduce him as Rufus. Thus their learning his name is part of the time loop.

Vader47000

Correction: He doesn't tell them his name on screen, but they spend a lot of time together off screen. He could easily have told them without it being shown.

Rufus never told Bill and Ted his name when they first meet him so there's no way future Bill and Ted would have known Rufus' name too.

Corrected entry: When the jewel is converted into the phone booth about 10 minutes in, there is a slight inconsistency between shots. The phone booth start to take shape from the crystal. The next shot with Rufus in his glasses, if you look closely, the phone booth is fully formed in the reflection, as you can see the word "Phone" at the top of the booth. In the next shot, the phone booth still isn't complete.

Correction: This was done on purpose. His glasses are reflecting a few seconds into the future. This happens one other time in the movie as well.

Jazetopher

Corrected entry: When they "pick up" Beethoven, he is performing Für Elise in front of an audience, a work which was never publicly performed.

David Mercier

Correction: This looked more like a private party than a public performance.

Playing for a private party is playing the piece publicly (i.e. for others to hear).

Bishop73

Corrected entry: When Beethoven is playing the keyboards in the mall why would he be arrested if the sales associate prompted him to play and he was obviously drawing positive attention to the business?

Correction: The security guards could easily be arresting him for disturbance of the peace, or the salesperson in the store might be losing business because everyone is listening, no one is shopping. There are many possibilites.

Corrected entry: In the beginning, Bill and Ted see the future Bill and Ted. When they wave goodbye, they wave normally. Then at the end they don't wave, they do the rock on sign.

Correction: Though it's a bit contrary to the form of time travel expressed in the movie, there's no reason meeting their future selves couldn't change said future, letting them do things a little different 'this time around'

Corrected entry: In the scene when everyone is in the mall Beethoven is in the music store. The sales clerk turned on the drum machine on the keyboard and Beethoven reacted. This should not have happened since Beethoven was completely deaf - the movie had already established that Beethoven was deaf at that time. When Bill and Ted "landed" the telephone booth to get Beethoven he was playing the piano in front of a gathering of people. The phone booth made a loud noise that everyone listening to Beethoven play reacted to, however, Beethoven continued to play without a reaction - thereby exposing his deafness.

Correction: Beethoven could feel the vibrations of the drum machine through the keyboard; this is how he composed in his later years, by holding a stick between his teeth and placing it on the piano.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Ted falls down a spiral staircase, the stairs should spiral anti-clockwise, not clockwise. This is because in medieval times, the castle's defenders would have an easier time defending in this direction as almost all of them would have been right-handed.

Correction: This is true of most towers in castles, but some had staircases going the other way, so that if the castle was taken over, then they could have a slight advantage if they tried to recapture it.

Correction: The clockwise spiral of a newel staircase being designed that way to give defenders an advantage is a myth, one that I'm sure castle tour guides love to tell. Not only is there no documentation for this, and the direction of the staircase would not provide an advantage to the defender. In both cases, the attacker would always have the advantage (not to mention the fact that the stairs were extremely narrow and defenders would be more prone to fall down then have an advantage, as Ted demonstrates).

Bishop73

Other mistake: Beethoven didn't seem fussed nor resentful of Napoleon being part of the group. Historically he temporarily admired him and wrote the Third Symphony inspired by Napoleon's ideals of Europe's new hope of enlightenment but later despised him after he crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804 and furiously scribbled out his name off the title page of his Third Symphony and named it Eroica which he originally titled it as "Bonaparte Symphony" due to his former admiration of Napoleon.

More mistakes in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill: Ted, while I agree that, in time, our band will be most triumphant, the truth is, Wyld Stallyns will never be a super band until we have Eddie Van Halen on guitar.
Ted: Yes, Bill. But, I do not believe we will get Eddie Van Halen until we have a triumphant video.
Bill: Ted, it's pointless to have a triumphant video before we even have decent instruments.
Ted: Well, how can we have decent instruments when we don't really even know how to play?
Bill: That is why we NEED Eddie Van Halen.
Ted: And THAT is why we need a triumphant video.
Bill/Ted: Excellent.

More quotes from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
More trivia for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Question: Anyone know the name of the song playing in the dome when Bill and Ted visit? I know it's supposed to be by the Wyld Stallyns but what is its actual name and artist in real life?

Answer: The song is called 'In Time' and it is performed by Robbi Robb.

Alan Sproul

More questions & answers from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.