Goofs

When Superman first grabs the wing of Air Force One, his "S" is backwards, revealing a flipped shot.

Superman pulls Lois out of her car and lays her on the ground with her arms pointing down and her clothes are all dirty. Yet when he screams in rage and takes off, her right arm is up by her head and her clothes are clean.

When Clark and Lois are leaving the Daily Planet on Clark's first day, he tries to follow Lois into the revolving door, getting his briefcase stuck. So, he then goes into the partition behind Lois. But when they come out into the street on the other side, they exit from the same partition. They enter the door separately but exit together.

At the train station, the New Haven engine that masks Otis's entrance to Luthor's lair and the one that hits the detective Harry are the same unit, number board 5048.

Luthor says that Krypton exploded in 1948, and that it took three years for the rocket that carried Kal-El to reach Earth, so it arrived in 1951, and he should be around three years old. Yet when Clark is in high school, it still appears to be the 1950s judging by the fashions, cars, and songs played on the radio.

The missiles fired were shown to be ballistic and not cruise missiles. They would rise to a high arc into the lower atmosphere and then descend upon their targets. They wouldn't have flown parallel to the terrain until they reached their targets.

No heliport would ever have electrical cables strewn across the helipad as shown on top of the Daily Planet building.

Actual footage of two Minuteman I ICBM's test launch from Vandenberg AFB was used in movie. Minuteman is not capable of non-ballistic, low-altitude, cruise flight as seen in movie.

In the opening sequence, when the film dissolves to show the Daily Planet building, the camera tilts up to show the Moon but the view shown is one that is not visible from the Earth, as it shows a large amount of the Moon's far side.

The pilots and crew on Air Force One are all members of the United States Air Force, but are not shown wearing uniform shirts or insignia.

Although Kryptonite weakens Superman, there is no significant reason as to why he cannot remove the chain itself and throw it away like Ms. Teschmacher does.

Obviously, the kryptonite weakens Superman to the point that even the lead chain containing it is too heavy for him to lift.

The recorded teachings by Jor-El in baby Superman's capsule states there are 28 known galaxies. By the 1960s, the Catalogue of Galaxies already listed 29,418 galaxies. However, it may be that when Jor-El said "known galaxies", he was referring to those which had been explored by the people of his world.

After Air Force One is struck by lightning and her crew apparently panics, the Captain instructs one of the others to inform the ground that the president is aboard. While Air Force One only becomes identified as such when the President is aboard and the notification would not be needed, it was a life and death situation and the crew did not care about protocol at that moment.

When Clark jumps out of the Daily Planet window on hearing Luthor's ultrasound tone and changes into his Superman costume instantaneously on the way down, his legs stay clad in Clark Kent's pants. Obviously, it was not an instantaneous process.

When plainclothes Detectives Harry and Armus are tailing Otis through Grand Central Station, Armus leaves Harry saying he's going to call for backup, when a uniformed officer literally is standing just a few feet behind him.

Law enforcement personnel have specific assignments, the uniformed police officer seen would likely just be a transit cop, whereas Harry would be calling for backup from someone else who is also assigned to the more secretive Lex Luthor investigation.

When Superman is catching the cat burglar falling down the side of the skyscraper, his cape (also note the burglar's flashlight) is flat against his body revealing the tilt camera special effect.

When Lex Luthor and Otis are brought to prison at the end of the film, the flaps of Luthor's bald cap are clearly visible on the back of his neck (especially when he tells Otis to shut up).

As Superman is reaching out to grab the missile to hurl it into space, you can see the scaffolding used for Christopher Reeve to lie on sticking out inside his suit.

When Superman lands on a street corner to drill himself down towards Luthor's hideaway, you can clearly see that the street is not concrete, but a pad that moves when he lands on it.

When young Clark is "running" next to the train, his feet are not touching the ground.

Jor-El wears an alien device with an uncanny resemblance to a Rolex watch on his wrist.

The Cheerios box in Martha Kent's kitchen is a 1970s design, when this scene would be set in the 1960s.

The little girl who is audibly slapped by her mother after getting her cat returned by Superman clearly isn't, judging by her shadow on the wall of her house.

Director Richard Donner is reflected in the Daily Planet revolving door when Clark and Lois are leaving (just after the "swell" exchange).

When the planet Krypton explodes, you can clearly see folds in the cloth on the ceiling that makes up the black "space" surrounding the planet. Explosions that are supposed to take place in space are photographed from directly underneath so the sparks "fly" evenly in direction of the camera.

When the gas station explodes, as Lois escapes in her car, we can clearly see a camera sitting on the back seat.

After jumping across in front of the moving train, a reflection of the cameraman can be seen in the train windows as Clark runs home.

During the sequence of Superman's first rescue, police and fire engines are shown responding to crash scene. Shooting briefly from inside the fire truck, the camera drives past a row of four or five location crew campers.

When they do the pan shot of the town site just before the cemetery scene, on the grain elevators the logo for the "Alberta Wheat Pool" is clearly visible on the green grain elevator.

Hoover Dam sits at the head of a long, narrow canyon which ultimately leads into Lake Mohave, and does not have any towns downstream within sight of it.

It is established that Lois and Jimmy are in California by the San Andreas Fault, and they are in daylight. When Superman pulls Lois out of the fault in the ground, then flies into space to reverse the direction of Earth's spin, the shot from space shows the west coast of North America is in darkness not in daylight like the regular ground based shots.

It is stated that the fault that opens up where Lois and her car fall in is the San Andreas Fault. Jimmy was rescued from hanging off the crumbling Hoover Dam, and seems to walk to where Lois is pretty quickly. However the closest part of the San Andreas Fault to the Hoover Dam is around 290 miles.

Although Metropolis is represented exclusively by New York City throughout the film, in the shot where the passengers in the bus see Superman fly by outside and one says "That's Superman!" the background plate of the building they're passing that's used in the effects shot from inside the bus is actually a shot of Robinson's department store on 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles.

The day after Lois has her interview with Superman, there is an extensive article in the newspaper. The article includes a picture of Superman. Lois didn't take any pictures, and since he was unknown before that, there wouldn't be a picture for her to include unless she took one. No explanation is given for how she got the photo.

When Jor-El introduces himself in the Fortress of Solitude, he explains that by this time, he will have been dead for thousands of Earth years. Yet during his teaching during Kal-El's journey to Earth from Krypton, Jor-El refers to Einstein's theory of relativity, which wasn't formulated until long after the destruction of Krypton.

In his double jeopardy, Lex has to have reprogrammed both of the missiles to hit two different targets, but Otis's blunder at reprogramming the first one is never actually corrected and Teschmacher reprograms the second one with a different set of numbers, indicating that this is the other missile set to a different target.

The pilot of Air Force One describes their position as "Ten miles - that's Ten-er miles" from the airport. The scriptwriters have incorrectly extended the aviation custom of pronouncing the number "nine" as "niner" to avoid possible confusion with the German word "nein", which means "no". The "er" suffix isn't added to any numbers not ending in 9. In addition, for distances of more than one digit, the digits are pronounced individually: "One-Zero Miles", not "Ten Miles".

When the commentator on the TV is reporting on the missile launch, he says that he is at the launch site at ground zero. However "ground zero" would refer to where the missile is due to land, not where it's launched from.

When Clark turns and goes down the hall from the ladies room, the extra passing him looks right the film crew.