Goofs

The word ORCA on the back of the boat continually changes from shot to shot varying from very rusty letters to shiny letters.

When Chief Brody is typing up his report of Chrissie's attack, he lists the date of the incident/her date of death as 7/1/74. Mrs. Kintner's bounty sign says she'll pay the men who kill the shark that killed her son June 29th at the town beach. Alex was killed after Chrissie so these date don't align.

When the Shark first approaches Hooper in the cage, the above water shot shows the barrels being towed through the water at great speed. However, underwater the shark passes Hooper at less than half the speed of the barrels, and the shark has no (barrel) lines attached.

There are five yellow barrels on the Orca. After they get the third barrel in the shark, Quint walks past the barrels with his harpoon gun and there are still three barrels left.

Towards the end of the movie, Hooper acknowledges to Quint he cannot get "this little needle" (a normal hypodermic needle) through the shark's skin, but says if he gets close enough he can "get him in the mouth." However, in the next scene, during a montage sequence for Hooper's shark cage assembly, it shows that the hypodermic is not the actual weapon. The hypodermic is only used to measure and deposit poison into a much larger steel, Farallon-brand Shark Dart Repeater, one which does penetrate shark skin.

Great White Sharks cannot move backwards once their gills are under water, as seen towards the end of the film.

The Louisiana license plate which came out of the first shark reads "Sportsmen's Paradise", while the correct motto is "Sportsman's Paradise".

A pressurized scuba tank does not explode when shot by a high powered rifle. One could only burst open violently (can't "explode") when the internal pressure exceeds the burst limit of the tank which is not what was portrayed at the end of the movie.

As the town celebrates the Fourth of July, there are no leaves on the trees.

The Farallon Shark Dart Repeater, into which Hooper pours "20cc of strychnine nitrate" before he enters the shark cage, was not designed to accept, nor be a receptacle for, poison. It was designed solely to cause massive internal damage by triggering a CO2 charge once the steel dart penetrates the shark's skin.

Some think that when Quint first encounters the shark, he incorrectly refers to the Great White shark as an orca, saying that he's "gotta get a good shot at that orca's head". In fact, as he referred to the great white when first approached by Hooper and Brody inside his boathouse, he is calling it a "porker" - slang term for "big & white" - but with his accent it sounds similar to "orca".

During the barrel scene, the shark pulls three barrels underwater. MythBusters (2003) discovered that the shark would have had to exert 1200 pounds of pressure, which it would be incapable of doing. However, this is a thriller/horror movie, and shark's strength is intentionally exaggerated to make it appear invincible.

When Hooper is examining Chrissie's body he attributes it to an attacking squalus. Squalus is genus of dog sharks. He should know this, being a shark expert. However, at this point, Hooper does not know what kind of shark attacked her and so he is listing all of the species it could be. (He also indicates Longimanus and Isurus glaucus, which are whitetip and mako sharks, respectively.) More than that, though, "squalus" is the Latin word for "shark" and is often used by marine biologists as a generic name for sharks.

When Quint stabs the machete into the Orca's gunwale, the wood has already been marked up with gashes from the machete, probably from previous takes. However, it is conceivable that this was not the first time Quint has done this, and the marks in the wood were not a mistake.

As Brody is making a mayday call on the Orca, he places the mouth piece to his ear.

When Hooper finds the shark tooth in the hull of Ben Gardner's boat, the point is sticking up, with the root end of the tooth embedded in the wood. If the shark had lost the tooth while biting into the hull, Hooper should have found the point stuck in the wood, with the root end exposed.

When Brody is left on the boat by himself, the 3000 psi scuba tank floats beside him. A full scuba tank would sink. Only an empty tank would float because it does not include the weight of the compressed air inside. For the tank to explode, however, it would have to be full and pressurized.

During Quint's speech at the town meeting during which he offers to kill the shark, there is an obvious shift after he warns them they could be on welfare the whole winter. When the camera cuts back to him as he begins, "I don't want no volunteers," his hair and sideburns are longer, his shirt collar is disheveled, the audio has a slight echo, the chalkboard has moved about a foot to the right and its drawing has slightly changed, the room behind him is completely different; the furniture and papers posted on the wall are different, and Quint's own shadow and the shadow of a citizen on the left wall are different, indicating that the lighting has shifted. This last line was clearly shot at a different time and edited in.

