When Nicky, Frank Marino, Jennifer are in the kitchen after they return home from their flight, Nicky makes Jennifer turn her head upside down to have the diamonds he stole & smuggled through airport security fall out of her hair up-do onto the table. After all they all fall out, her hair "bun" releases and is hanging down in an undone, long ponytail. But immediately after that shot when the camera switches angles, Nicky slaps her on the cheek and her hair is back up in a bun the way it was originally.
SPOILER. As Nicky and his brother are being buried in the desert grave, Dominick is dumped into the grave first and lands on his right side, facing right. The next time we see him, moments later, he is lying on his left side, and facing left as Nicky is dumped on top of him.
After Nicky has stabbed the man with the pen in the bar, he puts the hand that was holding the pen up on the bar counter. Although, the pen that was in his hand had been covered in blood, his hand is clean.
When Nicky calls Sam after Sam kicked the big cowboy from Nicky's crew out of the casino for cursing him, Nicky apologizes, then hangs up the phone. Nicky then asks the cowboy why he "took off his boots and put his feet on the blackjack table." However, Sam never told Nicky this information.
When Nicky and Sam are in the club talking a shot from the back shows Sam putting out his cigarette, in subsequent shots of Sam from the front the cigarette is lit, and when it returns to the back the cigarette is out.
After the failed car bombing, Sam is put into the ambulance feet-first. People are loaded into ambulances head-first, since most of the monitoring equipment is in the front.
As Philip Green is coming off the plane and is being questioned by the press about Anna Scott's murder, one of the cameramen (the one who walks in front of the movie's camera) is seen carrying a camera not connected to anything. That model of camera (the RCA TK76) required an external tape deck/battery pack, otherwise the camera wouldn't function at all. The other two cameramen in the scene have their cameras tethered to the external equipment.
Don Ward, the fired overseer of the slot machines, is said to be the county commissioner's cousin, but later is said to be a brother-in-law. These terms are not mutually exclusive - his "hillbilly" accent makes it even easier to believe that he can be both.
When Nicky shoots the lady in the kitchen his arm is placed directly in the gun's aim and is not hit by an exiting slug. However, since the bullets were .22 caliber, and quite likely shorts, they likely never exited the skull.
Nicky says "...meet me a hundred yards down the road". Ace narrates: "...when I heard him say a couple hundred yards down the road..."
Obvious dummy in the car immediately before the explosion.
Wrist pads visible on Ginger when Nicky throws her out of the restaurant.
Just before Ace's car explodes, his narration says the dynamite was placed under the passenger's seat. Yet when the explosion occurs, it is the engine compartment that blows up first.
When Nicky goes into Anna Scott's kitchen to murder her, he puts the left side of her head into a headlock and fires the gun into the right side several times. Unless all the bullets lodged in her head, which is highly unlikely at such close range, they should have exited her left-side head and penetrated his left arm or the window curtains on his left, but there is no sign of bullets exiting.
When the card cheater gets his hand smashed with a hammer, at first he doesn't flinch or move his hand in any way and his fingers are widely spread. The camera changes angles and now his fingers are spaced closely together and he's wiggling them. From this angle, the security guard delivers one more hammer blow but it is actually off to the side. For the first cut, they must be hitting a prosthetic hand with spread fingers since it never moves. For the second, they then bring the actor's actual hand in but keep his fingers tight to avoid accidentally hitting them.
Although this is refuted, the scene where Nicky murders witness Anna Scott should be considered an error. His arm is on the other side of her skull in the line of fire. How a professional assassin would KNOW that the bullets wouldn't exit into his arm is ludicrous. No experienced killer would take the chance. The writer says they were likely short bullets, but there is no basis for that conclusion.
During the scene where the cowboy is exited out of the casino headfirst by the security guards, one of the guards hits his head on the door frame.
A caption shows the location as Washington, D.C. with only the W in a tall capital letter, the rest in small capitals. D and C should be equal in height to W, or it's equivalent to writing "Washington, d.c."
As Nicky Santoro (Pesci) was was heading out to the desert to meet Sam with multiple car changes, the unseen FBI agent says "OK, he's out. It's the ant. Brown unit." Nicky Santoro is based on Anthony "the ant" Spilotro in the book, but should never have been called the ant in the movie as his name was changed.
The cowboy who discusses his cousin's firing with Sam, wears a huge turquoise bolo tie that's later worn as a necklace by Ginger when she exits the courtroom with Sam.
