Goofs for
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

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• Factual errors: The earth should appear closer to the horizon at Clavius than at Tycho, not vice versa.
  
  
• Continuity: After Dave Bowman takes his food out of the food slot, two of the containers in his tray exchange positions by themselves. When he first removes the tray, there is a dark red container all the way to the left and a grayish one next to it. When Dave makes his way to the table to eat, the red one and the gray one have switched places.
  
  
• Continuity: As Dave Bowman climbs into HAL's logic center to shut him off, the seal on his suit's left hand is clearly broken and the glove separates from the suit (due to the swing). The glove is clearly reattached once he enters the logic center.
  
  

• Continuity: In the 70mm version you can see passengers moving inside the illuminated windows of the Pan Am space shuttle enroute to the space station. However, the following interior shot shows that Dr. Floyd is the sole passenger.
  
  
• Continuity: When the australopithecines jump up in the beginning of the film, one of them doesn't come back down.
  
  
• Continuity: The notes that Bowman puts on the table where Poole and he have their food.
  
  
• Continuity: Frank Poole sits on a massage table when watching the video from his parents. There is a cut to show Dave sleeping in his berth, which is adjacent to the massage table, but in this shot the massage table is vacant.
  
  
• Continuity: The state of the sandwich eaten on the transport.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Sound stage lights visible reflected in the window of the pod when Bowman first goes out to retrieve the AE-35.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the astronaut is leaving the pod for the first AE-35 EVA, the shadows of the wires suspending him are clearly visible.
  
  
• Continuity: When the astronaut leaves the pod to replace the AE-35 unit, he is holding it in his right hand so he can use his left hand to control his thruster backpack. In the next shot showing him maneuvering toward Discovery, the AE-35 is in his left hand.
  
  
• Continuity: The antenna (which contains the AE-35 unit HAL predicts will fail) is fixed pointed toward the rear of the ship just before Poole leaves the Discovery via one of the pods. However, in the next shot the pod is seen traveling toward the antenna, which is now rotating. Also, if they were going to replace the AE-35, they surely would have stopped rotating the antenna.
  
  
• Continuity: The air-hose on the spacewalker's suit switches sides just before he is hit by the space pod.
  
  
• Continuity: Letter designations of the pods in different scenes.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Bowman reenters the ship, he is exposed to vacuum for no more than 10 seconds before operating the repressurization valve. Scientific evidence shows that this would indeed be survivable without grievous harm, notwithstanding the sensational depictions in other movies.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dave and Frank are in the pod to speak about disconnecting HAL, we see Dave's left hand in close up turning off the 8 switches to block HAL from listening. However, in the long shot we see Dave's right hand pulling away from the 8 switches.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Dave opens the emergency airlock, his pod should have been blasted away from the Discovery by the rush of escaping air and the explosive bolts. He was not positioned in such a way that he could have grabbed anything with the pod arms. The escaping debris also should have damaged the pod.
  
  
• Factual errors: One of the most familiar effects in 2001 is when the stewardess enters a cabin on the round, moon-bound shuttle, velcro-walks around the wall and exits in a orientation upside down to how she entered. The upside down orientation is carried through to the next shot where she enters the pilots' control area and is readjusted to show she is matching the pilots' vertical. The goof is that, following the implications of the change of orientation, the pilots would be sitting upside-down in comparison to the passenger compartment. This would be problematic in the subsequent scenes of the shuttle landing on the moon - somebody would be on their heads at landing. The idea was to graphically demonstrate that there is no 'up' in space. Unfortunately, in a shuttle that lands in a gravity field, yes, there is an 'up' that has to be consistent throughout the ship, at least as far as the people are concerned.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: On one of the "computer monitors" in Bowman's pod (visible in the widescreen version only), scratches and a rather obvious film-edit splice can be seen, giving away the fact that the "computer graphics" are actually matte inserts. The same scratched-up section of animation is seen in two or three subsequent shots of the pod's control panel.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Dr Floyd is first on the space station, before he makes his phone call, he and the other guy are walking along the curved passage way. Their bodies' centers of gravity are always vertical to the frame of picture, not radial to the curve of the floor.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the space-suited crew are on the moon at the monolith excavation, Stanley Kubrick, who was filming the scene with a handheld camera, is clearly reflected in one of their helmets.
  
