Goofs for
Clue (1985) More at IMDbPro »

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the last solution (see trivia entry) it is said that Prof. Plum killed Mr. Boddy/Wadsworth, however, when Mr. Boddy was supposedly killed, everyone ended up in the kitchen except for Yvette. But he was absent for about three minutes, which gave him time to do the murder.
  
  
• Continuity: The order of the women entering the Study when they discover Mr. Boddy's body is missing.
  
  
• Continuity: In the Library, Col. Mustard's whiskey glass jumps from the table to his hand.
  
  

• Continuity: When they enter the kitchen to check on the cook, a pot on the stove disappears and reappears.
  
  
• Continuity: The ladder in the library disappears and reappears throughout the movie, as do the pots on the stove in the Kitchen.
  
  
• Continuity: The chandelier that fell when Yvette shot it disappears and reappears throughout the rest of the movie.
  
  
• Plot holes: When Mr. Boddy instructs the guests to murder Wadsworth in the study, he turns off the lights and the room is henceforth plunged into complete darkness. A gunshot is heard, and when the lights are switched back on, Mr. Boddy is apparently dead, resulting in confusion over how he was killed (the bullet only grazed his ear), and who tried to shoot him. None of this would have been possible considering the fire burning in the fireplace would have sufficiently illuminated the entire room.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Mrs. Peacock turns on the lights in the cellar and runs down, a modern pole for lighting or sound equipment can be seen on the left edge of the screen.
  
  
• Continuity: In the re-enactment, Wadsworth stabs a side of meat at a 90 degree angle. The next shot shows the dagger at a 30 degree angle.
  
  
• Continuity: In one of the solutions, Mrs. White strangles Yvette by waiting for her in the billiard room. In the scene before this she is still heard screaming upstairs as Yvette enters the room.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Col. Mustard and Miss Scarlet leave the lounge, one of the chandeliers crashes down from the ceiling in the hallway, yet the light level in the hallway never changes. This happens once again in the ending in which Ms. Scarlet is the killer, another chandelier in the hallway crashes down from the ceiling, yet the light levels in the hallway never change. The last chandelier was visibly on when Wadsworth shoots it.
  
  
• Plot holes: When Miss Scarlet and Prof. Plum are at the door, they never ring the bell. But Wadsworth goes to the door to greet them anyway.
  
  
• Continuity: When the guests are done searching the house, they hear Col. Mustard and Miss Scarlet yelling because they are locked in the lounge with the now dead driver. Yvette runs and gets the gun to shoot the door open, she trips on her way out of the study and shoots the chandelier and it begins to spin. The camera then pans to a shot from the ceiling looking downward on the room as Col. Mustard and Miss Scarlet are freed, the reflection of the lights from the chandelier are seen on the floor and are not spinning although the camera shot changes from the ceiling shot to a shot of the chandelier spinning and eventually falling. The reflection does not move although the lights themselves are supposedly spinning above.
  
  
• Continuity: After the cook is killed in the kitchen, Miss Scarlet drops her cigarette and kneels onto it or over it. When she gets up, the cigarette is gone.
  
  
• Plot holes: In the third solution, it is not explained why all the murderers use an identical pair of black gloves.
  
  
• Continuity: When Wadsworth is going through the events of the evening he says, "I introduced Colonel Mustard to Mrs. White" but he never did. He introduced Yvette and Mrs. White and noticed that they flinched.
  
  
• Continuity: In the second ending Mrs. Peacock is apparently the one who turned off the electricity, but when the electricity was turned off we saw Mrs. Peacock in the cellar beating up on a pipe.
  
  
• Continuity: When Prof. Plum picks up Miss Scarlet on the side of the road, he turns his windshield wipers on. In the next scene (of the car moving) the windshield wipers are not on.
  
  
• Continuity: Wadsworth locks the door with key so no one can leave, but every time the doorbell rings the door is unlocked already. He never has to use the key to unlock the door.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the dog presses against the window as Mr. Boddy is trying to escape, the entire glass wall wobbles.
  
  
• Continuity: When the FBI agent comes to the door near the end of the movie and begins speaking about Armageddon, the door is shut on him, and his "Genesis" banner is shut in the door and falls to the floor inside the house. In the next shot, the banner is gone.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When everyone gangs up on Mr. Boddy.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: The guard dogs only bark or growl when Wadsworth and Colonel Mustard arrive at the mansion. They are soundless when the singing telegram girl is shot, but they should have barked considering the disturbing sound of the gunshot.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the scene at the end when Miss Scarlet has been exposed, she has the revolver which is supposed to be empty (1+2+2+1 or 1+1+2+1). She is pointing it at everybody. You can see into the cylinders and there are clearly at least 4 bullets in the empty gun.
  
  
• Continuity: When answering the door to the Motorist, Wadsworth clearly places the key in his waistcoat pocket. However, later we see Colonel Mustard steal the key from Wadsworth's blazer's side pocket.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In Miss Scarlet's ending, Miss Scarlet is revealed to know Mrs. Peacock's husband from her real job, and still refers to Mrs. Peacock's husband as "Senator Peacock".
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: During the scene where all the guests are eating dinner in the beginning of the movie, Mr. Green points out that all the guests excluding Prof Plum live in Washington D.C., even though Mrs. White never mentions once that she lives there. All she ever mentions is that she was married to a nuclear physicist. However, just before this interchange, Mrs. Peacock asks "Does anyone here not live in Washington D.C?" to which only Prof Plum responds.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: When the cook is found dead, and Col. Mustard is by her head, he touches her arm, but the arm moves of its own accord, as if the actress pulls it under her head. Also, Mr. Green lays the cook's body on the floor, and then the next camera angle Miss Scarlet and Col. Mustard lay her on the floor.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: One ending includes a reference to Perry Mason. While the TV series did not start until after the setting of the movie, the radio series and books existed and were quite popular.
  
