X

Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Book mistakes

CanMag

The Daily Column

Daily Stab

Defamer

Double Viking

EHOWA

The Evil Beet

Film Drunk

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Game mistakes

Geek Tyrant

Gone Hollywood

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Am Bored

I Love Bacon

Joblo movie news

Movie Banter

Movie Buzz

Movie spoilers

Movie timeline

Other crap

Screenjunkies

Sky movie reviews

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Unreality Magazine

Virtually Existing

Quotes

Prem Kumar: So Jamal, tell me something about yourself.

Jamal Malik: I work in a call centre in Juhu.

Prem Kumar: Phone basher! And what type of call centre would that be?

Jamal Malik: Excel Five mobile phones.

Prem Kumar: Ohh... so you're the one who calls me up every single day of my life with special offers?

Jamal Malik: Actually I'm an assistant.

Prem Kumar: An assistant phone basher? And what does an assistant phoner basher do exactly?

Jamal Malik: I get tea for people and...

Prem Kumar: Chaiwalah! Well ladies and gentlemen, Jamal Malik, garma garam chai dene wala from Mumbai, lets play Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!

See more...

Mistakes

Mr. Vikas Swarup's book refers to "Ankhiya Hari Darshan Ki Pyasi" as the song by saint-poet Surdas. The song, Darshan Do Ghanshyam Nath Mori Ankhiya Pyasi, that features in the movie, is from 1957 film Narsi Bhagat which was directed by Devendra Goel. The film was based on the life of 15th Century Gujarati saint-poet Narsinh Mehta, who was a devotee of Lord Krishna. The song, based on one of the oldest ragas-Rag Kedar, was written by eminent Hindi poet and Bollywood song writer Gopal Singh Nepali and not Surdas as the movie claims. See more...

Trivia

The human excrement into which youngest Jamal jumps in the "toilet escape" sequence was actually chocolate. See more...

Mistake pictures

Movie Mistakes blog

Popular blog posts:

Top 15 biggest Harry Potter film mistakes

The biggest mistakes in the Harry Potter movies

15 biggest mistakes in Titanic

The 20 biggest Friends mistake pictures

10 Twilight mistakes in pictures

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - 15 corrections

starring Anil Kapoor, Dev Patel, Freida Pinto (add more)

Genres: Crime, Drama, Romance

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.

