Goofs for
WALL·E (2008) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: EVE's facial dirt markings disappear and re-appear. EVE gets several dirty markings on her otherwise pristine white exterior while in the garbage hold. A long dark stain runs down the right side (her left) of her "eye screen". When she flies WALL-E and M-O out of the garbage hold into the corridor, and is photographed aiming her weapon at the steward robot, and in shot when locking the steward away, the marking is clearly gone. Immediately after, as she is flying down the corridor, followed by a growing group of faulty robots, the mark reappears. During the battle with the large contingent of steward robots, in the beginning when she shoots a steward, the mark is gone, but as she shields herself when the 'massage' robot is let loose, the mark reappears.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the spacecraft carrying the EVE units docks inside the Axiom, among the robotic arms that attach to the ship is a two-conductor device resembling a heavy-duty power connector. Just after it connects to the ship, several small, black marks appear around it for one or two frames. They appear to be rendering errors.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Contemporary humans are computer generated cartoons but their ancestors, such as Buy N Large president Shelby Forthright and the actors in the Axiom ad, are all played by live actors. After hiring Fred Willard to play Forthright, the filmmakers made this an intentional stylistic choice to show that humans have greatly changed during 700 years in space.
  
  

• Factual errors: While WALL·E is traveling in outer space, the stars in the background are blinking as we would see them do on a starry night. In reality, the apparent blinking is due to the atmosphere between the star and the observer, so in space this phenomenon would not occur.
  
  
• Continuity: When WALL·E first adds the Zippo lighter to his collection, he very carefully places it in the lighter bin facing out. When he first rotates the junk bin after he meets EVE, the lighter is gone. It returns again when EVE goes to pick it up.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the film, WALL·E collides with Sputnik 1 (the first man-made satellite) during the liftoff of EVE's spacecraft. However, the real Sputnik 1 burned up in Earth's atmosphere in 1958, so WALL·E couldn't have possibly hit it. The filmmakers almost certainly knew this and included it anyway as an incidental visual joke.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: WALL·E's cockroach, Hal, sleeps in a "Kremie" (parody of the Hostess Twinkie). Twinkies grow stale and their cream filling evaporates after a few decades, yet Hal's interaction with it betrays it to be the same as a new Twinkie. This is most likely a joke implying that only cockroaches and Twinkies can survive the apocalypse.
  
  
• Continuity: After Eve pops the bubble-wrap, she drops it to the floor, yet when the camera pulls back for WALL-E to dance, the wrap is gone.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When the Captain raises the Holo-Detector, oxygen masks deploy over the humans' heads. But after the Axiom rolls to the right and the people slide out of their hoverchairs, the masks are gone. The masks can be seen retracting into the hoverchairs as their occupants slide out.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: WALL-E's lighter needs liquid lighter fluid to work properly. It's unlikely that any fuel would be left in it after Earth had been desolate for so long, nor would he know that he needed it.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The holographic billboards and advertising sound systems are powered by individual solar panels so they could still function without a working electric grid. Wall-E's truck also has solar panels and he uses a pile of (700 year old) car-type storage batteries at night. (However, the power source for the ship crane electromagnet is unexplained.)
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The original plan called for a mere five year trip, but the video instructions about the return to Earth show the same level of bone loss as the actual 700 year stay in space. Worse yet, such a short trip doesn't justify sending EVE probes at all, because, as we find out later, some people (including the president) have remained on Earth for these five years (the ship left in 2105 and the last message was sent in 2110). Evidently, the EVE program and the corresponding video were made in case the trip lasts indefinitely, possibly after it became clear that operation "Clean-up" is failing, but before it failed completely (or perhaps even afterward, but they forgot to cancel the previous order of not returning to Earth).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Even if Wall-E's cutter is a laser (it could be a plasma torch for all we know), it's obviously very different (at least in appearance) from the ship's ranging laser used for landing, because it produces a visible ray and melts any solid it touches. So it's perfectly natural that WALL-E wouldn't recognize the laser ranging dot for what it is, because there is no visible ray (as expected from a real laser), or any damage to the ground.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In an exterior view of WALL-E's life pod during the ejection scene, the pod's headlights have cones of scattered light. Although these would not appear in a vacuum, it is clear that Axiom is not in a vacuum, but inside a very dense nebula (which is a goof on its own, though), and also probably surrounded by all the air ejected during the frequent garbage removals. Moreover, most of the light scattering effects, if not all, can be produced by the lens of the camera and the air inside it, and it is known that the filmmakers tried to simulate the effects of a real camera (see trivia).
  
  
• Factual errors: In Pixar's related short animation BURN-E (2008) (V) it is revealed that the Axiom was 821,190,000 miles from Earth, which approximately equals the distance from Earth to Saturn. However, the scout ship flying to the Axiom apparently leaves not only our Solar System, but even our Galaxy. At least, to see the entire Galaxy as shown in the movie, the ship would need to travel tens of thousands of light years, assuming, of course, it's our Galaxy (millions or even billions of light years otherwise), which is about a billion times further away than required to reach the Axiom. Also, the Axiom is seen hiding in a nebula, but there are no nebulae anywhere near the Solar System.
  
  
• Factual errors: The first time we see the Axiom, it emerges from what appears to be a nebula. Although nebulae can appear as dense as shown from a very large distance (and after some heavy image processing), they are in fact much, much less dense than the Earth's atmosphere (otherwise they would quickly collapse under their own gravity), and utterly incapable of obscuring a ship as shown.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): BNL's president claims that people on board the Axiom are suffering from "bone loss" due to the effects of "microgravity". Numerous scenes establish that the (artificial) gravity on board is comparable to that on Earth, and certainly can't be called "microgravity", which is a near weightlessness. Also, no bone loss (let alone a "slight" one) can explain the change in physical appearance of humans shown in the movie, and "a few laps around a jogging track" wouldn't be enough to reverse such effects, not by a long shot. Of course, most of those mistakes, if not all, are probably intentional, to show the president's incompetence.
  
  
• Factual errors: The satellites over Earth appear to be standing still when the scout ship smashes through them (if they were moving at orbital speeds, such impact would have vaporized both them and the ship). However, standing satellites would fall down to Earth in a matter of minutes. But even if they were moving properly, such low orbits would've decayed in a matter of decades (let alone 700 years) due to atmospheric friction, solar wind, and interaction between satellites themselves. The only explanation is that all the satellites constantly support their positions with engines, but they appear to be defunct, and it's not likely that so many of them could still operate after 700 years.
  
  
• Continuity: In the Axiom's bay WALL-E repeatedly stains the floor with his tires when he moves, but occasionally he moves without leaving any marks behind.
  
  
• Continuity: Auto rolls the Axiom to the right by spinning to the right. After the Captain switches to manual, he levels the ship by also spinning the wheel to the right, not the left.
  
  
• Plot holes: When MO first appears in the film it's shown that he cannot go off the white path lit in the floor. However, when WALL-E is teasing him, he moves off the white light with no problem.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: WALL-E did not find his plant inside a closed refrigerator through which sunlight could not penetrate. Although it was behind a refrigerator door, the door had been removed from its hinges and was propped up against the corner of the fridge. WALL-E cut the door with his laser simply because it was too big for him to move as one piece.
  
  

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