Goldfinger

Corrected entry: In the forest chase scene, Bond activates the oil slick feature. The car behind spins out on the slick. But it's a dirt road so the oil would just soak into the ground.

Correction: Absolutely incorrect. Unless the ground is very soft powder, the oil will not soak in straight away and will have the effect as shown in the film.

stiiggy

Corrected entry: After Pussy Gallore's airplanes spray "Delta-9" onto Fort Knox and the soldiers fake the effects, why does the army let Goldfinger and his nuclear device so far into Fort Knox? Wouldn't it be much safer to intercept him somewhere at the fence? He would be surrounded by thousand of soldiers either way, but without having the opportunity to plant his nuclear device in the building. The army even awaits the signals that the device is armed.

Goekhan

Correction: It was only when the atomic bomb was armed that it could be detected. If the trap was sprung too soon, the bomb might not be captured. It was mentioned in the movie that if the bomb was not captured, it could be used elsewhere in the US. In addition, the bomb was not brought in by ground, but flown in after Fort Knox was captured.

Noman

Doesn't make sense too. Pussy Gallore was spraying useless "steam" over Fort Knox, she could've taken the bomb for Bond or the government pretty easily then.

Goekhan

The bomb was not there for anyone to take. It was necessary to wait until the helicopter brought the bomb to Fort Knox. To do anything before the arrival of the bomb would have meant that the bomb would not be captured.

Noman

Nope. Not that easy. The bomb was with so many other guards.

Corrected entry: As Bond discusses Goldfinger's plan with him he states a nuclear device will be detonated in Fort Knox which will cause the gold to become radioactive. While the gold will be irradiated (exposed to radiation), it is physically impossible to make it actually radioactive.

Correction: Goldfinger is correct in his belief. A nuclear explosion emits enough neutron radiation to make radioactive isotopes of gold. However, only one of these isotopes has a half-life of more than a few days, and it cannot be produced by neutron irradiation. The gold would therefore lose its radioactivity within approximately a month.

Corrected entry: Goldfinger designs an elaborate map and model layout in his Kentucky rec room complete with flip-flopping pool tables, slide-back floors, and rotating operations consoles, apparently to display his genius to the hoods he recruited for his nefarious scheme...and then he kills them.

Correction: Because Goldfinger has a psychological need to gloat. This is part of his character flaw which explains why he does NOT kill Bond when he has the chance to do so.

Corrected entry: After Goldfinger has been sucked out of the plane, and it is diving as Bond makes his way to the cockpit, there is a man lying on the floor in the cabin who was not previously in this scene. Where did he appear from, as the only people in the cabin were Bond and Goldfinger? This scene has obvously had something edited out.

Correction: The man is always there, perfectly visible, and has a noticeable afro: Behind Goldfinger when he opens the curtains, and next to Goldfinger when he fights against Bond.

Sacha

Corrected entry: When the plane carrying Bond and Pussy Galore to the White House goes down, it crashes into the ocean. But the plane was going from Fort Knox, Kentucky to Washington D.C. The plane wouldn't have passed over the Atlantic Ocean or any of the Great Lakes en route to Washington D.C.

poehitman

Correction: The plane has been hijacked by Goldfinger, who intends to take it to Cuba, a journey which obviously involves crossing some water.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: During the "gassing of Fort Knox sequence", you can see one soldier tapping another on the arm as they miss their cue to drop to the ground. Others miss it completely and are still standing as others fall, and a few even take the time to lie down comfortably, rather than just slumping over.

Correction: This is deliberate and was done on the instructions of the director. He is planting hints about what is really happening - the 'gas' is harmless and the men are faking their reaction to it.

Corrected entry: When Goldfinger unexpectedly appears on the plane near the end of the film, one can see the top of one of someone's head behind Goldfinger. This person's left arm is later visible behind Goldfinger as Goldfinger talks to Bond. Yet seconds later when Bond and Goldfinger fight over the golden gun this person is nowhere to be seen.

