Goofs

When Roy is first shown with his living room creation (model of Devils Tower made with trash/bricks/chicken wire), looking through the porch door it is clearly raining (most noticeable by the rain dripping onto the can that's on the ground just outside the door). The TV is playing an episode of Days Of Our Lives. As DOOL goes to commercial (Budweiser commercial plays) Roy looks out the window. He looks out at people outside in their yards, and it is bright and sunny out.

When the entities are attempting to get into Jillian's house, they pop the floor vent out of its hole and it lands upside down on the area rug. In the next shot, the vent is back in its hole, even though Jillian hasn't touched it yet.

After Roy drives through the fence, one of the posts lands on the hood. It falls off after he drives through another fence, but when he stops at the barricade, it's back, along with a couple of other pieces of fence that weren't there before.

The size of the Mothership is incompatible in different shots. When it arrives it's behind the mountain and a lot bigger than the mountain. When it's in front of the mountain it's no longer bigger than the mountain but smaller or at best about the same.

As the 12 people in red selected by the government head for the mothership, the blond woman is two people in front of Roy, and not wearing her sunglasses. In the next shot, she has her sunglasses on, and is now immediately in front of him.

Horses, not camels, are used for transportation in Mongolia. If they wanted to show camels, they should have been Bactrians, not Dromedaries.

During the ABC newscast that Roy sees, the voice over on the videotape report says that "Devils Tower was the first national monument erected in this country". Devils Tower wasn't "erected" by anyone - it is a natural geologic formation of igneous rock which has been there for over one hundred million years. The announcer should have said "the first national monument designated in this country", not erected.

Electrical utility workers are almost 100% represented by labor unions in the United States. This is especially true of Indiana, a bastion of organized labor in the 1970s. Neary would never have been summarily fired in the morning no matter what he did. Instead, he would have been put on leave (at worst unpaid but possibly paid) pending an investigation and a hearing with a union representative present.

The insignia worn by some of the Navy fliers do not correspond to their ranks.

The pickup truck that Roy drove for work has a front license plate. Vehicles in Indiana are only issued one license plate.

The newspaper headline describing Barry's abduction reads "Cosmic Kidnaping" rather than "Kidnapping". This is not a misspelling but a now-uncommon variant that some publications still used in the 1970s. (Time Magazine used it well into the '90s.)

The Mothership is clearly several times larger than the circumference of Devils Tower; therefore, it could not be hidden by it. The Mothership just appears out of nowhere, and the mass of clouds that appeared in the preceding shot are gone. However, Steven Spielberg has stated that this was entirely a stylistic directorial decision and special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull stated that having the mothership first appear behind Devils Tower gave it an immediate sense of scale.

When Roy is in his truck, the maps and papers get blown off of his dashboard and then he speeds away. When he stops his truck upon meeting Jillian and her son, everything is stacked very neatly on top of the dashboard. It's possible, though, that he stopped between the two locations to clean up his truck.

While it's true the Helvetica typeface was not designed till the 1950s, the calendar at the beginning scene may not be wrong. It's set in a sans-serif typeface but it's not clear it's Helvetica, and there were other typefaces from the time that looked the way that calendar does.

From Muncie, Indiana (Roy's town) to Moorcroft, Wyoming (outside Devils tower) is 1,250 miles and would take at least 18 hours to drive. Yet Roy arrives at Moorcraft the next day in the late morning.

Later, though, the car he is driving is seen to have Wyoming plates, indicating that he flew to Wyoming and rented a car when he arrived.

When the Mothership appears over the mountain at the end, it casts a shadow over those staring up at it, even though it must surely be above the light source.

When the Mothership first appears and passes over Devils Tower, stars are visible through hull of the ship in some of the shots from underneath the ship.

Shortly before Barry Guiler is abducted from his house by aliens, electrical appliances are seen moving and powering themselves. In the kitchen, the stove rings are meant to be glowing. However, they cast a shadow on the rear panel of the stove - indicating that the rings are actually cold and being lit from underneath with red lights.

When Roy is building the clay mountain in his living room, the cut in the clay can be seen where he later will pull off the top of the mountain.

When Roy's wife is backing out of the driveway with the kids, a wooden platform can be seen on top of the house. This was built by Roy in a known deleted scene but still shows in the movie with no explanation.

Philip Dodds was billed twice in the end credits: once as Phillip Dodds playing Jean-Claude and again as Phil Dodds playing ARP musician. The character Jean-Claude is the ARP musician. Author Ray Morton in his book Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film was unable to find a reason for this.

When the UFOs go through the toll booth and the guard stands up, in the closeup of his reaction, the clock on the wall behind him is flipped, so the entire shot must be a "mirror image".

When the 1940s-era abducted military personnel are coming off the mothership, they have 1970s-style haircuts and sideburns.

The Mexican officers who appear in the Sonora Desert sequence wear Federal Army uniforms. Those uniforms were used during early the 20th century but not anymore by the 70s.

The Flight 19 Avenger aircraft seen in the desert are painted in a three-color scheme, which was indicative of early World War II aircraft. In reality, since there planes disappeared after the war (in December 1945), they were painted in a solid dark blue color.

