Trivia: Roger Corman has a cameo as FBI Director Hayden Burke, and his portrait can be seen in one of the shots of Clarice and Ardelia.
Continuity mistake: In the scene in the hangar at Memphis airport, Senator Martin's hair keeps changing in each return shot. (01:02:55)
Continuity mistake: When they find out Lecter is on the elevator, they look down the shaft at him and there is quite a lot of blood on his back, so much that it even reaches down to his belt. However when they open the elevator shaft and the body falls down, there is only a small amount of blood on his back. (01:23:40 - 01:24:50)
Continuity mistake: When Clarice tries to push up the blocked door of the self storage container she puts her gloves on her lap. In the next scene the gloves have disappeared. (00:24:15)
Continuity mistake: At the graduation ceremony, a woman cuts a slice of cake and passes it to someone and then, without slicing the cake again, she somehow has another slice to pass to someone else.
Suggested correction: She actually hands the person an empty clear glass dish (the kind used to serve the first piece of cake); the person must have wanted the dish to get something else, not cake.
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Jack Crawford and Clarice are examining the dead body in Elk River, the substance they apply under their nostrils changes in shape and amount applied. (00:42:20 - 00:46:05)
Continuity mistake: At Chicago, when Crawford and his team are about to break in to the empty house, the red ribbon on the flower box covers both the lid and the box when the agent takes it out of his car. When he rings the bell, the ribbon only covers the lid.
Continuity mistake: In the ambulance, after Lecter escapes, the towel on his face swaps from slightly bloody, to completely covered in blood between shots. (01:25:00)
Continuity mistake: In the very beginning, when Crawford calls Clarice in to talk about interviewing Hannibal, his left shirt collar is over his vest. Two shots later, the same collar is under the vest. (00:07:50)
Continuity mistake: Dr. Frederick Chilton infamously leaves a pen on Hannibal's bed. The pen changes position between shots in a rather obvious way, doing almost a 180° turn. (01:00:15)
Continuity mistake: Clarice Starling is interrupted during her training course, and her clothes are sweaty, with a stain that goes under the breast and the "FBI Academy" logo. She rushes back to the building, and her jersey dried sufficiently up to be clean all the way above the logo. Even more obviously, when she gets in the elevator the V patterned sweat stain goes all the way to the middle of her back, but when she is making her way through the corridors leading to Jack Crawford's office, again the stain has dried off considerably. (00:02:55)
