Star Wars Mistakes That Slipped Right By You

Even in a galaxy far, far away, everyone makes mistakes — and that includes Jedi masters, Sith lords and George Lucas. The cast and crew behind Star Wars ushered in a new era of computer-generated special effects and digital filmmaking, but they were all still inherently human. If you look beyond the lightsabers, it's apparent in the myriad mistakes and missteps you can find in each of the movies in the saga. And that's not even counting anything to do with Jar Jar Binks. Check out these Star Wars mistakes you might have missed.

Who knows what weirdness you might find at a Jedi's place? When Luke Skywalker swings by Obi-Wan Kenobi's hut to try out his dad's lightsaber, there's initially a jacket hanging from the archway. But after a cutaway shot, the jacket must have gone to the dark side, because it's nowhere to be seen.

George Lucas took special effects light years into the future with Star Wars, but his team at Industrial Light & Magic were learning on the job. To depict asteroids, they used everything from old shoes to recycled shots of space ships—including one that's very familiar. In a view from the helm of the Millennium Falcon, you can briefly see the ship fly past itself in the middle of a barrel roll.

There's a reason people forget Keira Knightley was in The Phantom Menace before Pirates of the Caribbean: the British actress plays Sabé, a handmaiden who serves as the costumed decoy of Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) throughout most of the movie. But the fact that Knightley's first name is misspelled in the end credits probably doesn't help either.

Lando Calrissian reveals himself to be two-faced in The Empire Strikes Back, but he unintentionally takes it to a literal level in Return of the Jedi. As he playfully calls his pal Han Solo a "pirate," Calrissian is suddenly shown wearing all his clothes the opposite way.

Obi-Wan Kenobi uses the Force to convince stormtroopers that C-3PO and R2-D2 aren't the droids they're looking for. But he apparently could've just made them disappear. After a quick cut, the trooper who was right behind them suddenly vanishes.

In The Force Awakens, it's pretty clear that Rey is far from an ordinary young woman—but at one point, she does something incredibly extraordinary on board the Millennium Falcon. As she points at something with her right hand in a close-up, the wide shot shows her pointing with her left.

In 1980, the action sequences revolving around the Empire's large AT-AT Walkers were larger than life. But looking back, some of the practical special effects seem a little crude. When one of the massive transporters comes tumbling down in The Empire Strikes Back, you can't miss the piece used to tip over the miniature model.

When Darth Vader takes on Obi-Wan Kenobi during an epic lightsaber battle, Vader also inadvertently takes on the laws of physics. The buttons on his chest plate first appear on Vader's right, then they switch to his left. If you look closely, you'll see it's because the entire shot is reversed.

Although the Jedi Younglings that Yoda trains are capable of some astounding things, one appears just a little more capable. After a cutaway, the little guy with the reptilian face who starts the shot out near the back of the group is suddenly at the head of the class. It's probably just a continuity error, but it could also be that kid's best attempt to impress his wily green teacher.

The Millennium Falcon has been recreated countless times in various video games, and it finally reappeared on the silver screen courtesy of The Force Awakens. However, there's one Falcon feature that you'll never see again: golden dice. Lucky gambler Han Solo has these dice hanging in the cockpit for exactly one scene in A New Hope (look right above Chewie's head). However, after that single moment, they disappear for the rest of the Star Wars saga. Those dice were later given a quasi-canonical backstory, as the dice Han used to win the Falcon from Lando Calrissian. Interestingly, there's a deleted scene from a previous cut of The Force Awakens where Han hangs the dice back up in the cockpit, but that scene, like our favorite smuggler, is long gone.

Han frozen in carbonite has become an iconic image. It even adorns T-shirts, jewelry, and the occasional refrigerator. In fact, people love the image so much they don't notice it's completely wrong. Don't believe us? Look at frozen Han's shirt. He's sporting the low-cut top he wore in A New Hope rather than the one he wore in The Empire Strikes Back! The likeliest explanation is this prop was made before Han's look for the newer film was finalized. Or perhaps a side effect of carbonite sickness is that you get to change into something comfier before turning into an ice cube.

Near the end of The Empire Strikes Back, our protagonists (minus the frozen Han Solo) are making a frenzied escape from Cloud City. What adds to the drama are the TIE fighters chasing them from the planet all the way into space, where Darth Vader and his Star Destroyers are waiting. Because the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive has been disabled, Vader is hoping to capture his son and the other heroes alive, and at one point, he looks out of a window to see the escaping ship. There's just one problem, though. Just seconds before this shot, we see the Falcon being chased by no less than three TIE fighters. But when Vader looks out the window, however, those fighters have disappeared entirely, leaving only the Falcon. What kind of Jedi mind trick is this?

Establishing Jabba the Hutt as a scary space gangster in Return of the Jedi involved a whole lot of violence and droid drama. First, Luke hands an unwitting C-3PO over to Jabba as a present. Later, we see a grisly room where the sadistic slug apparently tortures droids that have displeased him. Of course, this brings up a rather troubling question: do droids have pain receptors? And if so, why? In addition to all that confusion, the torture scene has a particularly weird goof. Pay close attention as those hot irons burn that poor, defenseless droid, and you'll notice they never actually touch him. In fact, you can actually see the steam shooting right out of the robot's feet, minus any burn marks. Sounds like the creative minds behind Star Wars aren't exactly experts when it comes to torture... which is probably a good thing.