Correction: The person is one of the Korean flunkies (you can tell by the blue uniform, you see his sleeve). He is backing up Goldfinger, with his hand ready for a martial art strike. Presumably though, he is knocked to the floor as Goldfinger fights Bond (Goldfinger is a big bloke) so doesn't appear in shot again.

Corrected entry: When Oddjob chops the statue's head off outside the golf club with his steel-rimed hat, the arm starts falling down with it, but then bounces back. It appears to be spring-loaded. (00:31:20)

turkman143

Correction: The statue was a concrete casting, not a carved marble statue. It was reinforced with metal bars to give it strength when it was cast, so the concrete broke when the head fell off, but the metal bar held it together.

Corrected entry: The plane with Pussy and Bond is crashing very very fast. There is no way they could jump out in a parachute - and survive - at that speed.

Jacob La Cour

Correction: This is an assumption with no supporting data. They obviously grab parachutes, jump out of the plane, then pull the rip cord after they've cleared the jet (they do not "jump out in a parachute"). The submitter has no proof that people could not survive a jump from a plummeting plane.

BocaDavie

Correction: It's not an assumption without data, it's common sense. You cannot jump out of a jet with a parachute and survive. If you tried, you'd be caught in the slipstream and smashed against the side of the jet (or possibly sucked into an engine). This is why fighter jets have ejector seats, to clear the pilot away from the plane before the parachute opens. In a jet in a dive with no attitude control, it would be impossible to even make it to the door, as the jet would be spinning and you'd be thrown around.

Corrected entry: When Bond is following Goldfinger, a 1964 Mustang pulls in behind his Aston Martin. The woman driving the Mustang is sitting on the right side driving, then she is sitting on the left.

Correction: The only shots in which we see Tilly driving on the "right side" is when Bond looks in the rearview mirror, and in the mirror's closeups we see Tilly driving in the reflection, and it's obviously backwards. In every other closeup and long shot of Tilly she is driving on the left side of her car.

Super Grover

Corrected entry: When Bond looks at Tilly Mastersons attache case in the rear view mirror as he's driving along, the initials on the case are the right way round instead of being backwards which they would've been when seen in a mirror.

Correction: This is commonly cited as an error due to how the scene is edited but actually it isn't. Bond looks in the mirror to see the case, but the shot that is shown to the audience is of the case itself, not the view that Bond sees in the mirror.

Vader47000

Corrected entry: When Bond enters his hotel room he hangs his gun on a peg that is a significant distance away from the bath tub. When the assassin lands in the tub, the gun is suddenly within arm's reach.

wizard_of_gore

Correction: He hangs his jacket on a peg that isn't near the bathtub. After the girl complains the gun pokes her when they kiss, he hangs the holster on the peg near the bathtub.

Vader47000

Corrected entry: Dropping a large gold bar onto a golf green, as Bond does, would have left a considerable dent in the ground, yet it didn't. A standard gold bar weighs about 25lb, so even on a well-tended green, this would have done visible damage.

Nicki

Correction: Several problems with this submission. 1. The bar lands flat against the green, distributing its weight evenly. 2. We only see the bar hitting the ground; for all we know Bond may have just dropped it from below waist level. 3. A 200 pound person could jump on a well maintained golf course and not leave a 'considerable dent', their shoe size not being much larger than the side of the gold bar.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: The homing device Bond puts in the inside trunk lid of Goldfinger's Rolls is magnetic as shown when Q is demonstrating it. However, like the other body work, the trunk lid of that car would have been made of gold, to which a magnet will not stick.

William Lanigan

Correction: The entire car is not made of gold, just the body panels. Since gold is very heavy but bends fairly easily, any gold on the car would have to have some kind of support structure not made of gold. Bond would have attached the homing device to this support.

