Goofs for
Angels & Demons (2009) More at IMDbPro »

• Revealing mistakes: The Oxygen Monitor in the Library Vault has bilingual signage and a bilingual error message. However, the labels at the side of the Oxygen-Level Graphic are only in Italian.
  
  
• Factual errors: Historically, the Illuminati was a post-Enlightenment sect started in Bavaria in 1776 by Adam Weishupt, 200 years after Galileo. All secret societies were banned in Bavaria by Karl Theodor in 1784. Conspiriology abounds with theories about their survival, hence the frequent use of the word "Illuminati" to refer to any sinister conspiratorial group.
  
  
• Factual errors: The equipment needed to store antimatter, and the quantity produced, is inconsistent with reality. Also, the Large Hadron Collider is not a particularly important instrument in antimatter research, and antimatter research is not an important part of the LHC's goals. However it is established in dialogue immediately that the antimatter-production experiment is an unauthorized piece of research well outside of the LHC's actual mission, and that the few researchers "in on it" are creating an exceptional new method for producing large quantities of antimatter. While this is not realistic, it's deliberate and established in the movie's fictional world.
  
  

• Factual errors: Langdon states that, after the death of the Pope and before his successor is chosen, the Camerlengo becomes Head of the Catholic Church. While the Camerlengo does in fact become acting head of state of Vatican City, leadership of the Church is taken up by the College of Cardinals.
  
  
• Factual errors: The movie falsely states that Priests cannot truly be elected as the Pope. However, they can be elevated to the rank of Bishop, and can therefore take office. Furthermore, every unmarried, male Catholic layman can be elected as the Pope and would then be promoted to the rank of Priest and Bishop consecutively.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Camerlengo is always a Cardinal, yet Father McKenna holds the post as a Priest.
  
  
• Continuity: When they are arriving at the church to save the first cardinal at 8:00 PM the sun is much too high in the sky for that time of day, especially when contrasted with the lighting as they exit the church later.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After the Cardinals elect the new Pope and the crowd in St. Peter's Square sees the white smoke, the camera tilts down from the microwave dish on a TV truck, to the reporter below. The microwave dish is clearly a fake, as it lacks a feedhorn.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Langdon is trapped in the oxygen-depleted vault in the Vatican Archive, he tries to break a glass wall by shooting at it. The resultant impacts show the glass to be laminated safety glass. When the glass finally breaks under the weight of a cabinet it shatters into thousands of small pieces - showing that the glass is toughened safety glass.
  
  
• Factual errors: Every Catholic who is unmarried and male is eligible for becoming Pope, not just the ones who are in the Sixtianian Chapel during the voting. Therefore the Dean of the College of Cardinals (in the movie Cardinal Strauss) is also eligible even if he is chairman of the conclave. Thus Cardinal Ratzinger, being the Dean, was elected in 2005 for pope.
  
  
• Factual errors: Since 1996, the Pope must be elected and cannot be named by acclamation as stated in the movie. This rule was changed by John Paul II.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Camerlengo is always a Cardinal and not just a priest. He is part of the College of Cardinals and the conclave. Furthermore, the Camerlengo does serve as acting head of State of the Vatican City but is not responsible for the government of the Roman Catholic Church itself.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When one of the Preferiti is burned in the church, Rober Langdon releases the chain on his left arm, and the cardinal falls into the flames, suspended by his right arm only. However, soon we see him again, behind the Assassin, and he is again suspended by both arms. In fact Langdon never completely released the Cardinal's arm: we see the chain snag again before Langdon is forced to take cover from the gunfire.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Italian scientist Vittoria Vetra tries to change the battery on the bomb she says that batteries lose charge when they are cold. This is accurate: the chemical reactions in a battery are slower at low temperatures, and at particularly low temperatures, the electrolyte may freeze, causing the battery to completely fail. Clearly the fictional high-capacity battery in their fictional antimatter containment device is particularly sensitive to temperature drops. At high temperatures, a rechargeable battery's working lifetime may be reduced, meaning it has to be replaced sooner, but this would not adversely affect its capacity in the short term.
  
