Goofs for
Blood Diamond (2006)

photos

board

trailer

details

• Anachronisms: Although set in 1999, when Solomon and Maddie are in London towards the end of the film, we see a 2005 Volkswagen Passat drive by on the street.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Although set in 1999, when Solomon and Maddie are in London towards the end of the film, we see a single deck red "bendy" (articulated) bus showing route 453. Neither this bus type nor this route existed in London until 2003.
  
  
• Continuity: When Danny is talking to Maddy at the bar, he puts a cigarette in his mouth to light. In the next shot the cigarette is back in his hand.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: When Archer is talking to Maddy before leaving with the group of journalists, he puts his hand on her right shoulder and she shakes his hand off of her left shoulder in the next shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When Solomon is carrying the child back to the van, in the scene where the journalist jump out of the van to report on a roadside attack, the child's arm position changes a few times, from around Solomon’s neck to his side, and back again.
  
  
• Factual errors: The mercenary intervention in the Sierra Leone civil war (Executives Outcomes PMC) began in May, 1995 and ended in January, 1997. They were long since gone by the time of the RUF invasion of Freetown in January 1999 when the movie is set. It was actually a combination of British and UN troops who brought the war to an end in 2001. Possibly made deliberately to avoid associating EO with the fictional mercenaries, whose activities were much more sinister.
  
  
• Continuity: At the orphanage, Danny and the caretaker are sitting on the porch, drinking beer. First Danny is drinking from the bottle but suddenly he appears with the bottle in his hand on his knee.
  
  
• Continuity: When Solomon goes to hide the diamond for the first time, he is seen bending down to take the diamond from his toes. When he opens his toes up, there is nothing there before it cuts to him pulling the diamond from his toes.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The plane seen early in the movie, a Gippsland GA8 Airvan, was not available for export sale during the late 1990s when the film is supposed to take place.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene in Kono, one of the child soldiers is seen with a Game Boy Advance SP, which was released in 2003.
  
  
• Factual errors: Throughout the movie, the vehicles are driven on the left side of the road. Sierra Leone drives on the right, while filming locations South Africa and Mozambique drive on the left.
  
  
• Factual errors: Despite the location filming in Africa, several North American birdsongs can be recognized in the soundtrack, including the Downy Woodpecker, Black-throated Green Warbler and Eastern Wood Pewee.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): DiCaprio's character claims that the Shona people of Zimbabwe refer to white people as 'mukiwa'. This is not true, as the word 'mukiwa' is actually from the Ndebele people. The Shona call the white people 'murungu'
  
  
• Errors in geography: The GPS coordinates of the rebel camp that Danny Archer gave when he called in the air strike puts the camp somewhere in the southeastern Sudan, near the Ethiopian border - on the other side of the African continent from Sierra Leone.
  
  
• Anachronisms: When Danny arrives to do business with Commander Zero, he encounters Rambo, who wears a Snoop Dogg Afroskull Tee under his military green shirt. This piece was fabricated by Alstyle Apparel & Activewear in 2004.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the film, Danny Archer is wearing Magnum Desert Operations Series boots, which were introduced by Hi-Tec Sports USA Inc. in 2003.
  
  
• Continuity: When Archer gives Solomon Maddy's business card it is tattered enough to fold in half. In the shot showing Solomon receiving the card from Archer it isn't folded anymore.
  
  
• Continuity: When Danny is talking to Maddy at night and drinking out of the plastic jug he hands it to her with the cap off, yet when he hands it to Maddy, the red lid is screwed on.
  
  
• Factual errors: While running through Freetown, Danny and Simon are being fired at by AK-47s, M2s and a host of other weapons. The bullets are seen ricocheting off the cars. 7.62mm and .50 cal bullets would be punching holes in the thin metal of cars and shattering glass.
  
  
• Anachronisms: An arrival scene at Cape Town International Airport shows yellow posters in the background advertising 3G video cellphones. Such technology was definitely not on the market when the story was set.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In one of the scenes in the jungle, there is a brief shot of a cheetah in dense vegetation. A cheetah's natural habitat is dry, savanna landscape.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the sun is seen rising over Freetown, it rises over the ocean. Freetown is in Western Africa, where the sun rises over the continent to the east.
  
  
• Continuity: When Archer, Maddy and Solomon get onto the reporters bus we see Solomon sit down in an aisle seat next to a man who he says he is the camera man too. In the next shot Solomon is in a completely different seat next to the window.
  
  
• Factual errors: Towards the end of the movie, after Solomon negotiates with Simmons about the price of the diamond, Solomon exits the car. The car leaves but only stops after a few meters. Most likely to have a retake of the scene The pink diamond constantly changes shape, color and size throughout the movie. The most obvious one is at the end of the movie when the diamond is placed at the Van de Kaap Vault, the size changes in the two scenes
  
  
• Continuity: When Maddy and Danny dance on the beach bar, on one scene she holds her hand around Danny's neck and on the next she does not.
  
  
• Factual errors: Cheetahs aren't native to Sierra Leone nor any of its neighboring countries.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In the Freetown prison, there is a tattoo on Danny Archer's right shoulder of the SADF 32 Battalion's badge. While it has the Cape Buffalo and two crossed arrows, the two scrolls with the battalion's motto - "Proelio Procusi" - are missing. The arrows are also misplaced. In the tattoo, the arrowheads are directly underneath the tips of the buffalo's ears, while the actual badge had the heads directly under the bases of the ears, where the ears met the animal's head. The arrows were placed where the scrolls should have been.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the attack by the Sierra Leone government troops on the mining camp, a rebel is seen firing a Kalashnikov rifle, but the sound is clearly that of an M16.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Soloman enters the rebel camp to find Dia; Archer, armed with a Kalashnikov taken from a sentry, moves into position to cover him. Once in a position with cover, his rifle is heard cocking, yet his hands do not move.
  
  
• Continuity: When Soloman and Archer are fighting, as Soloman picks up Archer, Archer's pistol is clearly not loaded with a magazine. Yet when Archer breaks Soloman's hold, and draws his pistol, it apparently is loaded.
  
  
• Continuity: As Archer draws his pistol, the sound of the hammer cocking is heard, yet when shown from the side, the hammer is at rest.
  
  
• Factual errors: When calling in the air strike on the rebel camp, Archer refers to the attack helicopter as a "Dak-Dak." This did not refer to an attack helicopter, but rather, a DC3 Dakota (hence, the truncation to "Dak"), used in airborne "Fire Force" operations.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The GPS unit that Archer has in his hand while calling for the air strike is from the Garmin GPSMAP 60 series, which was first introduced in mid-2004.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: On the subtitles of the film they refer to "Foday Sankoh" as "Poppy Sankoh".
  
  
• Factual errors: Near the beginning, when Danny Archer is still in the airplane, he puts his pistol "on safe" manually, before holstering it. Whilst talking to the captain, he un-holsters his pistol, drops the mag, and clears the chamber of a Glock© "Safe Action" pistol. The Glock© line of pistols, however, have no manual safety, only internal and trigger safeties.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Although the film is set in 1999, the Jaguar that Van de Kaap is seen in has a year 2003 number plate.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Soloman and Archer are fighting overhead power lines can be seen. However, there are no power lines or utility poles on the road they follow through the jungle. These power lines appear twice during the fight.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: Solomon carries Danny on his back with his bullet-wound side down, yet has no blood stains on his shirt when he drops him.
  
  

Related Links