Goofs

The word ORCA on the back of the boat continually changes from shot to shot varying from very rusty letters to shiny letters.

When Chief Brody is typing up his report of Chrissie's attack, he lists the date of the incident/her date of death as 7/1/74. Mrs. Kintner's bounty sign says she'll pay the men who kill the shark that killed her son June 29th at the town beach. Alex was killed after Chrissie so these date don't align.

There are five yellow barrels on the Orca. After they get the third barrel in the shark, Quint walks past the barrels with his harpoon gun and there are still three barrels left.

When the Shark first approaches Hooper in the cage, the above water shot shows the barrels being towed through the water at great speed. However, underwater the shark passes Hooper at less than half the speed of the barrels, and the shark has no (barrel) lines attached.

During the town meeting, the shot before Quint scrapes his fingers over a chalk drawing of a man-eating shark on the blackboard shows the back of the meeting room, including the blackboard. There is no drawing, and Quint is not in the shot, even though both are there a split second later.

Great White Sharks cannot move backwards once their gills are under water, as seen towards the end of the film.

When Hooper finds the shark tooth in the hull of Ben Gardner's boat, the point is sticking up, with the root end of the tooth embedded in the wood. If the shark had lost the tooth while biting into the hull, Hooper should have found the point stuck in the wood, with the root end exposed.

When Brody is left on the boat by himself the 3000 psi scuba tank floats beside him. A full scuba tank would sink. Only an empty tank would float because it does not include the weight of the compressed air inside. For the tank to explode however, it would have to be full and pressurized.

As Brody walks through Amity, the trees are bare, despite its being July.

When Brody and Hooper are out on Hooper's "High Tech" boat, there is a radar antenna rotating on the bow of the boat. A radar antenna should be at the highest point possible on a boat. In the position shown on Hooper's boat, there would be no radar coverage behind the boat as it would be blocked by the cabin and bridge of the boat.

Some think that when Quint first encounters the shark, he incorrectly refers to the Great White shark as an orca, saying that he's "gotta get a good shot at that orca's head". In fact, as he referred to the great white when first approached by Hooper and Brody inside his boathouse, he is calling it a "porker" - slang term for "big & white" - but with his accent it sounds similar to "orca".

During the barrel scene, the shark pulls three barrels underwater. MythBusters (2003) discovered that the shark would have had to exert 1200 pounds of pressure, which it would be incapable of doing. However, this is a thriller/horror movie, and shark's strength is intentionally exaggerated to make it appear invincible.

When Hooper is examining Chrissie's body he attributes it to an attacking squalus. Squalus is genus of dog sharks. He should know this, being a shark expert. However, at this point, Hooper does not know what kind of shark attacked her and so he is listing all of the species it could be. (He also indicates Longimanus and Isurus glaucus, which are whitetip and mako sharks, respectively.) More than that, though, "squalus" is the Latin word for "shark" and is often used by marine biologists as a generic name for sharks.

When Quint stabs the machete into the Orca's gunwale, the wood has already been marked up with gashes from the machete, probably from previous takes. However, it is conceivable that this was not the first time Quint has done this, and the marks in the wood were not a mistake.

As Brody is making a mayday call on the Orca, he places the mouth piece to his ear.

During the beach panic, attendants dressed in white with black ascots can be seen at the water's edge trying to guide the swimmers to safety. One of them, a young man with slick black hair, breaks character and is just standing there with his hands at his sides, laughing.

Sharks, like other types of fish, propel themselves through the water by moving their tail fin. It's also how they change direction while swimming.

The shark in the film is repeatedly moving through the water without moving its tail fin which is, of course, impossible.

When the shark jumps onto the boat, you will notice daylight shining through his gills. The sharks used for filming included a right and left design. Which meant one side had skin and the other side didn't. This design allowed the daylight to shine through to the other end and through the gills.

Just as Quint finishes scraping his nails on the chalkboard, the camera begins to move in closer when he takes the first bite of the cracker. On the right side of the screen under Harry's chin, Roy Scheider is seen ducking down while staring at the camera, as it pans toward Robert Shaw, and he then lifts his left hand up, cueing Robert's line.

During the scene at the hospital after the shark attack in the pond, as Michael and his bed are being wheeled out of the room and down the hall by a female nurse and a male doctor the actor playing the male doctor looks directly into the camera.

An editing error occurs during Hooper's examination of the first victim in the medical examiner's office. He lifts up her arm and states, "This is what happens..." there is a cut back to Hooper's face and he continues saying "indicates the non-frenzied feeding..." The editing obviously cut out an intervening scene that would have explained what happened as Hooper was alluding to. Perhaps the arm lift was kept in for graphic gruesomeness but the dialogue should have been fixed to match the rest of the scene.

