Nothing gets past eagle-eyed fans.
Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey and Bridgerton
Macall B. Polay/Courtesy of HBO; Nick Briggs/ITV for MASTERPIECE; Liam Daniel/Netflix
Starbucks coffee in Westeros? A man in blue jeans in the middle of a light saber fight in The Madalorian? If these sound odd and out of place, it’s because they are. However, due to production mistakes they actually ended up making the cut onscreen in a myriad of period shows on television.
But it’s tough for something not to be noticed given that nothing gets past eagle-eyed fans. Just recently, a scene in the fourth season of Netflix’s Bridgerton stirred a reaction after fans noticed Katie Leung’s character sporting a band-aid on her ear, seemingly to cover an ear piercing that she was unlikely to have in the Regency era. Guess the subtle workaround didn’t fool the audience.
Despite the errors, shows have made light of the mishaps by joking about it on social media, the cast speaking out and/or even donating to charity because of it. Below, The Hollywood Reporter takes a look at some of the mishaps caught on shows including Bridgerton, Downton Abbey, Mad Men and more.
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‘Bridgerton’: A Band-Aid and Parking Lines
Image Credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix Netflix’s Bridgerton may take place during the Regency era in England, but fans have noticed a couple of mishaps that seemed too modern for Lady Whistledown and sure to cause a scandal. In season one opening scenes, the audience can see horse-drawn carriages on a cobblestone road. However, it was noticed that the street happened to have yellow parking lines, which reportedly didn’t debut in the U.K. until the 1950s. Jumping to season four, Katie Leung — who plays Araminta, the stepmother of Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha) — is shown in the first episode with a small, flesh colored Band-Aid on her left ear. Though assumed to be used to cover a piercing, the issue is those Band-Aids didn’t exist during that time.
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‘Game of Thrones’: The Starbucks Cup That Should’ve Been Tea
Image Credit: Macall B. Polay/Courtesy of HBO Starbucks seemingly made its way to Westeros. In the fourth episode of HBO’s final Game of Thrones season, fans were in for a surprise when they noticed a Starbucks coffee cup placed near Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen. When addressing the mishap at the time, HBO said in a statement: “The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake. Daenerys had ordered an herbal tea.” Starbucks also poked fun with a tweet. “TBH we’re surprised she didn’t order a Dragon Drink,” read the post from the coffee chain’s official handle. HBO later edited the coffee cup mistake from all platform re-airs.
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‘Downton Abbey’: Water-Bottle-Gate
Image Credit: Nick Briggs/ITV for MASTERPIECE Downtown Abbey caused quite the scandal in 2014. At the time, the HBO series, which takes place in the 1920s, released a promo photo that included a plastic water bottle in the background, something clearly not everyone in the early 20th century drank from. The cast poked fun at the snafu in a social media post in which they all posed with a water bottle with a caption, “The cast of #Downton embraced ‘water bottle-gate’ today.” The post also included a link to the nonprofit Water Aid U.K., which aims to provide access to safe drinking water and sanitation globally. Another mistake caught in an early season was during an opening scene in which a rooftop has a visible TV antenna.
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‘Mad Men’: That Super Bowl Title
Image Credit: Carin Baer/AMC/Courtesy Everett Collection You probably think we’re here writing about the puke machine, but we’re not — though we did here. You would think that Mad Men, a series that, let’s say, dabbled in toxic masculinity, would get the football right. An episode set in 1968 really spoiled the NFL’s plans, referring to the championship game as the Super Bowl. There was just one problem: the big game would not be dubbed the “Super Bowl” until 1969.
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‘M*A*S*H’: The Avengers in the ‘70s?
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection M*A*S*H followed a group a combat medics amid the Korean War, which spanned 1950-53. The show itself aired throughout the ‘70s — yes, it was another recipe for easy continuity errors. This time, it was Radar (Gary Burghoff) in his cot with an Avengers comic book. Not only were Radar’s comics from the 1960s and 1970s, the Avengers didn’t even first assemble until a decade after the Korean War ended.
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‘The Mandalorian’: “Blue Jeans Guy”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd There are no jeans in outer space. That is the takeaway from a famous mishap in Chapter 13 of The Mandalorian. A screw-up saw a dude in jeans just chilling in the background of a shootout scene featuring Greef Karga (Carl Weathers), Cara Dune (Gina Carano) and the Mandalorian himself (Pedro Pascal). Though Jeans Guy immediately became a favorite of Star Wars fans, he has since been digitally erased from Disney+. Jeans Guy was not the only thing that should not have been visible in the series: The Mandalorian’s fourth episode had a boom mic encroach into a crucial scene.