Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Corrected entry: When he hears Will coming, Jack leaves the piece of bone sticking in the cell lock. It disappears in the next shot.

Correction: This has been submitted and corrected already.

Corrected entry: The solid cannon shot explodes in flames. Shells that exploded weren't invented until the mid-19th century.

Correction: Leonardo da Vinci invented exploding shells in the late 1400s-early 1500s.

Corrected entry: Barbossa tells Elizabeth that they spent all the gold and took ten years to find it again. But this makes no sense. The moment night fell and they realized the side effect was that they were cursed, they would have just returned it, instead of spending it.

Correction: Could be many possible explanations for this. They could have found and spent the gold before night fell. Also, by spending all the gold, he might not have actually meant every single piece, just a portion, which would be a much more possible thing to do before night fall. They also likely split up when they got to land, so some could have gone to a bar and stayed there all night, indoors, away from the moon light. If they stayed all night, they wouldn't realize they were cursed til the following night, giving the money time to circulate.

Corrected entry: When the child Elizabeth wakens the child Will in the first scene, she says "It's okay." Use of the term "okay" was strictly American slang, and not in use until the early 19th century.

Correction: See similar corrections for 'Braveheart' and 'Troy'. The film is shot in colloquial English so modern audiences can understand it. This is a film convention, not a mistake.

Corrected entry: When Elizabeth is about to smack Jacoby in the head with the large gold sceptre, she says "You like pain? Try wearing a corset." In the 18th century, that garment was called "stays," and that is certainly the word she would have used. Similarly, in the scene in which her father brings her a new dress, she appears to be uncomfortable in the stays, as if she had never worn them before: a woman of her socio-economic class would have been wearing stays since she was at least 7 years old.

Correction: First of all, using "corsets" vs "stays", is similar to the corrections for 'Braveheart' and 'Troy'. This film is shot in colloquial English so modern audiences can understand it. This is a film convention, not a mistake. Second of all, being used to wearing corsets wouldn't mean that it doesn't hurt, especially a brand new one.

Corrected entry: When Jack boards the Interceptor after sneaking past the guards, watch when the guards confront him. There's a shot of the guards, and you can see a boat pass by in the background. Then a shot of Jack, then back to the guards. In the background the exact same boat can be seen passing by again. (00:13:40)

Correction: It is not the same boat, but a different one which was behind the first boat. When you see the first boat, just at the end of the shot you can see the front of the other boat behind it come into view.

Corrected entry: It would be physically impossible to crew a ship with two men. The sails alone weigh over 1,000 pounds.

Correction: That's why Jack had to let the navy get the ship ready to set sail (in fact already sailing) before he could "commandeer" it. That's why he thanks Commodore Norrington because "We'd have had a hard time of it by ourselves."

Corrected entry: Near the beginning of the movie when Jack Sparrow dives in to save the unconscious Elizabeth, the water around him is completely devoid of all life. However, when he is carrying her to the surface, there are fish swimming all over. Furthermore, the fish do not move like real fish; real fish would swim away from Jack. (00:16:15)

Correction: Fish tend to be less scared when traveling in groups.

Corrected entry: What suddenly makes Elizabeth the great expert on nautical affairs when they are being chased by the Black Pearl? I know it's to involve the actress in the scene, but really this is just silly.

Correction: Rubbish. Elizabeth has lived around a port and ships for at least half her life - there's every reason to expect that she'd be familiar with nautical affairs, particularly as it seems likely that Norrington has been a frequent visitor to the Swann household and would no doubt relate tales of his misadventures. And note that the real sailors on the crew do point out that her ideas are pretty out-there - sailing into dangerous areas and dropping the anchor while at full sail are not the suggestions of an experienced sailor.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: When Jack first enters the blacksmith shop, and sees the old man sleeping, he walks up and says "WHOA." You can see that the chain of beads on his headwrap stays securely in place as if it were glued there. However, throughout the rest of the sword fighting scene you can see it moving and swaying as Jack moves around.

Correction: Actually, the headwrap beads don't move in the scene at all, except for the coin on the end. This is true even when Jack is hanging from the rafter, trying to loose the sword, and when he turns a backward somersault after falling from the same rafter when the sword does come loose.

BGTerri

Corrected entry: Elizabeth (as a little girl) sees the boy (young William Turner) floating on some driftwood and says calls for help. When Turner is determined to be alive, the Commodore puts Elizabeth in charge of his well being. While looking at him, she spies the medallion on the chain around his neck and realises it's the mark of a pirate. The Commodore comes up behind Elizabeth and asks if the boy is feeling okay (or something to this effect) Elizabeth spins around and hides the medallion behind her back till the commodore leaves. Now, she didn't break the chain, nor did she lift his head up to remove it. When she spins around, the chain is mysteriously off his neck with no effort on her part. (00:04:10)

ShooterMcGavin34

Correction: Watch her holding the chain in her left hand as she picks it up. It appears as though she is unclasping it when the camera changes to show her face. You can hear the sound of the chain sliding before it changes to show it in her hand, unclasped. Plenty of time for her to undo it.

