Goofs
Revealing mistakes
Blofield has Bond thrown into the brig, but we can clearly see Bond is put into a storage locker, even one with below deck access.Share this This goof item contains spoilers. Click to view
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Audio/visual unsynchronised (10) |
Character error (4) |
Continuity (14) |
Crew or equipment visible (1) |
Errors in geography (3) |
Factual errors (8) |
Incorrectly regarded as goofs (3) |
Plot holes (4) |
Revealing mistakes (14) |
Spoilers (14)
Audio/visual unsynchronised
When Bond is released from the burning coffin, Shady Tree's diatribe against him about the phony diamonds doesn't match the movement of his mouth.
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The man Bond attacks in the very first scene manages to scream "Cai-Cai-Cairo!" without moving his mouth.
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At Dover, Bond arrives (and departs) in a Triumph Stag (V8 engine). When he drives away, we hear the sound of a Triumph Spitfire (1200cc 4 cylinder).
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When Plenty O'Toole comes to Bond's room, she compliments on how "super" the place is, but her mouth does not move. Later, when a half naked Plenty is yelling as she's being forced over to the window, her screaming does not match the movement of her lips.
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When Bond emerges from the manhole cover in the desert, there are two men working at the site, one digging and the other watching. The dialog over the scene is not matched by the supervising worker's lips, who appears not to speak at all.
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When Bond remarks that Tiffany could get 20 years to life, she responds, "20 years to life?" but halfway through her sentence, her and Bond change positions, and her mouth is not moving for the remainder of the sentence.
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Bambi and Thumper push Bond over during their fight, and he knocks down the silver tubes. As Bond picks himself up, we still hear the tubes crashing around, but they are still.
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When Bond gets picked up from the airport and he and two other men get into the hearse, we see three doors being closed, and hear accompanying foley/sound effects for the driver side front and rear doors, but not the passenger side door.
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As the Ford sedans are racing through the desert in pursuit of the moon vehicle, the exact same "engine-revving" sound effect is used over and over throughout the scene.
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The voice disguise machine is not realistically depicted. Such a machine would disguise the speaker's voice to the person on the other end of the phone, but in the movie it makes it seem like it is actually changing the speaker's voice.
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Character error
At the circus the announcer says that the transforming woman was captured near Nairobi, South Africa: but Nairobi is in Kenya.
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Klaus Hergersheimer (and Bond posing as Hergersheimer) claims to be checking for "radiation shields". However, the device that he is wearing, as well as the one he gives Bond, is not a shield, but a radiation badge. It only shows the amount of exposure to radiation; it has no protective function, as the word "shield" implies.
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During the discussion about the satellite and what it might be used for, Bond describes Dr Metz as being an expert in "light retraction" - he should have said "light refraction".
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During the craps game, Plenty throws a nine to establish the point, then immediately throws a seven, thus losing. The stick-man incorrectly says she "craps out" when the proper phrase would be she "sevens out."
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Continuity
In the opening scene, Bond gets mud spilt on him as he falls to the floor. When he stands up his jacket is perfectly clean.
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Bond passes the Golden Nugget several times during the chase but has not turned any corners on the street so he can't just be going round in circles.
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The moon buggy, and the dirt trike chasing it, each lose a wheel, which is back on again later.
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The helicopter that blows up in the desert is originally green. As it turns away, it turns red.
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When Bond is fighting Franks outside of Tiffany Case's apartment Franks swings a crowbar at Bond and it falls out of his hand when he misses. When Bond starts squirting Franks with the fire extinguisher the crowbar is back in Franks' hand.
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When Bond is holding Bambi and Thumper under water his hair is messed up. When Felix comes in, it is slicked back again.
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At the beginning of the film when Bond pulls down the light over Blofeld he is lying one way. In the next shot when Bond is strapping him to the table he is the other way.
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When Tiffany Case takes Bond's glass to verify his fingerprints to Peter Franks, she adds ice to his drink. When she returns the drink to Bond, there is no ice in the glass.
