Goofs for
Flash Gordon (1980) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: When Princess Aura is showing Flash how to fly the ship when they are traveling to Arboria, she tells him, "The left lever controls direction, and the right controls altitude". Moments later while still flying, Flash gets mad at Aura for not showing him how to use the thought amplifier, so he shoves the left lever forward. The ship responds with a nose-dive.
  
  
• Continuity: When one Ming's guards looks through a porthole of the ship, it seems that he is just outside. The next shot reveals a crowd of guards, but they are behind the ship and far away from the capsule.
  
  
• Continuity: During the fight between Flash and Prince Barin, the cuts on both men from the whips (especially the cuts on the face) change positions and sometimes disappear altogether.
  
  

• Continuity: In the same fight, Flash's shirt (that he wore in Aboria) goes from clean to dirty and then clean again.
  
  
• Continuity: Again in the same fight, some of the spikes on the fighting platform can be seen folding under both Prince Barin and Flash's body as they fall on them (watch closely as the scene changes quickly), clearly showing that the spikes are made of rubber.
  
  
• Continuity: During the wedding sequence, Prince Barin is roaming around Ming's Palace. He is at one end of a corridor when he shoots one of three guards who appear from around a corner at the opposite end. When we next see him, Prince Barin and the remaining two guards have switched positions (Prince Barin is now standing over the body of the guard whom he initially shot down).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the shot of the Ajax cruiser after the Hawkmen have taken it, it is seen with a swarm of Hawkmen following it. During this shot, the superimposed Hawkmen are not composited in for the first frame.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Flash and company first arrive at Ming's palace and see the floating orb droid for the first time, three wires holding it are clearly visible. Later as it floats down the hallway two holes punched in the extended pieces are seen where the wires are threaded through.
  
  
• Continuity: When Flash and Dale are flying the plane that crash lands, he is in the pilot's seat and she in the co-pilot's seat. When they crash land they have switched seats.
  
  
• Continuity: When Zarkoff's memory is being erased, it is shown going backward, from present to past. It then shows him hugging a wife or girlfriend and then it shows her being killed, which is forward, not backward.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Flash is hiding from the Ajax in the cloud, in one shot you can see the stage on which the scene was filmed for two frames.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: There are many blue-screen compositions where characters or items appear partly transparent. This is probably due to the copying process for the travelling mattes that were used to superimpose the effects shots over one another.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Flash holds out his hand to help Baron over the edge of the tilting combat platform, one of the spikes bends as Flash's leg pushes against it.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: After General Kala announces the execution of Zarkov and Barin, there is a small scene when the gold faced guards are lined up and ordered to march by their superior (in some distorted voice). The distorted voice matches the mouth movements of the superior for several words, then doesn't as his mouth is closed. However, the voice continues to sound off.
  
  
• Continuity: At the very beginning of the film, Ming and his henchman are discussing "an obscure body in the SK system", which the inhabitants refer to as the planet "Earth", pronounced as if the word is completely foreign to them. However, at that moment, Ming activates a button on his console labeled "Earth Quake".
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Flash and his friends first appear before Ming, the tributes are done first. Ming states "and now the tributes, from Ardentia". However, in the very next sentence, the representative from that country states "We, the people of Ardencia" with a "denc" pronunciation rather than the "dent" stated by Ming.
  
  

• Plot holes: SPOILER: Klytus orders Kala not to program Zarkov above level 3 because his mind can't take it, but Kala orders him programmed to level 6, apparently to kill him. But after the programming, she doesn't appear surprised at all that Zarkov is alive and responsive.
  
  

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