Mistakes
Trivia
Quotes
Corrections
Questions
Submit
One of the questions Jamal has to answer is - who invented the revolver, to which the answer is given as Samuel Colt. Colt didn't invent the revolver, or even claim to invent it - he merely took a form which had existed for many years and substantially improved it. For example, Elisha H Collier patented a flintlock revolver in 1818 when Colt was only 4 years old which was produced in numbers for the British forces in India. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Collier. [The questions wasn't who invented the revolver, the question was who invented the first commercially successful revolver. Samuel Colt is very much the person credited for popularizing the revolver.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
To test Jamal's ignorance he is asked, and fails to know, that Ghandi is on a high denomination currency note. Ghandi is on all Indian currency, smallest to largest. Even if he had never seen the really big bills, he would know Ghandi was on them. [This assumes he knew that Gandhi (correct spelling) is on all the currency. What may seem like common knowledge to you may not be to a poor, uneducated young man.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
The end of the film shows Jamel with his cheque dated 20/10/2005. The cricket game where Sachin Tendulkar was run out for 99, which formed one of his questions, occurred on 26 June 2007. [The question is about who scored the most centuries in first class cricket. As Tendulkar only scored 69 centuries against Jack Hobbs's (the correct answer) 199, this match has no relevance to the question.]
Edit Corrected by Necrothesp
When Jamal is kicked in the face, there are several shots of his swollen eye. In one of them, the opposite eye is swollen. [That's because one shot is a reflection in a puddle.]
Edit Corrected by Brad
When Jamal uses a search system to find his brother, his typing speed is about 120 characters per second, which reveals him to be quite a skilled computer user. It's hard to believe that he'd have learned these specific skills anytime throughout his career. [It's not hard to believe that he picked up typing skills at all. He obviously has spent some time in these call centers, he seems to know a few of the workers there - it's completely plausible that he has scored some computer time not only from there, but from God knows where else he has picked up odd jobs in his life.]
Edit
The TV host asks Jamal to read the question and he says he can't since he's illiterate. Later it shows Jamal sitting by a computer and searching the name of his brother and girlfriend easily. [That's incorrect. The host asks, "Are you a big reader?" to which Jamal shrugs and says, "I can read." He is literate.]
Edit Corrected by Thisbe
No version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire", regardless of what country it is in, allows for a bathroom break after the question has been posed and before that question is actually answered by the contestant. The show is pre-recorded with scripted times for breaks. Jamal could never have been in the bathroom where the host gives him a fake answer to a question posed but not yet answered. This clause is in the contract of all contestants who appear on the show. [There was no bathroom break after the question was asked. The bathroom break was BEFORE the question was asked, and the host gave the fake answer to the question that was coming next.]
Edit
In the beginning of the movie when Jamal is being shocked, he is being shocked by a single 12 volt car battery. 12 volts isn't enough to penetrate the skin and do any damage, you need closer to 30 volts and above. [Car batteries have been used as torture devices worldwide. It's not the number of volts, it's the amps. Stun guns work with just a 9v battery.]
Edit Corrected by JC Fernandez
The Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, like its original British counterpart, require contestants to pass a "Fastest Fingers First" round before getting onto the "Hotseat", not starting with the host walking the contestant out (unless the game is continued, which when Jamal first appears, it is not). [As you can see by all the other contestants sitting around the edge of the circle, you have got the "fastest fingers" there, so the likelihood is that we start to watch as Jamal is being led in after he has won the "fastest finger first" part of the game. I have seen this happen, then they take an ad break where the contestant has makeup applied, etc. before he is then led out to begin the main game.]
Edit Corrected by mandy gasson
The show "Who wants to be a Millionaire" is not telecast live as shown in the movie. There is usually a gap of two to three weeks between the shoot and the actual telecast. [The Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Kaun Banega Crorepati, airs live on KBC. The gameshow airs live in some other countries as well.]
Edit
While brother Salim owned a Colt, and indeed the Colt was the first revolver invented, at no time in the story was this detail ever given to Jamal, who answered this questions correctly on the game show. A scene must have been cut which would explain Jamal's first-hand knowledge of who invented the first revolver. [He heard his brother refer to a gun as a colt, and answered "Colt" based on that. He couldn't know it was the right answer, he got lucky.]
Edit Corrected by littlestar
In the car. the girl has a scar on her left cheek, then it changes to her right side in the final scene. [In the car they show the assailants cutting her left cheek, the scar stays on the left cheek throughout the rest of the film. In the final scenes she is wearing her hair down on the left side to help hide the scar.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie
When Jamal phones a friend on Millionaire, the phone rings several times and almost hung up before it is answered by Latika. In real life, the friend is first called off-air to make sure they are there and available, and then called a second time while the show is taping. [The show must have called Salim before they started taping - he has the phone with him when the show begins taping and must have gotten the call from the show off-camera. Salim knows that Jamal is trying to find Latika (Jamal's real reason for being on "Millionaire") and must know that the show is going to call his cell again when Jamal needs a lifeline. It's after the show begins that Salim gives the cell phone to Latika for her to take with her when she escapes.]
Edit Corrected by BocaDavie
In the show 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' contestants are given safety stages. E.g. if they get the £64k question wrong they go home with £32k. In this film, Jamal is warned by the host that if he gets the final question wrong he loses everything. [Different countries may have different rules. Most game shows in the past had no safety nets, perhaps the rules are similar here.]
Edit
Latika is slashed on the left side of her face, yet in one of the shots when she is driving, the scar shifts to the right side of her face. [This is not a mistake since the scene is of her driving the car and the shot of her face is a reflection in the rear view mirror. This is shown more than once and correctly, as depicted in the movie.]
Edit Corrected by Andrew Quattropani