Goofs

After setting the explosives under the bridge, Tuco and Blondie jump into a foxhole and are perfectly dry, despite having been soaking wet from the river just previously.

When Tuco and Blondie are carrying the crate with the explosives on the stretcher, it has turned about 90 degrees between the two shots when the music starts playing.

Blondie and Tuco walk down the street of the desert town to confront the Angel Eyes' gang. At the beginning, their shadows are projected to behind them. Next shot, the shadows are projected in front of them.

When Tuco is balancing on the cross at the end, the knot of the noose is above his head when shown from the front but it is close to his neck when shown from the back.

When Blondie is comforting the dying Confederate soldier near the end of the film, he gives him two puffs of his cheroot cigar - it changes length by almost an inch from shot to shot, first longer, then shorter, then longer again.

Blondie and Tuco are seen using dynamite to destroy a bridge. Dynamite wasn't invented until 1867, five years after this film was set.

The body in the grave would only have been in the ground about a month, and would not have been reduced to such a state so quickly.

The date of death on Arch Stanton's grave is 3 February 1862--a few months before the setting of the film; however, the body inside has undergone several years of decomposition.

When the two armies battle at the bridge, the Confederates are using the flag with the blue criss-cross on the red field. This is not the Confederate national flag, rather it is the banner of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. It would have been in battles in the east, not in the west.

During the three-way showdown (also known as a "Mexican standoff"), Tuco slowly pulls his pistol from his pocket and dangles it beside him, not knowing Blondie has emptied it. But a professional gunman like Tuco is supposed to be, would easily be able to tell the difference in weight between a loaded and an empty gun.

When Tuco and Blondie ride their coach up to the mission to recuperate from the desert several power poles are visible in the background to the left. (May only be visible in the wide-screen version). However, one can make the assumption that these are telegraph lines since the telegraph was a common form of long-distance communication during the civil war. Power poles are even visible by the train tracks when Tuco escapes his captive which makes sense since telegraph lines were commonly built along railroads.

The second hat shot off by Blondie also briefly separates the actor's toupee from his head. However, it's quite plausible for a man to have worn a toupee in 1862.

Although his name is never given, Tuco calls Clint Eastwood's character 'Blondie' throughout the movie. However, it clearly can be seen, particularly in the desert scenes, that 'Blondie', in fact, has dark brown hair. However, Tuco calls him "Blondie" not because of his hair color but because of his skin complexion. This is apparent from Tuco's monologue when he forces Blondie to walk in the desert while he, Tuco, rides his horse carrying an umbrella.

After leaving the POW camp, as Tuco is moving around in the town there are wagons and people going down the road. As he is walking beside one of the wagons, just before he turns to go into the building, the wagon has a man dressed as a woman in a blue dress sitting on the right side. It is possible he is trying to evade the enemy and is wearing the dress as a disguise.

When Wallace escorts Tuco on the train to their destination, presumably another prisoner-of-war camp, Tuco pushes him off the train, renders him unconscious, and tries to sever the chain that joins their handcuffs. But Wallace likely held the keys of the handcuffs, so Tuco should have searched his pockets first. After Tuco manages to sever the chain on the rails, he'd still have his part of the cuffs on his wrist, but shortly after, Tuco is in the bath and no cuffs are visible.

During the preparation of the charges on the bridge supports, they are connected in series, and Blondie lights only one (too short) fuse. When the bridge blows, all four charges detonate simultaneously, since they were detonated electrically.

When Tuco and Blondie seek Angel Eyes in the deserted town, they discover a note that says "see you later idiots", but looking closely at the paper, it can be seen to be a page of the film script.

When the Sheriff unrolls the wanted poster in Tuco's face, the poster has a photograph of very good quality instead of a sketch; this seems highly unlikely at the time the film takes place.

When the runaway Confederate carriage first appears in the desert, someone can be seen steering it. Then, as Tuco seizes the horse-team to stop the carriage, the reins obviously are being held by the out-of-frame driver. In the next shot, viewed from the driver's bench, the reins visibly tighten to halt the horses and then drop.

A car can be seen passing by in the background when Tuco is balancing on the cross on the graveyard at the end of the movie.

The American flags flown by the Union army have 50 stars, 97 years too late for the film's setting.

When Tuco and Blondie are under the bridge in waist-deep water strapping dynamite to the supports, a car passes from right to left where the poles form a V to the right of Blondie's hat just after Tuco says, "You go first." (widescreen edition)

All of the railroad cars seen are four-wheeled. This design had fallen out of favor in the United States by the 1850s.

