Did You Know?

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.
Share this Hide options

Bowman inhales deeply before attempting to re-enter the ship from the pod. Arthur C. Clarke in an interview later noted that this is incorrect. Bowman should have exhaled, as the vacuum of space would have damaged his lungs had they been full of air.
Share this Hide options

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.
Share this Hide options

The quantity of food changes twice while Bowman and Poole are eating.
Share this Hide options

The phase of the Earth reverses while the moon bus is en-route from Clavius to Tycho.
Share this Hide options

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.
Share this Hide options

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.
Share this Hide options

When Dr. Floyd is giving his speech during the debriefing, his hands are alternately (not) resting on the podium.
Share this Hide options

As Heywood Floyd approaches the Tycho Monolith in the shuttle, the Earth is on the moon's horizon. But a short time later, when Floyd stands at the monolith and it emits its signal, the Earth is directly overhead.
Share this Hide options

When Dr. Floyd travels to Tycho the speed that the shuttle makes is not continuous. In the shots inside from the cockpit shuttle appears to move real slow whereas outside shots show lot faster speed.
Share this Hide options

When Dave goes to climb into the pod the first time, he steps up with his left foot first. When the shot switches to the view on Frank's monitor on the bridge, Dave is climbing in right foot first.
Share this Hide options

The bone Moon-Watcher uses to beat the enemy ape is a femur (upper leg bone), as indicated by the sideways projecting "arm" with a ball at the end. However, the bone shown rotating in the air is a tibia (main bone of the lower leg), as indicated by its blunt ends.
Share this Hide options

Earth should appear closer to the horizon at Clavius than at Tycho, not vice versa.
Share this Hide options

During Bowman's EVA, stars are moving by, as though the ship was moving at about 5 light years (30 trillion miles) per second. In reality the star field would be stationary. Discovery's velocity of 28 miles per second is insignificant relative to interstellar distances.
Share this Hide options

When the astronauts on the moon are shown walking toward the unearthed sentinel, they are walking normally, as if on earth. The moon's gravity is one-sixth that of earth; hence, they should have appeared to "bounce" a bit when walking, as was seen in the later Apollo moon landings.
Share this Hide options

The spinning pen on the clipper is not spinning around its center of mass: it's spinning about a point well outside its body, which (no matter the mass distribution inside the pen) is impossible.
Share this Hide options

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.
Share this Hide options

HAL 9000 calls his favorite song "Daisy." Although some viewers argue that the correct title is "A Bicycle Built for Two", the 1892 copyright record lists the title as "Daisy Bell."
Share this Hide options

When the hatch is blown with the "explosive bolts", it appears to vanish when it should have been in between Dave and the Discovery, blocking his entrance, However, the door isn't actually detached in this sequence but is, rather, forcibly opened with the door sliding into the side of pod as it normally would, just much quicker due to the explosive bolts being fired.
Share this Hide options

Stanley Kubrick considered shooting the Dawn of man sequence on location in Southern Africa but was unable to due to the expense and also the likelihood of shooting being disrupted by adverse weather. Rear projection as well as colour separation overlay (blue-screen) were considered but not used because both methods would lack visual quality. Instead with assistance from MGM's special effects department the crew developed a new front projection system that used 8x10-inch slides taken on location in Africa. A high-intensity projector was aligned at a perfect angle from the camera and used to project the slide through a partially-transparent mirror that simulated placing the camera and projector in exactly the same place - thus the shadows cast by actors and set objects on the screen were invisible. However the screen material was only available in rolls of limited width and there were variations in reflectivity between rolls. Tearing the material up into small sections and "collaging" them together provided the best uniformity but with effort some variation can be seen in places.
Share this Hide options

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.
Share this Hide options

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. (On the BluRay release, the sheet is clearly visible through most of the scene. Even swirl marks and what looks like a palm-print can be seen.)
Share this Hide options

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 left side of the screen.
Share this Hide options

When the Earth Shuttle stewardess enters the passenger cabin and moves towards Heywood Floyd, she stumbles on the walkway. The nature of the misstep reveals that she is not weightless.
Share this Hide options

The people and props in the Clavius meeting hall, and the moon bus to TMA-1, move around and rest in gravity that shows they are on Earth. Moon gravity is 1/6 of Earth's gravity.
Share this Hide options

(At 01:48 - DVD special edition) When Dave is flipping switches in the pod prior to entry through the emergency airlock, his sleeves are hanging from his arms. They should be weightless.
Share this Hide options

Although the meeting on the moon is presented indoors, in a shirt-sleeve environment, it is still on the moon. Dr. Floyd walks around the room in full Earth gravity, rather than using the low-gravity "skip" that was adopted by the Apollo astronauts.
Share this Hide options

The pacing of the interview on "The World Tonight" is evidently that of an ordinary conversation, not one with 7 minute delays edited out.
Share this Hide options