Gilligan's Island

Show generally

Continuity mistake: There are several shots of the island used in the series. In the opening, it appears small. In some inland shots it appears immense and mountainous, despite being described numerous times as a "tiny island somewhere in the Pacific."

Movie Nut

Season 1 generally

Continuity mistake: When the SS Minnow is shown beached on the deserted island, it's seen leaning on its left. At the ending credits, the Minnow is shown completely upright.

Two on a Raft - S1-E2

Continuity mistake: After the shark bites off the rest of the paddle, leaving the handle, Gilligan hesitates a second, sees no paddle, and begins swatting at the shark. A moment later, in the closeup, he's paddling, hears the bite again, and pulls the handle up, showing the paddle is gone.

Movie Nut

Home Sweet Hut - S1-E3

Continuity mistake: While the castaways are standing around while their clothes dry, Mary Ann is not wearing any shoes. As the scene continues she is shown standing wearing black shoes. (00:05:00 - 00:06:00)

Snag.1

The Big Gold Strike - S1-E10

Continuity mistake: As the raft starts to sink, Lovey goes into the water on the back side of the raft. When the camera is in a close up of Mr. Howell, she's sitting beside him again. Then she's neck-deep in the water in the next wide shot.

Movie Nut

Man with a Net - S3-E7

Revealing mistake: Near the end of the episode, all the castaways are passed out cold when Lord Beasley finally catches his butterfly. Right after saying the line "That's the trouble with you Americans - you simply don't know how to hold your tea" as he's exiting off camera, Mrs. Howell starts to open her eyes slightly, but then quickly shuts them again. Perhaps she thought the cameras stopped rolling.

More mistakes in Gilligan's Island

Eunice Wentworth "Lovey" Howell: Anyone who says money can't buy happiness doesn't know where to shop.

More quotes from Gilligan's Island
More trivia for Gilligan's Island

Erika Tiffany Smith to the Rescue - S2-E15

Question: I'm very confused about the ending. During an interview, the interviewer says that the Navy are unable to find the castaways because Erika's log book is written in English translated from Hungarian. If her log book was translated from Hungarian to English, then how could the Navy be unable to use it to find the island and rescue everybody? She left out latitude and longitude but, there must have been something in the log book to give an idea of where the island was.

Answer: Hungarian-to-English translation aside, Erika's log-book entries were utterly meaningless. When the radio interviewer expresses confusion, Erika even reads entries from the log: "You take a left at a big, beautiful, pink tropical flower, then pull over and park," and "After the storm, we backed up and made a U-turn," etc. Her directions were scatterbrained, to put it nicely. Additionally, Erika's yacht was forced to leave the island during a tropical storm, and they lost their bearings for several days before the Navy found them. Given that Erika was such a scatterbrain, we might also assume that she didn't hire the most competent yacht crew, either.

Charles Austin Miller

More questions & answers from Gilligan's Island

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.