When Brody, Hooper, & Quint are on the boat, Hooper is on the floor of the boat playing solitaire. The wind is blowing his hair all around but the cards are not disturbed.

The little boy with a white T-shirt sitting on the beach is first seen at 15min57sec. He seen again at 59min 29sec, but the shot at 1hr 1min 5secs looks to have been lifted from the very first scene.

During the scene when Brody is typing up a report about the first shark attack victim, he spells "coroner", "corner".

It seems unlikely that Quint would be wearing such heavy clothes, including his heavy coat during July in Long Island.

At the beginning of the film, a cherry tree is seen in full bloom. The film is set in July. Cherry trees bloom in May.

When Chrissie is attacked by the shark, her mouth doesn't match her screams in many shots of her. This is because the audio was added in of her screams by Spielberg pouring water into Chrissie's mouth while she screamed.

As the shark passes the Orca and Chief Brody fires his gun at it, the second gun shot can be seen hitting the water before the gun fires it. It happens immediately following the cut after the first gunshot.

When the old fisherman yells at his friend to swim faster and not to look back, his mouth movements aren't consistent with what he is saying.

In the underwater scene when the shark attacks the cage and just when Hooper escapes, we can see the rigging that maneuvers the shark.

When the two barrels pop up out of the water, there is a cut to Brody and Hooper then a cut back to the barrels with the Orca in the background. In this shot Quint is on the bridge while Brody and Hooper are at the stern, but if you look closely you can also see a crewman moving around inside the cabin.

When the shark leaps onto the boat at the end, a silver machine can be seen inside one of the gills.

After the shark has pulled out the stern cleats and the three men are kneeling down in the boat, the film crew on a separate boat is reflected in the window of the cabin door of the Orca.

When the shark starts to pull the Orca backwards, a towline is clearly visible running from the stern of the Orca (to the tow/camera vessel), in spite of the attempted use of the rope lines from the yellow floats to cover it.

After finding and losing the shark tooth from Ben Gardner's boat, Hooper and Brody try to convince the skeptical mayor what they have seen. The mayor doesn't believe them, since Hooper has lost the tooth. But what about Ben Gardner's badly damaged boat, and decapitated head? No mention is made of these again.

Quint has an M1 Garand rifle on board the Orca. In a real life situation most people would simply sit in the crow's nest and shoot at the shark until it died. The M1 Garand shoots the 30.06 rifle round, which has more than enough penetrating power to kill the shark.

In their first encounter with the shark, as Quint is aiming his dart gun at it, Brody is egging him on, "Kill it Quint, kill it!" But all Quint does is tag the shark with the first barrel. If he had merely shot it a couple of times with an extra large caliber rifle the animal would have died of mortal wounds then and there.

When Mike shows up at the beach Martin asks him to go to the pond instead with the boat and friends. Then when the kids pull the fake shark stunt and everyone is running out of the water we see Ellen calling for Mike. But when she goes up to Martin she tells him that he's in the pond. How did she know that?

At the end of the tiger shark scene the mayor tells a couple of guys to cut the shark down and "dump it in the drink" before it stinks up the whole island. That night the shark is resting in a warehouse when Matt and Brody come to cut it open.

After the boat's engine has died and Hooper tells Brody and Quint that he will go into the shark cage, you can see a reflection of the boom mic in the window behind him, moving from left-to-right.

During his story about the USS Indianapolis, Quint says, "our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent." In fact, distress signals were sent by radiomen on the Indianapolis, and the messages were received by three different sailors on Leyte. But Navy protocol was to ignore any signal that was not confirmed by a reply. The only operable radio transmitter on the ship could only transmit signals via Morse code but could not receive replies from Leyte asking for confirmation. So the distress signals were ignored.

When Chief Brody is talking to Larry Vaughan on the ferry, before he says "I appreciate it, I'm just reacting to what I was told," he calls him "Harry" instead of Larry.

Throughout the entire beach panic scene on the Fourth of July, many of the fleeing beach-goers can be seen smiling, laughing and having what appears to be casual conversation as they leave the water.

As Brody argues with Mayor Vaughan about keeping the beaches closed over the Fourth of July, he states that five people were chewed up in the surf (in New Jersey) in five days, in 1916. In fact, it took place over a twelve-day period, and three of the victims were attacked in a tidal creek.

After Hooper and Brody necropsy the Tiger Shark, Hooper wants to go out and search for the rogue shark, stating "It's a night feeder." All of the attacks happen either early morning, in the daytime, or at dusk. He almost never attacks at night.