Trivia / Octopussy

• Actor-Shared Background: Vijay loves tennis. He's played by Vijay Amritraj, who was a pro tennis player. He also shares his actor's fear of snakes, where Vijay (the actor) reportedly finds it difficult to hold the snake's basket while filming his scenes).
• California Doubling:
  • Kent doubles for Cuba in The Teaser. In fact, this was the site where Fort Knox was built for Goldfinger.
  • In some scenes, the UK also doubled for Germany.
• Completely Different Title:
  • 007 Against Octopussy (Brazil)
  • 007 - Operation Tentacle (Portugal)
  • Octopus (Finland)
  • Operation Octopus (Italy)
  • 007 Averts the Plot (China)
  • 007 Against the Deadly Girls (Mexico)
• The Danza: Bond's ally Vijay, played by Vijay Amritraj.
• Development Gag: Octopussy's father being a leading authority on octopi and her nickname being his pet name for her was most likely a nod to Ian Fleming, who owned a pet octopus, which served as the inspiration for Pussy Galore.
• Duelling Movies: The duel between Eon Productions' Octopussy with Roger Moore as Bond and Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery as Bond, being dubbed "The Battle of the Bonds", was one of the most publicized in movie history. Neither film really wowed critics, with Never Say Never Again edging out a bit among them. Octopussy won by a tight margin at the box office. The Eon series has continued to this day and even managed to get all the remaining Bond rights that they didn't have in the meantime, whereas Never Say Never Again remained a Stillborn Franchise.
• Fake Brit: Swedish actress Maud Adams plays an Englishwoman.
• Fake Nationality: Kamal Khan, the exiled Afghan prince, is played by French actor Louis Jourdan.
• Fake Russian: English actor Steven Berkoff and German actor Walter Gotell play Russians. ^note  Justifiable in Berkoff's case, as he's of Russian Jewish background.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Vijay Amritraj plays a snake charmer. In reality, Amritraj is terrified of snakes and was virtually unable to take part in any of the action. His character mentions this while disposing of the cobra in the basket by telling Bond "This was the wrong cover. I hate snakes."
• No Stunt Double: Kristina Wayborn as Magda says a romantic au revoir to James Bond by way of an elegant elegiac window exit. She actually performed this stunt herself, swirling down to the ground, her dress acting as her support and being unwound as she alighted safely to the ground. Weyborn's departure was filmed in two different locations: her fall from the balcony was filmed at Pinewood Studios in England and her landing was filmed on location in India.
• On-Set Injury:
  • Roger Moore's stunt double, Martin Grace, had a serious accident while filming on the train. Hanging on the side of it, the train went into a non-assessed area of the track and he rammed into a pylon, seriously damaging his leg and hip and hospitalizing him for several months. He made a full recovery.
  • The actor who uses the buzz saw yo-yo broke his arm when he fell over the balcony onto Octopussy's bed. Despite his injury and having to wear a cast, he insisted on completing the rest of his scenes.
• The Other Marty: Bond was originally to be played by James Brolin in this film as a replacement for an aging Roger Moore and actually filmed some scenes in India. Then producer Albert R. Broccoli felt the pressure of using an established Bond actor against the return of Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again and brought Moore back.
• Prop Recycling: In the scene where Octopussy's circus was walking down the street, there is a brief glimpse of a performer on stilts wearing a skull mask which looks like the one from Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
• Recycled Script: The plot is very reminiscent of Goldfinger, with Auric Goldfinger's role played by Kamal Khan, Oddjob's by Gobinda, Pussy's by Octopussy, her flying circus by an actual circus, a Renegade Russian in place of Goldfinger's backing from Red China, and a backgammon game mixing the gin rummy and golf scenes, down to Oddjob/Gobinda crushing the golf ball/dice. The very next film, A View to a Kill, is another Goldfinger remake.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • Many production and story ideas and elements not used in Moonraker ended up being utilized for this film. These included the knife throwing twins, the casting of Louis Jourdan as the villain and the Acrostar Bede jet sequence. The backgammon game was originally intended to take place in Max Kalba's club in The Spy Who Loved Me.
  • The scene where Bond is pursued by villains riding elephants is as close as we got to Harry Saltzman's planned elephant chase in The Man with the Golden Gun.
• Throw It In!: The bicyclist seen passing in the middle of a sword fight during the tuk tuk chase sequence was in fact a bystander who passed through the shot, oblivious to the filming; his intrusion was captured by two cameras and left in the final film.
• Troubled Production: The film had problems in the writing phase after initial writer George MacDonald Fraser's draft contained several scenes that were ludicrously infeasible to film, in addition to generally lacking the feel of a Bond film, necessitating a rushed overhaul of the screenplay by veteran Bond writer Richard Maibaum and producer Michael G. Wilson. Casting the title character also proved difficult, with close to two dozen actresses being screen-tested before the producers finally threw their hands up and cast Maud Adams, who had previously been the secondary Bond Girl in The Man with the Golden Gun, while lifting some details from the original Ian Fleming story (the script having been an In Name Only adaptation until that point) to explain her non-Indian appearance. Then, during filming Roger Moore's stunt double was severely injured after an accident while filming the train sequence, which affected morale for the rest of the shoot.
• Uncredited Role:
  • Ingrid Pitt as the uncredited voice of a Galley Mistress.
  • Eugene Lipinski as the Head VOPO.
• What Could Have Been: Enough for its own page.
• Word of God: When asked why Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince, speaks with a French accent, Albert R. Broccoli suggested that he went to school in France.
• Write What You Know: George MacDonald Fraser chose India as a setting because of his extensive research for Flashman.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Maud Adams had previously played Andrea Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun.
  • M is played by Robert Brown, who previously played Admiral Hargreaves in The Spy Who Loved Me. A common Fanon theory is that they are the same person (especially after GoldenEye canonically confirmed that the title of "M" can be passed to another individual).
  • Albert Moses, who plays Sadruddin, previously played a bartender in The Spy Who Loved Me.

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