Sir Sean Connery called this movie his personal favorite of his Bond movies.

Steven Spielberg was convinced to cast Robert Shaw in Jaws (1975) after watching him in this movie.

Director Terence Young disliked Daniela Bianchi's legs, and used a stand-in for the scene where Bond spies on the Russian embassy in Istanbul with a periscope.

The knife shoe used by Rosa Klebb was an actual weapon used by the K.G.B.

Final James Bond movie released during Ian Fleming's lifetime. He died one month before Goldfinger (1964) was released in the UK.

Continuity

The truck hood is burned and the inside headlight is missing by air-bombing, then in the next scene is totally intact.

The flower truck that is first seen at the railroad crossing is a Dodge, and after 007 enters the pickup, with the villain in the cab, the truck switches to a Chevrolet.

When Bond is first provided with the briefcase, he fumbles and fails to close the latch on his left side. When walking out of the room, both latches are closed.

The stalled truck on the railroad tracks was a 1959/1960 Ford F-350 flatbed; when 007 enters the truck, it becomes a 1960/1961 Chevrolet C30 dually.

A machine gun from directly behind shoots holes in the fuel barrels on Bond's boat, yet the holes are in the ends of the barrels and the barrels are turned sideways on the boat.



Factual errors

Bond exits Istanbul Airport through the domestic terminal, despite arriving on an international flight.

During the chess match, Kronsteen receives a message to immediately show up in SPECTRE's HQ, so he makes a move to set his opponent in check, who replies by laying down his king to surrender. In fact his opponent wasn't beaten at that time, as retreat and parrying moves were still available. Someone may assume that his opponent wasn't skilled enough to realize the situation, but it doesn't seem plausible as it was a masters tournament.

The explosion caused when Bond fires the flare pistol at the oil drums is far larger than one would expect for only 4 or 5 drums. In addition, the scene establishes that the enemy boats have already passed the barrels before they are detonated.

In the opening credits, Martine Beswick's name is listed as 'Martin Beswick'.

Rosa Klebb's uniform in her scene with Romanova in the Istanbul apartment has numerous inaccuracies. Her light blue shoulder boards and collar tabs would indicate membership in either the Air Force or Airborne troops, not military intelligence. As a woman she could not be a Soviet paratrooper and her uniform also lacks the additional insignia required for Air Force officers. Additionally, her collar tabs lack the metallic branch insignia present on all Soviet uniforms of the era.



Incorrectly regarded as goofs

While it is true that visitors must remove their shoes in a mosque, Santa Sophia is an exception because it is no longer an "active" place of worship and visitors may keep their shoes.

Near the beginning of the film, Bond gets out of a boat he is sharing with Sylvia Trench to answer a beeping pager. He takes his shirt and goes to his car to call M. Shortly after he places the call, Sylvia comes over and helps him with the shirt. During the call, he gets the shirt completely buttoned. The camera cuts away momentarily, and when it returns to the couple, the shirt is once again completely unbuttoned. During this time, Sylvia is actually trying to seduce Bond, unbuttoning the shirt as he takes the call. During the cutaway scene she does this. This is partly why he says "Make that an hour and a half".

While a periscope would undoubtedly be useful for seeing what the Soviets were up to, it's inconceivable that an infinitely more useful microphone wouldn't be fitted to it. A microphone could be easily found using a radio frequency detector, which would be a common practice for a consulate building involved in espionage activity - the unconventional use of a periscope would be a lot harder to identify.

During the battle at the gypsy camp, Kerim Bey gets shot in his right arm. Some viewers think the actor is smearing fake blood on his sleeve with his left hand. However, when someone gets shot (or badly injured) in the arm they become in pain and would rub it with the other hand, which is what the scene is accurately depicting.

On the train, it appears that Tatiana is mouthing a series of Karim Bey's and James Bond's lines. However, reading her lips, it can be seen she is practicing her alias, "Caroline Somerset".



Revealing mistakes

Blofeld uses the Siamese Fighting Fish to demonstrate how SPECTRE works, with two fish fighting while a third watches and waits to fight the winner, who will be weakened by then. However, partitions in the fish tank are visible - the third fish couldn't attack if it wanted to.

In establishing shots of the room where Kronsteen's chess match is held, there is a mural on the ceiling and support arches. However, the arches are simply painted light blue when viewed from ground level. (This is because, in reality, the ceiling was an optical matte painting created to hide the set lighting.)

When Bond finds Kerim Bey dead in the train car, he bribes the uniformed employee to keep the incident quiet. When Bond hands the man a folded wad of bills, it can be seen that the money is printed on only one side of the paper.

When Bond's flare causes the explosion during the boat scene, it's obviously a pre-programmed explosion effect (identifiable by the fact that the explosions on the water are simultaneous. In real life there would only be one explosion - where the flare struck the water, and the flames would spread. There would NOT be multiple, simultaneous explosions as seen in the film.), Also, bullet holes are already in the fuel barrels during the boat chase scene.

