Goofs

(at around 41 mins) Joel smears some type of sauce on his neck and plays dead when Clem is looking for her boots. After Clem leaves, the next shot shows the sauce that was on his neck is now on his face as he cleans it off with a napkin.

When Mary first comes into Joel's apartment, Patrick and Stan have been drinking beer. At first, just before the door is opened, they both have Rolling Rock (green bottles). After she has entered, Stan's beer has turned into a Labatt Blue (brown bottle).

Near the end when Mary is walking around the corner with her box of belongings and cassettes, the man walking directly behind her disappears for one shot.

When Mary first comes to Joel's apartment to visit Stan and Patrick, she goes into the kitchen to pour drinks. Just after she says "Let me do the honors," the pendulum of the clock on the wall is not moving. About 2 seconds later, as she is pouring the drinks, the pendulum on the clock is swinging.

Mary's hair changes from "windswept" (long shots) to neat (closeup) and back again when talking to Howard outside Joel's apartment, after Howard's wife catches them together and drives off.

When Mary is arranging an appointment on the phone for "the fifth", she says "Yes, that's a Wednesday." Presumably, this would be March 5, which was a Friday in 2004, the year in which the film is set, but was a Wednesday in 2003, the year the film was shot.

Many of the continuity errors listed here may well be deliberate. In the DVD extras, the movie makers explain that they played with the continuity to underline the struggle between the doctor and technicians trying to erase the memories and Joel trying to hold on to them.

When Clementine asks if she is ugly, Joel calls her "Tangerine" after the scene where she dyed her hair orange and he gave her this nickname. The film shows Joel's memories of Clementine working backwards from when she left to when they met, so Clementine would not have this nickname yet.

However, because Joel is conscious of his memories (as well as manipulating them consciously at the time) and had heard Patrick previously calling Clementine by this nickname, it's possible that he calls her "Tangerine" for this reason.

While on the train on the way from Montauk point, Joel and Clementine are shown to ride the train to their destination of Rockville Centre, NY but the Montauk branch of the Long Island Railroad only spans as far as Babylon, NY (a full 12 stops away from Rockville Centre, NY).

Per IMDb Guidelines for "Errors in geography", this is not an acceptable Goof; to wit, "things like the use of the wrong railway station for the stated destination and other things that only a local would spot, but that don't alter the 'reality' of the movie, are excluded."

After deleting a memory, the camera pans from Joel in an overhead shot, then moves to Stan and Patrick. A bundle of wires can be seen on the floor in between the bed and table, one of which obviously is not plugged into anything. [Director Michel Gondry pointed out this error in the DVD commentary of the film.]

Members of the public can be seen waving to the camera while Joel is driving in his car.

When Clementine goes to Joel's building foyer and meets Joel's neighbor (the "McRomance" guy), the actor waiting to walk into the scene is reflected in the door.

When Joel and Clementine sit down on a tree trunk in a forest, a log behind them moves up and down quite significantly as if someone stepped on it.

When Clem gets out of the car to get her toothbrush, a mic pack is visible under her shirt.

When Clementine and Joel see each other again at the diner near the beginning of the movie, the shadow of the camera is visible off to the left.

Long Island Railroad trains are shown with a red stripe on the cars. This is the livery color for trains on Metro-North Railroad's New Haven line. LIRR trains are blue.

Mount Vernon East Station on the Metro-North New Haven Line was used as a stand-in for the Rockville Centre Long Island Rail Road train station. The Rockville Centre station has one island platform that serves both eastbound and westbound trains rather than separate platforms. If Joel were at the Rockville Centre station he would not have had to run through an overpass to get to the Montauk-bound train.

Joel lives in Rockville Centre, Long Island, but it was not filmed in Rockville Centre. The street signs are wrong; parking on the street overnight is not allowed in Rockville Centre, the train station is not the one in Rockville Centre, and there is a building across the street from Joel's apartment than is much taller than the tallest building in Rockville Centre.

Mary tells a client that because of policy no one can have the procedure done three times. However, it is made clear in the film that every client has all of the memories about arranging to have the procedure done erased. This means no one would call to see if they can have the procedure done again because no one would remember having it done in the first place.