  
• Continuity: Relative orientations of lunar shuttle flight deck and passenger cabin do not match between internal and external views.
  
  
• Continuity: The quantity of food changes twice while Bowman and Poole are eating.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dave is showing HAL his sketches, and HAL questions Dave for his crew psychology report: Dave's seating position and the way he holds his sketch pad is not consistent between scenes.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When the men visit the monolith excavation on the moon, the camera lens, operator, and another crewmember are reflected in the monolith.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Reflected in Dave's helmet on the right-hand side of the screen in the hotel room.
  
  
• Factual errors: Bowman breathes in deeply before he attempts to re-enter the ship from the pod. Arthur C. Clarke in an interview later noted that this is incorrect, and that Bowman should have exhaled, as the vacuum of space would have damaged his lungs had they been full of air.
  
  
• Factual errors: As the PanAm shuttle closes in on the space station, we see both from their point of view, i.e., they are both stationary while the stars behind rotate. However, the shadows on the space station do not move at all.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: As the PanAm shuttle closes in on the space station, the shuttle and station rotate synchronously, so you see the station stay still through the shuttle's windows. However the computer schematic displayed in the cockpit keeps rotating.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: To come up with a convincing effect for the floating pen in the shuttle sequence, Kubrick decided to simply use a pen that was taped to a sheet of glass suspended in front of the camera (in fact, the shuttle attendant can be seen to "pull" the pen off the glass when she takes hold of it). If you watch carefully around the upper left corner of the screen just before she catches the pen, you can see the glass briefly reflecting light as it rotates to give the floating effect to the pen.
  
  
• Continuity: The phase of the Earth reverses while the moon bus is en-route from Clavius to Tyco.
  
  
• Factual errors: While riding in the moon bus towards TMA-1, Dr. Floyd, the two other passengers, and indeed the sandwiches and even poured coffee seem to behave as if there is a strong (i.e., nearly earth-like) gravitational pull. The effective gravity inside the moon bus shouldn't be any different from that of the moon itself and much weaker than that on Earth.
  
  
• Continuity: In the Pan Am lunar shuttle, we see the Clavius Moon Base approach through the viewing window of the pilot's cockpit in a view like an airplane approach. In the next shot, we see the exterior of the craft, and the cockpit is shown pointing straight up towards the black sky as it lands on the landing gear beneath the craft. It would be impossible for the pilots to view the Clavius approach from the cockpit if landing with reverse thrust engines. All they would see is the sky straight above, and it would be relatively still from their point of view.
  
  
• Continuity: When disconnecting the HAL 9000 brain, Bowman turns a key to release clear plastic blocks which represent areas of brain being severed. As the shots go from Bowman's perspective to an alternate viewpoint showing his facial expressions, the number of blocks being released varies.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bowman is disconnecting HAL in the logic center, he turns a key and a corresponding clear plastic block slides out. However, when he skips the #1 block in one series and turns the key for the high number in the next series, the #1 block in the previous series slides out.
  
  
• Continuity: Throughout the moon scenes, up to and including the landing at Tycho, the Earth is shown as gibbous; but when the people stand in front of TMA-1 for a group photograph, and dawn breaks, the Earth is shown as a thin crescent - as indeed it would be at lunar dawn.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Floyd has his conversation on the space station with Smyslov et al, he is apparently waylaid by the Russians while on his way to the briefing. However, when he gets up after making his excuses, he walks off back in the direction he came from.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the scene on the Earth Shuttle where the attendant enters the passenger cabin and moves towards Dr. Heywood, she stumbles while trying to walk carefully along the walkway. The nature of the misstep reveals that she is not weightless.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the boardroom at the Clavius Moonbase, the men move around as if they are walking in a one G environment instead of the one sixth G that exists on the moon.
  
  
• Factual errors: When HAL kills the hibernating crew members you can see their faces. Their faces are clean shaven despite being in hibernation for several weeks. Facial hair would continue to grow in hibernation. This is shown correctly in 2010.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: A camera is visible above Floyd's right shoulder when he addresses the scientists at Clavius.
  
