Goofs

When Columbo goes out to talk with Diane, who is seated, she is looking downward when she is shown from behind but is looking up toward Columbo when she is shown from the front.

After Columbo demonstrates to Finch how the gun had fallen on top of a drop of blood, Columbo says: ''The information that you just gave me is priceless'' and he picks up the gun with his right hand, keeping his arm stretched next to his body. Halfway through the sentence, the shot changes,and Columbo now has his right arm in front of his chest with no gun in sight.

The closeup look at the gun Finch used shows it to be a .380. Later, they say the bullet is a .32 caliber, but it should have been a .380 bullet.

When Columbo leans into Oscar Finch's car, Columbo's cigar ash switches back and forth from long to short. It's short when Columbo is seen from the front, then long each time Columbo is shown from behind.

After the Lieutenant has told Finch the joke (in front of the Court), Finch drives off in his BMW. (Finch can be heard shutting the door of the car when the shot shows Columbo.) The shot with Columbo in view, however, shows an open driver's area.

When Columbo arrives at Finch's office, he notices a parking spot that is dry. Considering that the night before there was a torrential downpour that started moments after Finch parked his vehicle and lasted for at least 30 minutes, there would be no way that the parking spot would have been bone dry the next day.

Oscar Finch uses a Walther PP/PPK pistol to kill the victim. This model is a single/double action pistol that employs a hammer to strike the firing pin. After each shot the slide will recoil pushing the hammer back into a firing position. In the movie the gun is shown in the victims hand with the hammer down and not cocked. This is impossible without someone manually decocking the hammer. The decocker is located on the left side of the slide which is hidden in the movie. Columbo should have noticed this immediately and know it was murder.

Refernce: W.H.B. Smith, Walther Pistols, PP and PPK Firing and Safety Systems.

When one takes a bite of cheese, one uses their front teeth, but when one chews gum, they use their molars. Therefore, the bite marks on the gum would be different from the ones on the cheese, even if they are made by the same person.

However, the police had a complete set of dental records for Finch, so it wouldn't matter which teeth left the marks.

(at around 15 mins) Frank reaches over to his right to get some red candy from a bowl. Oscar is to his left side and shoots Frank in the head. The wound shows up in his right temple. It should have been in his left temple. Frank would have had to turn almost 135 degrees in that high back black leather chair to get shot like that. The gun also was placed in his right hand to drop on the blood from the wound.

This is incorrect as the murderer steps to the victim's right side immediately before firing the gun.

There's a photo in MacKay's office of himself and Finch in front of a 48-star flag. The 48-star flag was not used after 1960, and the men are not 30 years younger in the photo, as the events take place in 1990.

However, while there was no official government use of the 48-star U.S. flag after 1959 (when Alaska was admitted as a state, and the 49-star flag became the official banner), this is not an "Anachronism". Flags with 48 stars still existed and were being used by private citizens and for historical purposes.

When Finch shoots Staplin, he is standing around 1.5 m (5 ft) to the left of him. However, he then proceeds to place the gun in Staplin's right hand, and he is never seen moving the spent cartridge case. The entry wound on Franklin's left temple and the cartridge case laying somewhere to his left would have made clear at the first glance that it could not have been suicide.

This is erroneous as the murderer steps to the victim's right side immediately before firing the gun. Consequently, the bullet wound is shown on the victim's right temple and the casing would also fall on the victim's right.

Immediately after the murder, when the killer puts his yellow gloves on, the corpse in the background is breathing.

When Columbo is speaking with Sgt. Kramer at the apparent suicide, Columbo states that he has a problem with the gun. Columbo proceeds to show Sgt. Kramer all the blood that is under the gun (when, in fact, it's just one tiny drop of blood) and the tells Kramer that the blood drop dried before the gun was dropped, meaning that some time had passed, but this is not the case. The gun was dropped within seconds of being fired; there would not have been enough time for the blood to dry.

When Finch is seen racking the pistol, the sound is not consistent with the slide movement.

Finch never cleans the ammunition. He is not a professional killer so one would expect his finger prints on the bullets, yet the issue is never considered nor addressed.

The viewer is given the premises that 1) the presentation takes place in California, and that 2) the state's governor and one of its congressmen are planning to run for president and vice-president of the United States together. The federal constitution doesn't preclude two candidates from the same state running together, but does mandate that one or the other of the candidates forfeit his/her electoral votes should the situation occur. California at the time had 45 electoral votes - one-sixth of the vote total to be elected to either office - a huge number of votes to forfeit. There's little chance of this premise coming to pass, as it would create a real possibility of electing a president from one party and a vice-president from the other party. Anyone who remembers the days of Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mike Curb in California back in the 1970s will recall the mischief Curb would pull on Brown, the second that Brown left the state to campaign for president in 1976. (State law stipulates the LtG is acting governor as soon as the Governor leaves the state.) The system still could work, but the last time this happened at the federal level was in 1796 (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson).

Despite the fact that Finch and Mackey have been involved in criminal law for 20 years in Los Angeles, neither has heard of Lt. Columbo. It seems likely that the detective's reputation for busting murderers would have preceded him, and alarmed the suspects, particularly Finch, straight off.

A seasoned detective like Columbo would know better than to slice a piece of cheese and eat it at a crime scene. The cheese was next to a dead gunshot victim who was laying 2 feet away from the cheese platter. There easily could have been blood splatter and gun shot residue on the cheese.

When Columbo hands Finch the Warrant of Arrest at the end, the warrant reads "State of California" as the defendant.