A representative from the Egyptian government was on-set throughout the shoot in Cairo and Giza, to make sure that the country was not portrayed in an unflattering light. For that reason, when the scaffolding collapses on Jaws, and Bond quips "Egyptian builders", Sir Roger Moore merely mouthed the line, dubbing it in later. It went unnoticed by the official Egyptian minder, and ironically, got a great laugh from Egyptian audiences.

The closing credits say, "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only (1981)" but, because of the successes of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Moonraker (1979) was chosen.

The eyesight of cinematographer Claude Renoir was failing at the time of this movie, and he could not see to the end of the massive supertanker set. As a result, he could not supervise the lighting. Sir Ken Adam turned to his friend Stanley Kubrick, who, under the condition of complete secrecy, supervised the lighting. He suggested the use of floodlights. In addition Katharina Kubrick (Kubrick's stepdaughter) designed the dentures that Richard Kiel (Jaws) wore in this movie and "Moonraker" (1979).

By the time this movie was made, the James Bond films were the most lucrative in the world, and many manufacturers wanted their products featured. There was great competition for the company that would supply Bond's car. Don McLaughlin, Public Relations Manager of Lotus, realized that the best way to win this coveted position was to make the producers chase after him, rather than going begging to them. One day he turned up at Pinewood driving a brand new unreleased Lotus Esprit, with all identifying names covered up. He parked it outside the Bond set, knowing that the producers would see it when they broke for lunch. Once the car had attracted a crowd, all clamoring to know what the car was, McLaughlin nonchalantly got in the car and drove away without answering any questions. As he had expected, the producers were desperate to discover what the car was, and producer Albert R. Broccoli later chose it for this movie.

The stunt driver was having problems making the Lotus Esprit look sufficiently exciting in the chase scenes, because it held the road too well, and had to be driven dangerously fast to make it slide impressively on corners. One scene in Sardinia required the car to drive up a hill on a mountain pass and round a sharp bend. The normal stunt driver was not available, and the crew who were waiting at the top asked Lotus employee Roger Becker to drive the car up. He thrashed the car, skidding dramatically around the corners and making a dramatic one hundred eighty-degree turn on a gravel area as he stopped at the top. "Would you mind doing that again?" they asked him. "And this time we'll have the cameras rolling." From that time on, Roger became the stunt driver for shots involving the Lotus.

Continuity

In the escape pod, Bond makes his "final request" to Anya. She is holding his Walther PPK. Bond says "let's get out of these wet things", and she smiles. As they kiss, she is no longer holding the gun, she is holding Bond's hand. Also, if she put the gun down, it is nowhere to be seen on the white covers.

As Bond and Triple X are rising to the surface in Stromberg's escape pod, the pod is shown with a long appendage extending down from the bottom of the craft. When the British surface ship opens its stern door the pod floats into the cargo hold upright which it could not do with that appendage.

Jaw?s position under the magnet changes between shots.

Just as Bond is about to get up from his seat to follow Fekkesh, a jump cut makes several members of the audience change position.

On the train, the wine spill on Jaws' jacket disappears in one shot and is inconsistently dry in others.



Factual errors

For some reason the wet-bike is brought into the Captain's quarters for assembly. Nobody in their right mind would do this. It'd be assembled outside of the submarine since trying to carry it fully assembled throughout the sub would be virtually impossible.

Agent Amasova refers to herself as a member of the Russian Army. In 1977, there was no such thing. Before 1991, the army presiding over Russia was known as the "Soviet Army."

The Mark 46 Torpedo that the American Captain fires to escape the supertanker weighs over 500 lbs. and is filled with PBXN-103 high explosives, and has a minimum safety range of 1,500 yards, and no Navy commander would ever launch an active torpedo so close to his own ship, in this case to break open the supertanker doors to escape. Additionally, the Navy commander failed to issue a command to remove the safety features and set the safety range to zero, so as depicted in the movie with the safety still active, the torpedo would not have exploded. In reality, had the safety range been set to zero and the torpedo actually detonated the mere 100 feet or so as shown, the submarine that launched the torpedo would have been destroyed also.

When Bond and Jaws are fighting on the train, he breaks a lamp, and uses the live wires to "electrocute" Jaws. Since Bond and Jaws are struggling and their bodies are making contact, Bond would get shocked equally as much as Jaws does.

When both the American and British submarines are attacked, they make emergency blows to the surface, then are shown with the control room in red light while the captain is looking through the periscope. The reason for rigging for red, is to prevent light from being seen through the periscope while at periscope depth. Once the sub is on the surface, and completely visible to everyone, there is no need for red light, nor would they have bothered with it during an emergency blow.



Incorrectly regarded as goofs

At the end, it says "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only," the follow up to The Spy Who Loved Me was Moonraker (For Your Eyes Only was the follow up to Moonraker). However at the time of this film's release, it was intended that For Your Eyes Only was supposed to be the follow up, but the success of the original Star Wars movie that same year led to a rise in popularity for science fiction so filmmakers decided to postpone For Your Eyes Only until 1981 and release Moonraker next.

When the Wet Nellie is underwater, the license plates on the front and rear are different colors. However, the majority of UK cars have a white front plate and a yellow rear plate.



