You Only Live Twice

Corrected entry: Due to the Earth's gravity, is it impossible to land a space craft vertically, braking by using booster rockets (as was supposedly done on the Moon). It would require almost as much power and fuel as at lift-off.

Jacob La Cour

Correction: Leaving aside the implication that the Moon landings never happened (and if they didn't, why didn't the Russians blow the whistle on the whole thing?) a rocket can land vertically, using booster rockets. The Delta Clipper, or DC-X, tested by McDonnell-Douglas in 1993, did exactly that in two test flights. See http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/x-33/menu_dcx.htm and http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/dc-x.htm The failure of the DC-X was not related to vertical takeoff and landing but to human error and lack fo funding.

Correction: He doesn't say "cut", since his speech gets 'cut' off before he can finish the sentence. He could've been about to say "caught" or something else.

Corrected entry: When Blofield's base is exploding, external shots are shown which blatantly show lava flowing down. This is video of a real volcano erupting.

Correction: Blofeld sets off an explosion so intense that it re-activates the volcano to destroy all traces of his lair. Knowing which real volcano eruption they used would make an interesting trivia entry, but the volcano eruption in the movie is part of the plot - not a movie mistake.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: How could Blofeld have kept an efficient operation in Japan when he personally killed his own top two officers, 4 and 11, over such trivial matters as whether they succeeded in killing Bond? After all, when 4 was being killed, Bond was already in his custody, so exactly where did Osato fail? doesn't that leave a big power vaccum at the top?

Correction: Character choice, not a movie mistake. Many possible explainations. He is after all, quite evil.

BocaDavie

Corrected entry: Bond is 'killed' in the teaser in the hide-away bed. When the local police who respond to the situation open the bed, revealing Bond's 'dead' body, one of them remarks "That's the way he would have preferred it." Clearly making reference to Bond's proclivity for sexual escapades during dangerous situations. But how could any random, local gendarme possibly know about the personal habits of such a 'secret' agent?

Correction: Quite simply because he knew Bond from previous 'escapades'. Bond may be a secret agent, but he still has to work with other agencies such as local police. Also, the whole thing was a set up and there's every chance the local police were in on it.

Corrected entry: At the end of the movie when the remaining ninjas and Bond are escaping, aren't they using the tunnel that was filled with poison gas earlier in the movie? Notice that they are all swimming with their heads above water. Shouldn't they be dead?

Correction: The presence of poisonous gas in the cave is not natural nor permanent, but a defensive device designed by SPECTRE and operated from the volcano base. As the volcano base is being destroyed, the gas-feeding system logically stops functioning, and whatever gas then remains in the cave soon disperses.

Corrected entry: Near the end of the movie when the Ninjas are attacking the volcano compound, one of them shoots through the wall of Blofeld's supposedly impregnable control room. Apparently the noise and smoke that was produced to shoot the scene scares the hell out of the cat in Blofeld's arms. It is hilarious to watch the poor cat try to get free and its all Blofeld can do to try and restrain the animal.

Correction: So? Any cat in real life would do the same thing, and the owner of said cat wouldn't want it to go and get killed in the firefight below. It being a movie makes no difference. Trivia, at best.

Corrected entry: Since part of the volcano's interior consists of rough and porous rock, James' suction cups wouldn't have been able to give him a secure grip all the way down as he infiltrates the volcano base.

Correction: The inside of the base is lined with smooth metal.

Corrected entry: When Bond asks if anything unusual has happened on the island, Tiger says something to the effect of "Everything's just so normal. Nothing happens here". But to hollow out the crater of the volcano and build a rocket launch facility would be a major construction undertaking that would require large numbers of workers, construction material and equipment and would have taken quite a while to complete. How could the islanders not notice a construction project of that magnitude?

poehitman

Correction: With the amount of money involved to do the project, the islanders could easily have been paid off or threatened to keep quiet.

rswarrior

Corrected entry: The space capsules and spacesuits are incorrect. The Americans are wearing Russian suits in a Russian capsule and the Russians are actually wearing American spacesuits & are in an American spacecraft. (A Gemini to be exact).

Correction: This is simply incorrect. The Americans are only seen in Gemini-style capsules. The Russians are only seen in a completely different style ship.

Corrected entry: When Bond asks permission "to come aboard, Sir" in the submarine, his hands are loosely clasped across his chest, no uniform hat in sight. As he gets up, he has his white uniform hat in his hands.

Dennis Gannon

Correction: The white hat is visible through the transparent body bag on the widescreen version. Viewers seeing only the TV formatted version will not see the hat until Bond is starting to get up out of the bag.

Corrected entry: When Kissy returns to the volcano with Tiger, she has changed from her bikini. However, when everyone is fleeing the exploding volcano, she is back in her bikini.

wizard_of_gore

Correction: She was wearing the same bikini the whole time. Upon returning to the volcano with Tiger, she had merely donned a shirt to wear over it. Just before the final escape, however, she seems to ditch the shirt off-camera (possibly because she knew of the imminent swim ahead).

