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Quotes

Willy Wonka: How did you like the chocolate factory, Charlie?

Charlie Bucket: I think it's the most wonderful place in the whole world!

Willy Wonka: I'm very pleased to hear you say that, because I'm giving it to you.

See more...

Mistakes

In the scene where the group enters the weird elevator with the escher wallpapered walls when the shot looks from the back of the elevator you can see the shadow of the camera/light reflector on Mr. Salt. See more...

Trivia

Gene Wilder (Willy Wonka) would not do the film unless it included the scene in which he walks out of the factory lame and then falls and does a somersault. Wilder said that he wanted to make sure no one ever knew if the character was lying or telling the truth. See more...

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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) - 78 corrections

Directed by Mel Stuart, starring Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Julie Dawn Cole, Peter Ostrum, Roy Kinnear (add more)

Genres: Family, Musical, Fantasy, Comedy

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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When Charlie's teacher is giving a lesson on percentages, he tells Charlie that he will use the number 200 as a means of calculating a simple percentage because can't figure out what percentage 2 out of 1,000 yields. This is simple to figure out even without a calculator. All he would have to do is place the number 2 two zeros after the decimal point. As someone who is sanctioned to be teaching mathematics, he should know this. [Yes, he should, but apparently he is either lazy or not a very good teacher, so he simplifies the lesson. It's meant to be humorous.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore
During Veruca's "I Want It Now" song, after she says "I want a bean feast", Mr. Salt says, "Oh, one of those"—but his mouth doesn't move. [Look closely; his mouth does move. It just looks like it doesn't because he is grimacing in frustration.]
Edit
At Wonka's factory gates (coming from his entrance door towards the gates on the right) there's a road traffic sign which states '(you are on a) priority road' on the road is bending to the left. I presume the set (gates, carpets, office) was build on an existing junction. [The scene is not built on a road but in Munich Gasswerks gate.]
Edit
When Salt is about to go down the shoot in the scene with the golden geese, she fades away before she gets a chance to drop because she doesn't actually drop. [I just watched it over and over and I can't imagine that the shot was done any way other than just dropping her. Her hair flies up as she goes down, the movement is very natural, there is no cut to mask the shots. She definitely drops down the chute.]
Edit Corrected by Garlonuss Time
In the opening scene at Bill's Candy Store, Bill is giving out candy to everyone and taking no money with poor Charlie looking in the window because he cannot afford any. [The other kids' parents, being affluent, could have just opened an account with the candy store. Charlie knows his family can't afford the candy, so he is left with just looking.]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior
When Charlie is first seen walking up to the gates of the Wonka factory there are just the street sounds. Then suddenly the "Tinkerer" (the guy with the knife cart) gives the dissertation about fear of little men (a poem of some sort) then proceeds to leave clanking and clattering on the cobble stone street. He should have either been visible on the first shot of Charlie as he walked up to the gates or heard as he approached later on to give his dissertation. [While Charlie was concentrating on the factory he didn't hear the tinkerer come up, hence the silent approach. After the tinker leave he has Charlie's attention and therefore you can hear the sound.]
Edit
In every version of the story, including the book, in the scene where Augustus Gloop is sucked into the chocolate pipe, the principle of liquid being pumped through pipes is incorrectly used. In reality, liquids and such are pulled through a pump by means of a vacuum in front of them, not forced through by pressure behind them. Augustus would have had his lungs and innards sucked out until he was thin enough to pass through the pipe. He would not have survived. [This is simply not true. What device is creating the vacuum that pulls water out of the tap in your kitchen sink? Or spray forcefully from your garden hose? Fluids can be sucked in to or pushed out of a pipe.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
Near the end of the movie where Charlie gives the gobstopper back, Gene Wilder's hair is all screwed up, but the next second it's fine. [This is not necessarily a mistake: It was done on purpose to show how crazy he is.]
Edit
In the chocolate room scene Augustus would have burnt his hands if he tried to eat the chocolate because it would have been too hot to prevent it from solidifying on the travel from the waterfall. [It's not melted chocolate, it's a chocolate syrup. Not heated; no steam coming from the river.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie
