In this paper, the authors report on the formation of nanobumps and nanojets on thin gold films, induced by single fs-laser pulse irradiation. Experimental results on the structure size and shape depending on the pulse energy and the pulse duration are presented. For the first time, the process of short laser pulse nanostructuring on thin metal films was modeled by molecular dynamic simulations on the scale directly accessible in the experiments. Additionally, pump-probe experiments were performed for in-situ visualization of the structure formation.