Goofs

When Bond arrives in the hot air balloon the sky is cloudy and it is either evening or early morning. There is a sudden change in the weather conditions and time of day moments later when Kamal and Gobinda escape from the palace on horses; the sky in now clear of clouds and the sun is high in the sky.

At the beginning, Bond takes his cap off and turns it inside out to create an army cap. However, he then puts on a 'stiff' cap for his officer uniform.

Bond is stabbed on his left side near the breast pocket. When he meets Q, Q gets someone to fix the hole in his jacket. When the jacket is returned and he inspects the work, he checks the lapel.

Near the end of the movie, when Bond enters the circus, he sits down in the audience. Noticing Magda, he covers his face with what looks like a blank white sheet of paper. When the camera cuts to a long shot, he is covering his face with the red circus brochure and when the cut goes back to the closer one, he is again holding a white paper.

In the opening sequence, Bond flies an Acrostar, a tiny one-man jet with the engine in the fuselage and horizontal stabilizers below the exhaust. However, the jet seen through the hangar doors before the fly-through is clearly a much larger aircraft with twin fuselage-mounted engines and a high T-tail, similar to a Lear 24.

While Bond is running through the jungle to escape Kamal and his men, at one point he turns around and runs into a large spider web and wipes a tarantula off of his elbow. Tarantulas do not build webs. They are burrowing spiders.

A car without tires could travel along a railway, if its wheels happen to be the correct distance apart - but it could not switch between tracks, since this requires wheel flanges on the inside edge only.

When riding in a military truck parachutes cannot be instantly inflated by Bond pulling the ripcords, given the low speed of the vehicle - the same airflow barely disturbs Bianca's hair or her dress - and even if they could, the soldiers would not rise up into the air since they aren't being towed.

The three Soviet soldiers Bond fights at the tunnel entrance carry the Austrian Army "Steyr AUG" standard rifle and not as they should (and all other Soviet soldiers in the movie do) a Kalashnikov or derivate of it.

As Kamal Khan plays white at backgammon against Major Clive, he continues to move his pieces, while his white piece captured by Clive is still on the bar, which is against the rules of the game. And in any event a double six is not lucky, because Kamal can only play if his dice roll includes a one.

The train of the "Octopussy Circus" has a steam engine which was a quaint, obsolete technology in 1983. However, due to the rising oil prices in the 1970s the railroad company of the German Democratic Republic started re-using steam engine trains in their regular traffic. The last steam engine got out of order in 1988.

At one point General Orlov asks Bond "Who are you?" It seems a little strange that Tiffany Case, Lazar and Karl Stromberg (amongst others) all know the identity of Britain's top secret agent but a General in the Russian Army does not. Especially when his colleague General Gogol knows Bond very well. However it was plausible.

Bond switches the fake Faberge egg for the real one at the auction. Q then puts the bug in the real egg. Later at Kamal's palace, General Orlov smashes the real egg from which the bug falls out of. The bug was put in the real egg and they would not have smashed it since they needed it for the upcoming audit and it was priceless. An error of General Orlov, who smashed it because he thought it was the fake, might have been intentional by the filmmakers.

The Soviet Chairman in one scene appears to be a caricature of Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev, who passed away in November 1982, before year 1983. However, the film doesn't specify what year it's set in, it could've been set before 1983 (the year of the film's release). Besides, the chairman is not named, and the film does not depict actual history.

Before Bond enter the trailer to change into a clown the time on the bomb reads 5m17s. 22 seconds later (of movie time) Bond enters the trailer. The next reading of the bomb timer is 4m37s. 10 seconds later (of movie time) Bond leaves the trailer in clown makeup and costume. Which means Bond took 28 seconds of the bomb timer time to change into the clown costume and makeup. However, it is an acceptable artistic licence in montage.

When Bond and Vijay are trying to escape from Gobinda, Bond is fighting an assassin and flips him over, landing on the bed of nails. The nails are clearly made of rubber, as they bend around the assassin's body.

When Gobinda attacks Bond on the train, he rolls over and the rubber sword bends.

When the yo-yo saw comes down for the 3rd time, Bond grabs the cord to pull the killer down from the gallery, this was not a wise thing to do, because if the saw hadn't got stuck in the desk, Bond would have lost his hand.

As the Acrostar jet is flying thru the hanger, you can see that it has been mounted on a pole and is being pushed through the scene.

Before 009 dies, he manages to reach the river and fall into it. You will notice that 009's body floating down the river is actually a deflated balloon.

One of the final scenes were Kamal Khan uses a white and blue C-45H Expeditor, as his getaway plane in India, ends with Khan killing himself with his plane. The aircraft (a similar one, in fact) was destroyed for real, but unfortunately, the film crew forgot to turn on the cameras during the plane destruction scene, meaning they destroyed a plane for nothing. In the final movie, that scene shows a rather cheap-looking model trick.

There are no Marines guarding nuclear weapons on U.S. Air Force bases. Only USAF security forces personnel guard the nuclear weapons on USAF bases.

When Bond is fighting the thug in the water a crocodile shows up and turns clockwise toward the combatants. This is clearly a rubber crocodile. Rather than bending its spine in the direction of the turn, it rolls on its side.

The large map of Europe (in the Soviet leaders meeting room), doesn't appear to have the small independent principality of Liechtenstein shown or listed in-between Switzerland and Austria (with close inspection). However, certain small principalities are recognized by other nations as either 'unimportant' or 'exclusive' that certain big maps don't list them.

