Goofs for
Diamonds Are Forever (1971) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: In the opening scene, Bond gets mud spilt on him as he falls to the floor. When he stands up his jacket is perfectly clean.
  
  
• Continuity: Bond passes the Golden Nugget several times during the chase but has not turned any corners on the street so he can't just be going round in circles.
  
  
• Continuity: The moon buggy, and the dirt trike chasing it, each lose a wheel, which is back on again later.
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: When Peter Franks arrives at Dover he gets a message. He parks his car outside an office and as he walks in the camera crew is reflected in the window.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bond is hanging from the elevator shaft, his shadow is visible on the rear projection screen containing the street scene below.
  
  
• Continuity: The helicopter that blows up in the desert is originally green. As it turns away, it turns red.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Bond is released from the burning coffin, Shady Tree's diatribe against him about the phony diamonds doesn't match the movement of his mouth.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: The man Bond attacks in the very first scene manages to scream "Cai-Cai-Cairo!" without moving his mouth.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: ...sort of. During the Las Vegas car chase scene, Bond's car ends up riding on two wheels in order to pass through a narrow alley. When the car emerges at the other end of the alley it is balancing on the opposite pair of wheels. The producers spotted this error before release, however, and inserted a quick shot to indicate that, for some reason, Bond flips the car onto its other wheels. There must have been an opening somewhere in the alley.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: At Dover, Bond arrives (and departs) in a Triumph Stag (V8 engine). When he drives away, we hear the sound of a Triumph Spitfire (1200cc 4 cylinder).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the opening scene, a string can be seen attached to the final knife that 007 throws at the guard.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond is fighting Franks outside of Tiffany Case's apartment Franks swings a crowbar at Bond and it falls out of his hand when he misses. When Bond starts squirting Franks with the fire extinguisher the crowbar is back in Franks' hand.
  
  
• Factual errors: Blofeld points out for Bond a moving dot of light on a globe: his laser satellite's position over the U.S. But the dot moves over the map at a scale speed of 20 or 30 miles per second or faster - far quicker than the practical orbital speed of about 5 mi. per second. In a later scene, as the satellite nears Washington D.C., the dot moves at a normal rate.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the circus the announcer says that the transforming woman was captured near Nairobi, South Africa: but Nairobi is in Kenya.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bond is hanging from the rope at the top of the building, his arm movements are not synchronized with his upward movements. It's also noticeable that the rope he is hanging from is being pulled up through a hole in the set, rather than him pulling himself up a stationary rope.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond is fighting the real Peter Franks in the elevator, Franks drops the glass shard before his wrist gets hit for the second time (the one that supposedly makes him drop the shard).
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Plenty O'Toole comes to Bond's room, she compliments on how "super" the place is, but her mouth does not move. Later, when a half naked Plenty is yelling as she's being forced over to the window, her screaming does not match the movement of her lips.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond is holding Bambi and Thumper under water his hair is messed up. When Felix comes in, it is slicked back again.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: As the two workers are opening the manhole cover to repair the pipe welding robot, you can hear them talking but their mouths are not moving.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the Ford sedans are racing through the desert in pursuit of the moon vehicle, the exact same "engine-revving" sound effect is used over and over throughout the scene.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Bond emerges from the manhole cover in the desert, there are two men working at the site, one digging and the other watching. The dialog over the scene is not matched by the supervising worker's lips, who appears not to speak at all.
  
  
• Factual errors: You cannot make a laser out of diamonds. Even if you could, you could not make a laser out of multiple gem-quality stones; ruby lasers, for instance, are made from a single flawless rod of artificially-grown ruby.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Mr Wint and Mr Kidd exit the tunnel, with Mr Bond in the trunk of the car, the cover that lifts up has a Saguaro Cactus on it. That type of cactus only grow in extreme southeastern California, southern Arizona and adjoining northwestern Mexico.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the film when Bond pulls down the light over Blofeld he is lying one way. In the next shot when Bond is strapping him to the table he is the other way.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Tiffany Case pulls out the Polaroid of the thumbprint, she immediately peels the picture off the backing. Pulling the film out of the camera crushes a packet on the film which contained the developing chemicals. This caused the photo to develop, which took about a minute. You would then pull the photo off of the backing. There is no way that the photo could be developed the way she did it.
  
  
• Plot holes: Tiffany recognizes Blofeld in the casino by his white cat, yet she had never seen either one before. Also, Bond hadn't seen her since he discovered Blofeld was alive and behind the diamond-smuggling operation so there was no opportunity for Bond to describe him (or the cat) to her.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the establishing shot of the Whyte House, in actuality the Las Vegas Hilton, you can still see the Las Vegas Hilton's name at the entrance to the building.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Blofeld's laser fires from space, you see the beam take a bit of time to travel to its targets. Laser beams travel at the speed of light, so the effect should be instantaneous.
  
  
• Factual errors: The laser beam destroys a Soviet/Russian submarine moving underwater. First, it's almost impossible to locate a submerged, moving submarine in the vastness of the ocean. Then the chances of a laser going through the water causing it to blow it up are extremely remote.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the construction workers open the manhole in the pipeline you can see that the hand wheel isn't connected to any kind of latching mechanism, therefore making it useless to be turning it before they open it.
  
