Continuity mistake: In the opening scene, the vampire makes Buffy back up into a pillar. In the first shot, Buffy is only inches away from the pillar. The camera cuts to the vampire for a second, then when it cuts back to Buffy, she's suddenly moved forward several feet and backs up into the pillar finally.
TedStixon
20th Sep 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
20th Sep 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: In the opening scene, when you first see the vampire, you see a girl behind him running from screen-right to screen-left. She's in a blue plaid shirt and jeans. The scene cuts to Buffy for a second, then cuts back to the vampire and you can see the same girl doing the exact same thing in the background... running from screen-right to screen-left. (It looks like they used two different takes of the same shot in the scene).
28th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: When Giles walks up to Buffy, Xander and Willow after The Body is found at the beginning of the episodes, watch the extras walking by in the background. They don't always match as the shot cuts back and forth between Giles and Buffy/Xander/Willow. Ex. When Buffy asks "Vampire?" nobody is walking behind her, but when it cuts to the opposite angle, suddenly two students are walking by from Buffy's direction that weren't there before. This sort of thing happens at least two or three times.
28th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: After the credits, when Buffy, Xander and Willow sit down to talk about what to do for the talent show, two people walk into the background behind Buffy and are standing there talking throughout the scene. At one point, it cuts to Xander for about one second when he says the line "Whatever happened to corporal punishment?", then cuts back to Buffy, and the two people behind her are suddenly gone. There's not enough time for them to have walked away between shots - they simply vanish.
28th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: When Snyder grabs Buffy after she breaks into the locker, when she turns around, he is holding her hand up by the wrist. The height he is holding her hand up changes a few times between shots. Sometimes it's up by her face, other times it's level with her neck, at one point it's down by her shoulder, etc. Obviously snippets of a few different takes were used, and he wasn't holding it up at exactly the same height each time.
22nd Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: When Willow is unsuccessfully trying to tutor Xander outside towards the beginning of the episode, after Willow warns Xander he might flunk math, he reaches up and massages his face with his hand. When he does this, he has a pen in his hand. When the camera cuts to the opposite angle, the pen vanishes. Then, when the scene cuts to a wideshot about 10 seconds later, suddenly his hand is in a completely different position between cuts.
22nd Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: In the beginning, after the monk traps Moloch and closes the book, the positions of his hands gripping the sides of the book changes slightly between cuts. (Ex. His left hand is lower, then suddenly slightly higher between edits).
22nd Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: When Buffy meets Angel, Angel is walking down the alley and Buffy swings around a pole and kicks him from behind. Except you can tell in the first shot that Angel is too far ahead of her - she couldn't have reached him to kick him. She's only able to reach him through the power of editing, as the shot cuts, and he's suddenly closer to her. She also somehow flips backwards yet lands in front of him. The scene looks cool in motion, but makes absolutely no logistical sense if you watch closely.
22nd Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: In the beginning, when Darla "vamps out" and kills the boy, watch her shirt collar. In the first shot, her shirt collar is unbuttoned, but when she turns around to bite him, suddenly it's buttoned closed.
22nd Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: In the beginning, when Darla and the boy break into the school, the boy breaks through a window, reaches in, and unlocks the window from inside. When he does this, as the shot changes, the broken glass around the window changes slightly between cuts. (Noticeably, the glass wedged between his hand and the window vanishes.) Additionally, in the first shot, there's a microscope right next to the window, about an inch away. In the next shot, it seems to have moved about four inches to the left.
14th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: When the zookeeper catches Buffy and Willow trying to sneak into the hyena exhibit in the beginning, when Buffy and Willow turn around, they get close to each other but there's still at least 6-8 inches of space between them. When the camera cuts, though, they are suddenly pressed literally right up against each other, to the point they are borderline huddling.
14th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: When Buffy and Willow arrive at school at the start of the episode, Willow is wearing very dark, completely opaque tights that look to be black or at best very dark navy blue. When Xander finds her in the next scene, which takes shortly after on the same day, she's suddenly wearing much brighter purple tights.
14th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Continuity mistake: In the beginning of the episode, when Willow gets the email from "Malcolm" and says "He's so sweet! What should I write back?", she instantly goes from facing forward at the computer to facing sideways at Buffy between cuts.
13th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: When the Master first starts to appear, rising out of the pool, the top of his head is wet. But in the next shot (a wideshot) where you see him continue to rise, he's bone dry. This is because in the first shot, the actor is really coming out of the liquid, whereas in the next shot, he's added through visual effects. He obviously was supposed to look "dry" the entire time, but because the first shot was done with an actor rising out of the pool on-set, there was no way for him to emerge dry.
13th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: After Cordelia turns down Jesse at the Bronze, he says "Fine plenty other fish in the sea." In the first shot, his arm is raised and he has his hand against a pillar. In the second shot, his arm is suddenly down by his side.
13th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: When Jesse asks Cordelia if she wants to dance at the Bronze, and she replies "With you?", she goes from facing downwards to facing sideways towards Jesse between cuts. They try to hide the continuity mistake with editing (cutting the shot as an extra is partially obscuring the frame as he walks by), but you can see clear as day that she goes from looking down to looking sideways instantly.
13th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: When Buffy meets Willow at the Bronze, a drink basically magically materializes in Buffy's hands at one point. She points to the bartender like she wants a drink, but a few shots later (when she says "How come?") she suddenly has a drink in her hand without having picked it up in any previous shot. She also goes from not sipping her drink to sipping it between cuts just a few shots later.
13th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: When Buffy meets Willow at the Bronze, when Willow says she thought Xander was going to be there, Buffy is standing about a foot away from the bar and her arms are by her side. But suddenly in the next shot, she's right up against the bar and leaning on it with her elbow. Then in the next shot, she's about a foot away again.
13th Jul 2022
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997)
Welcome To The Hellmouth (1) - S1-E1
Continuity mistake: This is hard to describe. When Buffy and Joyce are talking in her room, Joyce keeps pulling pillows off Buffy's bed and re-arranging them. However, at one point, when the shot cuts back to her, she's holding a different pillow than in her last shot. This technically wouldn't be a mistake since she's off camera except in the shots facing Buffy, there's a mirror behind her with her bed in view, so we should have Joyce put down the first pillow and pick up the second one... and we don't.
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.