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When Tiffany dusts Bond's glass for fingerprints, she covers the entire glass with dust. She begins dusting it off, and it quickly cuts to the next camera shot, and the entire glass has been cleaned off already.
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Tiffany's position in the doorway changes rapidly several times while Bond is fighting Peter Franks in the glass elevator.
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When Bond is on the phone with Q, and Q says that Peter Franks has escaped, Bond never hangs up the phone before he leaves the room. However, in the next scene, the phone is placed properly on the hook.
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When Bond is talking to Tiffany by the pool, he puts one arm into his jacket. It then cuts to a different angle, and his jacket is completely on.
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Bond is soaking wet when he gets out of the pool after fighting with Bambi and Thumper. He then walks down some stairs, and is dry before he reaches the bottom.
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As the heroes' Mustang turns into the dead end alley, the sky is bright with daylight. But seconds later in screen time, the shot of the police car shows a dark night sky.
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Crew or equipment visible
When Peter Franks arrives at Dover he gets a message. He parks his car outside an office and as he walks in the camera crew is reflected in the window.
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Errors in geography
When Mr Wint and Mr Kidd exit the tunnel, with Mr Bond in the trunk of the car, the cover that lifts up has a Saguaro Cactus on it. That type of cactus only grow in extreme southeastern California, southern Arizona and adjoining northwestern Mexico.
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The "oil-rig" in Baja California which controls the laser satellite is supposed to be in the middle of the ocean. Yet when Tiffany is shown sun-bathing on the rig, we can see mountains and a coastline not too far away in the backdrop.
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The effect of the white cloud from the explosion of the rocket in Dakota is used again for the explosion of the long row of rockets in China.
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Factual errors
You cannot make a laser out of diamonds. Even if you could, you could not make a laser out of multiple gem-quality stones; ruby lasers, for instance, are made from a single flawless rod of artificially-grown ruby.
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When Tiffany Case pulls out the Polaroid of the thumbprint, she immediately peels the picture off the backing. Pulling the film out of the camera crushes a packet on the film which contained the developing chemicals. This caused the photo to develop, which took about a minute. You would then pull the photo off of the backing. There is no way that the photo could be developed the way she did it.
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The laser beam destroys a Soviet/Russian submarine moving underwater. First, it's almost impossible to locate a submerged, moving submarine in the vastness of the ocean. Then the chances of a laser going through the water causing it to blow it up are extremely remote.
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Scorpions rarely sting humans, and even more rarely do scorpion stings cause death. Most scorpion stings are nonfatal. In cases that are fatal, death is not instantaneous. Scorpion venom usually takes several hours to take complete effect on the body. A scorpion is not a portable lethal injection device, as depicted in this movie.
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When Tiffany takes Bond's fingerprint (fake) and compares it to Peter Franks', the two images are 100% identical, pixel by pixel. Although the two images would be similar, it would be virtually impossible to produce two 100% identical fingerprints, which are taken at the same angle, with the same amount of substrate, and the same amount of pressure applied.
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There is no such thing as a piton gun, let alone one small enough to carry as a small firearm, as we see Bond shooting a piton into the concrete supports as he negotiates the upper part of the Las Vegas building. For a single piton to support the weight of an adult, it would have to be hammered into place, by hand, taking several hundred foot pounds of energy to secure. Even if there was a piton gun large enough to carry, the required force would obliterate its target, not lodge a piece of metal into it.
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The technician monitoring the launch says that the satellite was launched 24 minutes ago, yet we then see a rocket stage separating, and we are told that this event is premature first stage separation. In fact the first stage of most launchers only burn for a few minutes, and the satellite would normally be in orbit within 15 minutes. The stage that is shown certainly would not have enough fuel to burn for 24 minutes.
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Shady opens the coffin, that was just in the incinerator, without releasing the catches and then grabs the lid which ought to be too hot to touch. Also, as it had just come out of the incinerator, the coffin should have been smoking.
