Many of us watch TV and movies as a form of escapism, to be transported to another time or place. More often than not, this experience necessitates a certain suspension of disbelief.
Actors will look different in certain scenes, mainly those that involve fighting, because they are replaced by stunt doubles. Sometimes, their hair changes in length or even color, because scenes close together in the series were shot much further apart in real life. In some instances, people or objects are visible when they really shouldn’t be. Other times, facts seem to completely fall by the wayside. We all know this. However, we are fooled because we want to be.
Smallville made it on the air for ten years. That’s a decade of shooting at least twenty episodes for every single season. The showrunners did the best that they could with the time and money they had, but ultimately, there were bound to be some missteps.
Although many fans can enjoy a show despite these flaws, there are plenty of viewers who feel that the details of the piece are paramount. Certain mistakes on this list are pretty easy to miss if you blink, but others are fairly egregious errors.
Here are 15 Shocking Mistakes You Missed In Smallville.
Lex's Porsche shows no signs of damage after hitting Clark
One of Smallville’s most controversial moves was using Lex and Clark’s friendship as one of the central relationships of the series. It was a part of Clark’s backstory that had been all but forgotten in post-Crisis continuity. This decision paid off, though, with their rapport becoming one of the main draws for many fans.
The way the writers chose to bring these two together in the pilot was by having Lex crash his Porsche into Clark and by having Clark, in turn, save Lex’s life after his car went over the bridge. However, where is the damage to the car? It hit the Man of Steel, which is tantamount to hitting a brick wall and yet, there’s not a scratch on it!
Perhaps the showrunners didn’t want to damage the car or maybe they simply didn’t consider the aftermath of the crash, but whatever the reason, this was an error that plenty of fans noticed.
Kristin Kreuk's name was misspelled in the opening credits
This was an interesting error – one that was quickly remedied – because Kreuk had been a part of the series since the pilot. Her name was always spelled correctly until the title sequence was changed for the show's fifth season. The funny part is that, like many of us, even co-creator Alfred Gough missed the mistake. He mentioned how awesome the new opening credits were before season 5 premiered, so he had obviously seen the sequence.
Certain eagle-eyed viewers noticed when the episode aired that Kristin Kreuk was misspelled Kristen Kreuk. To be fair, she does not spell her name in the more traditional way. On the other hand, she had already been on the show for four years, so one would think that everyone involved was aware of this fact.
Naturally, fans took to the Internet immediately and the mistake was fixed before the next episode aired.
Martha’s migrating cut
We all love Martha Kent (Annette O’Toole), Clark’s doting adoptive mother – played by the actress who portrayed Lana Lang in the dreadful Superman III. No one likes seeing her injured, but she survived a plane crash in the season 6 premiere, which left her with some scrapes and bruises. The problem is, they weren’t exactly consistent in terms of placement.
At the end of the episode, Martha’s cut moves from over her right eye to above her left and back again.
“Zod” was a huge episode in terms of scope and there were undoubtedly a whole lot of balls in the air. Keeping track of Martha’s wound was probably the last thing on anyone’s mind. The crew may not have noticed, but some fans certainly did.
Jonathan Kent’s birthdate
There is a bit of a discrepancy concerning what year Clark’s adoptive father was actually born in Smallville continuity. During season 3 episode, “Relic”, the Man of Steel has flashbacks to the past, specifically the year 1961. He comes in contact with Hiram and Jessica Kent, and the latter is very pregnant. This would point to Jonathan being born in late 1961.
We realize that the series was on for ten years, so by the time that final season rolled around, perhaps no one felt that they needed to fact check Jonathan’s birthdate before putting it on his tombstone. When Clark visits his grave in “Homecoming”, the date of his birth is listed as September 1st, 1954. It is a touching moment, but fans with good memories recalled that he was supposedly born six years later.
The crewmember holding a hay bale in “Zod”
Speaking of the fact that there was a whole lot going on in “Zod”, viewers caught another error in the episode. This one definitely falls into the “blink and you’ll miss it” category of mistakes on this list. In a scene toward the end, Martha and Lionel are in the Kents’ barn together when everything starts to fall apart on account of Zod’s master plan.
In the complete and utter chaos of the world coming down around them, fans caught a glimpse of someone who didn’t quite belong. As a boat falls from the ceiling, you can clearly see a crewmember holding a hay bale. Either no one noticed he was there or they simply assumed he wouldn’t be spotted. We’re still not sure how anyone saw him in the first place, but he is definitely there.
The journey from Smallville to Metropolis
How long does it actually take to get from Smallville to Metropolis? We’ll never know for certain since they’re both fictional places. However, the series had quite a retcon when it came to the distance between the Man of Steel’s hometown and the big city that he would eventually relocate to. The two places seemed to get closer together with every new season.
Back in season 3, Chloe stated that it was a three-hour drive, round-trip However, show creators Alfred Gough and Miles Miller later said that it was approximately 100 miles. In later seasons, the trip was referred to as anything from forty-five minutes to two hours.
Either way, characters were often traveling back and forth, sometimes even more than once in a single day, so the distance shortened significantly as was convenient for the writers.
Chloe's "death"
Chloe Sullivan was a controversial character from the start. Created specifically for the series, she went from minor annoyance to fan favorite over the course of Smallville’s first three seasons. By the time the writers decided to kill her off at the end of the third season, fans were crushed.
They were so bummed, in fact, that when it was revealed to be a ruse, no one really questioned it too much. Everyone was just glad to see Chloe back among the living.
Chloe was ostensibly killed in an explosion, but it was later revealed that Lex’s team rushed her and her father into a secret tunnel seconds before the bomb went off. However, the house exploded literally as soon as Chloe walked inside. She and her dad were nowhere near the tunnel. Unless Lex’s team had super speed, both of them would’ve been toast.