Revealing mistakes

When Bond is in the Egyptian desert, he peeks around the corner, and becomes a cardboard cutout. (See trivia.)

During the fight on the train when Jaws is slamming Bond into the ceiling, one of the shots shows Jaws holding up a slightly shoddy mannequin.

At around 19 minutes, when the helicopter carrying Dr Beckmann and Prof. Markovitz away from Stromberg's Atlantis is blown up, the wreckage falls onto a solid surface in the middle of the sea. There is no splash.

As the Wet Nellie drives off the pier and enters the water, the exposed underbody of a normal car can be glimpsed. After it enters the sea, the underbody is sealed (as a submarine car should be).

When Bond and XXX are on the speed boat going to see Stromberg, the underwater lair is super-imposed on the horizon, rather than midway. This would make the lair 50 miles high.



Audio/visual unsynchronised

When Bond and Commander Carter send the new co-ordinates to the first stolen submarine, to destroy the second, the co-ordinate numbers typed are 092765491. But when the captain reads out the numbers to missile control, he reads "034285219".

In the car chase with the Wet Nellie (just before it runs into the ocean and transforms into a sub) the helicopter can be seen firing its machine guns directly into the ground, but there are no impact plumes or sound effects as in previous scenes.

Bond honks the horn on the Wet Nellie before passing a truck on the cliff side road. Bond presses the center of the steering wheel when a Lotus horn is actually the lever on the left of the steering wheel.

During the car chase Jaws shoots at Bond and Anya with a suppressed revolver yet it makes a loud bang like a non-suppressed firearm.



Errors in geography

They travel from Cairo to Sardinia by overnight sleeper train. Not impossible, provided you're happy to go through Sinai, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, across the Bosporus, through Greece, the former Yugoslavia, down Italy and then catch a ferry. Or alternatively through Libya, Tunisia and across the Med. But, since they're trying to avert nuclear armageddon, flying might be a bit quicker.

When the USS Wayne is tracking the Liparus, the captain ranges it at 6,200 yards. Then approximately one minute later, with no obvious time skip, the Liparus is immediately behind the Wayne and captures it. Closing 6,200 yards in 1 minute puts the Liparus' speed at 211 mph, a speed no ship of that size could ever reach. So when the captain utters "impossible", he's right.

The two submarines leave the supertanker to deliver their nuclear weapons. Less than 1 hour later (in the time-line of the movie) the two subs are shown several hundred miles away from each other on the large globe in the control room.

The ruins where Jaws tries to kill Bond are actually from two different locations on opposite sides of the Nile.

The ruins where Bond and XXX battle Jaws are in Luxor. After they escape, they head to Cairo, which is 500 miles north of Luxor. However, when Bond wakes up on the boat, the first scene is at Abu Simbel, which is 250 miles south of Luxor, in the opposite direction.



Plot holes

Even if Stromberg managed to capture two ballistic missile submarines, how did he manage to bypass the launch systems? By that time , British and Soviet strategic missile submarines would require special launch codes send from respective governments, not from a villain.

It's obviously a joke, but... as Bond drives the Wet Nellie out of the sea, he hands a fish to a person on the beach. If there was a hole large enough to allow a fish to enter the car/submarine, they would surely have drowned, or at least got very wet (although a leak did occur in the roof of the car just before it emerged from the water).

Despite his plan to destroy civilization on land coming to fruition, Stromberg's underwater city is apparently still not built at all. Also, the model shows that Atlantis is clearly supposed to be part of the city, but due to its location in the Mediterranean Sea, its chances of surviving a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR seem very slim at best.

Even if Bond succeeded, he created two nuclear detonations by firing the SLBMs at each captured submarine. Given that both US and Soviet missile warning teams would be on alert, this still would theoretically cause political and radiation fallout.

After XXX helps destroy the enemy sub that was attacking them, Bond asks how XXX knew about the controls. She says that she had stolen the plans for the Wet Nellie, 2 years prior. She suddenly knew at that point how the Wet Nellie worked despite knowing about the plans, yet it never crossed her mind beforehand to push any buttons when a Killer Motor Cycle, A Car full of goons (Jaws) & a helicopter (Naomi) was chasing them.



Character error

After Bond and Anya abandon the van, they tramp up and down a series of rough sandy mounds, ignoring the nice flat roadway which can be seen in the foreground.

When Maj. Anya Amasova is driven by Bond into the sea in the underwater car she looks both surprised and scared, yet a little later she claims to know all about this car and what it can do.

When Bond releases the first of the captive crews, two officers grab machine-guns in order to release the others. When the crew furthest from the audience swarms out of their prison, the officer who released them can be seen going INTO the prison! Surely he should be leading them to the armory in order to take on Stromberg's mercenaries.

When escaping from the Liparus by firing a torpedo at the bows, the captain gives the standard order; "Match bearings and shoot". But in this case they are not tracking a target, so there are no bearings involved; they are shooting straight ahead.

Barbara Bach's Russian accent comes and goes in various scenes. However, it is most noticeable when Triple X and Bond are in the van, and she says, "Give me the key!"