When Bond first recovers the Lektor, he does not properly close it, though he goes through the motions. It becomes closed and latched as he runs through the door.



Miscellaneous

In the boat chase, Tatiana's hair is never blown or distracted in any way with the wind despite their boat moving fast.



Anachronisms

The Orient Express route shown in the film was discontinued in 1962, the year before the film was shot and released.



Audio/visual unsynchronized

When Morzeny says "Exactly 1 minute, 52 seconds. That's excellent" in the beginning of the film, his lips never move.

When Klebb arrives on SPECTRE island and asks where Grant is, the henchman says "At the lake" but his lips are saying something different. Klebb then says, "Take me to the lake" but her lips don't say lake either. In both cases it looks like they're saying the word "pool".

When Klebb visits SPECTRE Island and first speaks with Morzeny, most of the conversation heard does not synch up with their lips, as if the actors were initially saying completely different dialog on the set. This mismatch goes on until they enter the training area.

After Bond removes the wire to release the burning wagon, he clearly fires two shots from his gun (two flashes of light), but only one shot is heard.

During the meeting with Tanya, after she says "I know all about you from your file", when Bond replies "You do? Well, I hope you're not... disappointed", his lips are not moving in sync with the dialogue.



Crew or equipment visible

When Tatiana goes to see Klebb, Klebb closes the door but it doesn't shut tightly. A crew member's hand reaches through to pull the door shut all the way.

In the helicopter chase and subsequent explosion, the cable attached to the helicopter prop (and an off-camera crane) is clearly visible as the flaming wreckage falls to the ground.

In the boat chase, the director's waving hand can be seen reflected in the windshield of Bond's boat at several points.



Errors in geography

The entrance sign at its gate identifying the Soviet consulate in Istanbul is written in Russian and, inexplicably, English - but not Turkish.

When the Pan Am Boeing 707 lands, a man on the telephone says to someone in London, "Your flight PA1 has just landed." As Bond was traveling east from London the flight should have been PA2. All Pan Am flights used even numbers for eastbound flights, as do a number of other airlines, with the exception of Lufthansa.

In the establishing shot of the train leaving Beograd, the driving wheels of the locomotive are Boxpok driving wheels, which are of American design. This same shot shows a delta-style trailing truck while a Cartazzi design truck would be typical for an English locomotive.

Russian consulate is placed over the Byzantine cisterns in the old city. Actually it is located in the "European" Beyoglu district.

During the train journey from Istanbul to Venice, some shots of the passing train show "green" British carriages, rather than the continental carriages shown in other shots of the train. The carriages are maroon in real life, the film being altered to show green. The disc signal, and the locomotive buffer beam is the give-away.



Plot holes

The Russians know a Lektor has been stolen. Therefore, they would have removed the coding system from use and informed any other areas using the Lektor to stop using that coding machine until a new coding system could be put in place. The goal in stealing coding technology is for the enemy not to know it has been stolen; otherwise, they will stop using that coding technology.

Tatiana Romanova described the Lektor machine to Bond as weighing about 10 kilograms (22 pounds). But in the Venice hotel scene, she and Klebb handle it with considerable ease, as if the machine weighs only one kilo (2.2 pounds).

While Bond is getting his briefing from M in M's office, M says, "If there's any chance of getting a Lektor, we simply must look into it." But later on in Kerim's office, Bond says, "M thinks I'm wasting my time here."



Boom mic visible

Aboard the Orient Express, as Bond and Tatiana are given their passports, what appears to be a shadow of a boom microphone is visible overhead.



Character error

Making their escape by train, Bond and Tatiana are given cover documents to aid their escape. Bond tells Tatiana that they are Mr. and Mrs. David Somerset and that her cover name is Caroline. They briefly discuss the particulars of their cover identities and from that point on they should assume that they are being observed, so should always maintain their covers. Just a moment later, James opens the compartment door and loudly calls her "Tania".

Bond does not turn the bathtub tap off after he meets Tatiana in his hotel bed.

The words used for "pull" and "push" signs on the doors at the Russian consulate are literal translations of the corresponding English verbs ("dergat" and "pikhat"). First, it's not what is customarily written on the doors in Russia ("to" and "fro" are used), and second, the colloquial forms of verbs are used, not the written forms.

When Grant asks for Chianti on the train, the waiter asks if he means white Chianti. White wines are made in the Chianti region, but a wine that is called Chianti must be red.

When Klebb reads out facts to Tatiana, she is wearing thick glasses. Instead of using convex lenses, she has concave lenses. Concave lenses are used to correct shortsightedness (myopia), convex lenses are helpful in farsightedness (hyperopia) or presbyopia. Using those glasses for reading is pointless. It would be easier for Klebb to read without glasses than with wrong glasses. If she is so short-sighted as to require such thick lenses, it would be virtually impossible for her to move around without them; she would literally not be able to see where she was going.