At the start of the film, the air traffic controllers are wearing 1970's headsets. Towards the end of the film at Devils Tower technicians are wearing circa early-1960's rocket firing-room headsets.

Three minutes into the movie, when the car with the license plate AK3-962 comes in, it is in the middle of an extreme sand storm, yet its car windows are rolled down. No one would drive in this storm with the windows rolled down.

When Roy has his first encounter with the UFOs at the railroad tracks he sticks his head out of the driver-side window exposing the right side of his face. Later in the movie is sunburn is on the left side of his face.

In one scene, many people are on a hillside watching two bright lights approach them from near the horizon. As the lights get closer a few more lights with lower intensity can be seen trailing behind them. The next shot shows that at least the two brighter lights were military Huey helicopters which are shown hovering near and scattering the people. Huey helicopters have a very distinct and prominent "thump" generated by their rotors. The noise is very clear, especially if the chopper is headed directly towards the observer, and can be heard from a considerable distance from the aircraft. It's very doubtful that two Hueys, possibly followed by more, would be able to approach the observers as quietly as shown in the scene. The "Bell Thump" can be very reassuring if you're stuck in the weeds and need to get out of there fast. But, it doesn't make for a sneaky approach.

(audible though not visible) When Roy and Ronnie argue in their bedroom, Toby closes his bedroom door. Just before he closes the door, Steven Spielberg can faintly be heard saying, "Close the door now."

Shadow of camera on the screen door of the farm.

As Barry opens the door (just before he's abducted), bright lights are seen moving just beyond the trees. Some of the light can be seen reflecting off the dollies on which the lights are mounted.

The coordinates received by the scientists (40°36'10" N, 104°44'30" W) aren't very close to Devils Tower at all. The coordinates are actually in a farm paddock about 200 yards east of hwy 85, half way between the towns of Pierce and Ault, Colorado (17mi [27km] east of Ft. Collins, Colorado), 276 miles (444 km) due south from the Devils Tower monument (they got the north latitude wrong by 4 degrees, it SHOULD have been 44°35'25"N. In addition the longitude is incorrect, it should be 104°42'54"W)

One of the Air Traffic Controllers at the Indianapolis Center asks the Air Force if they have any tests going on in Restricted area 2508. R-2508 is in California and Nevada. It would be controlled out of Los Angeles Center.

The scene where the Muncie police cars are chasing the UFOs shows them driving in mountains and through tunnels, and cross into the state of Ohio. Muncie has no mountains, no tunnels, and is not that close to Ohio. There is another county between Muncie and the Ohio state line. The Indiana Toll Road is about 100 miles north of Muncie, paralleling the Michigan state line.

When Roy Neary is first shown driving in Wyoming looking at maps, the location is given via subtitle as Moorcroft, Wyoming. In the next scene, a sign on the train station can be seen labeling the depot as "Gillette, WY." Gillette is approximately 28 miles WEST of Moorcroft, the wrong direction for someone headed to Devils Tower.

Stars shown on a summer night near Muncie, Indiana are inappropriate for the latitude and the season as shown by the dense foliage. The constellation Orion would be much higher in the sky in the upright position in which it is shown - but only during the winter and late autumn.

When long-lost planes and ships start to reappear, scientists believe that this might be linked to "aliens in the the neighborhood". And when missing people (including those of Flight 19) start to disembark from the mothership, the scientists log their return on a large screen with photographs. But it's extremely unlikely these scientists could have deduced a huge mothership would appear on Earth, releasing its abducted people. (Thus, the scientists having prepared with aforementioned photo-collage.) This stretches credibility to the breaking point. There is no indication that a huge mothership was going to appear, not to mention return its abductees. Thus, not even the most optimistic scientist would have suggested to prepare for such an event, photo-collage and all.

Taking in count the landscape and the terrain around Devil's Tower respect to the size of the Mothership, it's impossible that Mothership "emerge" completely from behind Devil's Tower.

During the ABC newscast, a reporter states that the Devils Tower National Monument was created by Theodore Roosevelt in 1915. Roosevelt was President from 1901 to 1909 and the Monument was created in 1906.

Lacombe says that the hand signals were developed by Zoltan Kodaly, to teach music to the deaf. They were, in fact, developed by John Curwen, to teach tonal content in music to British schoolchildren.

After starting communication using the five tones, the mothership plays a group of twelve tones, eleven tones, and ten tones, all notes with the same rhythmic value. One of the technicians then states: "She sent us four quavers, a group of five quavers, and a group of four semi-quavers."

'Steven Spielberg (I)' and producers wanted Walter Cronkite as newsreader for the broadcast that Neary ignores in the "living room sculpture" scene. However, Cronkite's network would not allow him to take the role, so the producers settled on ABC's Howard K. Smith. Unfortunately, the news footage of the Wyoming reporter was filmed before this decision; as a result, the reporter says "Order your steak well-done, Walter." Later, when Roy is interviewed, he mentions the newscast with Walter Cronkite.

Although the man selling birds calls them canaries several times, all of the birds shown in any of the cages seen on screen are doves or pigeons.