Office Space

Continuity mistake: In the scene near the end of the movie where Peter apologizes to Joanna, Joanna is shown either in her red shirt and holding her blue jacket, or wearing her blue jacket. For instance, as Joanna is moving in to kiss Peter, she is holding the jacket, but as they embrace, she is wearing it. In the blue jacket cuts, it is much less windy, and Joanna's hair is styled differently than it is in the red shirt cuts, where her hair is blowing due to the wind. (01:16:20)

Office Space mistake picture

Continuity mistake: During Tom's BBQ when Michael Bolton and Samir are asking Tom's lawyer about prison you see Michael lose grip and drop his cup with a piece of ice hitting Samir in the head. When the ice hits him he's holding the cup in his left hand but when the camera angle changes the cup shows up in his right hand. (01:01:30)

Continuity mistake: Toward the end of the scene where Michael, Peter and Samir are smashing the printer, the camera pulls back to show all the printer's parts around it on the grass, and its cover is off. When Michael goes back for one more blow, the printer's cover is still on it.

Lisa 176

Continuity mistake: When Peter goes to see the Bobs for the first time, he comes in, there's the Bobs sitting on the right side of the desk, and the row of empty chairs on the left. One of the chairs is not pushed in and turned left but when Peter comes back to sit down after getting his water it is pushed in and straight. (00:34:55)

Continuity mistake: In the restaurant scene the volume of the water in the glass in front of Jennifer Aniston continually changes from full to half-full depending upon whether Aniston or Livingston is talking.

Continuity mistake: When Peter is shutting his computer down to try to escape his boss, one of the cuts shows that it's an Optiquest monitor (us computer people will recognise this), then they cut back to Peter, back to the monitor and there's a piece of black electrical tape covering up the company logo on a completely different monitor.

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Lumbergh is talking to Milton in the building basement, his ever-present cup of coffee switches hands between shots.

Continuity mistake: In the scene with Samir, Michael, Peter, and Tom in the office talking about Tom's 'jump to conclusions' mat, the army men in the background on Peter's cubicle change positions. Shots of Michael show the kneeling man with the bazooka on one side of the minesweeper, shots of Peter show them in reversed positions. (00:12:30)

Continuity mistake: In addition to the mistake about Joanna's hair on the way back from the party: on the way TO the party, when the camera is on Joanna her window is up and her hair is still. But when the camera is on Peter, Joanna's window is obviously down, because her hair is blowing.

Krista

Continuity mistake: When Michael gets pulled away from beating the copier, he has a cord in his hand which he drops before going back. They pull him away again and the cord is gone, but in the last shot it in his hand again.

Continuity mistake: When the guys go to Flinger's for coffee, we see that the little cardboard triangle thing in the middle of the table advertising new additions to the menu (most restaurants have these) is facing the camera with 3 lines of text reading "Try our Jalapeno Poppers." In all the shots with that triangle thing in it after that, it has 5 lines of text facing the camera reading something different.

Factual error: All of the computers show a Mac OS when they're booted up. However, when Peter is shutting his computer down to try to escape his boss, the computer shuts down to a C: prompt. For those not technically minded, a C: prompt is only seen on IBM-compatible PCs, never on Macs. (00:19:20)

Office Space mistake picture

Continuity mistake: In the scene when Peter returns to the company and sees that it's on fire, his hair is coiffed and partially in his face. In the next shot, as he watches Milton skulk away, his hair is cut short and totally out of his face. (01:20:20)

Lisa 176

Office Space mistake picture

Continuity mistake: When Bill Lumbergh pulls into his parking space at Initech, the sign reads "Reserved for Bill Lumbergh, Division V.P." When Peter later pulls into the same space the sign only reads "Reserved for Bill Lumbergh." (00:02:50 - 00:41:05)

princesskelli

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Michael and Peter are in Michael's apartment, sitting and talking, we see Michael has a blue shirt which is spot-free. Right before they cut to the scene at the bar, we see that he has 2 small stains on the upper right of his shirt.

Continuity mistake: When Peter is on the freeway thinking of changing into the left lane, the vehicles are different between the shots of his face and the shots looking ahead. Then when he changes lanes there was a Mitsubishi Mirage in front of him and a blue Dakota truck a few cars ahead, yet both are gone when we see the lane he left begin to move. Then when he changes back into the right lane, we see a motorcycle up ahead in the lane he left, yet in the next forward shot, the motorbike is gone. (00:01:05)

Continuity mistake: In the scene where they are smashing the copier, they show a slow-motion of Samir lifting his right leg to smash the copier, the camera cuts away and then comes back showing him coming down with his left leg instead of his right.

Continuity mistake: When they meet at Flingers to eat lunch, sometimes his coffee is steaming and sometimes not.

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Peter and Michael are in Michael's apartment discussing his idea for a virus, we see Michael put down his beer on the table. The camera cuts to a shot of Peter and we see Michael from the side. He puts his beer on the table and just as he sets it down the camera goes back to a shot of Michael from the front and his hand is behind the beer in a sort of fist. There's no possible way he could have set the beer down and removed his hand from it in the time it takes to switch camera shots.

Michael Bolton: If we get caught, we're not going to white-collar resort prison. No, no, no. We're going to federal "pound me in the ass" prison.
Samir: I don't want to go to ANY prison!

More quotes from Office Space

Trivia: Red staplers like Milton's weren't made in real life, so the prop department had one specially made for the film. After the film's release, however, so many people wanted red staplers the office supply company started producing them.

Krista

More trivia for Office Space

Question: While recognizing that this film is entirely fictitious, how likely is it that an IT firm in 1999 would have allowed a former employee access to the premises after being laid off, never mind continue to send him a paycheck as with Milton Waddams? I myself was fired the following year and got the walk of shame treatment ("you have 5 minutes to clear your desk - the taxi's waiting outside") which at the time already seemed pretty standard.

Answer: They never told Milton he was fired, they just cruelly cut off his paycheck, figuring he'd eventually get fed up and leave (he'd actually been laid off years ago, but a payroll glitch kept him getting a paycheck). The management is hoping if they're cruel enough, he'll stop showing up.

Brian Katcher

This is actually the reverse of what happened. The glitch caused him to continue to receive a paycheck, even though he'd been laid off. The "Bobs" corrected the glitch, so he would no longer receive a paycheck. In an effort to avoid confrontation, they chose not to say anything to him, hoping he'd realise it and leave on his own.

Answer: Simply because he is basically invisible to them. Anyone can walk into that place, no guard outside, no key-card required. Nobody cared. At least you got a taxi.

lionhead

Exactly. These things can happen. It depends on the place and how they operate. As recently as January 2024, I read about one young woman who went into a Kroger grocery store and worked for six hours, as an experiment. She has also done this at Target and Walmart. She wears clothes that look like a real employee's.

More questions & answers from Office Space

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