When everybody moved to the side of the boat to exit onto the dock, the boat should have leaned in that direction from the imbalance, but it stayed steady. [The boat's ballast keeps it balanced to prevent tipping. ]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
When they're in the room with Wonkavision, as Mike Teevee jumps up on the platform to get shrunk, in the background an Oompa Loompa puts goggles on, then later in another shot, the same Oompa Loompa puts goggles on again. [You said it yourself, "Later in another shot", so it IS possible that he took them off and then simply put them back on. Surely you have put on glasses or sunglasses, then taken them off and put them back on.]
Edit
Before the ride on the Wonkamobile, an Oompa-Loompa pours a liquid from a green bottle into the Wonkamobile, but in the next shot he is pouring it out of a brown bottle. [All the Oompa Loompas look the same if not very similar, and there was more than one Oompa Loompa fueling the Wonkamobile. It is most likely a different Oompa Loompa with a brown bottle took his place after the green bottle was empty. Either that, or the other Oompa Loompa was fueling the other side. The first shot was up close so we don't know what side it was showing.]
Edit
Gene Wilder also played the Paraguayan newscaster. [No, he didn't. That isn't Gene Wilder.]
Edit Corrected by jhoffman100@yahoo.com
When Augustus Gloop's parents are interviewed, the father eats the end of the microphone, but the announcer goes on to ask the mother a question with the mic still intact. [Given that there are only five golden tickets in the world, it is likely that a location where someone found one, would attract multiple reporters. It was a different mic for Augustus' mother than his father. The reporters do sound the same, but who are we to say that they were the same. They could have been just similar.]
Edit
How did "Slugworth" get to Verucca so fast? He was already in Mr.Salt's factory at the time, but he would have had to be an employee to be there. [As we learn later in the movie, "Slugworth" was working for Wonka. Either the distribution of the winning tickets wasn't random. or they knew (through shipping information) where they'd ultimately turn up. We have no information on the security measures at Salt's factory, so we can't say with any certainty that Slugworth would have to have been an employee to be in there. Even with security measures in place, Slugworth is an industrious and determined man.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
The chocolate river is obviously just brown water, it is the wrong texture for melted chocolate or even chocolate milk. [As we don't know what Wonka's formulas or processes are we can't say with certainty that the fluid in that river is not chocolate. If Wonka can make a candy that never dissolves as you suck on it, certainly he could lower the viscosity of chocolate to make it easier to churn.]
Edit Corrected by Phixius
In the scene where Mike TeeVee is made smaller and transmitted through the tv, he's on a black stage. When he talks to his mother, she's obviously on a movie type screen. [Well after watching this I'm pretty sure this was intentional, since Mike has been 'transmitted' inside the TV set, he is now seeing his mum through the TV glass which is giving this illusion.]
Edit
In the half-room, Wonka angrily tells Charlie and Grandpa that there is no lifetime supply of chocolate due to stealing fizzy-lifting drinks and touching the fan which needs to be 'washed and sterilized.' But how did Wonka actually KNOW that Charlie and Grandpa did the above, since they were alone at all times and there were no Oompa-Loompas or CCTV cameras watching them? Also, when Charlie and Grandpa rejoin Wonka and the others, Wonka is carrying on without any suspicion whatsoever and he doesn't question them till they get to the half-room. [It's not hard to imagine Wonka having a security system that would have let him know what happened with the fizzy lifting drinks - it wouldn't necessarily be visible to anyone. He never mentioned it to Charlie because he intended to use the incident as a sort of "final exam" to test Charlie's reaction and see if he was worthy to take over the factory.]
Edit Corrected by Chanteuse66
In the 'half room', half a wall clock is shown, yet the pendulum mechanism is not directly below the 6, it is slightly offset to the right. [Why is this a mistake? Almost every single thing in the entire factory is slightly "off" if you will.]
Edit Corrected by wizard_of_gore
When Charlie and Grandpa enter the 'half-room' to enquire about the lifetime supply of chocolate, look at the 'half-lamp' on Wonka's desk. It has a full complete light bulb. This bulb should be 'in half' to match the rest of the room. [That's because a half lightbulb wouldn't work. Wonka would still want a working light, even if everything else was cut in half.]
Edit Corrected by Blibbetyblip

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