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Mistakes

When Bond is escaping from the Island after he finds the girl is dead he comes out of a basement/cellar and opens the hatch which visibly slams open hard, but silently. See more...

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This is the only James Bond film in which Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman are not credited for their work done as producers. They are instead only credited as executive producers. See more...

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Thunderball (1965) - 22 corrections

Directed by Terence Young, starring Bernard Lee, Claudine Auger, Desmond Llewelyn, Lois Maxwell, Rik Van Nutter, Sean Connery (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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At the beginning of the film Bond manages to get away with the help his Aston Martin DB5, which should be impossible since Bond crashed that car into the wall of Auric Goldfinger's factory in Switzerland. [Throughout the history of Bond films James Bond is provided with a new car whenever one is destroyed. This was obviously a different car.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie
At Bond's nighttime diving mission to Disco Volante, a secret agent would not wear white shorts, white diving tanks and a red wetsuit. [Character mistake, not a movie mistake.]
Edit
In the scene where James Bond is being briefed with the other double-0 agents, just after they have opened their top secret folders, the agent who is sitting next to 007 (the one with the beard) bears an uncanny likeness to Ringo Starr. [I don't see how an actor who looks like someone else (and isn't) counts as trivia. Many people look similar to others.]
Edit
M equips JB with a watch-mounted geiger counter to detect radioactivity. Then he hands him a radioactive homing device that he keeps on his person. Surely the homer would trigger the counter, but when he uses it the first time, the counter doesn't register. [In the world of James Bond, M seems to be rather intelligent. It stands to reason that the homing device emitted a specific type of radiation and the Geiger counter was set to ignore that specific radiation.]
Edit Corrected by papajim
In the scene at Moneypenny's office, Bond's hat disappears. [It does, but there's a meeting Bond attends in the meantime. He even addresses the fact that his hat disappears, moving towards the hat rack saying "I had a hat when I came in", then looking confused when it's not there. No explanation's actually given for what's happened to it though!]
Edit
At the movie's end, Bond is wearing a harness to enable him to be picked up by the plane. He takes Domino in his arms, and moments later they are snagged by the plane and yanked out of the life raft. The speed and force of the plane would have ripped Bond out of Domino's arms, leaving her in the raft if she was lucky, unconscious or dead if she was not. [This is pure speculation. The skyhook device was actual technology in use at the time of the movie. Obviously the rope used had elastic properties - like a bungee cord - to absorb the shock of accelerating from 0 to airplane speed.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie
When Connery walks into Moneypenny's office he puts his hat on the anorak. After the meeting discussing the capture of warheads he walks back into Moneypenny's office. M enters the room and Connery says "I think I had a hat when I came in." He then walks out without his hat, because for some reason it's no longer on the anorak. [Can't see how this is a continuity error as Bond is pointing out that his hat is missing. Perhaps it wasn't supposed to be missing in the script but even so it didn't turn into a continuity error because they picked up on it.]
Edit
Two Vulcans left the airbase together. They would have flown together as well. Where did the other go? Why didn't it follow the other plane when it got in trouble - and reported where it had gone to? [It's not odd to think the Vulcans separated at some waypoint in the flight for simulated bombing runs or as practice for some sort of decoy maneuver and were to return at different times.]
Edit Corrected by Grumpy Scot
The movie's villain, Emilio Largo (played by Adolfo Celi) has silver-gray hair, but his underwater stunt double has blond hair. [More of a minor mistake. Being underwater changes the color of a persons hair as well as their skin.While the stuntman likely had blond hair,Largos hair would have not looked white underwater.]
Edit
When Fiona Volpe is shot in the back while dancing with Bond, you can see his hand covering the entry wound with blood seeping through his fingers. Since he was facing her at the moment that she was shot, and could not have seen her back, how does he know exactly where the wound is so that he can cover it with his hand? [He felt the wetness of her blood.]