Corrected entry: Japanese SIS identifies the island that the Ning-Po stops at is called "Matsu" and is in the direct route between Kobe and Shanghai. The actual island of Matsu is just off the coast of CHINA, northwest of the island of Taiwan. Now, even assuming that it's the actual island in the movie, Bond takes Little Nellie and says he wants to take a quick look over the island. There's no way Little Nellie makes it that far on it's on-board fuel.

poehitman

Correction: The key phrase is "assuming it's the actual island." There's nothing to confirm it is the actual island.

rswarrior

Correction: Re the corrected entry. This is not entirely accurate. Tiger says they have identified the island, 'we have identified the coastline in the photograph, it is an island called Matsuo and lies on the direct route between Kobe and Shanghai' And while he can't confirm that the Ning-Po has stopped there Bond says 'I want to take a fast look at the island now ' So indeed the plan is to look at Matsu.

Corrected entry: When Bond goes back to the control room to hit the self-destruct button, he goes in completely unarmed. Bond is supposedly the best secret agent in the world, but as he's going up the stairs, with dead bodies and weapons all around him, he doesn't pick up a weapon before going into a room where armed guards are most likely present.

poehitman

Correction: It's never stated anywhere that Bond is "the best secret agent in the world." He's a skilled agent, yes. But also not immune to arrogance.

JC Fernandez

Corrected entry: How does 11 reconfigure that plane so that it would entrap James Bond? Wasn't it Bond's plane that he offered to take 11 out of there, the night before?

Correction: No, it's not Bond's plane. When it crash lands you can see it has an Osato Chemical Company logo on it.

Corrected entry: During one of the Ninja training sessions, a trainee smashes a melon. The goo from the melon splashes the camera lens. (01:16:40)

Correction: How is that a mistake, exactly? It's a common movie making technique to leave splatter, whether it's food, oil, fruits, blood, water, etc. hitting the camera in during editing to make the audience more a part of the action.

Corrected entry: In the car chase, just before the villain's black sedan is lifted off the road by helicopter, to be dumped into the Tokyo bay (that was before environmentalism) there's a shot from behind inside Bonds sports car. They race madly....with the speedometer needle clearly showing zero!

Correction: See similar mistakes in Die Another Day and Sideways. While in reality this means the car is mounted on a wheeled trolley for filming, in this fictional universe it means the car's speedometer is broken.

Corrected entry: In the scene of 11 flying Bond in the Navion single engine airplane, it doesn't make sense that Bond would get in the plane and sit in the back seat while 11 is wearing a parachute on her back and goggles on her head. Bond's not particularly observant, is he? Either that or he can't put two and two together.

Correction: Character mistake.

Corrected entry: When Bond is being chased at the docks, he reaches the top of the stairs with the Asian girl and a man with a submachine gun starts shooting at him. Bond fires back, the man throws his arms up in the air and screams. In the very next shot with the camera looking up, a second gunshot is heard and he comes flying over the edge. Given that the first gunshot caused a serious injury, how does he suddenly have the strength to hurl himself over the edge (the bullet would not have enough momentum to do it for him)?

Tobin OReilly

Correction: Just because he screams doesn't mean its a fatal or even serious injury. It could just have been really, really painful, leaving him plenty of strength to hurl himself over the edge.

Corrected entry: When the SPECTRE vessel attempts to intercept the second U.S. capsule, the Air Force launches several intercept aircraft. But jet engines require an oxygen atmosphere to produce thrust, and the capsule is beyond the stratosphere and thus beyond any usable atmospheric concentrations for them to work. Also, the tracking sensors of their light AA missiles (also considering it was the 60s when the movie was made) would also be useless for hitting something in orbit, because their lock-on range would be far too low.

Correction: The US aircraft are not attempting to intercept the capsule. After both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have lost a capsule, each side blames the other. The Americans make it clear to the Soviets that if anything happens to the next American capsule, they will be at war. The planes are taking off because they will be attacking the Soviet Union if the American capsule is harmed. the Air Force general warns his troops that the codeword which will start the war is "imminent". After the SPECTRE capsule explodes, he recalls the Air Force and advises them that the codeword is "not imminent". This was the whole point of SPECTRE's plot, to set the two nations at war.

Revealing mistake: During the car chase scene, if you watch the speedometer on the car, it never rises above zero. That, and the obviously poor image quality of the "road" in front of them, shows that they were using projected film in front of the car.

poehitman

More mistakes in You Only Live Twice

Aki: You wouldn't touch that horrible woman, would you?
James Bond: Oh heaven forbid.

More quotes from You Only Live Twice

Trivia: For production designer Ken Adam's giant Pinewood volcano set, some 700 tons of steel were used, and some 250,000 square yards of canvas. It featured a working monorail and elevators and cost £1 million to produce.

More trivia for You Only Live Twice

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