Polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films were deposited on quartz substrates by rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition (RTCVD) under nonideal conditions. Then, crystallographic defects in the poly-Si films were investigated by using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and optical microscopy combined with defect etching. We found that as-deposited poly-Si films contain a lot of twin crystals, including first-order, second-order, third-order, and higher-order twinned crystals. Besides twinned crystals, stacking faults, dislocations, dislocation nets, dislocation loops, extended dislocations, and dislocation line arrays were also found. Finally, the origins of the defects were analyzed, being attributed to the peculiarities of the RTCVD-quartz growth system, stress caused by lattice and thermal mismatch, a huge temperature ramp, and nonideal deposition conditions. Although our experimental results cannot represent the crystallographic quality of poly-Si films prepared by RTCVD, they at least indicate what kinds and how many defects exist in poly-Si films when deposition conditions severely deviate from the optimum.