  
• Continuity: For the final scene in the film, Tiffany is wearing a red and purple bikini. Miraculously, while Bond is operating the crane, Tiffany's bikini turns into a red and brown bikini. (This is only on certain prints of the film and available online clips, and is due to degradation of the film or copying from a TV showing. The current DVD and UK TV release keeps everything red and purple.)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the car chase through the streets of Las Vegas, many shots plainly show crowds of onlookers obviously watching the filming of the action; they do not behave like normal pedestrians (walking, etc.), and while some sidewalks are crammed with people standing still observing the action, the adjacent sidewalks (nearer the cameras) are completely devoid of any people.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bond wakes up inside the pipeline there is a mysterious light source which illuminates him and the inside of the pipe.
  
  
• Continuity: When Tiffany is walking towards Bond to secretly hand him the tape, a long shot of her from behind clearly shows the beginning of her butt crack protruding from her bikini bottom. The ensuing shot is a close up of her from behind slipping the tape to Bond, however her bikini bottoms are pulled fully up, no longer exposing her crack, though she made no visible effort to pull them up.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The "oil-rig" in Baja, California which Blofeld has made his hide-out and headquarters to control the laser satellite is supposed to be in the middle of the ocean. Yet when Tiffany is shown sun-bathing on the rig, we can see mountains and a coastline not too far away in the backdrop.
  
  
• Continuity: When Tiffany Case takes Bond's glass to verify his fingerprints to Peter Franks, she adds ice to his drink. When she returns the drink to Bond, there is no ice in the glass.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bond attacks Peter Franks with the fire extinguisher, you can tell it is not a real fire extinguisher, because there is no gas discharge from the CO2 sublimating into gas at room temperature. The fire extinguisher used in this scene appears to spray out soap suds.
  
  
• Continuity: When Tiffany dusts Bond's glass for fingerprints, she covers the entire glass with dust. She begins dusting it off, and it quickly cuts to the next camera shot, and the entire glass has been cleaned off already.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Bond remarks that Tiffany could get 20 years to life, she responds, "20 years to life?" but halfway through her sentence, her and Bond change positions, and her mouth is not moving for the remainder of the sentence.
  
  
• Factual errors: Scorpions rarely sting humans, and even more rarely do scorpion stings cause death. Most scorpion stings are nonfatal. In cases that are fatal, death is not instantaneous. Scorpion venom usually takes several hours to take complete effect on the body. A scorpion is not a portable lethal injection device, as depicted in this movie.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Obvious use of a projection screen during the "Zambora" scene.
  
  
• Continuity: Tiffany's position in the doorway changes rapidly several times while Bond is fighting Peter Franks in the glass elevator.
  
  
• Continuity: During the scene when Blofeld's escape pod is hanging from the crane, and Bond is repeatedly crashing it into the walls. The amount of distance between the pod and the wall changes very rapidly between camera angles.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When the dead Mrs. Whistler is being pulled out of the water, you can clearly see her eyes blink. Perhaps she isn't completely dead yet, or else this is a post mortem reflex.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Klaus Hergersheimer (and Bond posing as Hergersheimer) claims to be checking for "radiation shields". However, the device that he is wearing, as well as the one he gives Bond, is not a shield, but a radiation badge. It only shows the amount of exposure to radiation; it has no protective function, as the word "shield" implies.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Messrs. Kidd and Wint dispose of Bond by leaving his drugged, unconscious body in a 8' section of underground pipe, open at both ends. The next day, a construction crew somehow manage to select the pipe section, hook it to a crane, lower it into position, weld it to the rest of the pipe sections, and bury it in dirt without happening to notice a man in a tuxedo apparently sleeping in it.
  
  
• Factual errors: There is a scene where the corpse containing the diamonds is cremated. A cremator is an industrial furnace capable of generating temperatures of 870-980 °C (1600-1800 °F) to ensure disintegration of the corpse. However, Diamond is a form of Carbon which burns in the presence of oxygen at around 800 deg C. Therefore any diamonds smuggled through the innards of corpses and recovered through cremation would either be partially or completely destroyed. Diamonds are in fact not forever.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When James Bond and Peter Franks meet at the front door of Tiffany Case's apartment building in Amsterdam, Bond starts talking with Franks in German, which is not the primary language of the Netherlands.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): During the police chase the cops are wearing motorcycle helmets even though they are inside their cars.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At the funeral parlor Bond receives 50,000 dollars in a relatively small number of bills (presumably $1000 bills). Minting of $1000 bills for general circulation ceased in 1945, at least 20 years before the film is set. They do exist but are not generally in public use.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint operate by killing their victims quickly and with certainty, except for Bond who they leave in a deathtrap.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Tiffany takes Bond's fingerprint(fake) and compares it to Peter Franks', the two images are 100% identical, pixel by pixel. Although the two images would be similar, it would be virtually impossible to produce two 100% identical fingerprints, which are taken at the same angle, with the same amount of substrate, and the same amount of pressure applied.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond is on the phone with Q, and Q says that Peter Franks has escaped, Bond never hangs up the phone before he leaves the room. However, in the next scene, the phone is placed properly on the hook.
  
  
• Plot holes: British Intelligence is doing a surprisingly poor job of keeping its people's identities safe. A common American criminal, Tiffany Case, knows James Bond's secret career history by heart.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the chase scene in the desert where James Bond is being tailed by sedans, Bond makes a jump that causes one of the cars to flip and roll behind him. Once it rolls down the dune, a spare tire not matching the size or tread of the rolled car rolls into the shot for no apparent reason. The rolled car did not even lose a tire.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Bambi and Thumper attack Bond in the house, while performing a series of cartwheels, Thumper's skin color appears to change. This is most noticeable just as she lands.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: Obvious doubles for Wint & Kidd in the fight scene where they are killed. Along the way, Mr. Kidd suddenly grows protective gloves, and the bomb on Mr. Wint's coattails disappears and reappears.
  
  

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