Factual error: At the beginning of the film, with the boat chase down the River Thames, Bond manages to get from the Vauxhall HQ of MI6 to Docklands in a remarkably short time. To travel the distance in the time that it takes him, you would need to be going at about 700 mph.
Factual error: In the boat scene at the beginning, the route is completely impossible. James Bond drives out from several dead ends.
Factual error: When Bond and Christmas are inside the oil pipeline, there are lights in the 'ceiling'. Why would there be lights inside an oil pipe? It also sounds dangerous.
Factual error: In the final battle, Bond shoots up the dive controls of the submarine and it dives vertically down, straight into the bottom of the Bosporus. The sub is said to be a Victor-III that is about 100 meters long. The Bosporus around Istanbul, however, is only about 50 meters deep, so the rest of the sub would have stuck out of the water, not be fully submerged as shown.
Factual error: King can't be a terribly good engineer. He's built his oil pipeline over a glacier. Glaciers flow. The pipeline would break within a year.
Factual error: In the scene where James is being told why Robert Carlisle's character is so deadly (no pain etc.), they mention a specific part of the brain - Medulla Oblongata, which the character has a bullet travelling through. This is part of the brain is responsible for control of breathing and the heart - you can't survive a bullet there...
Factual error: In the scene where Bond is watching the screen showing the bomb going through the pipeline, he asks for the distance the bomb has to travel and how fast it is going. Bond is told the bomb "is 106 miles from the terminal, going 70 mph." Bond says, "We've got 78 minutes." Wrong. At 70 mph (1.17 miles a minute) it would take about 91 minutes to cover that distance.
Factual error: After the explosion in the pipeline Christmas says: "the world's greatest terrorist running around with 6 kilos of plutonium." That tells us that each half of the plutonium ball weighs 6 kg. Seconds earlier she asks "Why leave this half" and pulls out the other half of the plutonium from her bag. She lifts it with the tip of her fingers as if the container weighs no more than a pound. You can definitely not lift 6 kg with such a casual hand movement, and no significant weight change is visible in the bag.
Factual error: When Christmas and Bond are on the rigs in the pipeline and are supposedly moving at about 70mph their hair only move about a little bit and very little flapping of the clothes. 70mph is a significant blast, try opening a window on a motorway.
Factual error: When Valentin takes Bond and Christmas into the FSB's headquarters in Istanbul, he explains "This used to be the KGB's headquarters in Istanbul. Now we call it the FSB: Federal Security Bureau. Different name, same friendly service," or something to that effect. However, the important part that Valentin flubs is that "FSB" is the *Russian* acronym transliterated into the Roman alphabet. What it really stands for is Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti. If he'd said the name correctly in English, he would've said "Federal Security Service," the FSB's official English name and that appears on all of its translated literature. Had a character unfamiliar with the FSB (Mr. Bullion, Electra, Bond, Christmas, and possibly even Renard) made this same flub, it would've been understandable. However, Valentin knows the FSB so well that he can apparently just waltz into a foreign headquarters building with whoever he wants. If he knows them that well, he's flat out not going to make so simple a mistake.
Factual error: In the opening boat chase scene, when Bond takes the Q-boat ashore at high speed and hurtles through city streets, we see that his hands are still steering the Q-boat, even though there's no external means of steering the boat on dry land. We get a good look at the Q-boat's keel a couple of times, and it has no wheels nor other steering mechanism aside from its jet-ski nozzle, which would be useless for steering on dry land. Its twin rocket thrusters, which are both firing in the street sequence, provide only forward thrust. But, remarkably, the Q-boat manages to change direction by as much as 90° without losing momentum on dry land.
Factual error: When James Bond and Christmas Jones were in the pipeline, they were going at great speed, so when the robot explodes, why does the explosion suddenly stop?
Factual error: When Bond is in the little boat and nosedives it underwater to avoid whatever it was he was avoiding, he appears to be travelling at fairly high speed. With no windshield (or such a small one), the force of the water hitting him in the face should have knocked his head off or at least broken his neck.
Factual error: Bond fires two torpedoes against the other speed boat on the Thames. They both hit, but in the next clip only the rear end of the boat is burning slightly. That must be some very weak torpedoes if a fiberglass boat is not completely destroyed by them.
Factual error: During the boat chase, the part when Bond jumps the boat through London Canoeing Club shed was filmed in the canal at Tobacco Wharf in London. This is not actually the home of the L.C.C. Across from this in real life is a road and then a dead end yet once Bond hits the road he finds himself in what appears to be Camden Fish market!
Factual error: The Caspian sea oil pipes are shown being built in Azerbaijan and the helicopter comes from the country's capital Baku. The Azeri flags are waved by locals wearing Azeri national hats and clothes. They are Muslim, but the cleric is a Russian Orthodox priest.
Factual error: When Bond's BMW gets cut in half it folds in on itself too much, as if the engine, axles, car interior, etc. has been removed. If anything the two halves should fall in the other direction.
Factual error: At Valentin's Caviar factory, one of the lumbering choppers cuts through Bond's car. It is obvious that saw blades cutting through metal cause a high volume of sparks. Yet as the saws cut, the car is simply split in half down the middle, and falls apart. This would have ignited the gas tank, and the car would have exploded. Not to mention all the modifications Q has made to the car, with rockets and other explosive goodies.
Factual error: In the scene where Zukovsky is almost drowning in caviar he lies very deep - only the top of his face above the surface. The depth of a body in a liquid depends on the proportions between the density of the body and the liquid. For example in the Dead Sea, with its high salt content, the water has a high density, so a body floats higher than in fresh water. Caviar must have a quite high density too - probably as high as the water in the Dead Sea, since it tastes quite salt too. So if a person was floating in caviar, he would not go as deep down as Zukovsky does in that scene. That looks more like how deep he would go in fresh water.
Factual error: When the pipeline explodes it is clear during the explosion that it is mostly fire coming from the pipeline. There is no spray of earth or other debris. But afterwards Bond and Christmas are walking through a huge crater. Where (and when) did the earth get displaced, if it was not thrown up in the actual explosion?
Chosen answer: We see them in the movie when Bond first arrives to meet Electra - they're used for cutting trees in a straight line. Google "helicopter tree trimmer" to see dozens of examples.
Jon Sandys ★