Mistakes - For Your Eyes Only
In the opening sequence after "Blofeld" kills the pilot, the helicopter goes into a brief nosedive, sounding like an airplane going down, not a helicopter.
James Bond attempts to fly a helicopter with two hands on the joystick; this is impossible.
In "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (1969), Blofeld was paralysed. In "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971), he was inexplicably no longer paralysed and could walk fine. Now, in this film, when he appears, he is paralysed again.
After Bond has seized control of the helicopter, in the pre-title sequence, at one point he can be seen wearing a set of headphones, seconds later they are gone.
The third time the ATAC officer reaches for the destruct switch, his thumb catches the destruct charge and flips it up about an inch, despite the fact that it's supposed to be fastened by a very strong magnet.
Sir Timothy Havelock is referred to (by people who should know better) as "Sir Havelock" instead of "Sir Timothy".
Near the beginning of the movie, when Bond and Melina Havelock are chased from the pool party, a near perfect reflection is shown in Melina's window of a crewman holding a yellow pole with equipment on top and wearing a short-sleeved tan shirt and black glasses. A few frames later he waves his hand between the backseat window and the camera.
During the car chase, Bond says "Take the low road." Melina's 2CV gets flipped over, with Bond and Melina inside, Bond says something like "not THAT low." However, his mouth keeps moving as if he is saying something else, but no words are coming out.
As Bond climbs up through the forest to the pool party, the guard is distracted by a woman with long curly brunette hair and a red flower over her right ear; she is wearing a blue bikini and a long cover-up. After Bond passes her and the guard and proceeds up the hill to spy on the pool party, this same woman is now seen dancing at the party in the first shot seen through Bond's binoculars; she could not be in both places at once.
During the "umbrella escape" from Gonzalez's estate, a bullet hole appears in the umbrella before the guard fires at it.
James Bond and Melina first meet in a house which is supposed to be in a mountain area near Madrid. There are women wearing bikinis and a swimming pool. In the meantime, some farmers are harvesting olives near there. Olives are harvested in December-January, when temperatures around Madrid are around 5 degrees celsius.
The number plate of one of the vehicles in the "Madrid" scene ends with a single A. The other one has just numbers and no letters (apart from the M, standing for Madrid). These are very old number plates for 1981 Madrid cars (at least, 15-20 years old) and the looks of both cars are way too new to accept they had such numbers. Most likely, they would have plates ending in two letters (in 1981 the plate letter series had gone already as far as EP).
In the downhill car-chase, the cars pass the same spot several times.
Bond and Melina are chased by cars in the mountains near Madrid, Spain. Yet when one of the pursuing cars falls down a cliff and into a net where olives are being harvested, the farmers can clearly be heard swearing and talking in Italian, not Spanish.
During the downhill chase when one of the Peugeot 504s begins to bump into Bond's 2CV, We see a close-up of the driver and there are no vehicles visible on the road behind him. In the following shot when Bond is pushed off the road the second Peugeot is almost directly behind him.
Bond and Luigi are walking along, discussing Columbo. Luigi says something like "He runs a fleet of inter-coastal freighters in the Aegean" but his mouth is not even moving.
Bond tells Bibi to get her clothes on. He peeks out into the hallway for a few seconds. He turns around, and Bibi is fully dressed already.
Bond races through the ski chase with only one ski pole (the other was damaged by the sniper chasing him). The remaining pole was used to clothesline one of the bikers following him, but he has it again in the later shot when he first approaches the bobsled track.
The camera and crew are visible in the window reflection of the car where Emil Locque is talking on the car phone at the ski jump.
When Bond boards the elevator to the top of the ski lift with the ski jumpers he is toward the rear of the car. The doors close, then re-open, allowing Locque and another baddie to enter the car. Seeing as they were the last ones in, they should be the first ones out; yet when the car reaches the top and opens, Bond is the first person off the elevator.
The ski jump and bobsled run are nowhere near each other in Cortina, Italy, as depicted in the film.
After Eric Kriegler drives through the barn and crashes the front tire, the bike is clearly OK. A second later, when he picks it up and throws it after Bond the tire is completely twisted.
During the fight in the ice rink, one of the hockey players tries to kick Bond with his blade. He puts his foot through the wall. When it cuts to the next scene, there is no damage to the wall in that spot.
