Goofs for
The Great Mouse Detective (1986) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The footprints Basil follows outside Baker Street and in the toy store appear and disappear between cuts.
  
  
• Continuity: When Olivia is hugging Basil at the end of the movie, her hair ribbon is on her right ear, but when she steps back it's on her left ear.
  
  
• Continuity: After escaping Ratigan's trap, Basil changes from his sailor disguise to his regular clothes. When he's done, he is clearly wearing the blue sailor pants under his coat. When posing for the camera, however, he is wearing his regular brown pants.
  
  

• Continuity: After putting Ratigan's bell on a shelf, Basil leans back and crosses his arms. On the next shot, he is leaning forward with his right arm behind his back. Also, the bell disappears and is not seen again.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Dawson and Olivia are seeking Basil's help at his house, Basil sits down and starts playing the violin, holding it in his right hand and having the bow in his left. When Basil the stands up in another shot, he is holding the violin in his left hand (like it's supposed to be) and the bow in his left.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end of the film, in the first two cuts (opening the door and close-up) of the Lady Mouse from Hampstead, she has a mole on her left. But in all the other scenes after that, the mole has vanished. Of course, her eyes are shaped differently, too.
  
  
• Continuity: When Basil and Dawson enter The Rat Trap, Dawson bumps into a poker-playing lady in green with a mole on her right cheek. As she turns around to blow smoke in the doctor's face, the mole is on her left; then when she turns back to the game laughing, the mole is back on her right.
  
  
• Continuity: During the mousetrap scene, Hiram Flaversham (Olivia's father) is tied and gagged. When we cut back to him again from another shot of something else, the gag is missing.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ratigan's thugs are setting the spring on the overkill trap down, we cut to a close-up of Basil and Dawson tied down with the trigger-bar already set. But in the next shot, Fidget is setting the bar on the trigger.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: At the end of the movie, when Basil says, "But-but I thought...", his lips aren't moving.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ratigan talks to Hiram when he is near the bottle, we see Olivia in the bottle, wearing her Tam O'Shanter hat. But Fidget wore it earlier (along with Olivia's scarf and dress), and we don't see Olivia's clothing after that until the final scene so Olivia couldn't have gotten her clothes back just yet.
  
  
• Continuity: Fidget's peg-leg is normally on his right-hand side, but when Olivia stomps on his toes, his peg-leg is on his left-hand side.
  
  
• Continuity: When Basil gets ready to go to Toby's house, Basil puts on his Inverness cape, which was hanging on the suit of armor, although it wasn't there a moment before.
  
  
• Continuity: Basil's front door is quite plain on the outside, but has wooden cross-pieces on the inside, except in one scene where it suddenly has them on both sides.
  
  
• Continuity: During the "Let Me Be Good To You" scene, when Dr. Dawson dances on stage with the girl mice, the lead singer grabs him by his right arm and swings him around. Suddenly, she's holding his left arm and his head has turned completely around.
  
  
• Continuity: During the Big Ben sequence, Ratigan's necktie comes off at one point, but then it's back on when he and Basil fall down the clock tower, and then disappears when they land on the clock hand.
  
  
• Continuity: The clamp on the leash changes color when Basil latches it to Toby's collar.
  
  
• Continuity: Shots of Basil handling Fidget's list show no writing on either side of the paper.
  
  
• Continuity: Close-ups of Fidget's list show torn edges on the paper, but the paper is intact in long shots. Also, the tears are inconsistent in each close-up.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the climactic fight, as Ratigan says, "There's no escaping this time, Basil", his lips don't match the dialog.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the opening shot of the Big Ben sequence, there is a cog just to Basil's left whose teeth go through a staff next to it.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of Ratigan's rant ("I have the power. I am supreme !", etc.) he snaps a crutch in his hands. He is still holding the two halves when we cut to a two-shot of him and the robot Queen, but when he jumps up on the banister on the next shot the two pieces are gone. (He is not seen holding them before the jump.)
  
  
• Continuity: When the lighting strikes on the close up shot of the picture of Ratigan that Basil has on his fireplace, his evil smirk shows his teeth. However, they are not shown in any other shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ratigan's sanity snaps in the clock tower, he tears his cape in half to free himself. In his very next shot however, it is still there, albeit becoming much more ragged, only going down a little past his shoulders. But when he and Basil land on the hands of the clock, his cape, though torn, is back at it's normal length.
  
  
• Plot holes: Fidget somehow finds Olivia at Basil's apartment, yet it's evident that Ratigan did not instruct him to go there. The arch-villain was surprised when Fidget told him he ran into Basil at the toy shop, and obviously didn't realize that Basil was already working on this particular case.
  
  
• Continuity: Just after Dawson has said goodbye to Olivia and her father, there is a shot of him wearing his black overcoat but when it next cuts to him he says "It's time I was on my way too" and he puts the coat on.
  
  

Related Links