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Incorrectly regarded as goofs
...sort of. During the Las Vegas car chase scene, Bond's car ends up riding on two wheels in order to pass through a narrow alley. When the car emerges at the other end of the alley it is balancing on the opposite pair of wheels. The producers spotted this error before release, however, and inserted a quick shot to indicate that, for some reason, Bond flips the car onto its other wheels. There must have been an opening somewhere in the alley. In a TV interview director Guy Hamilton said that after he'd filmed the car coming out of the alley he was called back to England and left Albert R. Broccoli ("Cubby") to film the car going into the alley. When Guy saw the rushes he pointed out the error to Cubby who refused to do a reshoot.
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When the real Peter Franks buzzes Tiffany in her apartment, she tells him to come up to the third floor. As Tiffany thinks that she has already met "Franks" (really Bond) in her apartment, there's no reason for her to remind him what floor she lives on. However, she may have recognized that this Peter Franks had a different voice and let him in assuming he was an impostor. (Though Case verifies the identities of her visitors, she does not do anything to prevent them from entering her apartment first; presumably she has a plan to deal with unwelcome guests.)
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Cremation furnaces run at 870-980 °C which would burn up any diamonds present (diamonds are not in fact forever); it would be impossible to successfully smuggle diamonds inside a cadaver and separate them via cremation. However, we never see the furnace at Slumber, Inc. actually operating, and cremation usually takes an hour and a half whereas Bond is given the diamonds a few minutes after the coffin moves down the belt. It is more likely that the diamonds were simply removed from the body.
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Plot holes
A common American criminal, Tiffany Case, knows of elite British secret agent James Bond, as if his career and record is public knowledge.
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Messrs. Kidd and Wint dispose of Bond by leaving his drugged, unconscious body in a 8' section of underground pipe, open at both ends. The next day, a construction crew somehow manage to select the pipe section, hook it to a crane, lower it into position, weld it to the rest of the pipe sections, and bury it in dirt without happening to notice a man in a tuxedo apparently sleeping in it.
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Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint operate by killing their victims quickly and with certainty, except for Bond who they leave in a deathtrap.
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Since the diamond cartel is careful to identify Peter Franks with fingerprints, it is odd that they didn't take the additional precaution of having a photograph of his face.
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Revealing mistakes
When Bond is hanging from the elevator shaft, his shadow is visible on the rear projection screen containing the street scene below.
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During the opening scene, a string can be seen attached to the final knife that 007 throws at the guard.
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When Bond is hanging from the rope at the top of the building, his arm movements are not synchronized with his upward movements. It's also noticeable that the rope he is hanging from is being pulled up through a hole in the set, rather than him pulling himself up a stationary rope.
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During the establishing shot of the Whyte House, in actuality the Las Vegas Hilton, you can still see the Las Vegas Hilton's name at the entrance to the building.
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When the construction workers open the manhole in the pipeline you can see that the hand wheel isn't connected to any kind of latching mechanism, therefore making it useless to be turning it before they open it.
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During the car chase through the streets of Las Vegas, many shots plainly show crowds of onlookers obviously watching the filming of the action; they do not behave like normal pedestrians (walking, etc.), and while some sidewalks are crammed with people standing still observing the action, the adjacent sidewalks (nearer the cameras) are completely devoid of any people.
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When Bond wakes up inside the pipeline there is a mysterious light source which illuminates him and the inside of the pipe.
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Obvious use of a projection screen during the "Zambora" scene.
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In the chase scene in the desert where James Bond is being tailed by sedans, Bond makes a jump that causes one of the cars to flip and roll behind him. Once it rolls down the dune, a spare tire not matching the size or tread of the rolled car rolls into the shot for no apparent reason. The rolled car did not even lose a tire. (The wheel is in fact from the moon buggy - apparently this prop vehicle shed its wheel(s) a few times during filming.)
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Obvious stunt double for Bond, as he rides the top of the elevator, and again as he jumps off the oil platform.