One of the major plot points of The Force Awakens involves the New Republic secretly funding the Resistance. However, it's tough to see where all of that money went, as it looks like the Resistance could only afford one X-wing... or, more accurately, one X-wing cockpit. The movie features several close-up shots of the different X-wing pilots as they make their desperate attempt to destroy the Starkiller Base. If you look closely to the left and right sides of the cockpit windows, you can see every ship shares the exact same damage marks. While director J.J. Abrams was committed to creating practical sets instead of repeating the CGI mistakes of the prequels, it seems he spent a little more time on some sets than others.

In a movie jam-packed with thrilling scenes, one of the most exciting moments of The Force Awakens comes as Rey and Finn are being chased while flying the Millennium Falcon. With enemy ships in hot pursuit, Rey is just getting used to piloting the craft, while Finn is trying to operate one of the Falcon's turrets. In one dramatic moment, Finn's turret is damaged and stuck in the forward position, forcing Rey to line up a perfect shot for him. He then blows away the final TIE fighter and cheers, and audiences are usually too busy celebrating with him to notice one big problem. As Finn enjoys his little victory, the turret that's been stuck in the forward position is now pointing straight up! With so many technical problems, no wonder everybody thinks the Millennium Falcon is a piece of junk.

Kylo Ren has made a number of weird aesthetic choices in his life, and we're not just talking about his hair. In addition to periodically consulting the melted helmet of Darth Vader, he inexplicably owns a table that's covered in ashes. Later canonical sources established these are supposed to be the ashes of his enemies, which helps further establish his "none more Goth" lifestyle. But really, we only see the table when Ren is interrogating Rey, as he places his own helmet down in the soot. However, the table can't be seen in any of the wider shots. As it turns out, that's because the table was supposed to be in Kylo Ren's quarters and was simply added to the interrogation scene during the editing process.

It seems most moviegoers were enjoying Rogue One too much to spot a mistake involving everybody's favorite droids, C-3PO and R2-D2. We finally see the bickering duo at the Yavin IV base, and as usual, C-3PO is doing what he does best: complaining. This time, he's specifically whining about being left behind while the fleet goes to Scarif. At first, nothing seems amiss with the two hanging out at the Yavin base. However, the end of Rogue One spills over immediately into the beginning of A New Hope, which means the droids who explicitly complained about being left behind somehow ended up with the fleet anyway. Director Gareth Edwards has claimed those droids, along with CG Leia, showed up at the battle a little bit after the rest of the fleet, but as we don't see any of this happen onscreen, it seems Edwards might be telling the truth "from a certain point of view."

One of the coolest characters in Rogue One, Baze Malbus is presented as a man of very few words. For all intents and purposes, he's the heavy weapons guy on the team, and he demonstrates this very capably in a scene where he fires a rocket launcher at one of the Imperial walkers. Now, this is at the point in the movie where things are looking pretty bleak for our heroes, so Baze quickly puts the rocket launcher down, presumably because he may need to quickly run away. However, in the very next shot, he's still holding the exact same weapon. This is obviously just an editing goof, but we like to think that Baze just has trouble letting go of his toys.

Played by the peerless Ben Mendelsohn, Director Krennic serves as the primary antagonist of Rogue One, but for a high-ranking military officer, the guy makes a number of weird decisions. Those choices start near the very beginning of the movie, when he personally flies down to the planet to recruit Galen Erso back to the Empire. Krennic, possibly deciding he needs more exercise in his life, parks his ship far, far away from Erso's home. During his long walk, you can see the wind clearly blowing Krennic's cloak backward. When he's talking to Erso, however, the wind is mostly gone, as indicated by the fact that his cape is hardly moving now. But as soon as we see another wide shot, the wind is billowing again, making the weather seem kind of inconsistent. Of course, it's entirely possible that even the wind was in a hurry to get to the action and was periodically trying to tug everyone into the next scene.

It took more than 40 years after the first Star Wars movie hit theaters in 1977 until a live-action television show set in the same fictional universe — with the same high standards and cinema-quality production values — could even exist. In 2019, Disney+ launched with The Mandalorian, a serialized adventure series about bounty hunter Din Djarin and his dealings with the seedier elements of the galaxy. In the second-season episode "The Siege," the titular Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), along with rogue associates Greef Karga (Carl Weathers) and Cara Dune (Gina Carano), finds himself in a shootout on an Imperial outpost on the planet Nevarro. In addition to quality sci-fi storytelling, The Mandalorian also apparently inherited the Star Wars tradition of slight, amusing, and very visible mistakes. As the three characters hoist their weapons, just to left of Greef and just barely in the frame, a fourth figure can be seen. They're wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a watch — 21st century Earth clothes, in other words. That's no Star Wars character — it's a crew member accidentally standing in the shot, and accidentally immortalized in The Mandalorian forever.