But a scene in the hit film Gladiator suggests otherwise when a chariot strikes a wall and flips over - revealing a gas canister hidden beneath.
This is just one examples of hundreds of continuity errors to appear in Hollywood movies but most of them go unnoticed by the audience.
Scientists believe they have now discovered why this is - we view the world in 15-second chunks, so will miss brief continuity errors.
Movie mistakes: This scene from Gladiator, set in AD 180, shows a gas canister hidden in the back of a chariot
Oops: A white van is clearly visible in the background of this huge battle scene in Braveheart
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered the brain merges together similar images seen within 15 seconds.
Without this skill, even simple changes in people’s facial expression would be so overwhelming that we’d feel like we were hallucinating.
Researcher David Whitney said: ‘The continuity field smoothes what would otherwise be a jittery perception of object features over time.
‘Essentially, it pulls together physically but not radically different objects to appear more similar to each other.
‘This is surprising because it means the visual system sacrifices accuracy for the stake of the continuous, stable perception of objects.’
Dr Whitney made the finding by asking volunteers to do a computerised task in which they had to place a white line at the same angle as a pattern of bars they had viewed for five seconds.
Instead of precisely matching the orientation of the pattern, they averaged out the angle of three most recently viewed designs.
Where did he come from? A crew member in a
cowboy hat can bee seen in the background of this scene from Pirates of
the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Something to chew on: Christopher Walken's real
teeth are visible when his character the Headless Horseman is about to
kiss Catrina's stepmother in the film Sleepy Hollow
Researcher Dr Jason Fischer added: ‘Even though the sequence of images was random, participants’ perception of any given image was biased strongly toward the several images that came before it.
‘The brain has learnt that the real world doesn’t change suddenly and it applies that knowledge to make our visual experience more consistent from one moment to the next.’
A second experiment showed that the bars in the pattern had to be placed close together for the continuity effect to work.
This suggests the brain only amalgamates subtle visual changes.
The finding, reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience, helps explain why continuity errors in films usually go unnoticed by all but the most eagle eyed.
Other examples of props changing before our eyes include Daniel Radcliffe’s t-shirt in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Must be difficult to see in those helmets: The stormtrooper in the right-hand corner of the screen bumps his head in Star Wars
The disappearing badge: In the opening scene of
the 2009 Star Trek film, Captain Robau is seen wearing a Starfleet
badge. But when he turns and sits down in the captains chair, it has
disappeared. It returns again in the next scene
The young wizard is shown asleep in a crew-necked t-shirt but when he wakes up, he is wearing one with buttons.
Another easily missed error occurs in Pretty Woman, the croissant being eaten by Julia Roberts mysterious changes in to a pancake.
But perhaps one of the most famous mistakes occurred in the 1995 film Braveheart, when a white van appears in the background of a battle scene.
Others include a wrecked Porsche in the 1985 film Commando starring Arnold Schwarzenegger which suddenly appeared good as new as few moments later.
Or more recently, the film Gravity came under fire for literally defying gravity when Sandra Bullock was floating through space but her hair remained perfectly in place
Another reoccurring continuity issue in many films is the changing make-up and wounds of their stars.
Frodo Baggins's scar moves in Lord of the Rings while Bond girl Halle Berry's sword slash wound is miraculously healed for the intimate scenes on Die Another Day.
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