Near the movie's beginning, Maverick asks the young man wearing the bowler hat at the poker table, who claims to be a gunfighter, what his name is. He answers, "Johnny Hardin," and Maverick fumbles his chips pretending to be scared, but then clowns around pointing his own gun at the youth. The real John Wesley Hardin was a notoriously fast, volatile and deadly gunfighter of the Old West, who shot and killed more than 40 men, before being shot in the back of the head in 1895.

Jodie Foster's character's gracelessness in the film stems from the first scene she shot, when she waited for Mel Gibson to help her down from the stagecoach. Instead, he took her parasol and walked away. She tried to get down alone, and flopped to the ground. Director Richard Donner liked it so much that he kept the shot in the film, and staged more scenes of Foster stumbling, being dumped through windows, etc.

The $25,000 needed to enter the poker tournament in the 19th century would be approximately $600,000 in 2004 terms.

In the stagecoach sequence, stuntman Mic Rodgers (doubling for Mel Gibson) had to go under the coach and get up at the back. This is a direct nod to legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt's similar stunt in Stagecoach (1939). By coincidence, second unit director Terry Leonard, a former stuntman himself, performed this same stunt in the truck chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). In Draw! (1984) the same stagecoach sequence can be seen in the early part of that movie.

During Marshal Cooper's explanation of the rules at the beginning of the tournament, he pulls out his own guns and claims that they're the only weapons allowed in the room (the game room). When putting them away, he drops one but smoothly continues talking while someone hands him his dropped gun. This was not scripted. James Garner dropped the prop by accident but kept acting, resulting in a funny moment that the director kept in the final cut.

Continuity

As Maverick leaves his room in the saloon he locks the door behind him. When he returns, he opens the door with his hands full and keys in his mouth.

On the steamboat, the door to Maverick's room is immovable when seen from within the room, but able to be budged when seen from outside.

As the stagecoach nears the women that were robbed, the horses switch from jogging to loping between shots.



Incorrectly regarded as goofs

Annabelle gives her dealer a $1000 chip in the poker tournament before the final table. This is common in cash games in which money is won after each hand. Unlike cash games however, tournament chips have no money value and cannot be exchanged for cash. That scene was played for laughs.

When Maverick (Mel Gibson) wins his last hand of poker at his table (prior to the final round) the dealer stands up and shakes his hand. As he stands up, the chair is stuck to him. As he shakes Maverick's hand, he knocks the chair loose. He then turns and goes off camera, shaking his head and starting to laugh. This is clearly a blooper and there would have been a retake; the editor appears to have used the wrong take. If it wasn't a comedy, that would be correct, but this was deliberately left in for laughs.

When Maverick is out in the desert about to be hung, you can see the rope goes over the branch of the tree and then comes down and is tied lower on the tree, as it would be normally. Seconds later when the branch breaks Maverick is free and the rope is no longer attached to the tree. Obviously it broke. The trailing end is seen behind Ollie, Bret and the branch as they walk along.

In the first steamboat scene, while first traveling to the poker event, there is banter between Maverick and the other two main characters. The port steamboat paddle wheel is visible. Between supposedly continuous shots, the wheel's speed changes from very slow to quite fast. It happens several times. That's steering. Same principle as a skid-steer. A quicker response than using the rudder. They could about-face if they could reverse one of the paddle wheels.

Before the campfire confrontation, Maverick agrees to give Annabelle forty percent of the reward money but after they capture the robbers she reminds him he owes her thirty percent. They re-negotiated the split so many times, they both lost count. Besides, thirty percent of nothing is more than forty percent of nothing, so she came out ahead.



Revealing mistakes

During the runaway coach sequence, the sky repeatedly changes from being overcast and cloudy to clear blue between shots.



Miscellaneous

At around 24:50, just after Bret has retrieved his wallet, the scene changes to a mirror image of the establishing shot of the town.



Anachronisms

The playing cards used at the tournament have rounded corners as modern decks do instead of the period correct sharp corners

Contrail visible in the sky behind Joseph while the missionaries, Coop and Anabelle are watching Bret parlay with the Indians.

While Maverick is climbing over the runaway stage coach toward the dead driver, a car is visible in the upper right corner.[widescreen only]

When Maverick is talking to the women from the wagon train, a truck can be seen in the distance, traveling from left to right.



Crew or equipment visible

Cable marginally visible as Maverick flies over the edge of the cliff.

During the runaway stagecoach scene, another set of reins can be seen coming out from underneath the driver's perch. The hands of the hidden driver are sometimes briefly visible.