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

Fiona: You look pale, Mr. Bond. I hope I didn't frighten you.
Bond: Well you see, I've always been a nervous passenger.
Fiona: Some men just don't like to be driven.
Bond: No, some men just don't like to be taken for a ride.

More quotes from Thunderball

Trivia: If you noticed that almost all of the bad guys, including the villain, are all Italian, this is no coincidence. The original story involved the Mafia and the villain, Emilio Largo, as a Mafia chieftain. The story was changed to replace the Mafia with the organization, SPECTRE.

More trivia for Thunderball

Question: I am completely confused about the ending of this film. I mean, the camera-geiger counter starts clicking showing the nuclear weapons are on the boat, but they are not, they are still being moved. And the weapons do get onto the yacht, but both parts of it explode right at the end. Wouldn't that destroy the bombs as well, eg. massive atomic explosion? It is probably just me, I am known to be slow, but can someone explain?

KingofallSamurai

Chosen answer: Geiger counters show when radiation, even faint traces, are present. Therefore, if nuclear weapons were there recently, it will register. The scientist told Domino he threw the detonators overboard so the bombs could not explode. Also, nukes are surprisingly durable. Being in a large explosion will not detonate the core, only a specific chain reaction will.

SexyIrishLeprechaun

Answer: Yep he's right.

More questions & answers from Thunderball

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