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When Bond is fighting Peter Franks in the elevator, Franks drops the glass shard before his wrist gets hit for the second time (the one that supposedly makes him drop the shard).
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During Bambi and Thumper's attack, while performing a series of cartwheels, Thumper's skin color appears to change. This is most noticeable just as she lands.
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Obvious stunt double for Thumper as she dives into the pool.
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Despite all the broken glass in the elevator, there is no blood on either Bond or Franks. Franks even breaks the glass with his face and later grabs a large glass shard as a weapon, yet neither his face or hand is cut.
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Spoilers
Continuity
When Tiffany is walking towards Bond to secretly hand him the tape, a long shot of her from behind clearly shows the beginning of her butt crack protruding from her bikini bottom. The ensuing shot is a close up of her from behind slipping the tape to Bond, however her bikini bottoms are pulled fully up, no longer exposing her crack, though she made no visible effort to pull them up.Share this
Continuity
When Blofeld's escape pod is hanging from the crane, and Bond is repeatedly crashing it into the walls. The amount of distance between the pod and the wall changes very rapidly between camera angles.Share this
Continuity
Towards the end of the film, we see a long shot of James Bond diving into the ocean that allows us to see the surrounding surface area. There is no sign of Tiffany Case who had fallen in from the same spot only moments earlier and who could not have moved away so quickly.Share this
Continuity
In the last scene, when Mr. Kidd moves to attack James Bond with the kebab skewers, he is barehanded, but when Bond douses him with alcohol, and he catches fire, he is suddenly wearing asbestos gloves.Share this
Crew or equipment visible
Blofield says that five helicopters are incoming for attack on his oil rig, but six are shown, presumably the helicopter filming the action.Share this
Factual errors
When Blofeld's laser fires from space, you see the beam take a bit of time to travel to its targets. Laser beams travel at the speed of light, so the effect should be instantaneous.Share this
Factual errors
Blofeld points out for Bond a moving dot of light on a globe: his laser satellite's position over the U.S. But the dot moves over the map at a scale speed of 20 or 30 miles per second or faster - far quicker than the practical orbital speed of about 5 mi. per second. In a later scene, as the satellite nears Washington D.C., the dot moves at a normal rate.Share this
Incorrectly regarded as goofs
When the dead Mrs. Whistler is being pulled out of the water, you can clearly see her eyes blink. Perhaps she isn't completely dead yet, or else this is a post mortem reflex.Share this
Plot holes
Tiffany recognizes Blofeld in the casino by his white cat, yet she had never seen either one before. Also, Bond hadn't seen her since he discovered Blofeld was alive and behind the diamond-smuggling operation so there was no opportunity for Bond to describe him (or the cat) to her.Share this
Plot holes
Bert Saxby attempts to shoot Willard Whyte as per Blofeld's instructions. However it was James impersonating Saxby who actually received the orders. So how did Saxby know?Share this
Revealing mistakes
Obvious doubles for Wint & Kidd in the fight scene where they are killed. Along the way, Mr. Kidd suddenly grows protective gloves, and the bomb on Mr. Wint's coattails disappears and reappears.Share this
Revealing mistakes
The helicopters attacking Blofield's rig are merely issuing puffs of smoke, as there are no rockets in flight, either from the launch tubes or incoming onto the oil rig, and furthermore, the explosions on the oil rig are also just puffs of smoke, doing no real damage, just like the "defenses" occasionally sound like machine guns, but no barrel report or smoke is coming out.Share this
Revealing mistakes
The first target of Blofeld's laser is a nuclear missile silo in North Dakota, which is destroyed. However, even accounting for perspective, the laser is initially shown firing out of orbit, away from the Earth's surface.Share this
Revealing mistakes
For the final scene in the film, Tiffany is wearing a red and purple bikini. Miraculously, while Bond is operating the crane, Tiffany's bikini turns into a red and brown bikini. (This is only on certain prints of the film and available online clips, and is due to degradation of the film or copying from a TV showing. The current DVD and UK TV release keeps everything red and purple.)Share this
