10 TV Mistakes You Can’t Unsee
Upside phones, unexplained wedding rings, and Michael Scott's invisibility...
It happens to the best of shows (and Pretty Little Liars)—every series has its dodgy mistakes, inevitable continuity errors, and momentary mess ups which you can’t help but quirk an eyebrow at. Some of these fumbles may be minor, but sometimes the screw ups are so monumental that you can’t un-see them once they’re pointed out to you—and some are also so obvious that you may not even need them pointed out to you in the first place.
The errant Starbucks cup which showed up in the otherwise medieval milieu of Game of Thrones during its nail-biting final season is probably the most recent case of a TV mistake which millions were dumbfounded by, but there are also plenty of moments which may not be production errors but instead come from the scripting stage—characters who the writers room forgot about vanishing without explanation or unexplainable errors in shows whose period setting makes them easy to fact check.
Some creators laugh them off, some cite creative licence to get a free pass, and some are lucky enough never to have them pointed out, but here are ten television mistakes we couldn’t help noticing and now can’t un-see.
10. Ted’s (Not-So-) Dangerous Date - How I Met Your Mother
A beloved sitcom which managed to spoil its appeal with a disastrous finale, How I Met Your Mother was no stranger to huge mistakes. However, we’ve decided that “the entire finale” was too big a misstep to include on this list, so fans of the Josh Radnor starring series will have to be content with this smaller, stranger screw up featured in one of the shows best episodes.
During a date which serves to prove the show's resident womaniser Barney right about his "crazy eyes" theory, the show's luckless protagonist Ted is shocked when his until-now normal paramour grabs a metal pole and plants it through the windshield of a car which almost bumped into them. Watch closely though—a moment after she smashes the windshield, she takes another swing at what is clearly a miraculously whole and undamaged windshield.
It may be a minor enough screw up, but it’s still one which jars with the viewer upon a rewatch—which is particularly unfortunate given that this’s widely agreed to be one of the shows most critically acclaimed outings.