National Lampoon's Animal House

Bloopers

Although the action takes place only sixteen years prior to the date the film was made, the intervening time span had seen a dramatic change in styles, technological development, politics and social attitudes. As a result, any anachronisms stand out sharply:

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• In the parade scene, numerous extras sporting the long hair and bellbottoms characteristic of the late 1970s are visible among the spectators, as are several automobiles from that period.
• When hapless Delta pledge Pinto attempts to shoplift from a local grocery store, he meets the mayor's gum-smacking 13-year-old daughter, who is working the cash register and whom he later dates at his peril (see above). The cash register anachronistically features an LED (Light Emitting Diode) display. Interestingly, 1962 was the very year in which Nick Holonyak Jr. created the first practical visible-spectrum LED, but the technology did not come into everyday use until several years later.
• Similarly, while Boon and Katie are getting stoned at Professor Jennings' apartment, they sing "Hey, Paula", which was not released until 1963.
• At the party following the induction of Pinto and Flounder into the fraternity, the Delta frathouse jukebox plays the song "Louie, Louie" as performed by The Kingsmen, which would in turn become integral to countless parties staged by U.S. college students seeking to emulate Animal House. However, The Kingsmen didn't record their version of the song until April 1963.
• Flounder's Lincoln Continental, which the boys eventually convert into the "Deathmobile," was actually a 1964 model, although the "suicide doors" were typical of that period.
• When actress Karen Allen is shown in a kitchen, she passes a refrigerator decorated with a sticker from the Bicentennial—fourteen years in the future, but two years before the film was actually produced.
• Donald Sutherland sports a large, curly hairstyle that was indicative of the late 1970s, but was not worn by men in the early 1960s.