40 Mistakes And Fun Facts From Mrs. Doubtfire That Fans Likely Didn’t Catch The First Time Around

Fans of the movie have wondered now and again: how is Daniel being paid for the work he does as Mrs. Doubtfire? She isn’t a real person, so she can’t have a bank account! It’s possible Daniel used his brother’s account details instead, or got paid cash in hand, but that’s never explicitly stated in the film.

At one point in the movie we hear Miranda give the address of her family home, and that’s the real address of the real house used in the movie: 2640 Steiner St. And after Williams’ death in 2014 the home became an impromptu memorial, with fans gathering to place flowers and tributes there.

Sally Field’s character Miranda, Daniel’s wife and then ex, is an interior designer. She’s apparently not a very good one though. At one point in the film she recommends a “17th-century grand piano” for a client, but there’s just one tiny problem there… pianos didn’t actually exist in the 17th century.

Blink and you’ll miss this one, but it’s there! When Daniel-as-Doubtfire is cooking in the kitchen, he knocks the top of the pepper pot into the food. But in the next shot, though he hasn’t removed it, it’s gone. And there wasn’t time for it to sink to the bottom of the pan either.

When auditioning for the parts of Daniel’s older children, Lisa Jakub and Matthew Lawrence were introduced to “the director’s mother.” Nope, you guessed it — it was really Williams in full Mrs. Doubtfire makeup, and he and the producers wanted to see how the children would react. Both kids eventually worked it out, and were happy to be fooled.

In the scene where Daniel is playing with the toy dinosaurs in the studio, take a look behind him. There’s one creepy picture of a spider on the wall, and it keeps moving around from shot to shot. Quite a big error on the part of the continuity supervisors: maybe they just didn’t want to look at a spider for too long?

When Daniel is in the kitchen before Mrs. Stelner comes in, his robe is undone at the top. But a few shots and one splattering on the face later, the robe is done up, and we never see him closing it. A little while later and it’s open again! A very tiny mistake of course, but once you’ve seen it you can’t un-see it.

Mrs. Doubtfire is a film about familial relationships, so it seems only appropriate that a member of Williams’ family would be in there, right? The bartender at the pool, who’s mysteriously credited as “Dr. Toad,” is actually Williams’ older brother Robert, who was known throughout his life by his middle name, Todd.

Actress Blake Lively was five years old when she auditioned for the role that eventually went to Mara Wilson. Website Cheat Sheet told how because she was a massive fan of Robin Williams, her father tried to help by telling her she would be auditioning with his twin brother rather than the man himself. Alas, when someone said Williams’ name she worked it out, and she became so nervous she blew the audition. Awww. 

Watch Mr. Lundy’s suit while he’s sitting in the restaurant with Daniel. Every so often when the camera cuts to him, you can see white specks on his blazer and then in the next shot they’re gone. What’s the deal with that? Also, where’d they come from? Any answers, costuming department?

When unloading the shopping with Miranda in one scene, Mrs. Doubtfire takes out a bag of tomatoes, and then a few moments later the same bag comes out again. Well… Mrs. Doubtfire did say at the beginning of the film she would only feed the children good, nutritious food!

At the end of the film Miranda takes Daniel back to court and gets what she wants — or does she? Still,  watch the lawyer who sits next to her. At one point, with her head not directly facing the camera, she tells Miranda, “Congratulations.” But if you watch closely you can see that her lips don’t move.

On Mrs. Doubtfire’s TV show she and her puppet are heard talking about how England is an island. It’s not, though! It would make more sense to say Britain is an island, though that’s not completely correct either. The British Isles actually consist of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and are spread across more than one island. 

During the sweet scene where a non-Mrs. Doubtfire Daniel and his kids have spaghetti together, take a quick look at the picture frames dotted around. If you look closely enough, you can see the cameras in one of the reflections. Those pesky shiny surfaces always provide a difficulty for filmmakers.

Remember the film’s climactic scene where Stu chokes on the shrimp and Mrs. Doubtfire saves his life? You’ll note if you watch carefully that Stu does actually chew the shrimp before he starts choking. But when it comes out of him and lands on the table, it’s a whole shrimp with barely a tooth-mark on it.

Remember the birthday party in the movie, the one that goes so badly it ends Daniel’s marriage? Keep a close eye on Williams’ hair in that scene. He’s wearing a cap, and when he takes it off his hair is uncombed. But in the next shot of him, it’s neatly styled.

Hopefully this is another one where you’ll be too busy laughing to notice any mistake, but it’s still there. When Mrs. Doubtfire’s teeth come out in the wine glass, Daniel runs to the bathroom holding said dentures, but once he gets in there suddenly they’ve gone. Where did they go?

One of the movie’s funniest scenes is where Williams, disguised as Mrs. Doubtfire, accidentally sets the fake breasts he’s wearing on fire. But look closely at the pan lids he uses to put the fire out, and for a second or two you’ll be able to see the camera crew reflected in one of them.

During the famous “apartment inspection” scene where Robin Williams gets cake icing all over his face, look at the Mrs. Doubtfire wig he’s wearing throughout. One minute it’s got icing on it, as is only to be expected. But a couple of shots later, without any indication he’s wiped it off, it’s all gone.

This one is hard to hear, but it’s in there. At one point in the movie Daniel’s brother, played by Harvey Feirstein, is speaking on the phone to their mom about the unexpected divorce. At the end of the call he says “I love you, too,” but only after that do you hear the line to which he’s supposed to be responding: an “I love you,” from the mother.

