555 wrote:

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It's in the scenes in the cargo hold. Look closely at the background.

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I'll look again.

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Goofs:

Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the opening scene, we see the reflection of a computer screen on the helmet with a cup on the right. When we see the helmet again, it is showing a different screen, so the cup is not present.


Continuity: When Kane, Dallas, and Lambert are in their spacesuits exploring the alien ship, all are wearing white/gray fabric covers on their heads under the domes of their helmets. These are like the "communication carriers" or "Snoopy hats" worn by Apollo and later astronauts. But when Kane's helmet is cut off in the sick bay, no Snoopy hat.

Continuity: The amount of alien slime on Dallas's hand changes between shots.

Continuity: During the conversation about Brett being a parrot, the length of his cigarette constantly changes.


Revealing mistakes: Blood squib visible during chest-bursting scene.


Continuity: During the "chestburster" scene, Parker is holding Kane's arm when he is convulsing. However, after the alien arrives and Parker has clearly backed away with arms in the air, you can still see Parker holding Kane's arm.


Revealing mistakes: The two holes caused by the facehugger's acid blood in the ceiling of the two different decks have exactly the same shape (re-used shot).


Continuity: The milky "sweat" that drips down Ash's forehead before he fights Ripley disappears after he throws her onto the desk. It was not wiped away, because his head is perfectly clean, rather than smeared.

Crew or equipment visible: Just before Brett is killed and the alien drops down behind him you can clearly see wires attached to the alien.


Continuity: The alien's tail snakes between Lambert's feet, but it's not her feet that are shown. Lambert wears cowboy boots; the feet shown wore joggers. The feet and legs were Harry Dean Stanton's (see Trivia).

Continuity: Mother's two 30 second countdowns take 36 and 37 seconds respectively.


Continuity: During Parker's fight with Ash, the sleeve on his right shoulder suddenly becomes torn and a safety pin is visible holding it together. In the next shot we see his shirt intact and we see Ash tearing it.


Continuity: When the alien is popping out of Kane, the camera changes angle and there is a significant amount of blood missing from his shirt. Then when the angle changes again, the blood comes back.


Continuity: When Ripley comes out of the closet with her spacesuit on in the shuttle to try and get rid of the Alien and she straps herself into the seat the straps are up over her shoulders. Then she scene switches to her fingers pushing the switches and the scene then goes back to her in the seat and the straps are down on her arms. The next time the scene changes again the straps are up over her shoulders.


Revealing mistakes: When trying to abort the countdown, the cancellation instructions Ripley follows with her finger are actually just a French translation of the detonation instructions she followed earlier.


Continuity: During the introduction scenes of the Nostromo, the stars in the background are maintained even though the spaceship is shown from different angles.


Continuity: Right before Dallas is killed he touches a patch of alien slime on the floor. In the next shot he has more slime on his hand than there was on the floor.

Crew or equipment visible: When Dallas is crawling around through the bowels of the Nostromo before he is taken by the alien, you can see a dolly track lining the floor.

Continuity: When Ripley consults mother, she puts her left hand on a ledge and begins to type with her right. In the close-up she is typing with both hands, but when we cut back to the wider shot, she is still leaning on the ledge with her left.


Continuity: When Lambert comes to tell the rest of the crew that it will be ten more months until they reach Earth, Ripley is leaning forward listening to her. In the next shot she is leaning against the wall when she says, "Oh God."


Revealing mistakes: Near the end of the film, as Ripley is about to board to the shuttle, the pet carrier she is carrying (supposedly containing Jones, the cat) is clearly empty.


Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Ripley visits Parker and Brett to inspect their progress, she says "Yeah, you'll get whatever's coming to you." But the word "Yeah" is missing entirely from the soundtrack, and the rest of the sentence is out of sync with the video. This error is not present on the original Alien DVD box set, where Ripley's "Yeah" is muffled but quite audible. But the 2003 theatrical release and the new "Alien Quadrilogy" boxed set both have the word entirely absent.


Audio/visual unsynchronized: Just after the time limit to override the self-destruction of the ship has expired, the clock starts counting down from 5 minutes to 0. We see the clock counting down and it cuts away when the timer reaches 4:57, and then mother says "ship will self-destruct in T-minus 5 minutes."


Factual errors: During the landing sequence, Kane issues the instruction "Roll 90 degrees port yaw." Roll and yaw are two separate directional axes. The correct instruction (and what the ship actually does) is "Roll 90 degrees port."


Continuity: Just before Ripley enters the Narcissus (shuttle), she is carrying Jones's carrier with the "window" to the front. The next shot shows her holding the carrier with the window to the rear.


Continuity: When Kane is thrashing around at "one last dinner before bedtime" prior to the chestburster, his shirt becomes untucked. When the Alien finally arrives, the shirt is tightly tucked in.


Continuity: When Brett is demonstrating the electronic probe weapon for the first time, the spot on the overhead has a burn mark before he touches it (from prior takes?).

Crew or equipment visible: A crewman with a black panel of some kind is visible through the smoke as Ripley runs through the corridors at the end of the film.


Continuity: When Ripley is aborting the self destruct, the four tubes sink into the case while she is canceling it. However, when she stands up, the four tubes are all sticking out of the case again.


Continuity: Near the end when Ripley is in the shuttle closet putting on the space suit there are 2 axes hanging on the wall. When she puts the helmet on they have vanished.

Revealing mistakes: Throughout the film, at numerous points, what is reflected in the crew's helmets doesn't agree with what should be reflected.


