Factual error: At the East German/West German checkpoint, there is a level crossing. The warning signs for road traffic are clearly visible and are unique to the UK (where the shot was filmed).
Plot hole: When Bond is on the roof of the train, he opens the roof panel on the rail car, jumps down into the car, and puts on a gorilla suit to hide. He does all this while the knife thrower is in the small car. Wouldn't the knife thrower have heard something? The roof panel opening alone would have amplified the train's noises, not to mention the air that would have blown in.
Continuity mistake: When Bond is taking off with his Mini-Jet, he nearly hits the jeeps and trucks that are chasing him. The landing gear is still down. After the cut, you can see the scene from the other side, and now the gear is suddenly up. There is no interruption between the two shots, not even the two or three seconds the gear takes to retract.
Factual error: Bond tells Q at one point, "I've lost my PPK." However, he has been carrying a Walther P-5 throughout the movie and continues to use it in the later action sequences. A PPK never does make an appearance in the movie. The P-5 was also used that year by Bond in "Never Say Never Again."
Factual error: During one of the chases, when James Bond hops into the water, he is picked up by a group of American tourists on a tour boat. The city of Cincinnati is misspelled as "Cincinatti" on it.
Revealing mistake: In the scene where Bond is trying to escape with his new Mini-Jet, he flies through a big hall. If you look carefully, you can see that the aeroplane which is supposed to be flying with its wings vertical is fastened to some kind of sustainer.
Revealing mistake: When Bond and Gobinda are fighting on top of the train, Gobinda rolls over with his sword, which bends like a rubber prop.
Revealing mistake: When the police cars chase Bond and stop outside the circus, you can clearly see a lot of brake-marks. It's quite obvious that the filmmakers re-shot the scene several times, before they got it right, but didn't bother to remove the marks made in earlier takes.
Factual error: Being in Berlin talking about the Octopussy Circus, M says that Karl-Marx-Stadt (now again "Chemnitz") is further to the east, however it is 200 km to the south of Berlin.
Continuity mistake: When James Bond is trying to escape from Kamal Khan in the jungle, he passes through a spider web and crushes a spider that is on his elbow. The stain disappears in the following shots.
Plot hole: Bond falls off the train, and in the time it takes him to reach the air force base the train has arrived and unloaded all of the equipment including the cannon, staged a town parade including the cannon and erected and filled the big top with an audience. You could argue that the big top was sent ahead but the unloading and use of the cannon couldn't have been done in the time frame - would take at least 4-5 hours.
Other mistake: When Bond drives into the train tunnel, below the train cart with the jewelry, we see that welding is going on in the other train cart. But that is before the bomb is placed in the hole below the cannon. There is no sign of weldings, and no sign of welding equipment once we get inside that cart.
Factual error: On the railroad when the knife-thrower is welding the jewel canister onto the circus equipment, there are bright flashes of light. Later however, the knife-thrower attacks Bond with a gas welder. Oxyacetylene torches (gas) merely heat the metal until it melts. They do not produce blinding flashes, unlike arc and MIG welding kits (electric).
Factual error: In some scenes, the Communist soldiers use the wrong armament: the Cubans use American M16s (whereas they should be using AK-47s), and Orlov's bodyguards (in the scene where the jewels are switched for the bomb) have Austrian Steyr AUGs. It would have been rather problematic for socialist countries (during the period of the film) to keep captured Western weapons constantly supplied with spare parts and ammunition.
Continuity mistake: When Bond's Mercedes is on the railroad tracks, it is hit head on by an oncoming train. As it is shown sailing in the air backwards, it is very clear that the drive-train has been removed. When the car is shown again, it is now sailing nose first as it hits the water.
Suggested correction: The drive-train hasn't been removed, it's just damage to the car from being hit by the larger and more powerful train. Surely a head-on crash would with a train wouldn't just leave a few scratches on the front of the car.
Look at pictures of cars hit at high speeds; the drivetrain does not just fall out, everything forward would have compacted towards the firewall of the car, and the rear differential is attached in many places on the chassis and certainly wouldn't have just disappeared.
Other mistake: When Bond runs out of fuel in his mini-jet, his landing was obviously filmed on an airport runway, given the heavy black landing marks on it.
Continuity mistake: In the final scene on the plane, Roger Moore and Maude Adams jump from the plane over the cliff. Moore grabs a crack in the rock. The next overhead shot his hand is by his head. Next shot it is in the crack again.
Factual error: When the German police are chasing Bond into the air base, they are simply waved in at the gate. That wouldn't happen - without authority, local authorities wouldn't be allowed to enter an armed forces installation, especially a foreign one.
Audio problem: Just after Bond disarms the bomb at the circus, Octopussy asks Magda, "Where was Kahn heading?" Magda replies, "Back to India," but her mouth movements are "India, of course."
Factual error: When riding in the truck with the Cuban soldiers Bond pulls their parachutes. In the next clip they are 5-6 meters up in the air. That is impossible. First, parachutes are not shot out, but merely pulled by the passing air. And the truck does not go fast enough to pull the parachutes. Second, even if the truck went fast enough, the soldiers would be pulled horizontally - and just fall off the truck, not get pulled vertically up in the air.
