Continuity mistake: On the tank a soldier jumps from Indy's right to attack him. The following angle shows the soldier coming from the front.
Continuity mistake: When the Nazi Colonel discovers Henry Jones sen. aboard the zeppelin, Indy asks him for his flight ticket. In the first shot, Indy is standing right beside the colonel (the camera is behind the colonel and Indy comes in from the right), in the subsequent shot, Indy is standing behind the colonel.
Continuity mistake: While in the Germans tank, the right side of Marcus's jacket is bent and wrinkled. A Frame later it looks perfect.
Continuity mistake: Indy and co. leave their horses a way from the steps to the temple, but when we cut to a closer shot they're very close to the entrance.
Continuity mistake: In the Grail temple, when Salah says "Drop your guns please," he is holding a rifle. When Indy instructs his father a few seconds later to get up, Salah is not holding a rifle but has his hands crossed.
Continuity mistake: In the scene in the temple after the two soldiers attempt to get past the first task, the first soldier is seen on his back holding his head beside him. When Indy attempts the first task, both dead soldiers are on their stomachs with no heads in sight.
Continuity mistake: At the airport, someone is reading a newspaper. Instead of the year 1938, the date of the newspaper is 1918 (a guess: I think this mistake happened because the art director wrote the date in a rush, stretching the "3" in a way it seemed a "1" when the people of "atrezzo" saw it).
Continuity mistake: While Indy and his father are talking in the zeppelin, the amount of flowers in the vase keeps changing between shots.
Continuity mistake: When the tank is about to go over the cliff you can see that there is no one sticking out of it, but in the next shot, Vogel can be seen sticking out and yelling.
Continuity mistake: While the German tank travels to the temple, it passes a German soldier. Inmediately after, a very wide angle shows the soldier has dissapeared.
Continuity mistake: Jones Sr. falls on the tank's chain and passes by the turret and by a round rusty thing. When the angle changes, a second before Indy saves him with the whip, you see Sr. has moved half a meter back instead of forward, and is passing by the same elements as before.
Continuity mistake: When the Zeppeliner turns back towards Berlin, it is over snow covered mountains. But when the Joneses escape in the biplane there is no sign of snow anywhere.
Continuity mistake: Indy throws the German officer out of the zeppelin window and Senior stands up to watch it all better. Then he sits down. Angle changes to a wider view and Senior is back on his feet, head almost out of the window, repeating the previous movements.
Continuity mistake: Indy and a soldier fall down on the tank, right where some bags are. From the next angle they are half a meter before the place where the bags are.
Revealing mistake: A bomb falls in front of Indy's car, creating a crater where the car falls into. Dr. Jones Sr. doesn't move forward due to the momentum of the crash, revealing he's been replaced by a dummy.
Continuity mistake: When Indy is looking up at the front of the Grail temple it is bathed in direct sunlight. Indy dismounts his horse in the shadow. However, in the shot just before dismounting, the cliffs behind Indy are also bathed in direct sunlight. That is impossible.
Continuity mistake: When Young Indy is hoisted from the lion's carriage on the train, one of the baddies is holding a gun at him, in the next shot, the gun is down by his waist.
Continuity mistake: When Indy gives his father water from the grail to drink, the grail glows from inside, and the gold inside it is bright and even. But when Indy pours water over the wound, the grail is dark inside and there are dark patches in the gold. Obviously, they had to take the light that made the grail glow out so it wouldn't be seen when Indy pours the water over his father.
Continuity mistake: The 109s that are animated are shaped like the original German fuel injected ones. The shots where it's a real plane show the modified one with a RR Merlin engine that gives it a weird square nose.
Other mistake: When Indy and Kazim are fighting on the the boat as it is being chewed up by the giant propeller, the propeller is more than half way out of the water; if the ship was in dry-dock the smaller boats wouldn't be able to go up to the larger ship, on the other hand if it had run aground it would not be running its engines.
Answer: The implication is that disaster would follow them outside of the cave as well. It wouldn't make much sense if you could simply outrun the disaster.
BaconIsMyBFF
"Followed by disaster" is a kind of curse, a thing not common in Christianity. It doesn't make much sense anyhow. A seal is just a dot - OK, so let's at least grant that the seal represents a circle that the grail has to stay in. Who decided where those borders are? The grail was taken there during the first crusade. That was closer to 1938 than it was to 33 AD. The three knights could move the grail about then. Why not afterwards? The knights could have built the traps. But the borders could only have been set by god, in an unusually late and completely atypical miracle.
Spiny Norman
There are several examples of curses in the Christian Bible: Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at Sodom, the plagues visited upon Egypt, Adam and Eve are cursed for eating fruit from the tree of knowledge, etc. The knights did not move the grail around after finding it, they stayed in the temple for 150 years and then two left leaving the third behind. The great seal and it's restriction was already in place when the knights got there.
BaconIsMyBFF
Where in the movie is that stated? I interpreted the knight's story as them having made that place. Looks like it isn't actually specified. But if God made it, then I submit that he would have used Greek, not Latin, for the stepping stones. (All of those curses are from the old testament. The book where god kills firstborn children as long as they're Egyptian. Grail is by definition new testament where you turn the other cheek. There simply are no curses in the gospel, that's just not how Jesus rolled).
Spiny Norman
The tests were made by the knights, but the seal had God's power in it. Just like the cup.
lionhead
It's still a bit dodgy. What if you take a shovel and dig yourself a back door? Basically this film really excels at stuff that makes no sense but helps the storytelling, or to be precise, creates dramatic effects.
Spiny Norman
Every fictional story is like that in some way. That's why it's called fictional. It's just a story.
lionhead
Not a particularly convincing argument, "stuff happens for no reason all the time", if I may say so. Why is this website even here then? The fact is that some stories are more coherent than others. (♫ "In olden days, a hole in the plot, would seem to matter, quite a lot. Now heaven knows, anything goes..." ♫);).
Spiny Norman
It's the difference in what story they want told. Is it a fairy tale or based on actual events? A huge difference in plausibility between the two. The site is there to look at mistakes, not how believable the story is.
lionhead
It is not set in another universe so plausibility isn't somehow suspended. Maybe take a look at the categories recognised by this website. Plot holes, factual errors, even stupidity. (They? Who are they?).
Spiny Norman
It is set in a fictional universe because it's not a true story. With "they" I mean the writers/director. Mistakes in a plot (plot holes) have nothing to do with how believable the story is. As long as it's plausible, it's not a mistake.
lionhead
Pretty sure it's the same universe, just with some added characters/events. What about the total lack of spaceships or orcs or talking animals for example? The seal business is not a mistake YET, but it's very dodgy because no-one knows how it works or why. Like all Indys "trapped" secret places, it's (among other things) unclear who resets the traps for the next visitor. We can't brush it ALL off as "the hand of god" every time.
Spiny Norman
Huge amounts of stuff in films isn't exhaustively explained. Doesn't mean there isn't an explanation that's perfectly believable. There's zero evidence either way to say how "followed by disaster" would manifest, and just because there's not a thorough explanation doesn't mean that it's "dodgy", and it's not worth bickering about either, because there's no concrete answer either way.
Jon Sandys ★
OK but I would like to note that not everyone who offers creative explanations has recently seen the movie; some people just invent their own. E.g. "followed by disaster" is not an actual explanation from the movie, it was just one of the suggestions made here and only here. Or the ones on my own question below. All I'm saying is, it's very hard to tell what the "rules" / "logic" of this place are supposed to be, so I understand what the OP was driving at.
Spiny Norman