Continuity mistake: At the beginning of the arrow attack Chief Phillips yells, "Chef, open up, fire". Before he says this we see a wide shot of the shoreline with no vertical poles sticking up. In the next close-up shot of Chief Phillips there's a red spear stuck in the mud on the shore. (02:21:35)
Continuity mistake: Near the beginning of the movie when we first see Chef's tattoos up close the tip of the serpent's tongue on his left arm is entirely red. Later in the movie before he gets onto the Vietnamese sampan we see it again up close and the tip of the serpent's tongue is green. (00:24:05 - 01:35:55)
Continuity mistake: Chef and Clean pull Lance entirely into the boat. Than Captain Willard says, "Don't leave without me "as he runs to steal the colonel's surf board and we see Lance's legs dangling over the side as he is pulled into the boat a second time. (00:51:20)
Continuity mistake: After he cuts his hand on the mirror Captain Willard rubs his face with his bloody right hand. In the next shot as he attempts to pour a drink into his mouth only his thumb is bloody and there is no blood on his face. (00:07:10)
Continuity mistake: After the gentleman in the tan jacket spills the egg into the plate, between shots Roxanne goes from having her right hand on the table to having her right hand near her mouth holding her cigar. (02:07:30)
Visible crew/equipment: As he looks out to the surfers Lt. Col. Kilgore says, "It's gonna blow this place out, it's gonna ruin itÂ… it's the napalm that's what's doing it" and a mortar shell soon explodes in the water. If you look closely behind the surfer on the left you can see the explosive device floating in the water before the explosion. (00:50:15)
Visible crew/equipment: In the helicopter after Colonel Kilgore talks to Lance he says, "My boys love it" and you can see the silhouette of the crouching cameraman in his sunglasses. (00:36:50)
Continuity mistake: Harrison Ford goes over to the tape recorder to play a tape of Colonel Kurtz' voice and the food on the captain's plate changes completely. At first there's a serving of roast beef with a roll next to it, than when we see it again there's less roast beef and pees and carrots where the roll was. (00:12:55)
Continuity mistake: At the funeral Chief Phillips picks up the flag from Clean's body holding it between his fingers about two inches in on each end. In the next shot he's holding it on the edges and the flag is reversed with the stars and stripes on the right. (02:01:15)
Continuity mistake: The Frenchmen playing the accordion walks away from Captain Willard into the other room and trips over something. Look closely at the table because two shots later everything will be different. The fruit in the fruit bowl is entirely different, the flowers and the lazy Susan have been moved and some of the wine and water in the glasses are at different levels. (02:10:15)
Continuity mistake: After Roxanne sits down to the eat she says something sweet in French that makes Hubert de Marais chuckle, and also makes the amount of wine in his glass decrease between shots. (02:04:25)
Continuity mistake: On the boat as they look for the B-52's, Lance says, "There they are," standing in the center of boat under the flag. In the next shot, Clean is standing in that spot. (00:24:25)
Continuity mistake: Captain Willard enters the temple after he kills a guard and there's a great shot of him holding the machete as it glistens in the light. He just slit someone's throat not two seconds before and there's not an ounce of blood on the blade and it's not even the same machete he was holding three shots ago when we see his silhouette in the festival lights. The first machete we see has a thinner blade with a hook on the end of it and a different handle. (03:07:05)
Continuity mistake: During the arrow attack Captain Willard orders Lance to take control of the boat as Chief Phillips is shooting. When we first see him at the helm look at Lance's head, he doesn't have the broken arrow in his hair. In the next shot he does. (02:22:25)
Continuity mistake: Martin Sheen's fingers are shown many times in close-ups of him reading files such as after the "Satisfaction" surfing scene. They all look the same except for when he picks up Kilgore's death card. The thumbs on this person's hands are much longer than we see throughout the movie and are not Martin Sheen's. (00:28:10 - 01:13:55)
Continuity mistake: After the woman gives Captain Willard some water she tries to feed him rice from a spoon, which he doesn't eat. In the previous wide shot of the entire area there is no bowl of rice anywhere, there is only the pitcher of water at her feet and the rice bowl just appears. (02:53:55)
Continuity mistake: Dennis Hopper Says, " these are all his children, man, as far as you can see" and we see a large leaf covering Chef's head and held on with a rubber band. Then when Dennis Hopper says," the man's enlarged my mindÂ…. do you know that if is the middle word in life?" there's a different leaf on his head that has much more green in it. (02:30:30)
Continuity mistake: As Dennis Hopper gets the captain some water we see a wide shot of five bamboo cages with a guard standing between them. In the next shot as Dennis Hopper turns around from the fountain the guard is facing the opposite way and is now talking to the prisoner in the cage that was on the left (now behind them). (02:42:45)
Continuity mistake: When Clean fires his machine gun on the Vietnamese sampan Captain Willard ducks for cover then pulls his pistol out of his holster and holds it straight up in the air. In the next shot he takes the gun out of his holster again. (01:36:45)
Continuity mistake: No one has touched it, but when the General passes the roast beef to Jerry, the pepper shaker, which was just next to the salt shaker in front of him, has been moved to the other side of the table. (00:12:00)
Chosen answer: Kurtz was protected by political connections and his military record from being relieved of command, and the Montagnard people whose village he was in were considered American allies, so they couldn't just send a force in to kill him or relieve him of command, but an individual assassin. (The US Government's "official" policy is that they do not engage in assassination, which is why "this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist").
Captain Defenestrator