Goofs for
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) More at IMDbPro »

• Factual errors: The earth should appear closer to the horizon at Clavius than at Tycho, not vice versa.
  
  
• Continuity: After Dave Bowman takes his food out of the food slot, two of the containers in his tray exchange positions by themselves. When he first removes the tray, there is a dark red container all the way to the left and a grayish one next to it. When Dave makes his way to the table to eat, the red one and the gray one have switched places.
  
  
• Continuity: In the 70mm version you can see passengers moving inside the illuminated windows of the Pan Am space shuttle enroute to the space station. However, the following interior shot shows that Dr. Floyd is the sole passenger.
  
  

• Continuity: When the astronaut leaves the pod to replace the AE-35 unit, he is holding it in his right hand so he can use his left hand to control his thruster backpack. In the next shot showing him maneuvering toward Discovery, the AE-35 is in his left hand.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Bowman reenters the ship, he is exposed to vacuum for no more than 10 seconds before operating the repressurization valve. Scientific evidence shows that this would indeed be survivable without grievous harm, notwithstanding the sensational depictions in other movies.
  
  
• Factual errors: One of the most familiar effects in 2001 is when the stewardess enters a cabin on the round, moon-bound shuttle, velcro-walks around the wall and exits in a orientation upside down to how she entered. The upside down orientation is carried through to the next shot where she enters the pilots' control area and is readjusted to show she is matching the pilots' vertical. The goof is that, following the implications of the change of orientation, the pilots would be sitting upside-down in comparison to the passenger compartment. This would be problematic in the subsequent scenes of the shuttle landing on the moon - somebody would be on their heads at landing. The idea was to graphically demonstrate that there is no 'up' in space. Unfortunately, in a shuttle that lands in a gravity field, yes, there is an 'up' that has to be consistent throughout the ship, at least as far as the people are concerned.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On one of the "computer monitors" in Bowman's pod (visible in the widescreen version only), scratches and a rather obvious film-edit splice can be seen, giving away the fact that the "computer graphics" are rear-projected film clips. The same scratched-up section of animation is seen in two or three subsequent shots of the pod's control panel.
  
  
• Continuity: The quantity of food changes twice while Bowman and Poole are eating.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dave is showing HAL his sketches, and HAL questions Dave for his crew psychology report: Dave's seating position and the way he holds his sketch pad is not consistent between scenes.
  
  
• Factual errors: Bowman breathes in deeply before he attempts to re-enter the ship from the pod. Arthur C. Clarke in an interview later noted that this is incorrect, and that Bowman should have exhaled, as the vacuum of space would have damaged his lungs had they been full of air.
  
  
• Factual errors: As the PanAm shuttle closes in on the space station, we see both from their point of view, i.e., they are both stationary while the stars behind rotate. However, the shadows on the space station do not move at all.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the PanAm shuttle closes in on the space station, the shuttle and station rotate synchronously, so you see the station stay still through the shuttle's windows. However the computer schematic displayed in the cockpit keeps rotating.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: To come up with a convincing effect for the floating pen in the shuttle sequence, Kubrick decided to simply use a pen that was taped to a sheet of glass suspended in front of the camera (in fact, the shuttle attendant can be seen to "pull" the pen off the glass when she takes hold of it). If you watch carefully around the upper left corner of the screen just before she catches the pen, you can see the glass briefly reflecting light as it rotates to give the floating effect to the pen.
  
  
• Continuity: The phase of the Earth reverses while the moon bus is en-route from Clavius to Tyco.
  
  
• Factual errors: While riding in the moon bus towards TMA-1, Dr. Floyd, the two other passengers, and indeed the sandwiches and even poured coffee seem to behave as if there is a strong (i.e., nearly earth-like) gravitational pull. The effective gravity inside the moon bus shouldn't be any different from that of the moon itself and much weaker than that on Earth.
  
  
• Continuity: In the Pan Am lunar shuttle, we see the Clavius Moon Base approach through the viewing window of the pilot's cockpit in a view like an airplane approach. In the next shot, we see the exterior of the craft, and the cockpit is shown pointing straight up towards the black sky as it lands on the landing gear beneath the craft. It would be impossible for the pilots to view the Clavius approach from the cockpit if landing with reverse thrust engines. All they would see is the sky straight above, and it would be relatively still from their point of view.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bowman is disconnecting HAL in the logic center, he turns a key and a corresponding clear plastic block slides out. However, when he skips the #1 block in one series and turns the key for the high number in the next series, the #1 block in the previous series slides out.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the scene on the Earth Shuttle where the attendant enters the passenger cabin and moves towards Dr. Heywood, she stumbles while trying to walk carefully along the walkway. The nature of the misstep reveals that she is not weightless.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the boardroom at the Clavius Moonbase, the men move around as if they are walking in a one G environment instead of the one sixth G that exists on the moon.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): HAL's verbal description of his chess move (Q-B3), given what he shows on the screen, are from Frank's point of view. This is often regarded as an error, since in descriptive chess notation, the rank is described from the point of view of the player making the move. It should be Q-B6. HAL's errors can be considered either script goofs or clues revealing his internal conflict, since he is supposed to be infallible.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): HAL has apparently forgotten to wish Frank a happy birthday until Frank's parents' video reminds him. This is either a breach in his usual social graces or a lapse in memory. What are the chances that the ship's computer does not have each crewman's date of birth on file?
  