  
• Factual errors: The sealed chambers in the Vatican Archives are said to be at a "partial vacuum", i.e. low air pressure. This is standard procedure for scientific laboratories or other locations where the goal is to stop contaminants getting out, because the low pressure ensures a constant flow of air into the room rather than back out of it. However in an archive, this would constantly draw in outside air and contaminants through any imperfect seals or the use of doorways. Real archives have a high-pressure atmosphere instead, which ensures a constant flow of air out and therefore keeps contaminants from entering. It's possible to have a low-oxygen atmosphere that still has a higher pressure than normal air.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The screen showing the Antimatter Canister has a number "0086" in the top left. Although this may suggest that the corresponding camera has a registered location and would be easy to find, the number may also simply refer to the camera itself. Because the camera sends its signal wireless, it is unlikely that the number is assigned to a specific place.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Throughout, Langdon is asking which way a statue points. Even as a Professor of Symbology, he would have to ask because the orientation of church buildings varied throughout the times. In early times many church entrances faced East while this changed during the Medieval Era and from that time the apse was commonly placed towards East. So Langdon was not able to know the direction of the statues for sure. Also he has just got off an 8 hour flight and is in a strange city, it is likely that he is disorientated.
  
  
• Plot holes: Immediately after Langdon and Vittoria retrieve the poem from the archives, they get into vehicles with the police and speed out of the Vatican. But where are they going? Langdon and Vittoria don't decipher the poem, and therefore the location of the first Cardinal until after they are already in the car and supposedly driving to that first church.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Robert Langon has to ask Vittoria Vetra to translate a Latin passage and one of the Swiss Guards to translate some Italian. In the books and in the first movie, Robert Langon speaks multiple languages, including Latin and Italian. Nor would any academic scholar specializing in religious iconography be able to achieve credibility if he/she did not speak Latin and Italian, not to mention ancient Greek and probably Arameic.
  
  
• Factual errors: Right after the white smoke comes out of the chimney, a reporter is announcing who the newly-elected Pope is. However, that announcement ("Habemus Papam") is not made publicly until the Pope is ready to appear on the balcony.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Canon Rules (until recently) did not allow for someone with seizures to be a priest. The Church believed the person with epilepsy to be possessed by the devil. Therefore, the Pope would not have been publicly taking anti-seizure medicine. However, the movie establishes that the Pope kept his illness a secret from all but his closest confidants (the given reason is not "Canon Rules", but there's no reason to suppose that this was not also the case).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Langdon and the rest first enter the Vatican Archives you see the lights go off as they are shutting off power in an attempt to locate the bomb, but as they go through the reading room the screens on the computers are still on. However, lights and mains outlets are often wired on to separate grids and it is probable that the Swiss guard were only cutting power to the lighting grids, as their goal was simply to kill the lighting around the bomb.
  
  
• Continuity: The Galileo's booklet Langdon is examining in the Archives is called "Diagramma Veritatis" at the beginning but "Diagramma Della Verita" at the end, when Cardinal Straus is offering it to him.
  
  
• Factual errors: Bernini's Ecstasy of St Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria is obviously a fake. The real statue lacks a base and it appears that the figural group of St Teresa and the Angel float above the altar in the Cornaro Chapel. The arrow is also pointing in a different direction to that in the actual sculpture (where it points directly at St Teresa's heart after the transverberation).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The Camerlengo refers to having grown up as a Catholic in "Ulster". Ulster is a province which spans both Northern Ireland (six counties) and the Republic of Ireland (3 counties). While its true many unionists (primarily Protestants) refer to Northern Ireland as Ulster, most Catholics local to Ulster would refer to Northern Ireland as the "North of Ireland", particularly the very religious ones. It is likely from his description that the Camerlengo was born in a county of Ulster located within the Republic of Ireland.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Early in the film, Langdon can be seen swimming in a pool purported on the graphic early in the scene as being at "Harvard University - Cambridge, Mass." The pool has Harvard athletic banners, but is neither the older pool in Cambridge (the "MAC") nor the newer pool, across the Charles in Boston (the Blodgett Pool). In addition, at 5:30am when he's swimming, both pools have an active collection of swimmers.
  