Let’s face it, who hasn’t tried to do their own Mrs. Doubtfire impression? You’ll know, of course, that she says the word “dear” a great deal. Still, some very patient soul once went through the entire movie and counted exactly how often she said it. It’s actually no fewer than 101 times.

When the movie was first released, a few critics pointed out that there were several scenes which added nothing to the actual plot. One of these is the bit where Daniel tries on lots of different costumes and does lots of different accents. Fans have wondered, why was he doing that when he’d already established his Mrs. Doubtfire voice?

When Daniel enters the empty TV studio and starts improvising with the toy dinosaurs — revealing his comedic talents and thus winning him a job opportunity — watch the background. You can see faint amounts of smoke swirling around; apparently it’s the result of a crewmember not being able to wait for a cigarette break.

In the movie it takes Daniel seemingly no time at all to change in and out of his Mrs. Doubtfire persona. Not so in real life! When on the movie set, Williams had to spend a whopping — and probably quite exhausting — 4.5 hours every day having the Doubtfire prosthetics applied. 

Lisa Jakub has a fascinating story about making the movie. Because she spent so much time away from school, they uncharitably expelled her, and she was devastated. Williams stepped in and wrote a letter to the school on her behalf — according to Jakub, they framed the letter, but still didn’t let her back in. Still, she was always grateful to Williams for trying.

When the Hillard family go to the swimming party, there’s lots of people in swimwear strolling around, but watch out for two people in particular. There’s a couple of bikini-clad women walking in front of the gate, but when the scene cuts suddenly they’re walking past again in the same direction.

There’s an extra dimension to the scenes between Miranda and Daniel if you know Sally Field was going through a divorce herself when the movie was filming. She was splitting from producer Alan Greisman, the father of her youngest son Sam. But, like Miranda and Daniel in the movie, they managed to remain friends.

Check out the scene when Daniel is in the bath doing his German accent to fool Miranda. When he asks her how many children are in the picture, his chest is free of bubbles. Miranda gives the answer and then the scene cuts back to Daniel, who now has suds all over his chest as if he’d just dunked himself in the water — which he didn’t do.

Some of Daniel’s behavior in this movie crosses the line, and none more than when he puts pepper on Stu’s food knowing he’s allergic to it. That’s not just mean, it’s outright illegal, and it might well have resulted in Stu’s death under different circumstances. How on earth did he get away with it?

Not a seasoning problem this time, but instead a season-ing problem. (Get it?) When the kids arrive at the pool party it’s clearly hot weather and everyone is dressed in summer clothes. But the three children are for some reason wearing winter clothes with long sleeves, and not even sweating.

In the original production notes for the film, director Chris Columbus explained, “We all wanted Mrs. Doubtfire to be someone who would be the perfect grandmother. We looked through hundreds and hundreds of photographs until we found a portrait of an older English woman. She had an incredibly sweet face, pretty, prim, very popular and extremely warm.” But her exact identity is unknown.

The book Mrs. Doubtfire is based on, Alias Madame Doubtfire by Anne Fine, is a lot less family-friendly than the finished film. And Fine’s not a fan. She told newspaper The Independent in 2022, “I was quite astonished that so many people loved the film, and so many children loved it,” though she did concede she was “impressed with Robin Williams’s comedy skills.”

Delightfully, the three child actors who played Daniel’s kids are still friends to this day. Mara Wilson told Variety magazine in 2018, “I remember the second that I got into a room with Matt and Lisa, I knew that I adored them… Lisa and I talk all the time now and we saw Matt last week.”

People have pointed out online that Stu’s reaction to eating the tampered-with shrimp isn’t actually what you’d expect to happen when someone has allergies. In reality, he wouldn’t have “just” choked, but rather have ended up in a lot of pain, and it probably wouldn’t have been a family-friendly scene. 

The movie shows how Daniel adopts the very unusual name of “Mrs. Doubtfire.” When Miranda asks for her name, Daniel panics and takes it from a newspaper headline reading “Police doubt fire was accidental.” But considering he’d gone to so much effort already, why on earth didn’t he have a name picked out in advance?

Screenwriter Randi Singer believed both book and film could help children get through divorce. She told Variety in 2018, “Just because parents fail as a married couple doesn’t make it acceptable to fail as co-parents. I’m so proud that in 1993, we had a message that says there are all kind of families and that includes families where the parents are no longer married.”

Everyone in the movie behaves as though Mrs. Doubtfire is English, with Pierce Brosnan’s Stu asking her at one point, “What part of England do you come from?” Trouble is, that’s clearly not an English accent at all, it’s a Scottish one! Looks like there was a research fail by either Daniel or the writers themselves.

During the scene at the pool, we see Stu on the diving board and you can clearly see he’s got a big ol’ manly chest full of hair. But then he actually dives into the pool, and for a split second you can see that all that hair is gone. That’s a stunt double doing the dive.

Williams was up for wacky antics no matter what film he was doing or in whose attire he was dressed. While filming Mrs. Doubtfire, the actor revealed in a 2013 Reddit AMA, he took himself off to an adult shop in full make-up and tried to buy some of their wares.

There’s one bit in the film where Mrs. Doubtfire sneakily hurls a lime at Pierce Brosnan’s character Stu. Except, well, did she? We certainly see her throw it, but in the next shot of Williams-as-Doubtfire that lime is right back where it was before, at the top of the fruit pile.