The James Bond series has been around for too many years to count, running through central characters quicker than Doctor Who (but without the need for regeneration) and more dramatic slow-motion stunts than Mission Impossible.
From the first film in the franchise, Dr. No, to the upcoming No Time To Die, there have been plenty of opportunities for things to not quite add up. Looking beyond the fact that Bond’s face and age seem to change without anyone noticing, we’ve collected the ten biggest issues in continuity over its nearly 60-year existence.
Quarrel’s Quick Fixing Wound
The first film in the Bond franchise doesn’t hold up amazingly well. Its grainy quality and questionable acting seriously interfere with the iconic storyline and our first experiences with the smooth (albeit womanizing) secret agent.
However, Quarrel seems to have some sort of healing power. When Annabelle stabs him in the cheek, he gets a pretty brutal and bloody injury, but within a few seconds, there is no proof that he had ever been touched, let alone injured to that level.
Severine’s Multicolour Shoes
Moving forward in time to one of Daniel Craig’s first ventures as the titular 007, this was the film that gave Adele the reigns over the incredible title theme. The film introduces us to Severine, who, in all her lavish glamour must have access to a pretty cool wardrobe.
Well, she does have multicolored shoes, apparently. While she and Bond are walking, each shot shows them changing color. It seems pretty weird that they wouldn’t just keep her shoes consistent.
Magical Bulletproof Glass
Many of the errors found across the James Bond franchise show inconsistency between shots. For example, things may happen and they seem to have been wiped from existence entirely as if they never happened.
This particular error from Spectre sees Moneypenny’s car being shot through its ‘bulletproof’ window, smashing it and sending glass throughout the vehicle. However, rather than being taken out of existence, the bullet hole remains in the next scene, but it has shrunk and all of the glass has magically returned to the windowpane.
Disappearing Harness Helper
Die Another Day is certainly one of the more forgettable Bond films. It comes from that awkward period in the early 2000s where the days of Sean Connery and Roger Moore are long in the past, and Daniel Craig revival hadn’t yet been dreamt up.
When the relatively lackluster bad guy Gustav lands from his parachute, an unnamed guy jumps out of nowhere and starts helping him remove his harness, but when the shot changes, he is gone and Gustav is removing the harness by himself.
The Changing Gun
The World Is Not Enough falls into the same category as the film above; basically, no one was that interested in Bond at the film. All the posters look like Mission Impossible rip-offs, and the plots were pretty much the same.
When 007 is engaged in a gun fight in, of all places, a caviar factory, he seems to be holding some sort of pistol as his only weapon. This is pretty much consistent, other than during one shot when he holds a huge machine gun for a couple of seconds.
Fatima’s Clothing Change
Fatima is one of the more sinister villains in Bond history, appearing (as an updated reimagining of the pre-existing character Fiona Volpe) in the unofficial Never Say Never Again, which saw Sean Connery back in the role for the first time in seven years.
Early on in the film, she runs very quickly from the waterfront to Bond’s room in order to plant C4 there. Weirdly, she is able to change all of her clothes both in a few seconds, and while sprinting.
A Very Strange Numbering System
The 2006 film Casino Royale had one particular mistake that showed how the film doesn’t always shoot in on-location sets that match where they’re supposed to be portraying in the film.
For example, it is very clear that they’re on floor 18 at one point during the hotel fight. Using pretty simple maths, you can work out that it started on floor 19, because they only descended one floor during the fight. However, it is later shown that the hotel in question should only have had four floors. Which one is correct?
The Inconsistent Taping
Inconsistencies between what we see in a film and what is shown on ‘security recordings’ that we see on films are incredibly frequent. Because most films are shot using multiple angles that make the scene non-continuous, an overhead shot of the whole scene wouldn’t work, meaning a separate shot has to be made for the ‘security footage’.
This is exactly what happened in Tomorrow Never Dies, where the recording of Pairs and Bond talking is very obviously different from the actual scene we saw earlier in the film.
Teleporting Helicopter
License To Kill is full of automotive issues. The biggest and most obvious arguably comes when Bond jumps from the helicopter as it hovers over a church. It looks quite close to the church from the first angle we see, but when the shot changes to Bond actually jumping out, it seems to have teleported many meters higher into the air.
There are also issues with the many modes of transport in the film: a car disappears at one point, and storm clouds disappear as the seaplane takes off.
Bond’s Disappearing Gun
This links back to a mistake from an issue mentioned earlier, but as The Spy Who Loved Me, is so old we can let it off a little. Towards the end of the film, Anya seems to be holding Bond’s gun, but when the angle changes we can see that the gun has disappeared and she is just holding Bond’s hand.
Maybe she put it down somewhere? Well, no, because we should be able to see that, right? The only explanation is that there are magical undertones in the franchise…?
