Continuity mistake: When Indy falls inside the mine cart, the protruding log disappears. A shot later it reappears, but when Indy hits the railroad switch with the shovel it disappears again.
Continuity mistake: When Indy is fighting the Chief Guard on the conveyor belt, there is nothing behind the guard before he picks up the large rock, but in a close-up there are now small rocks on the belt.
Revealing mistake: When Indy is whipped six times, the first time we can see the whip doesn't touch him, or go anywhere near him.
Continuity mistake: When Indy hangs the assassin on the fan, in one shot he's spinning, but in the very next shot he's not. He can't just instantly stop, he'd have to slow down.
Revealing mistake: When Indy wraps his whip around an assassin's neck and hangs him on the fan, we can see it's not actually around his neck, it's just attached to his clothing.
Continuity mistake: When Indy punches Short Round, he starts falling forwards, but lands on his back.
Audio problem: Indie lifts Willie from the lava pit, she is semi unconscious. She slaps him weakly but instead a loud and strong punch is heard.
Continuity mistake: Before the first sacrifice victim is being lowered into the lava pit, Mola Ram is standing on the edge of the pit, but in a few shots later he moves some feet away.
Continuity mistake: When Indy, Willie and the kid are leaving the village riding the elephants the sun changes between shots.
Continuity mistake: On the ladder, when Mola Ram tries to grab Indy's heart, Mola's hands and Indy's chest are very sweaty and dirty in the close-ups, but dry and quite clean in the wide angles.
Continuity mistake: On the bridge, when Indy threatens the Thugees to drop the bag, they're a couple meters away from his back, but in the next angle they're further away.
Continuity mistake: After Short Round breaks the Maharaja's spell, the blood on the side of his mouth swaps from a thick strand to a thin one between shots.
Continuity mistake: Mola Ram falls off the bridge-ladder when a step breaks in two, but from the immediate wide angle it just moves slightly out of place. Furthermore, in the next angles the step is perfectly fixed.
Continuity mistake: When the thug jumps on Indy's mine cart, Indy's hat gets loose, but in the following shot it's perfectly tucked in.
Continuity mistake: After Shorty is saved from the thugs' mine cart, a baddie jumps from an elevated cart situated on the right side, but when the angle changes he is coming from the left side. Also, Indy is looking sideways instead of upwards, as if the bad guy was parallel to him.
Audio problem: In the mine chase scene, when both carts are parallel to each other, Indy punches a thug. A frame later, from a different POV, two quick punches are heard, but no one is punching anybody.
Continuity mistake: When the assassin's head is about to hit the fan, in the first shot of him going up, his head is very close to it, but in the next shot, it's further away.
Continuity mistake: When the Indian guest is given a beetle to eat during the dinner sequence, he pulls off the back of the insect. When he notices that Willie is not eating, you can see that he is only holding the beetle, but when the camera angle changes in the next shot, the guest is holding the insect with the part he pulled off next to it.
Continuity mistake: When Indy throws a flaming skewer at the Chinese guy, the right side of his scarf runs down to his waist, yet in the close-up it's shorter and stops by the ribs, check out the black lettering embroidered on it.
Chosen answer: His neck was snapped by the whip getting caught in the fan. There isn't always blood with a hanging. Since the fan wasn't designed to hold a man's weight, the motor in it would have stopped or given out.
Captain Defenestrator