• Revealing mistake: In the first scene, when Jack Torrance is driving to the Overlook, the shadow of a helicopter can be seen at the bottom right. This is only visible in the un-matted VHS print and fullscreen DVD.
• Continuity mistake: At the beginning when Danny Torrance is talking to his mom and eating a sandwich, the sandwich gets about five bites smaller in a split second.
• Revealing mistake: Wendy Torrance has a baseball bat in her hand and Jack Torrence is trying to get the baseball bat. When Wendy hits him over the head, the baseball bat bends.
• Visible crew/equipment: In the final shot of the opening sequence, at the top of the frame, you will see the helicopter blades twirling.
• Continuity mistake: Wendy Torrance comforts Jack Torrance after he has had his nightmare. His hairstyle keeps differing depending on the angle focusing on him.
• Continuity mistake: While breaking down the bathroom door with the axe, Jack Torrance repeatedly strikes and damages the right hand panel, but as he turns away from the door both left and right panels have been damaged.
• Continuity mistake: When Jack Torrance breaks the door to the bathroom and reaches in to unlock, Wendy cuts him. Later there is no blood on the knife.
• Continuity mistake: In the initial overhead shot of the house the hedge maze is not there though later on it is shown quite close to the house.
• Continuity mistake: In the beginning when Wendy Torrance is talking to the doctor, she lights a cigarette. Seconds later the paper has burned almost to the filter.
• Continuity mistake: When Wendy Torrance is looking through all the typed sheets where Jack Torrance has typed 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy', you can see that they are getting disorganised, and when Jack sneaks up on her, she gets a fright and puts them down in an untidy pile. However, in the next shot, they are in a relatively neat pile again in the tray.
• Continuity mistake: When Danny Torrance is playing alone in the corridor, with his toy cars and trucks, in the overhead shot, the little vehicles are set up on the orange and brown pattern, as the ball roles to him down the center brown path in the carpet's s**tagon pattern. However, in Danny's close-up, when the ball is in front of him, all the little toy vehicles are now set up on the opposite side of the carpet's distinct pattern, as he also faces the opposite way. This mistake has absolutely nothing to do with the ghosts of The Outlook moving the ball.
• Continuity mistake: When Dick Hallorann is showing Wendy Torrance and Danny Torrance around after they first arrive at the hotel, they walk through the kitchen towards camera & into the freezer door to the left of the screen. You can see the kitchen still visible in the background. When they leave the freezer, the background is completely different & the kitchen is not visible. This is because they have actually filmed a different door on the opposite side of the corridor. They then walk towards camera again & back into the kitchen they have just walked through.
• Continuity mistake: When Jack Torrance finally dies and you see him lie down on the hedges, his back is flat on the hedge, but when you see him face front, his back is about five feet away from the hedge.
• Factual error: At the end of the movie there is the chase scene through the hedge maze in the dead of winter in Colorado. While Jack Torrance runs after his son in a winter setting you cannot see their breath in what would be the cold night air.
• Character mistake: In the baseball bat scene Wendy Torrance accidentally calls Jack Torrance Jake. Right after she says, "Please stay away. Stop it Jake. Get away from me".
• Continuity mistake: As Danny Torrance is writing 'red rum' on the bathroom door, the lampshade on the nightstand light is askew. A moment later, when Jack is knocking down the door with the axe, the lampshade has somehow straightened itself out.
• Continuity mistake: In the scene where Dick Hallorann is talking to Danny Torrance over ice cream, the amount of ice cream stains he has on the side of his mouth changes between shots.
• Revealing mistake: In the scene where the barman drops the drinks on Jack Torrance, the cups are fixed to the tray. This is seen when the barman takes the tray up from the floor, and in the next scene, when he puts it on the table at the bathroom.
• Revealing mistake: In the scene where Wendy Torrance is confronting Jack Torrance about the bruises on Danny's neck, and she carries Danny away, take a look at "Danny" in her arms. She picks up a real little boy, but then after a cut away, in the next shot she is very obviously carrying a dummy.
• Factual error: When Jack Torrance and his family arrive at the Overlook, the hotel manager Stuart Ullman asks Jack, "has your luggage been brought in?" and the camera shot shows a large pile of suitcases and belongings, which would definitely not have fitted in their VW Beetle.
• Other mistake: When the blood spills from the elevator the editors try to make it look like the whole room is filled with blood by just putting a red screen over the camera,but you can see that the blood is only filled half way in the room.
• Other mistake: in the scene where Stuart Ullman is showing Jack Torrance and Wendy Torrance their quarters, you'll notice that there is a window on the wall to the right across from the bed. However later, in the scene where Jack tries to break into the bathroom with the axe and Wendy puts Danny through the window onto the hill of snow, you'll notice that their quarters is not on a corner of the hotel, which the aforementioned window would suggest.
• Continuity mistake: When Danny Torrance is meeting with the chef in the kitchen, and Danny is eating ice cream, the amount of ice cream in the bowl changes from a little to a lot.
• Revealing mistake: In the shot just before when Jack Torrance finishes axing the bathroom door, one of the broken pieces of wood is resting against the camera.
• Continuity mistake: In the scene where Jack Torrance is telling Danny Torrance he would never hurt him or his mother, towards the end when the camera is facing Danny, you can't see Jack's right hand and can a**ume that he's leaning it on the bed; but when the camera moves back to Jack's face it is now around Danny's shoulder.
• Continuity mistake: In the scene where Jack Torrance is talking through the door of the food closet he has been locked into, his right hand is leaning on a long thin door handle on his side of the door. However, a later shot of the door shows the same handle to be on the right hand side of the door, in which case in the earlier shot he would have been leaning on it with his left hand.
• Continuity mistake: If you compare the map of the maze posted outside on the actual maze, to the model of the maze Jack Torrance looks at in the hotel which pans down to Wendy Torrance and Danny Torrance walking through it, the two maps look nothing alike.
• Continuity mistake: When Wendy Torrance is crying, backing up the stairs and swinging a bat at Jack Nicholson, the positions of both of their arms and the bat change dramatically as the camera shots switch back and forth between them.
• Continuity mistake: In the scene at the beginning of the film, when Doc and Dick Hallorann are eating ice cream, if you pay attention to Danny Torrance's hands, they move from folded in front of the ice cream bowl, to the back, and so on. They move about five times, each different.