  
• Errors in geography: Early in the movie, the Globe of Science and Innovation at CERN and behind the Alps are seen, however it is not realistic, at all. It is mentioned that they are at ATLAS experimental area, which is in Prevessin, and it is impossible to see the globe from that place. If they are at the main site of CERN, then the Alps cannot be behind the globe.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Langdon is swimming in the pool at 5:00am US (East Coast) time (11:00am Rome time), and arrives in Rome at 6:30pm local time. A commercial flight takes about 8.5 hours, so making both the transfer to/from the airports, passing customs and immigration, and getting properly dressed within 7.5 hours seems highly unlikely. However, the movie does not show the kind of aircraft Langdon used to get from the US to Europe. The book explains that he was traveling in an aircraft much faster than a commercial airplane.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Langdon is saved by a fireman after the firefight in the church, the fireman directly starts to speak English although Langdon hasn't said a word. How does the fireman knows he isn't Italian?
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The car the assassin drives, a Volkswagen, makes a beeping sound when he remotely unlocks it. Volkswagens do not make this kind of sound.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Langdon finds the last brand, he accidentally refers to the other brands as "anagrams" instead of "ambigrams".
  
  
• Factual errors: In the final scene, the Pope is dressed with vestments in a room with a balcony where he proceeded to face the crowds (presumably the central loggia of St. Peter's). In reality, the Pope dresses with vestments by himself, in a room in the Sistine Chapel, and the Central Loggia is a fairly far from the Sistine Chapel, and not in the same place as what is shown in the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: The dove atop the obelisk in Piazza Navona is not flying as shown in the movie but is perched with its wings folded.
  
  
• Continuity: The timer on the antimatter bomb shows just over a third full, but the time they said they have left is 7 minutes, and later "a little over 5 minutes". But when the bomb threat was made, they had about 4 hours before the bomb would explode. According to the timer they would have had only about 15 minutes before the bomb exploded, however this doesn't add up to the time they used to find the bomb.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Helicopters take-off by means of collective pitch on the left hand side of the pilot, not using both the collective as well as the cyclic pitch. Here the padre is pulling the cyclic pitch which enables the chopper to move back, not upwards. However, this can be explained by the fact that by pulling the cyclic pitch will allow the helicopter to rise more quickly, used along with the collective to increase torque.
  
  
• Continuity: When the antimatter "bomb" exploded in the helicopter, the the shock-wave blasted off part of the roof inside St. Peter's Basilica (Right on top of altar). At the end of the movie when Camerlengo burns himself near the altar, there were no remnants of debris and the candles were still burning.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The Assassin was provided with a bail-out car, supposedly to be located on Via Giulia. The vehicle was actually parked on Borgo Sant'Angelo along the Passetto between the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo, which could also be seen.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The search pattern that the Swiss Guard are using when they turn off the lights one section at a time is indeed not the most efficient; switching off half of the remaining lights at a time would be faster. However, it would also tip off the unknown kidnapper(s) - after the second time of the lights going on or off they'd probably disable the camera. By searching one-at-a-time, it is ensured that when the light in the camera room goes off, the Swiss Guard know exactly where the camera is.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When viewing the footage sent by the kidnapper for the second time Langdon asks to pause it. After thinking for a while he says "Is there any more?" but he knows there is because he has already seen the footage once.
  
  
• Continuity: When the kidnapper is speaking to Langdon and Vetra after they find the church of the Illuminati, he goes to pick up his bags from under the table. As he does this Langdon shines his torch under the table so the kidnapper can see, then immediately points it at the ground again once the kidnapper has his bags.
  