  
• Factual errors: The centrifuge on board the Discovery rotates about once every 22 seconds. While this would give the astronauts a sense of weight, it would not be anywhere near Earth gravity; for instance Frank Poole would not be able to jog around the centrifuge as he does.
  
  
• Factual errors: A weightless environment like the Discovery's interior would have no need for a ladder. And Bowman and Poole would certainly never climb down a ladder, as this would be exceedingly awkward (it would be like trying to crawl backwards while underwater).
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): HAL's verbal description of his chess move (Q-B3), given what he shows on the screen, are from Frank's point of view. This is often regarded as an error, since in descriptive chess notation, the rank is described from the point of view of the player making the move. It should be Q-B6. HAL's errors can be considered either script goofs or clues revealing his internal conflict, since he is supposed to be infallible.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): HAL has apparently forgotten to wish Frank a happy birthday until Frank's parents' video reminds him. This is either a breach in his usual social graces or a lapse in memory. What are the chances that the ship's computer does not have each crewman's date of birth on file?
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Given that HAL is supposed to be infallible and can think with "incalcuably greater speed and reliability", why does he let Frank and Dave out of the pod, and what new information changed his mind later about what to do with them?
  
  
• Factual errors: Subtitles on the DVD misspell Clavius as Claivus during the conference.
  
  
• Continuity: When the spaceship is docking at the station, the ship and the station are rotating at the same speed as can be seen in the scenes from the ship's point of view. But in the exterior, zoomed out shot of both of them, they are clearly rotating at radically-different speeds.
  
  
• Factual errors: As the shuttle lands on the moon, the exhaust produces billowing clouds of dust. In an airless environment, dust particles would follow parabolic trajectories.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While Poole and Bowman are watching the BBC 12 interview, the right flat screen is slightly ahead (about two frames). This is due to both screens being FX matted separately. An actual video feed would be completely synchronized.
  
  
• Continuity: When Dr. Floyd has finished flipping through photographs on his way to the TMA-1 moon base, during the cut where he says "Deliberately buried...", he is holding a different photograph from the one he is holding in the preceding and succeeding shots.
  
  
• Factual errors: As the moon shuttle lands it kicks up swirling clouds of dust. In the vacuum of space the dust would shoot out straight, which is what happened with the real-life Apollo Lunar Modules.
  
  
• Factual errors: Whilst Doctor Floyd is talking to his daughter on the videophone, the size of the Earth behind the window is far too small for the altitude of the space station's orbit.
  
  
• Factual errors: At 1:48 into the film (DVD special edition), when Dave is flipping switches in the pod prior to entry through the emergency airlock, the upper part of his right spacesuit sleeve can be seen resting on his forearm, with a larger space below where the lower part of the sleeve is hanging down. Of course, in a weightless environment, Dave's forearm would be more likely to be in the center of the sleeve, and quite probably the motion of his arm would have caused the sleeve to bounce up and down, gently striking the side of his arm on the side of the direction of motion with each change of direction.
  
  
• Factual errors: During Frank Poole's EVA to remove the potentially faulty AE-35 unit that controls Discovery's antenna, the entire assembly is seen rotating dramatically. There is clearly no need -- and obvious disadvantages -- to turning the directional antenna off of its (necessarily very precise) focus on Earth. At such an enormous distance any adjustments to maintain the communications link would be imperceptibly small.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Bowman goes to shut HAL down by entering the "Logic Memory Center" room, you can briefly see a gap in his spacesuit glove and sleeve.
  
  

• Continuity: SPOILER: At the end of the film, Dave uses the last remaining pod to get a closer look at the huge monolith. The hangar bay door that opens is the one in the center. The center bay was from the pod which killed Frank and was drifted into space. The bay door to the left (outside perspective, looking at the Discovery) was from the pod Dave used to retrieve Frank's body. The pod became useless upon explosive re-entry of Dave in the Discovery. So, the only left pod should be the one at the right bay door and not the center door.
  
  

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