When Angel Eyes is interrogating the prostitute, a photo of Geronimo can be scene on the wall. This movies takes place during the Civil War. This photo of Geronimo was not taken until 1886.

When Tuco tests a revolver behind the gun shop on human silhouette targets, the sound effects are of bullets ricocheting off rocks, but there is a wall of sandbags behind the targets, which would absorb the bullets.

The POW band guitarist is shown strumming his instrument, but the soundtrack guitar is "finger-picking." There are other mis-matches in the scene, including actors playing valve trombones which aren't heard.

Tuco is ambushed by three bounty hunters with one of them firing an anachronistic Winchester rifle at Tuco to make him fall off his horse. The bounty hunter with the rifle is heard working the loading mechanism yet when he enters the frame he is seen pulling the hammer on the rifle. If he had really used the loading lever of the rifle the hammer would have already been pulled down.

After Blondie tells Angel Eyes of six being a perfect number because it is the number of bullets his revolver can carry, the latter gives off a laugh that audibly belongs to neither Lee Van Cleef nor Simon Prescott (Van Cleef's voice-over actor in the extended version of the film). The laugh belongs to Angel Eye's voice actor in the Italian version, Emilio Cigoli, so the presence of his laugh in the English version is a dubbing error in the extended English-language version.

During Tuco's beating in the POW camp, one of the fiddlers stops playing. The singers behind him are still singing but only the music is heard.

When the rhythmic music stops and Tuco is choking after screaming "Blondie", a person walking to the left can be seen on the left side of Tuco's face. Also, a sun reflection can be seen on something carried by the person.

At the Sand Hill Cemetery, Tuco is sitting on the ground next to Strantons grave marker, there is a coffee cup on the ground behind Tuco.

Right after Blondie places the rock in the middle of the courtyard (presumably containing the name of the grave), there is a closeup shot of Angel Eyes' face lasting about one second. To the right of Angel Eyes' head, a person can be seen running in the far background. They are moving right to left.

In the cemetery scene when Tuco is balancing himself on the cross, a person can be seen standing in the background, just to the left of his head.

Just before Tuco discovers Sad Hill cemetery, and Blondie fires a cannon at Tuco for the 2nd time, when he is tumbling, a stunt double can obviously be seen.

In the re-instated scene where Tuco gives his identity papers to one of the Confederate guards, he passes himself off as Bill Carson, Third Cavalry. There's one problem: In all other scenes, Tuco is known to have poor reading skills, and shouldn't have been able to make out most of it (except for Carson's own name).

Blondie goes from town to town handing Tuco over to the authorities and then saving him without ever wearing any form of disguise. Yet he never becomes a wanted man himself.

Tuco is wearing a Confederate uniform after he kills Wallace but is later seen in town wearing different clothes with no handcuffs around his wrists even though he only broke the chain.

When Tuco throws Wallace and himself of the train, he does so in full view of a few dozen men. The train would have stopped and he would be captured again.

The scene where Blondie, Angel Eyes and his gang are in the town being abandoned by the Confederates, Tuco shoots one armed bounty hunter. Blondie hears the shot and says every gun has its sound, implying he recognizes Tuco's gun.

Tuco at this time was most likely using Cpl Wallace's gun, taken after he escaped from the train. Blondie would not have recognized the sound of the Corpral's gun.

He was using the word "gun" as a synecdoche meaning "gunman". He was referring to Tuco's habitual cadence of firing 4 quick shots, a pause, then one more shot. He didn't mean that he recognized the bang of the pistol. Also, Tuco had broken Wallace's pistol trying to break the handcuffs chain and threw it away.

A man in Tuco's profession should have realized before engaging in the final three-way showdown that his revolver would not have fired. It is clearly visible that the percussion caps on his revolver have been removed. In contrast, such percussion caps are visible on the cylinder of Angel Eyes' pistol.

Blondie is cleaning his pistol barrel with a wire bore brush. As one so familiar with shooting, he would know not to insert the wire brush in the muzzle end of the barrel. To do so would eventually cause the weapon to be less accurate.

Although it makes for more tense and thrilling action, Blondie's and Tuco's walking through main street to hunt down Angel Eye's gang in the bombed-out town also makes no sense, as they become completely open targets.

Angel Eyes' horse is a trotter, distinguished by its high-stepping gait. This horse was trained for harness racing and pulling a sulky, not for western riding.