The crewmembers exiting in “Stray”
This is another difficult to spot mistake, unless you are specifically looking for it. In the season 1 episode “Stray”, a boy named Ryan, who can read minds, is on the run from his criminal stepparents. He takes refuge in a bowling alley, but his stepfather is hot on his trail. As Ryan hides behind bowling pins, it seems that all is lost… but then two figures enter the shot.
Has the Man of Steel finally shown up to save the day? Nope, unfortunately that’s not actually him. It’s just two crewmembers walking downstairs. Seriously guys, the kid’s trapped! You can’t lend a hand?
Don’t worry about Ryan, though. We all know Clark will make it there just in the nick of time. He always does.
Clark hiding his secret from Pete… after he’d already revealed it to him
What we have here is purely an error in continuity. “Redux” was the first episode shot for season 2, but due to some complications in postproduction, it was the sixth one aired. This led to a bit of confusion in terms of the larger arc of the season.
Clark revealed his secret to Pete in the season’s third episode, “Duplicity”, and it was kind of a big deal. However, because “Redux” was shot before that, Pete was still in the dark about the fact that his best friend was actually a super powered alien. So, when Clark goes off to fight the Monster of the Week – in this case that’s Chrissy – he distracts Pete by tasking him with locking the doors while Clark super speeds to the rescue.
For anyone who had been paying attention, this didn’t make much sense, as Clark had gotten honest with Pete just a couple of episodes earlier.
Clark’s Plaid of Steel
“Crush” was a season 1 episode guest starring a pre-The O.C. Adam Brody as Justin Gaines, a psycho with telekinesis seeking revenge on those he felt had wronged him. Unfortunately, Chloe gets caught in the middle when the two get romantically involved. Clark rightfully suspects Justin of murder, but Chloe is not trying to hear that, because she thinks he’s dreamy.
When Chloe does finally realize her mistake, Justin is prepared to shut her up by any means necessary, including a chainsaw. Luckily, Clark gets there just in time. Chloe is, of course, unconscious, so she conveniently misses Clark’s super powered display. He heroically steps in front of the chainsaw, which completely comes apart upon contact. That’s fine, because Clark is the Man of Steel.
However, his clothes are totally fine, which doesn’t make much sense.
An unconscious Lana moves in "Lockdown"
Clark makes yet another last minute rescue, coming to Lana’s aid in the season 5 episode, “Lockdown”. She is unconscious next to a bomb that’s less than a minute away from going off – Clark is cutting it super close, as usual. The mistake here is Lana’s position, or should we say, positions.
When Clark spots her in the warehouse with his x-ray vision, she is on her back. However, in the overhead shot, Lana is clearly laying on her side. Then, when Clark swoops in to save her, she is once again on her back. Lana was out cold, so it’s unlikely that she would be moving at all during that few second window. It may be just a minor continuity error, but some fans definitely noticed.
The changing glyphs in the Kawatche Caves
The Kawatche Caves made their first appearance in season 2 episode, “Skinwalker”. They expanded the show’s mythology a bit beyond its Monster of the Week format and added another dimension to it – although not everyone was a fan of the direction the series went in after the caves were introduced. The caves were full of paintings done by the Kawatche tribe depicting a story eerily similar to Clark’s. They were also tied to his Kryptonian heritage.
The thing is, these cave paintings are pretty inconsistent from season to season, sometimes appearing in color, other times, drawn in black and white. Considering the glyphs were around for five hundred years or so, it’s safe to assume that they really hadn’t changed at all during that time.
Clark Kent's Cavities
Clark Kent is the Man of Steel. We all know his iconic origin story, so we all know that dental work would never be an issue that he would face. Tom Welling, on the other hand, is very much human, and as such has had to face the same problems as the rest of us mere mortals.
In the season 1 finale, “Tempest”, Lana is trapped in her truck, with the titular storm prepared to swallow her. Clark arrives to save the day and shouts her name, at which point you can clearly see a filling in Tom Welling’s mouth. Of course, nothing much could be done to prevent this, save changing the angle or making the shot less of a close up. Still, some viewers noticed that the Last Son of Krypton has had at least one cavity.
Lana's roaming bullet wound
This list has already given examples of a certain lack of attention to detail where injuries are concerned. Again, with all of the pressures involved in shooting a single Smallville installment, whether a wound is on the right or left side is probably the last thing that anyone is worried about. In season 6 episode “Noir”, Lana Lang was shot and Jimmy Olsen was on the case. What he didn’t seem to notice, however, was that Lana’s bullet wound kept switching sides.
Lana was found in the elevator with a gunshot wound to her left shoulder, but when the paramedics were treating her, it switched sides more than once. Later in the episode, she is seen with a sling on her right arm. There’s the real mystery for Jimmy to solve!
Tom Welling's eye color
Clark Kent’s blue eyes have been referenced in the comics more than once, but it’s not exactly a prerequisite for playing the character. No one is really too concerned about Superman’s eye color on Smallville, so why have several characters referred to Clark’s eyes as “baby blues” on more than one occasion, when Tom Welling’s eyes are obviously green?
Sure, the showrunners could’ve had Welling wear contacts, but that hardly seems necessary. What would’ve made the most sense would be for the writers to either avoid mentioning his eye color at all - or just call his eyes the color that they actually are. It’s not as though his green eyes aren’t gorgeous, so there’s really no reason for them to go out of their way to write in a mistake that plenty of viewers have called attention to over the years.
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Did you notice any other mistakes in Smallville? Let us know in the comments!