Goofs for
Catch Me If You Can (2002)

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• Anachronisms: The fire alarm system in the hospital dates from the late '80s and early '90s.
  
  
• Continuity: While having lunch with his father, Frank Jr's hand jumps from the table to his side, and on and off his wine glass, between shots.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Frank and Carl are returning to the USA, Frank looks out the window of the jet and says, "there is La Guardia Airport, runway 44." Airport runway numbers are derived from their compass heading and go from 01 to 36, so there is no such thing as "runway 44". This could be Frank just "thinking of a number" (character error) but it could just as easily not.
  
  

• Factual errors: As Frank and Carl are flying back to the US, Frank says that he sees runway 44 at LaGuaria. This is impossible as runway numbers are based on the magnetic compass headings ranging from 01-360. 36 is the highest designation for a runway. Upon looking at the AFD (Airport Facilities Directory), LaGuardia does have a runway 04, which would be a north heading runway.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank Jr. goes to meet his father in a bar, he is wearing a United States Postal Service jacket. The symbol on the patch is correct, but it wasn't known as the United States Postal Service until 1971. In the '60s, it was the U.S. Post Office Department.
  
  
• Continuity: The gauze pad/small retractors Abagnale is given in the ER disappears in one shot then reappears two shots later.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At the French prison in 1969, Hanratty uses a pop-up mini-umbrella. This type of umbrella wasn't available until the late 1970s. Until then, all umbrellas were of the two-hand, slide-up variety.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Hanratty and Abagnale are aboard a plane at LaGuardia Airport in 1969, a shot of the New York City skyline shows the World Trade Center towers fully built. However, the towers were not completed until 1973.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The green-capped McCormick spice bottles on the spice rack in the apartment were not available in the early 1960s.
  
  
• Continuity: The checks Abagnale gathers up when he's confronted by Hanratty shift position between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank Abagnale Jr. gives the new car's keys to his father at the restaurant, Sr. takes the ribbon off the box, and sets it down to the right of his plate. In the next shot the ribbon is to the left of his plate. The box itself moves around and alternates between partially open and completely closed.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During one of the Christmas telephone conversations between Frank and Carl, Frank's phone has a modular telephone jack connection. Modular telephone jacks did not exist at the time.
  
  
• Continuity: The wine stains on the carpet in the scene in which Frank Sr. dances with his wife.
  
  
• Factual errors: Stopping a press like the one shown in the movie would not result in a flurry of cut checks flying through the air. Additionally, the small paper cutters shown in the movie would not be used with printing machines of this size - the cutter used would be a machine which can fit the entire width of the paper and make the precision cuts obviously required for checks and the like.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank is watching a court scene to prepare for his stint as a lawyer, the television he is viewing clearly has a remote control infrared panel and control buttons on the front. This did not exist in the 1960s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: As Frank first walks down the street in his Pan Am uniform, a Fedex delivery truck is partially visible in the background. Federal Express wasn't founded until 1971 and the Fedex logo on the truck was designed in 1994 when the company officially adopted the Fedex brand name.
  
  
• Continuity: Frank kisses a girl and smudges her lipstick. In subsequent shots, the lipstick is smudge-free.
  
  
• Anachronisms: We see TWA aircraft several times, all with the famous two stripe logo. That logo was not introduced until 1975, several years after when the movie was set.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Carl flips through Frank Jr.'s high school yearbook looking for his photo, the close-up shot reveals the same names duplicated on multiple pages of the book.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank and his father pull up to the Chase Bank, there's a Duane Reade drug store in the background with a current DR logo.
  
  
• Continuity: When Abagnale has dinner with his fianc»e, he finishes the prayer and we see her shaking her napkin at him to let him know to put it in his lap. In the next shot she is just picking up her napkin.
  
  
• Anachronisms: National Airlines logo at Miami International Airport is incorrect, it should have been the "SunKing" logo introduced in the mid-1960s.
  
  
• Continuity: When Carl is visiting Frank in prison, the comic books jump around between shots.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The slide projector used by Hanratty in his briefing on Abignale has a carousel, which was not released until Christmas of 1968.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The interior design of the aircraft bringing Frank and Carl back to NYC from France has the large windows, sculpted ceiling and gentle curves used in wide body aircraft. This "Psychology of Comfort" design was first implemented with the Boeing 747 which was not in commercial service at the time of their trip home to New York.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank is arrested in France in the late 1960s, the police car he gets into has an antenna/defroster embedded in the rear window, a feature which was not available at the time.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Hanratty is looking at a map of Europe trying to figure out where Abagnale is, Germany is unified in the map, and the former Yugoslavia is divided into several different countries.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Hanratty makes a phone call outside Frank Sr.'s apartment, the entire phone booth shakes, as if it is not bolted to the ground.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank interviews potential stewardesses, one of them sings a line from the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane". This scene takes place in 1966 or 1967, long before the song was made popular by Peter, Paul, and Mary in 1969. The song was written in 1967, which might have been before the scene in question, but it is highly unlikely that a student would have known the song before 1969.
  
  
• Continuity: The non-speaking role of "stewardess" Miggy is played by Amy Acker for the scene in the hall and when the stewardesses get out of the car with Frank outside the airport. However, for the scenes inside the airport, another (non-credited) actress has replaced her.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank Sr. hugs his son during the pancake scene, his jacket moves about between shots.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank Jr. receives his driver's license in the mail, he peels it off the letter, like modern credit cards.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank gets to Miami International Airport to wait for his fianc»e, a car driven by a man wearing a hat stops right behind him. When Frank looks around searching for potential police men the door of the car behind is being opened. In the next shot there is no car behind him at all.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the French police come to catch Frank, the plate number of the car is 44 (number of the state) but for Montrichard plate number is 41 (44 is for "Loire Atlantique").
  