  
• Continuity: In one of the endings, Col. Mustard is seen as being uninjured. Then in the next shot, he is shown holding a handkerchief up to his apparently bleeding nose.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the 1+1+2+1 etc scene, a large cardboard sheet can be seen at the bottom of the screen, on the hall floor. This is only visible on the Fullscreen VHS version of the film, which is presented with the widescreen mattes that were intended to hide the sheet removed.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: When Wadsworth is re-enacting Colonel Mustard's arrival at the mansion in high speed, a microphone is visible at the bottom of the screen. This is only visible in the Fullscreen version of the film, which has an incorrect "open matte" transfer.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Characters make references to Mrs. White's disappearing nuclear physicist husband in each of the three endings. Of the two of her five husbands that were mentioned, one was a illusionist that disappeared and never reappeared, the other was a nuclear physicist that was emasculated and decapitated. The nuclear physicist did not disappear. Even Mrs. White, herself, makes this error. Wadsworth first introduces this mistake when the discuss her first husband, stating, "Ah, but he was your second husband. Your first husband disappeared also." This implies that her second (nuclear physicist) husband had disappeared when in fact, "He was found dead at home."
  
  
• Continuity: The candlesticks change location on the table throughout the dinner scene in the dining room. The candlesticks are usually in the middle of the table, but in close up shots, the candlesticks are moved away from the characters to the left or right side, most likely to see the actors' faces when they talk.
  
  
• Continuity: The first time the Chief comes to the door as the religious guy, he sticks his reading material in the door and drops it. From that point on and in all three endings, the pamphlet isn't visible on the floor. And, somehow, in the "B" ending, when Mrs. Peacock is next to her car, the Chief has the pamphlet in his hand, before dropping it and drawing his gun!
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the cop is killed, he is in the middle of a telephone conversation. However, the electricity had already been switched off. Nowadays, telephone lines operate independently of the public power grid, allowing phones to be used even during power outages. However, such has not always been the case. In the early 1950s, when this movie was set, a power outage, deliberate or otherwise, would have terminated an existing phone conversation and made new phone calls impossible.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mr. Green is at the door, and although it's raining hard, Mr. Green isn't wet when he goes inside and he isn't carrying an umbrella.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Col. Mustard said that he stole essential Air Force parts during World War 2. The Air Force became a separate branch of the military after World War 2. During World War 2, what became the Air Force was the Army Air Corps. However, some returning airmen may have already been calling themselves Air Force officers -- as they did in the 1946 movie "The Best Years of Our Lives."
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: A cop vehicle drives past in the rain, heading towards the house and passes a broken down vehicle. As it passes, there is a shadow of an arm that appears on the broken down vehicle. This actually occurs twice.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Colonel Mustard offers everyone a whiskey at one point. But when Wadsworth is reenacting the events of the night, he starts with saying Yvette offers everyone champagne. You can clearly see that they are both referring to the same bottle.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first ending, the flashback of Mrs. Peacock screaming about the poisoned brandy shows her shaking the glass violently and throwing it to the ground. In reality, all she did was drop the glass and start screaming.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mrs. Peacock begins to scream about the poisoned brandy, Colonel Mustard jumps from Miss Scarlet's left to her right. Additionally, Mrs. White's arm jumps from on her chest to down at her side.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When everyone discovers Yvette in the billiard room after she screamed, Yvette says "It's what Mrs. White said in the study. One of you is the killer.". Professor Plum responds, "How do you know he said that?" However, he meant to say, "How do you know that SHE said that?"
  
  
• Continuity: While the glass didn't actually shatter when Mrs. Peacock dropped it, it disappears when Mr. Green takes Mrs. Peacock over to the couch.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Mrs. Peacock uses the word beatnik. This word only became common after the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The story takes place in 1954.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the third ending, Wadsworth (in a voice over) speaks of Col. Mustard splitting up with Miss Scarlet prior to killing the motorist. The visuals show Col. Mustard engaged in an argument with Mrs. Peacock. This was to illustrate the part where Col. Mustard suggests they split up into pairs.
  
  
• Continuity: When the chandelier falls and Colonel Mustard is saying he "can't take anymore surprises", you can clearly see him tense up before the chandelier hits the floor.
  
  
• Continuity: When Yvette, Mr. Green, Wadsworth and Mrs. White collide on the second floor landing, Yvette and Mrs. White and wearing high heels. When they are running down the stairs, they are wearing flats. When the action resumes at the bottom of the stairs, they are wearing heels again.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: When Professor Plum rolls over the apparently-dead Mr. Boddy onto his back to see where he has been shot, his eyes are closed. Later, in the first ending, Wadsworth talks about how Yvette listened on everyone's conversation in the Study through the tape recorder. When Wadsworth narrates that "She heard the gun shot, she thought he was dead", there is a flashback to the scene where Professor Plum rolls Mr. Boddy onto his back, but this time, Mr. Boddy's eyes are wide open instead.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When Prof. Plum first checks Mr. Boddy's body, Mr. Boddy's head is centered between the two orange sofas at least one foot away from either sofa. In the very next shot, Mr. Boddy's head is up against the orange sofa that Miss Scarlet is kneeling on.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When Prof. Plum is sitting on the couch between the corpses of the Cook and Mr. Boddy, Mr. Boddy's position changes before Col. Mustard closes his eyes.
  
  
• Continuity: SPOILER: When the Singing Telegram is shot, the position of her dead body changes when everyone later finds her.
  
  

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