Guy

Corrected entry: Even if Goldfinger managed to make it back to the helicopter after changing into the military uniform, there is no reason for Pussy to still be inside it considering she had already changed sides, she would have escaped the moment the army rushes in.

jbrbbt

Correction: She did not need to escape; she just needed to stay where she was until the Army completed their mission. Where else would she go? The helicopter offered some protection (away from the shooting )and a means to remove the bomb from the area quickly if it could not be disarmed.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: Although the gaffe of the crushed Lincoln Contintental demolishing the suspension of the Ford Falcon Ranchero (5,000 lbs. vs. an 800 lb. capacity cargo bed) seems to be pretty well known, there was another, very similar mistake made in the same film. In 1964, a troy ounce of gold was worth $36. If Mr. Solo got $1 million worth of gold bars in the back of the Lincoln Continental, he's got almost 2,000 lbs. worth in the trunk. The trunk can in reality only hold about 400 lbs.

Correction: The assumption of whether he was given the correct amount of gold is irrelevant. The weight of the crushed Lincoln would have easily exceeded the cargo capacity of the Ranchero.

Correction: This assumes Goldfinger gave him the correct amount of gold.

JC Fernandez

Corrected entry: In the scene where Goldfinger meets with the gangsters to explain in detail his plan for entering Fort Knox why does he go to the trouble of announcing his plan when he is going to kill the gangsters a few minutes later? It only serves to let Bond (and the audience) know what's going on, but makes no sense in the movie at all. The gas is fatal - he only tells them it knocks people out to win their confidence.

Correction: He does it for the same reason he tells Bond further details of his plot (that he intends to make the gold worthless): because Goldfinger is a megalomaniacal sociopath. He's not rational. He likes to win, and what good is winning if you can't gloat about it... even if it's someone he intends to kill?

JC Fernandez

Corrected entry: Goldfinger's Grand Slam task force is able to penetrate Fort Knox after the Flying Circus has sprayed the military reservation and surrounding area with nerve gas. To fool Goldfinger and his people, the U.S. Army has instructed its soldiers to fall to the ground and pretend to be dead. That way, Goldfinger will be fooled into believing that the nerve gas attack was successful. While the Army might be able to get its personnel to fake death, how would they go about getting the cooperation of every civilian that lives and works in the area around Fort Knox? Also, since there are numerous horse and dairy farms around Fort Knox, wouldn't Goldfinger's task force expect to see dead horses, cows and other livestock scattered about as they make their way to the Gold Depository?

Correction: At no time do they ever show anyone from the civilian population during the "nerve gas" attack scene; the gas was never sprayed over any civilian area. The Fort Knox Military Reservation is several square miles of land surrounding the Depository; there would be no reason to use the gas on the civilian land outside of the Reservation. In the submitter's defense, though, it was very lucky that there was no living wildlife around the Depository when Goldfinger arrived.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: At the congress between Goldfinger & the crime bosses, they all demand the payments owed to them, namely one million dollars each in gold bullion. Goldfinger then teases them by saying, "You can have one million today, or ten million tomorrow", which he explains to mean that, upon executing Operation Grand-Slam, the market value of circulating gold bullion will multiply by a factor of at least ten. But if that's the case, then why would the gangsters be motivated to wait for their parcels of gold? Its value will increase after the Fort Knox job regardless that they take possession today or tomorrow.

Correction: Goldfinger tells only Bond the value of gold will increase by a factor of 10, and he says this well after the gangster briefing. As far as the gangsters are concerned, he is actually going to try to rip off Fort Knox. Thus they expect to receive an actual $10 million in gold bullion from the heist. They don't know about the atomic bomb plot or Goldfinger's true plan to increase the value of his own gold, and thus have no way to expect the $1 million will increase in value.

Continuity mistake: The T-Bird, following Oddjob to the junkyard, does not have fender skirts, but does when they give up the chase and head back to the farm. (01:16:25 - 01:20:30)

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Trivia: Harold Sakata (Oddjob) was formerly a professional weightlifter and won a silver medal for the United States at the 1948 Olympics in London.

More trivia for Goldfinger

Question: Can someone please explain the scene where Bond says something is "As bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs?" Were The Beatles unpopular in 1964, or is Bond just a snob?

MikeH

Chosen answer: The Beatles were wildly popular with the youngsters of the time and not so with the older generation, of which Bond is part. Obviously, Bond's comment shows the Beatles were not to everyone's taste in music, especially his. And it was a good line for comic relief.

Scott215

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