The film negative was damaged considerably as a result of color dye fading as early as the 1960s. Nearly all of the yellow image dyes had faded. Despite fears that the film had been irrevocably damaged, preservation experts were able to restore the film nearly to its original coloration.

According to Georgine Darcy, the man and woman on the fire escape struggling to get out of the rain was based on a prank by Sir Alfred Hitchcock. Each actor and actress in the apartment complex facing Jeff's rear window wore an earpiece through which they could receive Hitchcock's directions. Hitchcock told the man to pull the mattress in one direction and told the woman to pull in the opposite direction. Unaware that they had received conflicting directions, the couple began to fight and struggle to get the mattress inside once the crew began filming. The resulting mayhem, in which one of the couple is tossed inside the window with the mattress, provided humor and a sense of authenticity, which Hitchcock liked. He was so pleased with the result that he did not order another take.

The entire movie was shot on one set, which required months of planning and construction. The apartment-courtyard set measured ninety-eight feet wide, one hundred eighty-five feet long, and forty feet high, and consisted of thirty-one apartments, twelve of which were completely furnished. The courtyard was set twenty to thirty feet below stage level, and some of the buildings were the equivalent of five or six stories high. This movie was shot quickly on the heels of Dial M for Murder (1954), November 27, 1953 to January 13, 1954.

By most accounts, everyone was crazy about Grace Kelly. According to James Stewart, "Everybody just sat around and waited for her to come in the morning, so we could just look at her. She was kind to everybody, so considerate, just great, and so beautiful." Stewart also praised her instinctive acting ability and her "complete understanding of the way motion picture acting is carried out."

James Stewart has stated that of the four movies he made with Sir Alfred Hitchcock, this one is his personal favorite.

Continuity

When Jeff grabs the box of flashbulbs, all four can be seen in the box, but when he backs up more, there are only two left.

The location and angle of the shadows of the "sun" are in the same place in the morning and at night.

When Thorwald returns home from one of his trips out in the rain lugging his suitcase, the camera (from Jeff's point of view) pans from a glimpse of Thorwald in the street, across Miss Torso's apartment where she is preparing to go to bed, to the second floor hallway where Thorwald is walking toward his apartment. This observed action takes only a few seconds - an impossibly short time frame for Thorwald to have entered his building through its front door, walked over to the stairwell, climbed the stairs to the second floor and then be seen walking along the second floor hallway.

Lisa takes the binoculars away from Jeff and wraps the neck cord around them before putting them on a small cupboard. When Jeff picks up the binoculars later, the neck cord is no longer wrapped around them.

The amount of brandy in the detective's glass increases between shots.



Factual errors

When the audience is allowed to look through L.B. Jefferies' camera with the telephoto lens, the screen image is masked as round. However, the actual image seen through the SLR viewfinder would be rectangular.

Traffic on 9th Street is one way, westbound; a truck is shown going eastbound (the wrong way) down the street.

The Exakta camera used in this movie is usually held in a way that would suggest that the shutter is triggered on the right-side upward surface, as is normal for most cameras. 35mm Exakta cameras actually have the shutter release on the front of the camera, just left of the lens.



Incorrectly regarded as goofs

It's possible the annual phone directory was published/issued during the first few months of Thorwald's lease.

(at around 1h 13 mins) Jeff wheels himself over to the window and bumps his broken leg against the wall below the window, yet he doesn't grimace at all. A broken leg in a cast for seven weeks (and just a week from coming off) is scarcely more sensitive to such bumps than an uninjured leg.

Judith Evelyn's Miss Lonelyhearts lays out a handful of pills on a nightstand. The pills should be the size of ants given how far Jefferies from Miss Lonelyheart's apartment. Viewer can see that the red pills are the size of Horse Tranquilizers. Typical human would have a hard time swallowing just one pill. However, not only is it a fictional drug that could really have any size, some real life pills are indeed surprisingly large. This is where the joke about a pill being a "horse pill" came from to begin with.

Stella is wearing the same dress on her fourth visit as she was on her second visit, which occurred on different days. However, this is not out of the ordinary. Many working women have a limited wardrobe causing them to repeat the same outfit every few days.

An obviously accomplished staffer of the world-famous 21 Club (aka 21) brings the couple their dinner and wine, and Lisa is purportedly top tier society, yet they're chilling red wine. This is incorrect; Lisa says they're drinking a Montrachet, which is a white wine.



Revealing mistakes

The helicopter seen near the start is obviously a composite, as there is camera shake in the copter footage.

(at around 49 mins) As the camera pushes in for a close-up of Lisa (her suspicions suddenly aroused), if the viewer listens closely, the creak of the camera as it dollies toward her can be heard.