Edit
While climbing on the roof at Palmyra, Bond drops his Walther PPK. It slides a few feet down the roof and fires a bullet. Walther PPK pistols have a firing pin safety that does not allow the hammer to strike the firing pin unless the trigger is pulled all the way back. There is no way the gun could have fired. [With all the modifications Q and Bond do to weapons and cars, it is unlikely the PPK is going to be stock. A hair trigger is an easy modification, and if it is too light, it can be fired just by dropping.]
Edit
During the underwater fight scene, Largo pulls off Bond's diving mask so that he can't see. Bond takes one off a dead bad guy and puts in on. Surely the mask would still be full of water? [If you seal a mask against your forehead at an angle and blow bubbles up into it, the water is replaced with air. I have done this many times before and if you watch Bond he does it when putting on the mask.]
Edit
Near the end of the movie,in the scene where the man jumps off of the boat with Bond and Domino, what happens to him? Bond and Domino get in the inflatable boat the plane drops, but in wide shots of the scene, the man is nowhere to be seen. [Afterwards you can see the plane drop more than one lifeboat. He simply might be on another one.]
Edit
In the film's numerous SCUBA scenes nobody is ever wearing buoyancy compensators. These are inflatable and deflatable vests SCUBA divers use to adjust their buoyancy. Nor does anyone wear any weights. Because of the positive buoyancy of the human body, wetsuits and air canisters none of these people should be able to submerge at all. [Since all the underwater scenes were actually filmed underwater, this is obviously untrue. Alternatively, this can be put down to some genius innovation available only to secret service operatives (Like the air canister that's no bigger than a pen which Bond uses).]
Edit
When the jet lands in the water, the landing gear is up. Moments later as the jet sinks to the bottom, the landing gear is conveniently down. [There is nothing convenient about it. Ditching in shallow water is done with the wheels up (otherwise they'd be torn off on impact) and they are lowered as the aircraft settles. This means the aircraft can be salvaged later (with lifting straps) and the crew can escape through the bomb bay.]
Edit
When Vargas spots Domino and Bond and prepares to shoot him, why does he decide to use a silencer on his gun? The two are alone on a desolate beach; no one would hear the shot. [It's not really a mistake. It's more of a choice of the character.]
Edit
After Bond escapes a shark-infested swimming pool, James drives back to his hotel with a CIA agent named Pinder. He tells Pinder to tell Leiter "That Paula is dead." Pinder says OK - end of scene. No grief, no tears, and no amazement - just another day at the CIA I guess. [Not really a plot hole or mistake, it just shows that Pinder is a.) a heartless cad or b.) used to the fact that fellow agents die in the line of duty or c.) hiding his pain from Bond and waiting to let his pain out in private. Bond after all is used to the women in his life getting killed (thats the reason for all the martinis).]
Edit
The film takes place during the 1960s. In the hotel scene where Bond is with Fiona Volpe, he tells her what he did was for king and country. England did not have a king at the time. Queen Elizabeth II was and still is the reigning monarch. Her husband is Prince Phillip. ["For King and Country" is shorthand for a patriotic act. It is used regardless of the gender of the monarch. Nobody says 'For Queen and Country.' Everyone knew what Bond meant.]
Edit
When Angelo gets into the pilot seat of the Vulcan there is a member of the crew eating a sandwich. At the moment when Angelo uses the poisonous gas to kill the crew, surely the man eating the sandwich would still be eating it, and would not have had sufficient time to put his oxygen mask back on. [His mask was still half-on, sort of hanging to the side. The alarm went off for several seconds, plus they might have felt the cabin depressurization so they put on their masks which takes almost no time at all.]
Edit
At the beginning of the film, how was it possible for Bond to get to the chateau before the black car, despite leaving the church a minute or two later, then get into the chateau, leave his his jetpack on a balcony outside, then get back into the room before the woman in black enters the room without being seen by anyone? [It is possible if Bond used the jetpack to fly from the church to the chateau, landed on the balcony of the chateau and left the jetpack on the balcony. This would give him plenty of time to enter the room prior to the "woman".]
Edit

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