Goofs

After their first night at the prison, Dega has a large bite on his arm. Several scenes later his arm is clear, the next scene the bite is seen again.

When Papillon is entered into the prison records, his nickname is being typed starting at 5 positions to the left of "Esclave" in the row above it. In the next shot of the typewriter, "Papillon" has been typed only 1 position left of it.

Henri Charrière spent several months living with the natives in Colombia, not one day, and he was arrested after he left them.

French authorities released penal colony records that contradicted Henri Charrière's story, amongst other details, Charrière had never been imprisoned on Devil's Island.

Louis Dega never escaped the French Guiana prison with Henri Charrière.

After Papillon is released from solitary confinement Louis Dega visits him in the infirmary and it's easy to see there is no correction in his eye glasses.

At the beginning the place and year are stated as Paris, 1931. When Charriere enters the night club the song Bei mir bist du schon is being sung and played. This song was not written until 1932.

Papillon stands at the top of a cliff on Devil's Island looking into the sunrise and watches the current taking debris out to sea. From this he reasons that all he has to do is jump from the cliff with a raft and he will be carried to the mainland. One problem: Devil's Island is off the Atlantic coast of of French Guiana in South America. The sunrise-lit cliff from which he's planning his escape is facing east, AWAY from the mainland.

It shows the Moulin Rouge Cinema in Paris and the BAL entrance next door as being on a round corner of the street on different roads, in fact they are all on a straight line to each other to this day.

Charlie Hunnam has obviously never eaten a coconut in real life. When he gets one in the bucket, neatly sawed in half, he gnaws at it like a rat. In fact, the accepted way for a human to eat a coconut is to crack the shell first and detach the meat from the broken pieces of shell.