Goofs

After Sam crashed with his Moon Rover, he has a wound near his right eye. In the following scene, when he puts his helmet back on, the wound is near his left eye. Much later, when he's back at the base, it's back on his right side again.

While Sam is working on his model, the other Sam lays his ping pong paddle on the table. A few shots later a small wooden house sits beside the racket.

When the rescue crew arrives, their spaceship lands partially on top of the lunar station. When second Sam launches his helium pod just a few seconds later, however, the whole station is visible and there is no spaceship on top of it.

As revealed in the DVD commentary with director Duncan Jones and producer Stuart Fenegan, the close-ups of GERTY are in fact a prop and the wide shots are post-production CGI inserts. It's visible that the CGI GERTY doesn't have the splashed coffee stains down his right side above the mug holder.

When Sam first approaches his clone while the clone is jumping rope, he has his baseball cap's bill toward the front. Then the camera cuts to a rear view and the hat is backwards. When the camera returns to the front view, his hat is forward again.

When Sam makes a phone call to his daughter, there is no noticeable lag time between responses. Radio transmissions take about three seconds to make the half million mile round trip from Earth to the Moon or vice versa.

The fuzzy dice in the rover hanging in the cockpit hang and sway as if affected by Earth gravity, not that of the Moon.

At the end, when Sam is launched off the Moon towards Earth, the capsule is not launched via a rocket but apparently by a magnetic rail gun.

That would be true for the Mach 9 versions the US Navy was developing. A magnetic coil gun (rails wear out very fast) doesn't have to have all the power slammed on at once. With virtually limitless H3 power and basically no limit for the potential length of the launch tube, a more leisurely acceleration is feasible for the high tech carrier capsules.

This would be fine for shipping ore, but not for human beings. The *extreme* G force would be fatal.

The Sams and the Harvesters have been on the moon base for circa 15 years, going back and forth within the Sarang Station working perimeter (and maybe even outside of it). However, on multiple occasions, the director provides overhead shots of the lunar rover traversing seemingly untouched lunar soil within the Sarang Station working perimeter, and leaving perfect tyre tracks, which are generally the only tracks visible.

Given that both the Sams and Harvesters would have completed thousands of trips over the 15 years, the Sarang Station working perimeter should be riddled with tracks and there should be near zero untouched lunar soil.

The last time see Sam Bell is seen in the pod (shouting "whoohooo!") the pod is rumbling and shaking. This can either be vibration of the engines or by reentering the atmosphere. But the shot directly before shows the engines turning off and earth's atmosphere is still far away. In that situation there's nothing that could rumble or shake the pod.

Helium is an inert gas and does not participate in chemical reactions. However, it can participate in nuclear fusion. The isotope helium-3 is particularly interesting to fusion researchers, and is more abundant on the Moon than Earth.

When seen in the sky, the Earth is much larger than it would actually appear to an observer on the Moon's surface as can be seen on shots by any of the real Apollo lunar missions, for example.

It's the same as the Moon Illusion. The Moon looks larger nearer the ground and Earth looks larger near the curve of the Moon. This illusion is seen from the ISS also. From Trivia: "When Sam is transmitting a message to Earth from the rover, the image of the Earth is identical to a photo taken by the Apollo 17 crew."

After Sam makes a call to his daughter we can see his vehicle and Earth above horizon in one shot. This may seem a goof, since base is supposed to be on the far side of the Moon, which is invisible from Earth and vice versa. However, Sam needs to get far from the jammers to be able to call Earth; explaining why he is on the other side of the moon.

When the two Sams first climb down to the secret room, one Sam is in the room hanging on to the ladder. The second Sam climbs down and his foot goes through the other Sam's arm.

The movie had a limited budget and paying for CGI for a simple shot like that is unlikely. Specially since they had borrowed the secret room set from Shepperton Studios' Red Dwarf (1988).

Sam and Overmeyers both say "over and out" at the end of transmissions. While this is procedurally incorrect ("over" means "waiting for your response" and "out" means "ending transmission"), most people don't know any better.