Jason Sieberg

Corrected entry: When young Will is rescued in the beginning, he wakes up and talks for a few moments. When he passes out again, the sound of his head hitting the blanket covered wood can be heard an instant before it actually hits. (00:04:00)

Correction: His head is rotating, so it is not possible to judge whether or not the sound occurs before it hits, or if it simply appears that way because he is turning his head.

Jason Sieberg

Corrected entry: During the attack on Port Royal Orlando comes out ready to fight with a sword in one hand and an axe in the other which he throws into the back of a pirate who drops dead. I thought the pirates could not die?

Correction: The pirate doesn't die. That is why Will is shocked when the pirate throws the bomb at him later. The pirate actually just got knocked over from the force of the blow.

Corrected entry: Just before Will runs down the stairs at the prison, to ask Jack where the Black Pearl is, Jack is trying to pick the lock with a bone fragment. When Will appears, Jack leaves the bone in the lock, and we see it once more, when Will says, "You. Sparrow." However, when the lock is shown again, as Jack and Will shake hands, the bone is not in the lock anymore. (00:42:25 - 00:44:15)

Correction: A bone does not fit a lock like a key, and it could have loosened and fallen out at any time. As pointed out previously, Will grabs the door in anger. He could also have brushed against the bone and loosened it, any number of things.

Corrected entry: In the first scene, young Elizabeth is singing her pirate song and Mr. Gibbs makes a remark that it is unlucky to have a woman on board even if she is a miniature woman. If Elizabeth is the ONLY woman on board, who curled her hair into perfect ringlets and helped her get dressed?(her dress would have fastened in the back). I don't think that the men on board would have known how to maintain a proper young woman - or be allowed to for that matter.

Correction: Nobody ever said she was the only woman on board.

Corrected entry: When Commodore Norrington proposes to Elizabeth, and she falls off the cliff, she should have died. When you hit water after falling from a great height, it acts like cement would if you fell on it from the same height.

Correction: Water tension only has this effect if the water is extremely calm, which it wouldn't be in this case, due to the waves and the presence of rocks nearby. A landing in even relatively calm water can be survivable - a well-documented case from 1993 details a New Zealand parachutist, who fell 3600 feet when both his parachutes failed to open. He landed in a shallow duck pond and walked away with only a small cut over one eye.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: When Elizabeth is talking with Norrington before she falls to the sea, she is wearing two necklaces - a short gold necklace with white pearls, and a long chain with the Aztec medallion. Later, we see only the chain with the Aztec medallion and there is no trace of the other necklace. (00:10:55 - 00:15:40)

Correction: The other necklace was a much more delicate piece than the sturdy chain for the medallion. Considering the height from which Elizabeth fell, chances are it broke when she hit the water.

Sereenie

Continuity mistake: When Jack holds the chain to Elizabeth's neck, and subsequently swings about, there are about ten links between the wrist shackles. When he tosses the links over the rope, before he slides down, there are at least fifteen attached links. Then at the blacksmith shop, when Jack sits at the anvil, there are eight links, and after he breaks it there are three links dangling from the right shackle and seven dangling from the left, totaling ten. (00:19:50)

Super Grover

More mistakes in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
More quotes from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
More trivia for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Question: Why did Jack cut himself before throwing the coin to Will? I thought the curse only needed Will's blood?

Answer: The curse needs the blood of everybody who took a coin from the chest. All the other pirates have already contributed so, as the movie opens, the only blood needed is Will's, substituting for his father. During the finale of the movie, Jack takes a coin from the chest, adding himself to the curse, so his blood is now required as well as Will's.

Tailkinker

But I didn't see any blood on the coins, and none of the pirates cut themselves, even before Will became part of the mix.

Yes, the other pirates did cut themselves before Will came into it, off-screen. The lack of blood on the coins can simply be explained as most of it dripping to the bottom of the chest, it being washed away by storms blown into the cave, or by the fact that they didn't drop that much blood on it in the first place.

When they had Elizabeth they believed she was Bill Turner's daughter, but they all thought the curse had failed, none of them had cut themselves so it makes zero sense.

They had been collecting back the coins for years. During that time they repaid their own blood. All they needed was the last coin and the blood of Bill Turner to break the spell.

lionhead

More questions & answers from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

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.