  
• Factual errors: Subtitles on the DVD misspell Clavius as Claivus during the conference.
  
  
• Continuity: When the spaceship is docking at the station, the ship and the station are rotating at the same speed as can be seen in the scenes from the ship's point of view. But in the exterior, zoomed out shot of both of them, they are clearly rotating at radically-different speeds.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While Poole and Bowman are watching the BBC 12 interview, the right flat screen is slightly ahead (about two frames). This is due to both screens being rear-projected film clips from two projectors. An actual video feed would be completely synchronized.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Floyd has finished flipping through photographs on his way to the TMA-1 moon base, during the cut where he says "Deliberately buried...", he is holding a different photograph from the one he is holding in the preceding and succeeding shots.
  
  
• Factual errors: As the moon shuttle lands it kicks up swirling clouds of dust. In the vacuum of space the dust would shoot out straight, which is what happened with the real-life Apollo Lunar Modules.
  
  
• Factual errors: At 1:48 into the film (DVD special edition), when Dave is flipping switches in the pod prior to entry through the emergency airlock, the upper part of his right spacesuit sleeve can be seen resting on his forearm, with a larger space below where the lower part of the sleeve is hanging down. Of course, in a weightless environment, Dave's forearm would be more likely to be in the center of the sleeve, and quite probably the motion of his arm would have caused the sleeve to bounce up and down, gently striking the side of his arm on the side of the direction of motion with each change of direction.
  
  
• Continuity: In the initial running scene with Dr. Poole on the ship, at the beginning the side with the two occupied long term sleeping units are on his left. In the last shot, they are on his right.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Dr. Floyd is talking to his little girl on the picture-phone, she squirms around and moves slightly out of frame. Although the camera on the phone is supposed to be stationary, it pans slightly to keep her in frame. Modern web cameras used in video communication often have the ability to follow a subject's face and/or body both mechanically and/or via digital and optical zooming. It is then easily assumed that such technology could easily be available and in use in the future created by Kubrick and Clarke.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end when Dave is disconnecting HAL, the video comes on inside HAL with Dr Floyd explaining that only HAL knew about the monolith on the moon. Yet in '2010', Dr Floyd (then played by Roy Scheider) himself denies having done that, or even knowing about it.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: A weightless environment like the Discovery's interior would have no need for a ladder. However, the ladders may have been installed for the purpose of maintenance etc. while the Discovery in is dock on earth.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Floyd is giving his speech during the debriefing, his hands are alternately (not) resting on the podium.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Dave goes out to repair the AE-35 unit the first time, he parks the pod away from Discovery and rotates it so that the door faces the spacecraft. During the rotation, the lights of the pod reflect on the let side of the screen.
  
  
• Plot holes: Spacecraft will always have redundant computer systems. Even with the HAL9000 series having had up until then flawless operations, no craft in deep space would be without one or more back up systems, especially for life support on the crew that were in suspended animation.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As Dave Bowman climbs into HAL's logic center to shut him off, the seal on his suit's left hand is clearly broken and the glove separates from the suit (due to the swing). The glove is clearly reattached once he enters the logic center.
  
  
• Plot holes: When Dave goes out to replace the AE-35 unit, he refers to the pod he uses as "B Pod". However, when he decides to speak with Frank privately he says he is having trouble with the radio in "C Pod". They get into the same pod Dave referred to as "B Pod". In 2010 (1984), there is a pod remaining in the bay but there should have been none. Two were lost in space and the third was the one Dave left in.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first view from the space station looking at the approaching ship, the stars are moving clockwise, so the station must be turning clockwise from the ship's point of view. But in the next shot, the station is turning counter-clockwise from the ship's point of view.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On the space station, right after Dr. Floyd clears security, and before he meets the Russians he and another man are strolling along the curved floor of the station. Their bodies' orientation should be radial to the curvature of the floor, appearing to lean forward in the frame, but instead they are perpendicular to the orientation of the frame; they are walking downhill rather that walking along the "bottom" of the curved floor.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: At the end of the film, Dave uses the last remaining pod to get a closer look at the huge monolith. The hangar bay door that opens is the one in the center. The center bay was from the pod which killed Frank and was drifted into space. The bay door to the left (outside perspective, looking at the Discovery) was from the pod Dave used to retrieve Frank's body. The pod became useless upon explosive re-entry of Dave in the Discovery. So, the only left pod should be the one at the right bay door and not the center door.
  
  

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