Probably due to the film's low budget of $5 million, there is no attempt to correctly depict the gravity on the moon (one-sixth of Earth's.) As an obvious example, when Sam is playing ping pong, the ball reacts as it would on Earth.

There's proof that there is artificial gravity.

When one Sam is looking at the photograph of his daughter that the other Sam gave to him, the mole on his right cheek is on his left. This indicates a flip-screen.

The hook for the crane on the second rover can be seen swinging in a manner which may not be consistent with Moon gravity.

When Sam makes a phone call to his daughter, there is no noticeable lag time between responses. Radio transmissions take about three seconds to make the half million mile round trip from Earth to moon or vice versa.

Clones are simply identical genetic copies. Body modifications like tattoos and piercings have no genetic basis and would not be reproduced in the cloning process, yet both Sams have the exact same tattoo on their right biceps, and both have pierced left ears. Clones would not have either of these features.

Sam realizes that he has lost a tooth when feeling around in his lower jaw. However, the tooth that he pulls out of the toilet has three roots, meaning that it is a maxillary (upper) molar. Mandibular (lower) molars only have two roots, unless the person is of Asian or Native American descent.

He first felt his upper row of molars where the tooth came out of, then tried wiggling some from the bottom row to see if any more were loose.

They are harvesting H3 on the far side of the moon, but a few times the Earth can be seen in the sky near the base. Since the moon does not rotate (relative to earth) there is one side where the Earth is always above the horizon (the side facing earth) and one side where the Earth is always below the horizon (the side that points away). The Earth cannot be seen from any part of the far side. The Earth is always below your feet.

They're not on the far side. They're on the dark side, obviously near the terminator line judging by the shafts of light beams that are not coming from machinery. It would be possible to stand at the terminator line with your head in sunlight, looking at Earth and your body in shadow.

There are many shots outside the station where sunlight and stars are visible at the same time. Even without an atmosphere this is not possible because the contrast between the bright ground and the dark sky is too high.

The atmosphere diffusing light particle/waves and turning Earth's sky blue is why stars cannot be seen from Earth during the day. The atmosphere-less Moon does not have a blue sky. Regardless how brightly the Sun shines on the ground, it won't prevent seeing the black sky with stars. Ground down. Sky up. Different directions.

When Sam is walking outside it looks like the moon's gravity. But inside he moves normally, although his weight should be only one sixth, assuming there is no sort of 'artificial gravity' being used/supplied in the indoor areas. Furthermore, a game of table tennis would look very different under the gravity of the moon.

Newton's Third Law: Action & Reaction still holds. Ping pong on the Moon is just regular ping pong except the ball trajectory is flatter - so you have to rely on spin to curve the ball. And why not assume artificial gravity? If helium fusion is okay so is artificial gravity.

In some scenes outside the station the dust moves as if there was an earth-like atmosphere.

There are no blowing clouds of dust and no plumes rising. It is thrown up then falls. There's also no time stamp indicating which scenes.

A member of crew is visible on the shiny metallic surface after Sam throws up at the toilet and leans against the wall.

In the original cinema release, Sam Rockwell is wearing a flesh-colored thong when he is showering. This error is fixed in the DVD cut of the film.

The wire running to Sam Rockwell's microphone is visible several times through his t-shirt.

At 9:27, when Sam is watching the video message from his wife Tess and young daughter Eve, the dark outline of a crew member breaks into the right hand side of the video call frame a few times. According to the DVD commentary track, this is probably the boom operator.

Since Sam is the only human that's intended to be taking care of the station, it's strange that a ping-pong table is provided. While one person can volley the ball against a raised half of the table, a question arises as to why there are two paddles.

When GERTY tells Sam he can't go outside, and at the first Eliza transmission, the computer monitor reads "sattelite link lost" (with "satellite" misspelled).

When the Sams are taking the rovers past the perimeter, The rover computer, when scanning for a "signal" mispronounces it as "single".