Thunderball

Revealing mistake: When Bond and that girl are floating at the end right after the boat crashed, the bottom of the ocean looks very shallow and very much like the bottom of a pool.

Visible crew/equipment: When the cars arrive at the mansion after attending the funeral, one of the car doors opens, and the film crew's lighting equipment is reflected in the door.

wizard_of_gore

Continuity mistake: In the car scene where Bond escapes, Fiona did not have a cigarette lighter in her hand, but instead the gun with which she held James Bond. He grabs her hand with the cigarette lighter and moves it near the flame, but if that's the case she still would have had a free hand to shoot him with.

Factual error: When Bond finds the hi-jacked sunken Vulcan, he swims into the aircraft and towards a door at the rear of the cockpit. In the real Vulcan there's no door. There is a full-width table with racks of "black boxes" where the bomb aimer and navigator sit.

Factual error: When Largo's henchman is hiding in Bond's shower, Bond turns on the hot water which scalds the villan. But scalding hot water is never the first which comes out of the hot faucet.

Jacob La Cour

Continuity mistake: When James Bond is inside the plane that is underwater, just before he goes to remove the facemask of the dead pilot Angelo, watch closely as Bond is holding a torch in his left hand and he is about to remove the mask with his right hand, but in the next shot, it is Bond's left hand hand that removes the mask and the torch is nowhere to be seen.

Will

Continuity mistake: When 007 is diving and fights with some divers his diving mask changes colour from blue to orange.

Continuity mistake: When James Bond is being chased through the carnival parade he has already been shot in the calf and you can see the bloodstain on his trousers. Later in the scene as he is jumping onto one of the floats to escape, the blood stain is on the opposite leg and his hand.

Other mistake: The tape recorder in Bond's room spins very fast, and the tape is not that big. It would have to have been started not long before Bond came back, and could not possibly have been running all day.

Jacob La Cour

Continuity mistake: When 007 is trying to escape from the Disco Volante, having taken underwater pictures, you see the speedboat come into contact with the oxygen tanks that 007 is using, as he is spun round you can see that the tanks are undamaged, but when one of Largo's henchmen pulls the tanks out of the water, the tank on the right hand side is damaged.

Will

Continuity mistake: In one scene, Bond and Leiter have landed the helicopter on the sea and Bond dives down to search for the Vulcan watch Leiter. One moment he is wearing long pants, the next moment shorts, and the next long pants again.

Continuity mistake: There is an underwater love scene between Sean Connery and Claudine Auger. The air hose on Claudine Auger's scuba tank switches from one side to the other during the scene.

Revealing mistake: In the cave where the A-bombs are kept, you can see that it is not totally submerged. You can see reflections from the water surface.

Jacob La Cour

Factual error: Before the final fight when the soldiers parachute down, they are spread out over a long stretch of water (up to 1 km, it seems). It would take them a long time to swim together (and none of them are wearing the underwater jet as Bond is). Nevertheless they are all in one group minutes later.

Jacob La Cour

Other mistake: In the final scene, Bond, the girl, and the man who rescued the girl all jump out of the boat before it hits the rocks. Then Bond and the girl are picked up by an airplane in an elaborate rescue scene. But what about the other man? I guess he has to swim home?

Revealing mistake: When Bond and Colonel Bouvar are fighting in the chateau, Bouvar grabs Bond by the door and in doing so, forces him into doing a roll. At this point, you can see that Bond is not Sean Connery but a stunt double.

Continuity mistake: The man with the eye patch is underwater on his way to retrieve the bombs, then confronts Domino about the camera on the yacht, and then is in subsequent underwater scenes as the bombs are being brought back to the yacht.

Continuity mistake: The bullet-proof shield that rises behind the rear window on Bond's Aston Martin comes from a very noticeable slot in the sheet-metal. On all subsequent views of the car, this slot is not there,indicating a different car used for the bullet-proof shield scene.

Factual error: After the photo dive at Disco Volante, where Bond's air tanks are hit, he takes them off and leave them in the water. There is no air filled BCD attached to the tanks (which are quite heavy) but they float anyway.

Jacob La Cour

Plot hole: It would not have been possible for Bond to place his jet-pack on the roof of Jaques Bovier's mansion. If he flew up there, everyone would have heard him - it's very noisy. And since it's also quite heavy, it is hard to imagine that he would have time to climb the wall, place it there, and get into the mansion, during the same time it took Jaques Bovier to get back from the church - which he left before Bond did.

Jacob La Cour

James Bond: My dear, uncooperative Domino.
Domino: How do you know that? How do you know my friends call me Domino?
James Bond: It's on the bracelet on your ankle.
Domino: So... what sharp little eyes you've got.
James Bond: Wait 'til you get to my teeth.

More quotes from Thunderball

Trivia: When Bond and the guard fall into the pool and the shutters close over them, Largo gets the gate opened to allow sharks into the pool. When they were shooting this, there was supposed to be a sheet of glass in the water with the sharks on one side, and Sean on the other. Unfortunately, a couple of the sharks got round it, and when Sean opens the door to go through to the other pool, he's nose to nose. At this point, he's not acting. Watch his face for the genuine look of horror.

More trivia for Thunderball

Question: As I watched the end scene I wondered: how do James and Domino intend to return to terra firma? They were whisked out of the boat by the plane and are hanging on the end of a long cord so the plane can't land without them being dragged at high speed along the concrete.

Answer: Look up Skyhook online and you'll find out how it was done. The person hanging from the cable wold be pulled aboard by the plane's crew.

Answer: A helicopter could lower a line to them to attach themselves to. They could then cut the rope and be lowered to safety. A bit outlandish, but this is Bond we are talking about after all.

Grumpy Scot

More questions & answers from Thunderball

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