Goofs for
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: Extra in the background moves quickly when Norville examines the newspaper that hits him.
  
  
• Continuity: The letters that old-timer is sorting.
  
  
• Continuity: When the camera angle switches to follow Waring Hudsucker down during his fall, we suddenly have no glass falling with him. The glass is visible when he breaks through the window.
  
  

• Anachronisms: In the beatnik club, Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood" plays in the background. The scene takes place New Year's Eve 1958, but the Impulse! recording, from "Duke Ellington and John Coltrane," wasn't released until 1962.
  
  
• Factual errors: The newspaper with the headline "Imbecile Heads Hudsucker" is dated Monday, December 19, 1958. That date was on a Friday.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Norville talks to Mr. Finlandson he is supposed to insult him in Finnish. In fact he does not speak any known language but something which sounds a mixture of Swedish and Dutch.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Near the end of the film, when Norville walks out of the juice bar, one of the album covers hanging on the wall on the right hand side of the screen is Tom Lehrer Revisited (Lehrer Records TL 201). This is supposed to take place on December 31, 1958, however that album was not recorded until November 23 & 24, 1959 (side 1) and March 21 & May 4, 1960 (side 2), and its cover photo was not taken until June 29, 1960. The album was released in the second half of 1960.
  
  
• Continuity: The bottom of Norville's coffee cup is perfectly clean when he lifts it up, but it leaves a ring on the newspaper.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Norville puts Amy on the couch in his office she keeps speaking, but her mouth doesn't move.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In stock footage of kids enjoying the Hula Hoop there the American flag has 50 stars. The U.S. flag had 48 stars in 1958.
  
  
• Anachronisms: One of the microphones at Norville's press conference has a flag that reads "WWOR-TV." WOR-TV didn't add the second "W" until the 1980s.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Dr. Bronfenbrenner's film of Norville's psychiatric session begins with a SMPTE Universal leader that counts down from 8 to 2. This type of film leader wasn't developed until the 1960s. The film would have actually had either an Academy leader counting from 11 to 3 with black film in between or one of the brand new (for the late 1950s) SMPTE Society leaders that counted from 11 to 3 but had focusing cross hairs, rather than black film, between the numbers.
  
  
• Continuity: When the boy is playing with the hula hoop, a crowd of kids runs up to him. You can see a boy with a green shirt and yellow suspenders to the right of screen. But when the crowd runs off, this boy is to the left of the screen.
  
  
• Continuity: Za-Za is standing next to Buzz when he hits Norville. After Norville falls to the ground, Za-Za is missing from the scene.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first few minutes of the movie, we see a wide shot of the Hudsucker building from blocks away. However, when Waring Hudsucker jumps, there is clearly another building directly across the street. If that building were there, we could not get such a clear view in the first shot. Not only that, but as Hudsucker is falling, the scene cuts to a secretary sitting by the window, and again, the building across the street is gone.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Sidney Mussburger has a Newton's Cradle on his desk, yet this was only invented (by the English actor Simon Prebble) in 1967.
  
  
• Continuity: When Norville and Musburger get into the elevator together, the elevator doors open in the middle. When they get out on the first floor, the elevator doors open from one side to the other.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The time period of this film is the last month of 1958, i.e., December. Yet, when the Hoola Hoop hits the stores, the Toy store shown shows nothing indicating Christmas is only a few weeks away, and all but a few of the boys shown in that sequence are wearing short-sleeved shirts.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the crossword editor asks about "a six letter word for a condition of the hypothalamus", Amy replies with "goiter". A goiter is a condition of the thyroid, not the hypothalamus.
  
  
• Continuity: When Waring Hudsucker jumps from the conference room they say he "drops 44 floors...", "45.", "Counting the mezzanine.", we see from all the outside shots that this is the first floor under the clock. When Norville Barnes enters the elevator to take the blue card to Sidney J. Mussburger's office he asks to go to the 44th floor but since Sidney J. Mussburger's office has the "3" from the clock visible it must be 2 floors above the conference room floor, per the above mentioned outside shots, which would be the 46th floor assuming the conference room is on the 44th. And then at the end of the movie Moses says "Norville Barnes climbed waaay up to the forty-fourth floor of the Hudsucker Buildling... there was a man who jumped from the 45th floor", his office was on the 46th floor and assuming he meant the sign painter, he actually "jumped" from the upper level of the two story high 46th floor and would have landed on the conference room ceiling.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Norville is in the mail-room, telling the old mail-sorter about his invention, Norville holds up the drawing, and you can see Norville's lips are not moving when he says his line: "You know, for kids."
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Norville is in the mail-room, telling the old mail-sorter about his invention, Norville holds up the drawing, and you can see Norville's lips are not moving when he says his line: "Yes siree... This is my ticket up upstairs."
  
  

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