Incorrectly regarded as goofs: A close-up of the Alien egg when Kane is looking at it shows water droplets falling upwards off the egg, revealing that the shot was done with the camera upside down. (according to Trivia, this is an intended effect by Ridley Scott)


Revealing mistakes: When Parker beats Ash with the fire extinguisher, the prop bends back and forth. Also, standard fire extinguishers are bright red; the prop is a faded orange.

Revealing mistakes: After Lambert hits Ash with the electric prod, the camera pans down and we can see wires on the ground leading to the prop Ash torso atop Parker. The torso has no legs, ending at the waist. (Visible in 1979 theatrical wide-screen and full-screen versions, but not in 2003 director's version).

Continuity: After Ash wrestles Parker to the deck, Lambert runs over, grabs Ash (the prop torso) and throws him aside. In the next scene, Ash is still atop Parker. Lambert then hits Ash with the electric prod.


Continuity: When Ash wrestles Parker to the deck, Lambert can be seen dragging Ripley through a hatchway into an adjoining corridor. In the next scene, Lambert is just picking Ripley up. She moves Ripley only a short distance toward the hatch before dropping her to assist Parker.


Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the crew is sharing a meal after Kane regains consciousness, Parker is shown to be talking. The shot changes to show the crew from a closer angle, and although we can still hear Parker speaking, he is shown to be laughing softly and not speaking at all.


Miscellaneous: At the very beginning, when Dallas is going through the computer login sequence to communicate with Mother, and all the green-lettered commands are flashing by, the word "ALIGNMENT" is spelled "ALLIGNMENT".

Factual errors: The planetoid where the Nostromo finds the alien spaceship is said to be 1200 kilometers diameter with a surface gravity of .86G. (Earth is 1G.) The horizon would curve visibly on a moon that tiny. By Newton's Law of Gravitation, a body that small would need a density of 50 grams per cubic centimeter to achieve .86G. This is more than twice the density of osmium, the densest element known. It's unlikely that the moon would be made of a massive ball of some hitherto unheard-of, super-dense, stable element. Together, this indicates that the size of the moon is incorrect.


Revealing mistakes: The computer readout says to "insure" the safe return of the organism rather than to "ensure" it.

Continuity: When Ripley finds out the truth from mother, Ash is seen standing next to her. A brief physical exchange ensues and Ripley leaves the room. As she leaves there is no injury to her but when the door opens on the other side she has a bloody right nostril.


Continuity: When Dallas is first entering mother, as he passes through the last doorway... when he is seen outside the door, one of the lights on the door-frame is burned out (on his left) but in the next shot, it is lit.

Miscellaneous: One of the moons in the system containing LV-426 (the target moon) is out of phase with the others.

Revealing mistakes: The landscape of LV-426 is obviously a segment of the larger planet landscape.


Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Almost every space movie - with the notable exception of "2001 A Space Odyssey" - has the sound of the ship in space: it's called special effects.


Continuity: During the chest-burster scene, Kane's shirt is not tucked in during the initial struggle but becomes tucked in when the alien breaks out of his chest (the fake chest).


Revealing mistakes: When Dallas is climbing through the air shafts of the Nostromo, a ladder he uses wobbles.


Revealing mistakes: As Ripley blows the alien out of one of the lifeboat's aft nozzles, the engine exhaust is obviously water because it dribbles down the camera. Ridley Scott stated that they used water as a substitute for some sort of plasma. At any rate, there's no reason for the exhaust - whatever it is - to dribble down a camera glass that isn't supposed to be there.

Revealing mistakes: Several shots early in the movie where the crew are at their stations the monitor images are projected onto their faces. This is impossible - they would have to look into projectors instead of monitors, so this effect just doesn't make sense.


Crew or equipment visible: Just after the alien bursts from Kane's chest, you can see 2 steel rods supporting either side of the head. They disappear into the neck when the body is raised high enough.


Continuity: Jones vanishes from his carrier as Ripley boards the Narcissus. This is deliberate because the fiery explosion effects in the scene would be traumatic for the trapped animal. However, as a consequence, Sigourney Weaver handles the carrier more roughly than Ripley would if Jones was inside.


Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Mother's reports of the remaining time in the countdown to self-destruct all say that the explosion will occur "in T minus minutes". In fact, as she is saying that the event will occur after a certain period, the "T minus" is unnecessary. She should simply say that the event will take place "in minutes".


Factual errors: When the Nostromo approaches the planet, there is too short time between the phases of the approach - such distances in space would require either much more time or much greater speed. In the latter case the deceleration required for orbital insertion would have a lethal effect on the crew.


Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Ripley asks Mother to explain "Special Order 937", Mother replies that it is to "...Insure return of organism for analysis...". The correct word should have been "Ensure", not "Insure". Mother the super-computer made a grammatical error.

Continuity: SPOILER: Just before Dallas is killed, Ash's headset disappears.

Continuity: SPOILER: In the split second shot where the alien drives its tongue into Parkers head, you can see he is bald, but throughout the rest of the movie, he has hair. Also, in a freeze-frame of the shot you can see the alien tongue is white, not airbrushed like the rest of the creature.


Factual errors: SPOILER: When the Nostromo blows up, Ripley would not be able to hear the sound of the explosion immediately and at the same time as she sees the fireball, as the dingy on which she escapes is already miles away from the spaceship. Even given that films like this use the effect of sound being transmitted through space - an airless void - the different speeds of light and sound would have to be taken into account.