Goofs

When Gatsby meets Daisy at Nick's cottage, it is 4 pm. Later, they look across the water at Daisy's house in East Egg. The sun is just over it - which would only happen in the morning.

When Gatsby is Daisy's Louisville home, the opening shot shows two ribbons on his chest. In subsequent shots, the ribbons were missing.

Gatsby gets completely drenched at 4:00 pm when Daisy arrives at Nick's house for tea. When he drops the clock, the time is 4:20 pm, but his suit is dry.

When Nick discusses the tea invitation with Gatsby in the garden, a spot on Nick's left lapel disappears in the very last shot.

When Tom, Jordan, and Nick are driving away from the accident scene, close-ups show Jordan sitting up straight with Nick's arm resting along the back of the seat. Long shots show Nick's arm loosely around Jordan's shoulders, and her head resting on his shoulder.

When Daisy is about to marry Tom, she pulls off the $350,000 pearls he bought her and they scatter all over the floor. An expensive pearl necklace like that would have individually knotted pearls, to minimize lost pearls if the silk were to break.

The tenor saxophonist at the Gatsby's mansion party holds his instrument with the right hand on top and the left hand on the bottom. The proper way to hold a saxophone is with the left hand on top and the right hand on the bottom.

Nick is wearing a necktie as he narrates his and Gatsby's story to the doctor. As a patient at a mental health facility, Nick would not be allowed to wear a necktie.

The story is set in 1922, but the music playing over the main party is George Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue". The song was written in 1924, but it's often associated with the novel. It sets the scene, like the Jay-Z, Will.I.Am, and Beyonce songs on the soundtrack.

The opening scene shows Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) as a patient at the Perkins Sanitarium, diagnosed as morbidly alcoholic. Yet in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and later on in the picture itself, Nick states that he's only been drunk twice in his life.

Some establishing shots of Manhattan show the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building under construction. The film takes place in 1922. Construction on the Chrysler Building began in 1928, and on the Empire State Building in 1930.

The doctor gives Nick a ballpoint pen, invented in the 1930s.

The story is set in 1922, but Gatsby's yellow car is a 1929 Duesenberg SJ and Tom Buchanan's blue coupe is a 1933 Auburn 12-165.

When some characters talk about the unwanted guest calling Tom, the phone pictured was invented in the mid 1930s. In 1922, a caller would have had to hold the candlestick phone in one hand and talk into the mouthpiece while holding the earpiece up to their ear.

Party guests dance the Charleston, which originated in a 1923 Broadway play and became popular in 1926.

During the first trip to New York with Myrtle and Tom, Nick watches a man play the trumpet on the fire escape. The trumpet has no mute, but the sound is clearly a muted trumpet.

While Gatsby and Nick drive to lunch, Gatsby is telling a story. In further shots, however, his mouth is not moving.

When Nick is finally invited to the party, he tries to find Gatsby. Several party-goers tell him that no one has ever seen him, and they don't know if he actually exists. Later in the movie, flashbacks of newspapers show front page stories about Gatsby buying up New York, and several stories include his picture.

At the first dinner party, Daisy comments that she's heard a rumor that Nick is engaged to a girl out West. Nick responds, "It's a libel!" As a writer, Nick should have known that it was actually slander. Libel is written untruths, slander is spoken untruths.

During a conversation between Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway, both characters have stains on their suit jackets.