When Ace and Nicky take a drive around Vegas after Nicky first arrives in town, there are several modern vehicles visible on the streets around them.
In the first newscast scene, before Ace's license hearing (which takes place around 1980), the Mirage hotel and casino can be seen in the background shot of Las Vegas. The Mirage was not completed until 1989.
The shots of "The Stardust" and the entry to "The Flamingo" show the results of redesigns done in the early 1990s.
The Budweiser bottle the cowboy (with his feet on the table) is drinking is of the modern (1995) model and not the correct 1970's style.
When Ace and Nicky talk at the diner 60 miles outside of Vegas, the jukebox shows a digital readout that didn't start to be used until the late 80s.
Nicky squeals the tires of his car in the dust in the desert.
The sound of shoes walking on floorboards is heard in the bedroom when Ginger returns to Ace after he threw her out of the house. The bedroom is carpeted, so Ginger's shoes shouldn't have made any sound.
When Ace and Sherbert are entering the car to chase after Ginger, the car starts up before Ace is even in the driver's seat.
Just as the plug is pulled on the scammed slot machines, Sam is explaining to Don Ward that three machines with four reels won with all sevens across them. This audio does not match Sam's lips.
in the scene where Ginger and Sam/Ace are at dinner at a restaurant, the camera keeps switching back and fourth to Ginger and Ace, when the camera is looking at Ginger, Ace is talking to her, but he is not moving his mouth.
Camera crew can be seen reflected in car door as Nicky opens it when driving up to meet Ace in the desert.
As Ace drags Ginger across the living room floor, a quick reflection of the "steady cam" crew following the actors can be glimpsed in a large mirror off to the viewer's right.
As Sam walks towards the car that will catch fire, the cameraman is reflected in the driver's side window.
As Sam meets Commissioner Webb in Sam's office, a faint reflection of a crew member can be seen in the window on the left.
Reflected in the passengers side of Sam's Cadillac's door as he pulls up to the new house with Ginger after they get married.
During car ride where Nicky is discussing possibility of moving to Las Vegas with Sam, scenery outside window flip flops wildly from shots of downtown Vegas to scenes of miles-away Vegas Strip.
When Nicky first comes to town, Ace shows him the panoramic daytime view from his corner suite. The only high rise building that can be seen is the Landmark (demolished). Later, in the scene where Ace proposes to Ginger, the same view, at nighttime, is instead filled with high rise buildings as well as nearby Dunes and Frontier marquees. The nighttime view is clearly fabricated; the south-Strip Dunes (demolished) is nowhere near the north-Strip Frontier (demolished). The daytime view implies the corner suite is somewhere inside the Las Vegas Hilton.
The film takes place in the (fictional) Tangiers casino, but in one of the scenes in Robert De Niro's character's office, you can clearly see a calendar for the Riviera (the movie was primarily filmed in the Riviera.)
When Ace and Nicky are supposedly driving in Downtown Las Vegas, the view differs from each of their side windows. The Fremont Hotel is visible out of one window, and the Sahara out of the other. The Fremont is on Fremont Street, while the Sahara is on the Las Vegas Strip.
Seeking a place where they can converse without being overheard, Ace and Nicky go into Ace's closed up home garage, start the car engine, turn on the radio, and engage in a long conversation. The carbon monoxide fumes from the car engine would have soon knocked them out and killed them.
After Sam has the cowboy thrown out, Nicky calls him, at which time Sam tells him that the cowboy had insulted him. When Nicky gets off the call, he yells at the cowboy for putting his feet on the table, yet Sam never said that in the call.
When Ginger enters the bank, the boom mic is visible on the window door right above her head, but only for a brief few seconds.
When Pat Webb is meeting with Ace to ask for Don Ward to be rehired as the slots manager, Ace responds that Webb's accusation is "libelous." For Webb's comment to have been "libelous," it would have had to appear in print. Ace should have said that Webb's accusation was "slanderous."
When Nicky murders Anna Scott, he isn't wearing any gloves, so in addition to placing his hands on her head and doorknob and whatever else, he's leaving fingerprints all over the place.
When Lester calls Ginger after her wedding, he says he always remembers her as a "long-legged little colt". A colt is a younger-than-4-years MALE horse. He should have called her a "long-legged little filly".
In voiceover, Ace says that to go anywhere, Nicky had to change cars 6 times in underground parking garages. But in the accompanying visual montage, all of the garages we see are aboveground (evidenced by the bright sunlight on the sides).
Sam would be able to sue the Business Week Reporter and the publication for intentionally taking his response out of context.