At the baccarat game, Bond has the same cards for both the first and second hand; the queen of spades and the five of diamonds. While this is, strictly speaking, not impossible (several packs are mixed together to fill the shoe from which the cards are dealt) it is blindingly unlikely, and the fact that these cards are initially erroneously described as giving a count of nine (court cards and tens count nothing in baccarat, while number cards count for their respective number of pips) makes it far more probable that the close-ups of Bond's cards are in fact both taken from the second hand played.
During the dinner scene at the Casino, Bond closes his menu twice.
When Bond and the countess are being chased on the beach, one of the dune buggies loses its passenger side headlight. Moments later, as Bond foot kicks the gun out of Locque's hand, the headlight that was dangling from the car moments before is now securely back in place.
When Lisl is hit by the dune buggy on the beach, the windshield breaks. When the dune buggy stops, the windshield is no longer damaged.
Dawn breaks rather rapidly. When Bond attacks Kristatos' warehouse with Colombo's men it is dark and then when he emerges from the tunnel (having chased Locque) it is day.
The Mercedes-Benz that Locque flees in after blowing up the warehouse is an older model S-Class, which becomes a newer model after it enters the tunnel.
As Locque speeds away from the exploding warehouse, Bond shoots two bullet holes in his rear window which disappear and reappear in subsequent shots.
When Bond is standing under the arch, and shooting at Locque's vehicle, he fires one shot. A bullet comes out and hits the windshield. A second later, another bullet hits the windshield, but there was no sound of a second bullet being fired from Bond's gun.
After the car is kicked off the cliff, a dummy (representing the character inside) falls out of the car window when it lands. After Bond says his line, we cut back to the car, this time from above. The car is in a different place with the dummy where the car should be.
During the dive on the sunken sub, it is stated the pressure is very great requiring special suits, one of the bad guys is using a JIM Suit, which is designed for extreme depth dive work. Yet when they emerge from the sunken sub the water is very light blue and the color rendering is very good. This is only possible in 1 Atmosphere diving. At depths below 100 feet the water is very dark and colors are very gray.
Bond says the ATAC charge is a "transmitter with a thermite charge" - Thermite is an incendiary weapon, and not an explosive charge that would blow a hole through the diving suit of Kristatos' henchman as it did.
When James Bond leaves the sunken ship after escaping from the attacker, you can see that his dive helmet suddenly has an inner black mask attached, covering his mouth and nose. It's a stunt diver. (Those dive helmets usually have an inner mask preventing CO2 poisoning - but obviously you wouldn't have been able to see the actor's faces then).
When Bond and the diver are fighting over the ATAC, Bond is holding onto it with his left hand. The diver sends Bond crashing through a glass window, and it cuts to the next shot. Bond is now holding onto it with his right hand.
Bond and the diver are fighting over the ATAC. Bond gets pinned underneath some type of machine. The diver reaches down and cuts Bond's elbow with his claw. If you look closely, Bond's elbow is already cut and bleeding before the claw even makes contact.
When Bond and Melina exit the sub, the beam in their flashlights is red. When they get into the sunken St Georges (a set) the beams are clear (white). When they return to the sub, a brief view of the flashlight beam as the light falls to the ocean floor again looks red.
When Melina removes her scuba helmet after diving for the device, there is a release in pressure. Her air tube had already been punctured by the goon, so the pressure was already released and therefore no sound should have been emitted.
While diving down to retrieve the spare tank with Melina, 007 is a stuntman with long, blond hair.
When Bond is climbing up the rock towards St. Cyril's, he anchors his rope to a spring-loaded camming device, and subsequently drives pitons into the rock as he goes. When the henchman has dislodged all the pitons so that Bond is swinging from one final anchor - the first one he placed - that anchor has changed from a spring-loaded camming device to a piton.
When the mountaintop monastery guard is struck by Bond's piton, the blade enters his chest dead center, a few inches below the adam's apple. Yet when the body lands on the ground, the blade has moved to the man's left shoulder.
When Bond reaches the top of the cliff and the man "kicks" Bond in the face, it doesn't even come close to making contact, yet, Bond reacts as if it connected.
When Bond's/Columbo's infiltration team surprises the dorm full of off-duty guards at St Cyril's, a blond man seen briefly rising from a bed on the left is the same guard the team already dealt with on duty outside - he was last seen tied up and gagged after being shot with an arrow, then knocked unconscious in the basket room a few minutes earlier.
At the very end of the film, when the parrot drops the wristwatch in the water you can clearly see the wire that the watch is attached to as it is sinking.