As Lisa (played by Grace Kelly) is in the kitchen preparing the brandy for Lt. Thomas Doyle and Jeff, her silhouette can be seen on the ceiling. The silhouette is of Grace Kelly with her hair down, though moments later when she emerges with the warmed brandy, her hair is swept up in a French Twist.

Throughout the film Stewart whispers constantly when there is no need to, on the phone, to people in the room. Thorwald's apartment is a good distance away, and there is always loud music playing; it would be impossible for Thorwald to hear normal conversation. It is only done for dramatic effect.

When the dog is taken from the basket after being killed, it is apparent that it is a kid's stuffed dog by the way the guy is holding it. If it were really dead, his legs and head would be hanging down.



Miscellaneous

Jeff spies on Thorwald with a giant telescopic lens and holds it with his hands. As such, the image in the viewfinder should be extremely bouncy and shaky, yet it is rock-solid most of the time. This was obviously a stylistic choice by Alfred Hitchcock as shaky handheld photography was considered unprofessional and amateurish in the 1950's (as opposed to later eras of film, where it became commonplace). Not to mention the cameras were far more cumbersome and more or less impossible to be used for handheld photography, and would have likely annoyed and confused audiences at the time, especially considering so much of the film is seen through the viewfinder. That being said, it is still technically an error within the context of the movie.



Audio/visual unsynchronized

When Miss Lonelyhearts and the songwriter are talking about his record in his apartment, the dubbed-in dialogue doesn't sync with the picture, even to the extent of Miss Lonelyhearts being heard to say "I can't tell you what this music has meant to me," while her mouth isn't moving.

(at around 52 mins) When Jeff's nurse goes to the door saying she's going to find out the name of the freight carrier that is taking off with the trunk, someone who sounds nothing like James Stewart has dubbed him with the peculiar sounding line "I'll keep an eye on the alley." Stewart is holding the binoculars over his mouth, but he's not moving his lips. Prior to that, when he says, "don't do anything foolish", his lips are still moving after the audio is heard.

(at around 1h 32 mins) While Lisa and Stella are digging up the flowers, the pianist is shown playing with other musicians. When the harmonica players start to play, a saxophone is heard although none is visible. The harmonica is subsequently heard also.



Crew or equipment visible

After Lisa sees Thorwald tie up the trunk and the camera dollies forward to a close up, there are creaks from the floorboards and footsteps heard from the camera crew.

(at around 1 hr. 11 mins) When Tom Doyle is on the phone to a colleague and before Lisa comes out of the kitchen, the shadow of a camera crew member is visible on wall by the kitchen window.

While Raymond Burr is looking through his wife's purse, studio lights are visible in his glasses.



Character error

Jeff, a professional photo-journalist, doesn't bother to take any photos of the developing mystery in his own back yard. He merely uses the camera with telephoto lens as a makeshift telescope. The only photos he seems to have taken were of the (at that time completely uninteresting) flower bed a couple of weeks earlier. That's because Jeff could be arrested for invasion of privacy and voyeurism should he do so, with the photos being evidence, and Thorwald could sue him, obviously compromising the entire investigation (Doyle should probably arrest him anyways, but he's incredulous and probably doesn't want to arrest his friend, not to mention the movie would be much shorter if he did). And besides, there wouldn't be any real point to taking the photos as there are rational explanations for nearly everything Thorwald does (i.e. when Jeff tells Doyle about Thorwald using a saw, he says "you ever own a saw?"), and only by studying his actions constantly can Jeff deduce that Thorwald likely did something nefarious.

INCORRECTLY REGARDED AS GOOF: (at around 1h 18 mins) When Lisa and Jeff are discussing "rear window ethics", Grace Kelly noticeably stumbles her line "Jeff, you know if someone came in here they wouldn't believe what they'd s...see." This should not be considered an error as people misspeak and stutter in real life all the time.

When Stella tells Jeff that Thorwald's blinds are "up now", Jeff spins around and moves back with Stella into the shadowed part of his apartment telling her to "Get back. He'll see you". But immediately afterword, while Thorwald is looking out of his window, Jeff moves back into the bright sunlight.

(at around 1h 43 mins) After Lisa has been taken away by the police and Stella leaves to bail her out, Jeff is alone in the apartment, and he calls Doyle. Jeff whispers during the phone conversation, but there is no reasonable explanation why.

Lisa pronounces her first name as "Lee-sah", but her longtime boyfriend L.B. always pronounces it as "Lee-zah" - with a "Z" sound, rather than with an "S" sound.