As Brody walks through Amity, the trees are bare, despite its being July.

During the beach panic, attendants dressed in white with black ascots can be seen at the water's edge trying to guide the swimmers to safety. One of them, a young man with slick black hair, breaks character and is just standing there with his hands at his sides, laughing.

It seems unlikely that Quint would be wearing such heavy clothes, including his heavy coat during July in Long Island.

At the beginning of the film, a cherry tree is seen in full bloom. The film is set in July. Cherry trees bloom in May.

When Chrissie is attacked by the shark, her mouth doesn't match her screams in many shots of her. This is because the audio was added in of her screams by Spielberg pouring water into Chrissie's mouth while she screamed.

As the shark passes the Orca and Chief Brody fires his gun at it, the second gun shot can be seen hitting the water before the gun fires it. It happens immediately following the cut after the first gunshot.

When the old fisherman yells at his friend to swim faster and not to look back, his mouth movements aren't consistent with what he is saying.

When Hooper is in the cage and the shark attacks, just before he escapes, the rigging that maneuvers the shark can be seen.

When the two barrels pop up out of the water, there is a cut to Brody and Hooper, then a cut back to the barrels with the Orca in the background. In this shot, Quint is on the bridge while Brody and Hooper are at the stern, but a crewman can be seen moving around inside the cabin.

When the shark leaps onto the boat at the end, a silver machine can be seen inside one of the gills.

After the shark has pulled out the stern cleats and the three men are kneeling down in the boat, the film crew on a separate boat is reflected in the window of the cabin door of the Orca.

When the shark starts to pull the Orca backward, a towline is visible running from the stern of the Orca (to the tow/camera vessel), in spite of the attempted use of the rope lines from the yellow floats to cover it.

After finding and losing the shark tooth from Ben Gardner's boat, Hooper and Brody try to convince the skeptical mayor what they have seen. The mayor doesn't believe them, since Hooper has lost the tooth. However, Ben Gardner's badly damaged boat and and decapitated head should have been sufficient evidence. No mention is made of these again.

Quint has an M1 Garand rifle on board the Orca. In a real life situation most people would simply sit in the crow's nest and shoot at the shark until it died. The M1 Garand shoots the 30.06 rifle round, which has more than enough penetrating power to kill the shark.

In their first encounter with the shark, as Quint is aiming his dart gun at it, Brody is egging him on, "Kill it Quint, kill it!" But all Quint does is tag the shark with the first barrel. If he had merely shot it a couple of times with an extra large caliber rifle the animal would have died of mortal wounds then and there.

When Mike shows up at the beach, Martin asks him to go to the pond instead with the boat and friends. Then when the kids pull the fake shark stunt and everyone is running out of the water, Ellen is calling for Mike. But when she goes up to Martin, she tells him that he's in the pond, which she shouldn't have yet known.

At the end of the tiger shark scene the mayor tells a couple of guys to cut the shark down and "dump it in the drink" before it stinks up the whole island. That night the shark is resting in a warehouse when Matt and Brody come to cut it open.

After the boat's engine has died and Hooper tells Brody and Quint that he will go into the shark cage, a reflection of the boom mic can be seen in the window behind him, moving from left to right.

During his story about the USS Indianapolis, Quint says, "Our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent." In fact, distress signals were sent by radiomen on the Indianapolis, and the messages were received by three different sailors on Leyte. But Navy protocol was to ignore any signal that was not confirmed by a reply. The only operable radio transmitter on the ship could transmit signals via Morse code but could not receive replies from Leyte asking for confirmation, so the distress signals were ignored.

When Brody and Hooper are out on Hooper's "High Tech" boat, there is a radar antenna rotating on the bow of the boat. A radar antenna should be at the highest point possible on a boat. In the position shown on Hooper's boat, there would be no radar coverage behind the boat as it would be blocked by the cabin and bridge of the boat.

Quint claims that the USS Indianapolis wasn't reported missing for a week, implying that they were at sea that long. Actually, the survivors were spotted by a PV-1 Ventura after three and a half days. The first rescue efforts began only hours later.

Author Peter Benchley, playing the news reporter on opening day, describes the beautiful "white sands" of Amity island, while standing on its very conventional-looking tan beach sand.

Throughout the entire beach panic scene on the Fourth of July, many of the fleeing beach-goers can be seen smiling, laughing and having what appears to be casual conversation as they leave the water.