Home Alone

Continuity mistake: When Buzz is eating the pieces of pizza in front of Kevin, the frontal shots of Buzz show him eating with his left hand, but the shots over Buzz's right shoulder (facing Kevin) show Buzz eating with his right hand.

Scott215

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Continuity mistake: When Kevin goes to the grocery, he buys Tide detergent. While walking home, the two bags break, but no Tide detergent falls out.

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Suggested correction: Maybe he returned it.

No chance, we see him buy it and then use it in a later scene.

Ssiscool

Other mistake: Kevin rides down the stairs on his sled and out the door. He originally lined up the sled at the top of the stairs, but it is clear that the stairs lie to the right of the door. His sled went straight down the stairs, therefore making it impossible to go straight out the door in one movement as shown. (00:25:25)

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Revealing mistake: As Kevin is flying off the front porch on the toboggan, you can see the small wheels mounted on the bottom of the sled to aid in its "jump". (00:25:30)

Factual error: When Kevin's mom leaves Paris to return home, the plane shown departing the airport is a DC-9. No airline uses this plane for trans-Atlantic service - it doesn't have the required range.

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Suggested correction: Although not explicitly mentioned, it could easily be a connecting flight which departs Europe from another airport. Potentially flying a short or medium range aircraft to reach a hub airport like Heathrow, then catching a trans-Atlantic flight back to the US.

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Continuity mistake: When Kevin is leaving the church after talking to the old man that lives next door to him, he runs home. Between leaving the church and getting home he is wearing one pair of trousers, when he gets home he is wearing a pair of jeans, then when he is setting up the traps for the bad guys he is back to the first pair.

Revealing mistake: When Harry trips on the fan string throwing feathers all over him, the fan sound is heard running but there's no air blowing at him as the feathers are falling around him undisturbed. A few shots later, we see the fan on and blowing feathers around the room which is what it should have been doing.

jerimiah

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Continuity mistake: When Kevin goes outside the first time and sees the cars in the garage, the light isn't on. When it shows the garage again in the next shot, the light is on. (00:20:25)

Bishop73

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Suggested correction: The light could be motion activated. Either Kevin's movement or passing vehicles could have turned it on, regardless of the time of day. I have motion detector lights in my carport and they constantly go on and off in the daytime if it's low-light and cars pass by fast enough. People walking their dogs can also activate it if they are close enough. They sometimes stay on until I have to manually turn the power off, then on again.

raywest

That would explain it only if the light came on when Kevin "activated" it. It stays off during the first scene, and he doesn't make any motion towards the garage when the camera is on him. Nor do we see any vehicles or people pass behind him.

Bishop73

How likely is it that this movie - taken in 1990 - had access to the developed technology that we have today, to make automatic lights turn on?

Infrared motion sensors were around in the 80s.

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Continuity mistake: In the scene where Kevin prepares to ride his toboggan down the stairs, the front door changes position between shots from half open to completely open. (00:25:20)

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Continuity mistake: When Joe Pesci places his hand on the red hot doorknob on the front door of Kevin's house, he places his hand on the doorknob sideways, but after he sticks his hand in the snow, he looks at his hand and the letter M that was burned into his hand is straight up and down, not sideways like it should be based on how he grabbed the doorknob.

Revealing mistake: The morning the McCallisters are rushing to get to the airport, the kid from across the street is bothering one of the van drivers. In the scene where the van driver says, "Gee, kid I dunno, hit the road," you can clearly see the kid mouthing the words as the man speaks. (00:14:00)

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Continuity mistake: When Kevin is shooting the BB gun at action figures he has lined up along the laundry chute, there is a baseball player figurine leaning against the side of the laundry chute. A few shots later, when Kevin begins shooting at the figurines, the baseball player figurine is no longer leaning against the laundry chute frame, instead standing unassisted.

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Continuity mistake: When Kevin is putting washing in and taking clothes out of the dryer, he places a bottle of Tide detergent on top of the washing machine with the handle facing away from the camera. Upon taking the clothes out of the drier and closing the door, he turns to see the furnace scaring him by saying "Kevin." When the camera faces Kevin again, the bottle of detergent is turned so that the handle faces the camera, and the cap is no longer fastened correctly.

Continuity mistake: Kevin goes out to cut the top off a tree to use as a Christmas tree. The tree top he drags in is much smaller than the one he decorates.

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Revealing mistake: Right after Marv loses his shoes on the tar-covered stairs, he goes back outside to go in through the window. When he's walking in the snow with bare feet, you can see that he is actually wearing little flesh-colored rubber booties that look like feet. Then later, when he is getting into the police car at the end, you see a short shot of his feet when he's almost in, and you can see he has black boots back on. (01:22:30)

Revealing mistake: When Kevin rides the rig on the rope to get to the treehouse, you can see that it was a stuntman who is much taller than Kevin and looks nothing like him.

Home Alone mistake picture

Continuity mistake: Kevin sits down with a meal before the Wet Bandits arrive at the house consisting of macaroni and cheese on a plate. When Harry eventually makes it to the dining room, he is pelted with feathers. Look at the table to the left. A three part microwave meal still in its white plastic container now sits on the plate.

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Character mistake: When Kevin is shooting the toys off the laundry chute with Buzz's BB gun, he's looking through the scope with his closed eye.

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Kevin is hanging up ornaments on the Christmas tree and he sees Harry peeping through the window by the reflection of the ornament, the reflection is not entirely accurate. It shows Kevin facing the camera with both the tree and window behind him. The reflection should have shown Kevin with just the window behind him and slightly to his right, based on his original position.

Check-Out Woman: Are you here all by yourself?
Kevin McCallister: Ma'am, I'm eight years old. You think I would be here *alone*? I don't think so.

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Trivia: When Kevin is in Buzz's bedroom, he finds in the box a picture of Buzz's girlfriend. This is actually a picture of the art director's son dressed up to look like a girl, because the director, Chris Columbus, thought it would be too harsh to make fun of a girl like that.

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Question: If Old Man Marley is actually a nice man (and not a "shovel slayer" as Buzz claims) then why does he always give Kevin that cold, creepy stare? After Kevin ran away the first time wouldn't he want to talk to Kevin the next time, to assure him that everything is okay?

Answer: Because he's understandably angry that Kevin's so unreasonably scared of him and assumes the worst in him without even getting a chance to know him. He never gets a chance to talk to him, because he always runs away too quickly. The first time he gives him that stare was when Kevin was watching him shovel from the window. Nobody would like to be stared at like that while doing a simple task.

MikeH

Answer: Marley appears that way mostly because the audience sees him from Kevin's point of view. Marley is miserable and sad because he is estranged from his family, but we see him as a crotchety, unpleasant person because that is what Kevin believes. Buzz had tainted Kevin's opinion of him by spreading the false stories that a gullible Kevin believed were true.

raywest

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