– In the beginning of the Prologue-sequence, you see three Elf Lords receiving three Rings of Power. These are supposed to be Círdan, Gil-Galad and Galadriel – but Tolkien describes Círdan as having a beard!
– When Isildur takes the Ring you can clearly see that he is wearing gloves. However, in the scroll Gandalf reads in Minas Tirith, Isildur speaks of how his hand was scorched by the Ring, and how he thinks he would never rid of the pain. So either the Ring should have burned throught the fabric, or Isildur did not wear gloves when he picked it up.

– When Gandalf enters Bag End, he bumps his head. This is actually Ian McKellen bumping his head in reality, but because he kept up his performance the shot was used afterwards.

– Saruman isn’t dressed in white in the book: his robe shifts colour when he moves. Saruman calls himself Saruman of Many Colours, because he sees white as a starting point, not the ultimate colour.
– Elwing pointed out that, during the fight, the wizards using their staffs implies that their power is connected to it somehow. When Saruman takes Gandalf’s away, he is helpless and seems to have lost his power. Tolkien doesn’t imply this anywhere, however.
– ‘Uruk’ simply means Orc. Gandalf uses this name in the Chamber of Mazarbul when he describes the horde awaiting them in the hall: ‘black Uruks of Mordor.’ The Uruk-hai shown in the movie (described in the books as larger than regular Orcs, slant-eyed and with a darker skin) were not created by Saruman, but by Sauron.
– The Uruks bear the White Hand of Saruman on their shields, and the S-rune on their helmets. In the movies, the White Hand is the only symbol used.

– Apparently, there’s a car driving by when Frodo and Sam are standing in the cornfield: it was spotted by several people in the theatre. It’s nowhere to be seen on the DVD version however, and there is some speculation of it being a chimney or something of the kind. Mysterious, indeed.
– Some people have complained about the fact that the cornfield in this scene is not old-fashioned English corn, but ‘maïze’. They figure maize wouldn’t have existed in Middle-earth, since this is a representation of the Old World, and maize was first discovered in America by the conquistadores. However, ‘The Two Towers’ contains the famous discussion about how to eat a rabit, where Sam suggests it should be eaten with ‘taters’. Potatoes, too, were discovered along with the ‘New World’, so it seems some Tolkien fans are more consistent than the good professor himself. So no, it’s not a mistake.
– According to the book, both Merry and Pippin were good friends of the farmer and his wife, and regular guests. So there’s no way they would be stealing his crops.

– Of course Pippin knows beer comes in pints! He is the one who insists on a stop at The Golden Perch on the road to Crickhollow, which makes Frodo take a shortcut… to mushrooms.
– If the Inn has Hobbit-sized rooms, wouldn’t it also have Hobbit-sized tables?
– Not so much a mistake as a huge big change: Strider is not wearing Narsil so when he pulls his sword out it’s not broken. What a disappointment!

– Bill the Pony keeps appearing and disappearing. This is his first shot: how did he get there?
– It’s snowing. In September?
– Rangers are known to be practical folk, but carrying four Hobbit-sized swords on you ‘just in case’ doesn’t strike me as a very sane thing to do. So where do these swords come from?
– The Nazgul fear fire. Strider even advises the Hobbits to make a small fire when they arrive on Weathertop, because ‘fire is our friend in the wilderness’. So none of that: ‘Put it our!’ panic in the book.

– There are some people who think that Arwen’s glow – derived from that of Glorfindel – is a mistake: Arwen has never been in the light of Valinor, nor is she even completely Elven. However, Tolkien doesn’t say that regular Elves of such might as Arwen don’t posses such a light to one who is in the realm of shadow. Also, Arwen is called the Evenstar of her People, so this might refer (also) to an inner light. So there’s no saying wether this is a change or a mistake.
– The dress-change when Frodo first sees Arwen, is not a continuity error, like some believe: we first see Arwen through Frodo’s eyes, as a beautiful and powerful Elf maiden, hence the white dress with pearls. But to the normal eyes, Arwen is simply wearing her riding garment.
– Tolkien doesn’t use the word She-elf, anywhere, as far as I can see.

– There’s a couple of moments where the balconies in Rivendell are apparantly Hobbit-sized. This was brought to our attention by Rivka, and you can see it clearly in this pic.
– TheBaggins brought to our attention the fact that because their is little to no time between Bilbo’s departure from Hobbiton and Frodo’s arrival in Rivendell, the sudden kick-in of the ageing process seems sort of unbelievable and doesn’t really make sense.
– When talking to Frodo, Bilbo says ‘I meant to go back… wander the paths of Mirkwood… visit Laketown… see the Lonely Mountain again. But age it seems has finally caught up with me.’ However, in the book Bilbo tells Frodo that ‘after a rest, I went on with the dwarves to Dale; my last journey.’
This change probably has to do with what was said above about the time lapse: if there was indeed hardly any time between Bilbo’s and Frodo’s respective departures, then Bilbo wouldn’t have had the time to travel to the Lonely Mountain and back.
– Boromir, ladies and gentleman, has black hair and grey eyes, much like Aragorn. Almost all the men in Tolkien’s books, who all come from the same forefathers, have dark hair. The only exception to this are the Rohirrim, who are almost all blondes.
– Boromir couldn’t have arrived on horseback, because he lost his horse on the journey from Minas Tirith to Rivendell and had to make the rest of it on foot.
– Legolas doesn’t ride saddle-less, this was noticed by Lozza.