  
• Anachronisms: The front-loading washers in the Coin Laundry, were not introduced in that style until the mid-'80s. They are Wascomat W74 Front Loading washing machines and the square door handle and rotary temperature control knob was a design change made in the '80s.
  
  
• Continuity: It is sunny at poolside at the Tropicana in L.A., with young ladies sunbathing. But when Frank is almost caught in his motel room, he points to the "perp" being escorted to the car by "another Secret Service man", and the streets are clearly wet, as well as raindrops all over the car itself.
  
  
• Factual errors: French police cars in the '60s had amber (yellow) flashing lights and not blue as shown in the movie.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When we first see Brenda at the hospital, she is wearing 1970s-style braces on her teeth.
  
  
• Continuity: En route to Handratty's first confrontation with Frank Jr., Amdursky and Fox are wearing sunglasses in one shot as the car turns into the hotel parking lot (after the "knock-knock joke"), but not in others.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Hanratty is briefing fellow FBI agents about check routing, the first US map seen has many geographical errors (Kansas City where Omaha should be, St Louis in middle of Missouri, Boston in Maine). When the same map is shown again the cities are correctly located, and the map shading scheme has changed.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Brenda is last seen waiting at the Miami airport directly behind a sidewalk curbcut for wheelchairs which was not introduced until at least the mid-1970s, particularly after federal legislation for the handicapped was enacted.
  
  
• Continuity: When the little girl on the street asks Frank if he's a "real live pilot", she's standing in front of a yellow car. After he speaks to her, he begins to walk away, and the yellow car is gone.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the FBI agents reveal to Frank's mom how much money he has stolen, she reaches for a pack of Kent cigarettes. The cigarette she lights has a "cork" filter - Kents had a white filter
  
  
• Continuity: Frank is measured for the PanAm Airlines jacket and is shown being fitted in a jacket with the two stripes of a flight engineer. Moments later he is seen on the street wearing the 3-stripe sleeves of a co-pilot.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Early in the movie, when Frank Sr. attempts to pull off a bank caper with the help of Frank Jr., there is a 1980s city bus in the background.
  
  
• Continuity: Frank points out the Manhattan skyline from the plane, but one of the subsequent shots shows them at a much higher altitude where only clouds are visible.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In several scenes, Agent Hanratty is seen using what is known generally as the "Weaver Stance" when holding a handgun. This is particularly evident When he first meets Secret Service Agent "Barry Allen" in the hotel room. Most of the movie takes place during the 1950s and/or 1960s. The "Weaver Stance" was only first developed during the 1950s, and was not taught widely until the late 1970s or early-1980s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Bottle of Tab diet cola shown in pool scene is from late 1970s at the earliest (it is a throwaway bottle with the revised logo on a pink label).
  
  
• Anachronisms: Use of OCR-A character-reader font on letters, driver's license. It was first introduced in 1970.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank tries to escape after printing the checks, he is holding the checks in his arms in a disorganized pile. In the next shot, before he throws them to the floor, they are sorted more neatly.
  
  
• Factual errors: The expert printers tell Hanratty that only Heidelberg printing presses could print so accurately, and could be found only in Europe. Although it's true they are the finest press, they could be found in the 1960s in any "quality" print shop in the United States - and today as well.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the beginning of the movie, Hanratty visits Frank in a French prison and notifies him the terms of his extradition "according to the European Convention on Human Rights". However, France ratified the European convention only on 3 May 1974, and it would have no relevance whatsoever at the time the action takes place (1969).
  
  
• Factual errors: "Saxophone solos" is misspelled as "Saxaphone solos" in the closing credits.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Carl confronts Frank in France, just after he yells "They're going to kill you!" His mouth is clearly seen to move more, but no sound is heard.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Carl is not allowed to go to Spain and is sitting in his office watching the checks, the stamp on the back of one check is of 1997 whereas the scene is shot in 1967
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. are entering at Chase Manhattan Bank, a little white truck is shown three times, twice going in the same direction in a couple of seconds.
  
  
• Continuity: When Frank is walking down the street with his new co-pilot uniform, the sidewalk is dry. In the next shot, the camera is above his head and the sidewalk is wet.
  
  
• Factual errors: Many of the cars in this movie have new style aero dynamic black wiper blades. Cars of that time period had standard silver/chrome colored wiper blades.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Hanratty shows his ID to a frightened maid at the top of a hotel staircase, the badge with the FBI logo is facing the camera and not her, so in actual fact all she would see is the black leather outer of the wallet.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Frank and Carl are returning from France there is some stock footage of the lower half of an aircraft landing. The aircraft shown is actually a TWA 767. The first 767 did not fly until 1981.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When the plane that takes Frank Jr. and Carl back to the States lands, we are shown a sequence where the wheels touch the runway; the plane filmed is a 767, which did not fly until 1981. The interior shots are that of a 707.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Frank Abagnale Jr. flies "deadhead" in the cockpit of a TWA plane, the cockpit windshield has a central pane (as opposed to a metal divider in the dead center of the windshield). The only jet airliner that would've had such a windshield configuration at the time was the Douglas DC-8, which TWA did not fly; they used the DC-8's main competitor, the Boeing 707.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Carl Hanratty goes to the hotel to find Frank, he pulls out his gun and scares a maid, he then flashes his badge and says it's ok, FBI. He holds the badge backwards, with his ID facing away from the maid.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Frank goes to the flight deck to ride on the jump seat, the jump seat that is pulled out has no restraints on it.
  
  

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