  
• Factual errors: Flying the canister into the air will only increase the effect of the explosion. This is why nuclear weapons are designed to air-burst instead of ground-burst, because in the latter case, the earth will absorb much of the energy. A 5kt air-burst would cause much more damage than what is depicted on the screen; in addition to the kinetic shock wave, there would have been a tremendous release of thermal energy and wave of heat that would, at the very least, have given everyone in the scene third-degree burns (if not worse, such as vaporizing them outright). People would have been blinded and things on the ground would have burst into flames. The antimatter device depicted in the film is, effectively, a small nuclear weapon, deriving its energy from mass-energy conversions, just as nuclear weapons do, and it will generate the same explosive effects as a nuclear weapon (since the explosive effect is the result of the amount of energy released and is not tied to the specific nature of the weapon). The explosion depicted is simply too small, even for a weak nuclear device.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the book, it is specified that the canister contains 0.25 grams of antimatter, which means that if containment fails, 0.5 grams of mass will be converted into energy (0.25 grams of antimatter, plus an equivalent amount of regular matter), which will yield an explosion of 10.7kt, which is just a bit smaller than the Hiroshima bomb. It is possible, however, that the movie deliberately halved the yield of the device (however, even at 5kt, the device would do far more damage than what is depicted).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Langdon finds the box of the five brands, but a shot clearly shows that there are only four of them in it. The fifth (papal) brand is not there and only the stamp on the cover of the box alerts Robert that it's gone and therefore the Camerlengo is in danger.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The dead pope in the beginning of the movie was "Pius XVI" as we saw the Ring of the Fisherman that was destroyed by Camerlengo McKenna bears his name. At the end of the movie, when Cardinal Baggia was elected the new pope and Vittoria said that he chose the papal name "Luke", the camera zoomed in to the new Ring of the Fisherman. However it's clearly shown that the inscription on the ring reads "Pius XVI". It's the same ring which belongs to the dead pope that was destroyed in the beginning of the movie.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the beginning of the movie, we saw the Ring of the Fisherman of the dead pope, inscribed with his name: "PIUS XVI". However, the inscription should be done in Latin style, which uses "V" instead of "U". Thus the correct inscription should read "PIVS XVI". The Latin style of writing is evident in the Ring of the Fisherman that is worn by the real, currently reigning pope, Benedict XVI, which is inscribed "BENEDICTVS XVI".
  
  
• Factual errors: The Camerlengo's chest was branded with an image of crossed keys with the loops in lower position and the tips in upper position. When Langdon saw it, he said that it was "crossed keys but they are upside down". Langdon must have thought it upside down because he compared it to the crossed keys in Vatican's coat of arms, such as the one printed on Vincenzi's bag when Langdon met him at Harvard's swimming pool, which pictures the crossed key with the loops in upper position and the tips in lower position. However the real coat of arms of Vatican and all of derivative symbols for various Vatican organizations feature the crossed keys in position exactly like the one on the chest of the branded Camerlengo. It's in fact the crossed keys in the logo on Vincenzi's bag that is upside down.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Vittoria said that the new pope chose the name Luke, Langdon said that "there has been many (popes who are named) Marks and Johns, but never a Luke." Of all the 265 popes in Roman Catholic Church, there are indeed 25 popes with the name John, but actually only 1 named Mark, that is Pope Marcus (reigned for just 9 months in 336 AD). The name Luke in Latin is Lucas and Langdon is correct, there has been no pope named Lucas.
  
  
• Factual errors: When searching for sculpture associated with air in St. Peter's Square, Langdon spotted the West Ponente marker on the ground and said that it could be considered a sculpture since it is a bas-relief. A bas-relief is a relief where the image is projecting out from a flat surface. The image of West Ponente marker is not projecting out, rather it was carved into a flat surface. The correct term for this type of sculpture is sunken-relief or intaglio.
  
  
• Factual errors: Inside the Vatican vault before the power is cut Chartrand struggles to breathe, Langdon suggests that because he is a smoker he cannot handle the lower oxygen levels. In fact smokers have a better tolerance to low oxygen levels than non-smokers.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Langdon is in the Vatican library he passes the book he is reading over to the guard and asks him to look for any reference to fire. The guard glances at the book and mentions the word "seraphim". Directly above this is a far stronger reference to fire, "del fuoco", which actually is Italian for fire.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Robert Langdon is walking back to his office from the pool with the Vatican representative he refers to the picture as an anagram because it is symmetrical and looks the same ether way up. This is incorrect an anagram is a word, phrase, or name formed by rearranging the letters of another. The correct word should have been ambigram, a design that may be read as the same word or phrase when oriented in two different ways, usually when reflected in a vertical axis or when rotated through 180 degrees.
  
  

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: According to the storyline, the kidnapped Cardinals are to be "publicly executed." It was thought that the Cardinal stabbed in the square is the only death that is truly in a public place. In fact, the first killing is hidden in a basement but in the catacombs (thus, in the public view of many dead people).
  
  

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