Goofs for
Octopussy (1983)

photos

board

trailer

details

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Bond kills the first twin, Mischa, and hides him in a cannon. While the border guards search a cannon, it's a duplicate.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The tiger head that roars out of the jungle at Bond during the hunt is a rather obvious, immobile stuffed head.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gobinda is fighting Bond on the outside of the plane toward the end, his jacket opens up to reveal the stuntman's parachute underneath, just as he falls from the plane.
  
  

• Errors in geography: After the Octopussy Circus train leaves East Germany and enters West Germany, the train passes through a tunnel entrance festooned by an East German-style propaganda banner.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: 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.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gobinda attacks Bond on the train, he rolls over and the rubber sword bends.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Immediately after Bond deactivates the bomb at the circus, Octopussy asks Magda where Kamal was going. Magda's reply is "Back to India" but her mouth says something different.
  
  
• Continuity: Bond blows out the front two tires when he fires his machine gun into the tires of the military transport he had just escaped from. When that transport veers off into a small shed, both front tires are still clearly inflated.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: 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.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After James has the guards distracted thoroughly by his accomplice and pulls their ripcords, the two guards are pulled from the truck by a visible line.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond is taking off in the jet in the beginning sequence, the jet's wheels are down as it lifts off over the cars in the roadway. In the next shot, the jet flies over the heads of the vehicle occupants, and the wheels are up.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond blows the tires out on the military transport, one of the guards flies out of the truck into the hay bales, yet when the transport is fully at rest, the guard is back in the truck.
  
  
• Continuity: During the jitney chase at the beginning of the movie, Vijay is fighting with the tennis racket out of the left-hand side of the vehicle in the close-ups and out of the right side in the wide shots.
  
  
• Continuity: By the end of the film, after having escaped from Kamal's plane, Bond is holding Octopussy with his left hand, preventing her from falling off the cliff. In this scene the position of his right arm significantly changes between shots, once being strung-out and away from his body, then suddenly being very close to his body.
  
  
• Errors in geography: It is said that Karl-Marx-Stadt is east of Berlin. Karl-Marx-Stadt was the name of the city of Chemnitz between 1953 and 1990, which is situated slightly south-west of Berlin.
  
  
• Factual errors: A shot of a sign which says "National Art Repository" in both English and Russian has the Russian word for "art" misspelled: the fourth letter should be the Russian "u" not the Russian "ch." The two letters do look alike, which suggests that the text was likely copied out of a dictionary erroneously.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond and M driving through West-Berlin towards Checkpoint Charlie, they pass the same place at Kurfürstendamm several times, heading in the opposite direction to Checkpoint Charlie.
  
  
• Continuity: Near the end when Gobinda is sent outside the airplane to get Bond, he opens the door and it apparently blows off the plane. Later when Bond and Octopussy jump from the plane it is back on the door frame.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Bond is on the airplane he scoots back and moves the elevator down with his feet for just a moment, then scoots back forward again. In the movie this puts the airplane in an uncontrollable dive and crashes. In reality there would be no loss of control.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During a close-up of the car-on-railroad stunt, the car has proper flanged railroad wheels rather than shot up and skinned up automobile wheels (albeit dressed up to resemble the original wheels).
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Octopussy claims that her father was a leading expert in 'octopi'. While the correct plural should be octopuses, most dictionaries also list octopi as a plural for octopus and it is now a part of common vernacular to use the word octopi.
  
  
• Continuity: When the palace is attacked, it is the dead of night. Yet, when they have the big chase scene from the palace to the airplane, it is fully daylight.
  
  
• Continuity: Dressed as a clown, James Bond alternates between wearing and not wearing long clown shoes.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gobinda and Bond fight on the roof of the moving train and fall, the sabre Gobinda holds in his hand bends on contact with the train roof.
  
  
• Factual errors: 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.
  
  
• Continuity: 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.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kamal turns the plane 360 degrees to try and shake Bond, as the plane levels out the wing comes down in the opposite direction to which the plane turned.
  
  
• Continuity: When Bond tries to escape the rocket that is shot at his plane, he is seen in the cockpit pulling the control lever to the right. But the plane turns to the left.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Incorrectly regarded as goof: The train of the "Octopussy Circus" has a steam engine which was considered to be an anachronism as the film takes place in 1983. In fact, 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.
  
  
• Errors in geography: 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.
  
  
• Errors in geography: You can just about make out that the cars driving over a bridge in the railway scene are driving on the left, not the right.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gobina slashes at Bond atop the plane, a medium shot clearly shows a stunt double (note the bald spot) who is wearing a black outfit, not a blue suit.
  
  

Related Links