– Aragorn is not clad in his nice and kingly elvish garment at the Council of Elrond, but in his Ranger outfit.
– Aragorn has no immediate claim to the throne of Gondor: he is the heir of Isildur who received from his father Elendil the northern realm of Arnor. The North-kingdom ended in 1975 of the Third Age with the death of Arvedui. The line of Isildur was continued, however they took on the position of Chieftain of the Dúnadain, the Rangers of the North.
The southern half of Elendil’s realm, Gondor, went to Isildur’s brother Anárion. This line of Kings ended in 2050 (TA) with the death or Eärnur. Gondor was further governed by the Stewards, the first of which being Mardil Voronwë.
In fact Steward Pelendur, who ruled Gondor for a year after the death of King Ondoher, refuted the claim of North-king Arvedui on Gondor, after the fall of Arnor; so there’s no reason why Aragorn II should hold any immediate claim over the South-kingdom.
The claim is legitimate though, since originally the South-kingdom was ‘shared’ between the brothers, and only after the death of both Elendil his father, and Anárion his brother, did Isildur become King of the North-Kingdom.
Furthermore, the line of Kings from the south has supposedly died out, though our Middle-earth Section had an essay by Cressida discussing ties between the royal family and the Stewards has been added, which discusses this matter more profoundly.

– After Aragorn and Arwen have plight their troth, Gilraen returns to the land of Eriador, where she was born and stays their till her death in 3007. It doesn’t say anywhere that Gilraen returned to Rivendell to die.
– Bill the Pony keeps re-appearing all the time, it gets a little tiresome of keeping track of him. As Rivka so eloquently put it: Where the heck does Bill the Pony go during the Crebain from Dunland scene?
– Telquellewen_greenleaf pointed out that Aragorn releases the hilt of his sword twice during the confrontation with Boromir.
– Caradhras is not called the Redhorn for no reason: Tolkien describes it as ‘a tooth tipped with snow; its great, bare, northern precipice was still largely in the shadow, but where the sunlight slanted upon it, it glowed red.’
– Gandalf doesn’t know what the Dwarves awoke in the depths of Khazad-dûm. As a matter of fact, when faced with it outside the Chamber Of Mazarbul, he doesn’t even recognise it as a Balrog. It’s only later that he can identify their foe.

– In the books, the doors of Moria open outward and can only be opened by hand from within – that is why one needs a password to enter from outside. But in the movie, the doors open inward!
– According to Trignifty, when they enter the mines Gandalf doesn’t have his hat on and when he appears next he does, but there’s not enough time in between these shots.
– There aren’t any dead Dwarves lying about on the floor. Gimli even assumes that Balin never entered Moria, until they find his tomb, because there is no sign of recent Dwarf activity at all.
– In the movie, there’s no daylight in the Twenty-first Hall, and there’s hardly any daylight in the Chamber of Mazarbul. In the books however, several shafts lead into both the hall and the smaller room.
– The (two!) doors in the Chamber of Mazarbul are made of stone, not wood.
– The page that we see up close in the Book of Mazarbul is filled with Dwarvish runes. Although these runes are accurate and readable, this is incorrect: Gimli identifies the last person to write in this book as Ori, because he had the habit of writing in Elvish characters.
– Gimli takes the book with him.
– SilverDeath mentioned that it is very disrespectful of Gimli to stand on top of Balin’s tomb, and I’d have to agree that this is not just a change, but something that Tolkien would never have written.
– According to BondageOrc, Glamdring doesn’t shine white at all; and Sting doesn’t glow blue the whole time they’re in the Chamber of Mazarbul. Both swords should constantly, however, since they were both fashioned by the Elves and start glowing when Orcs are near – and Orcs can’t possibly be any nearer than when you fight them.
– I’m putting it here, because to some it may seem to be a mistake: the Balrog has wings. Tolkien doesn’t really say it has wings, just that ‘the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings.’ [2.V.] So there’s some quarrelling over that point amongst readers, but Jackson decided to make a Balrog that has wings as you can clearly see in this sequence, as well as in the opening sequence of The Two Towers.

– One of the biggest gripes many fans have with the movies, is the lack of mallorn trees in Lothlórien. The only shot coming close to the golden wood Tolkien describes, is this shot of Caras Galadhon.
– When Gimli insults Haldir, he says: Ishkhaqwi ai durugnul. This is supposedly Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves, meaning: A plague upon the stiff necks of Elves. However, Tolkien didn’t come up with so many Dwarvish words. To my knowledge (please correct me if I’m wrong), the only word in the list that can be translated from Khuzdul is ‘ai’, which means ‘upon’, as is shown in the old battle-cry of the Dwarves, ‘Khazâd ai-menu’, The Dwarves are upon you.
– Galadriel pronounces ‘Eärendil’ incorrectly: it should be ay-ar-en-deel rather than ar-en-deel.

– In the panoramic shots we see during this sequence, there are always trees (a rather large forest, as a matter of fact) surrounding Anduin. However, the Fellowship passes the plains of Rohan, with vast open spaces on either side of the River.
– Before Frodo leaves, Aragorn says they’ll wait till nightfall to cross the lake because there are Orcs there – wouldn’t they be safer in the day, Orcs being afraid of light and all? Both PotbellyHairyfeet and Mara_Jinn asked this just question.
– So, where is Sam’s backpack?
– A lot of people complained about the fact that Lurtz’s chopped off arm doesn’t bleed. This was done, according to the EE commentary, because PJ wanted to keep the rating low.
– In the books, Boromir’s sword is broken at the hilt.