Incorrectly thought a goof: When Bond is leaving the Circus in Karl Marx Stadt, the band is playing the "Liberty Bell March". This was written in 1893 by John Phillip Sousa in honor of the Liberty Bell returning to Philadelphia after a tour of the US. Hardly a song that would have been played in East Germany during the cold war. The Liberty Bell March was also used as the theme music for Monty Python's Flying Circus. The circus act just finishing was a man flying out of a cannon. Very appropriate.

Near the beginning, Bond's assistant says something like "They moved the flight up to this afternoon" but her mouth does not match what she is saying.

Just after Bond defuses the bomb, Octopussy asks Magda where Kamal has gone, and Magda replies "back to India" --- but her lips clearly say something that has an F in the final word.

At several points during his lecture to the committee members, General Orlov's mouth is either closed or saying something different to what we are hearing him say.

During the raid when Octopussy's circus girls attack Kamal's men, there are many punches, kicks, and everything else that miss very badly, but sounds are still played as if they connected.

When Bond says "Actions speak louder than words", before Magda descends from the balcony using her sari, she says "You're so right." When she says this, her lips are not moving.

When M and Bond are in the car at Checkpoint Charlie, the top of a crew member's head is visible through the rear window.

Near the start of auto rickshaw chase, just after passing through the gate into the marketplace, a man wearing a blue and white baseball cap and blue shirt ducks to try to avoid being seen in the panning camera. Most likely a crew member since everyone else who is visible is wearing more traditional Indian clothing.

During the fight sequence between Bond and Gobinda, the Octopussy Circus train enters a tunnel featuring a red-and-white sign reading, "Unser Beitrag zur positiven Bilanz: tägliche Planerfüllung!" ('Our contribution to positive balance: daily fulfillment of the plan'). This is obviously intended to be an East German propaganda banner, but the train has already entered West Germany at the time of the fight.

During the jungle escape, Bond comes across what is clearly an alligator. In India it should have been a crocodile.

When Bond and M drive through West-Berlin towards Checkpoint Charlie, they pass the same place at Kurfürstendamm several times, heading in the opposite direction to Checkpoint Charlie.

We are told that Bond is going to fly to Delhi. Upon arrival there, we see scenes of the Taj Mahal which is not in Delhi, but in Agra, 120 miles SSE. Then, still under the impression we are in Delhi, we see the Monsoon Palace, which is also not in Delhi but in Udaipur, some 400 miles SW of Delhi. Then we see Octopussy's Palace identified as the Floating Palace which is really the Jal Mahal. It also is not in Delhi, but in Jaipur, some 100 miles SW of Delhi.

The train scene (shot in Peterborough, England) is meant to be in Germany, but features quintessential English countryside and British pylons. East Germany's topography is markedly different, particularly as it has more pine trees as opposed to the hedgerows and broadleaf typical of England.

After spending the night with Bond, Magda takes the Fabergé egg and using her sari descends from the balcony to the ground. Knowing that the egg has a tracking device in it, Bond activates the tracking device in his watch which begins beeping. Gobinda then knocks Bond out. Bond later awakens in Kamal's mansion and the watch is still beeping. Evidently none of Kamal's people thought a constantly beeping watch was unusual enough to try turning it off or removing it from Bond's wrist.

When the bomb is being loaded onto the train, the dialogue says, "It is preset for a four hour delay. Set time for the explosion here." This is a contradiction, as the bomb cannot be scheduled to detonate both at a specific time and after a four hour delay. This contradiction is repeated later, when Kamal Khan commands that the bomb be set to detonate at 3:45, and a four hour countdown commences. This would only be possible if they had intentionally waited until exactly 11:45 to start the timer, but nothing in the scene suggests this was the case.

The villains had set the bomb to go off in four hours prior to the circus arriving at the military base. This is not nearly enough time for the train to unload all crew, equipment and supplies and then set up to a full house audience to witness the last seconds of the timer.

Bond's "rail car" gets hit by the train and ends up in the river. The car is towed and winched almost instantaneously after it lands in the water. This would not have been enough time for the vehicle to be called in, dispatched, towed, and winched.

At the end after the bomb plan is foiled, Octopussy and all her women decide the attack their traitorous people (Khan, Gobinda and the remaining thugs) in the palace. It would've been safer to sign a group of military men to arrest them, instead of a riskier way (that Octopussy herself ends up getting captured).

As Bond descends the final steps into the bar where the backgammon game is going on, a boom microphone is visible at the top-center of the screen.

During Kamal's backgammon game with The Major, Kamal doubles then rolls a double 6 and the Major resigns. In fact, The Major had his home board locked and there is no roll that would have helped Kamal. (In the long shots, one can see the 1 through 5 points are closed; in the closeup of the double 6, one can the 6 point is closed).

During the Soviet rulers' meeting, the map on the wall shows both Koreas color-coded as communist countries.

When Bond runs the gate at the circus, the MP draws his pistol and shoots several warning shots in the air. It would be unrealistic to see an MP doing such a dangerous and illegal act.

If Octopussy's father was a renowned expert on the subject, she should know that the plural of octopus is not "octopi", it is octopods, octopodes or octopuses.

General Orlov's "Russian" accent sounds more German.