Octopussy

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The 13th James Bond film, starring Roger Moore. After a replica Fabergé egg is found on an assassinated agent, Bond is sent to India to infiltrate a circus gang led by Octopussy (Maud Adams, the only Bond girl actress to make a second leading appearance).

007 soon discovers a connection between the priceless Fabergé egg, an elaborate smuggling operation and a meeting with a renegade Russian General Orlov who plans on detonating a nuclear device at Octopussy's circus as part of his plan to instigate World War III.

Despite the title, it has surprisingly little to do with Naughty Tentacles.

Tropes used in Octopussy include:
  • Actor Allusion: Vijay plays tennis on his spare time and fights off some goons with a tennis racquet. He's played by a tennis player.
  • Adaptation Expansion: The movie uses the short story as a Backstory to Octopussy's origin.
  • Affably Evil: Kamal, especially when discussing Bond's torture.

Bond: Well, supposing, for argument's sake, l don't feel like talking?
Kamal: Don't worry, you will.
Bond: Let me guess. Thumbscrews and hot coals?
Kamal: (insulted) Hardly. We're much more sophisticated than that.
Bond: Sodium Pentothal?
Kamal: A bit crude. Very unreliable. We prefer curare with an effective psychedelic compound. Guaranteed results.
Bond: But with permanent brain damage.
Kamal: An unfortunate side effect.

  • All Part of the Show: Bond's antics in the clown makeup is mistaken for being part of the show. Given that he's trying to warn people of a nuclear bomb, this is a problem.
  • And This Is For: Doubled.

Mishka: And this (prepares to throw knife at Bond). . .for my brother! [throws knife at Bond, but misses]
James Bond: (Throws the knife back and impales him) And that's for 009!

  • Amazon Brigade: Octopussy's army.
  • Artistic Title: This title sequence has neon lights, shadow silhouettes, pistols, vapor trails, and colors circling a center, and Rita Coolidge performing "All Time High."
  • Auction: Bond enters one to seek out the one who is interested in this Fabergé egg business.
  • Bedsheet Ladder: Magda uses a varation of this to escape from Bond: she ties one end of the sari she's wearing to a balustrade and jumps off the balcony, "riding" the garment down to safety as it unravels.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: General Orlov and Kamal Khan.
  • Banister Slide: Used by Bond during the attack on Khamal's palace.
  • Bodybag Trick: Gobinda kills two Khamal's mooks two preserve secrecy and Bond takes the place of the other one to escape the Monsoon Palace.
  • Catch and Return
  • Censored Title: The movie was sometimes advertised as "Octocat".
  • Chewing the Scenery: Orlov's glorious briefing scene at the beginning of the movie.
  • Cool Plane: Bond's miniature jet in the prologue.
  • Cutlass Between the Teeth: Done briefly by Gobinda when he goes after Bond on Khamal's plane.
  • Did Not Do the Research: The blue rings on a blue-ringed octopus are visible only when it is about to attack.
  • Dirty Communists: One of the few in the Bond series, oddly enough.
    • It's emphasized that Orlov is acting independent of the Politburo, and that Gogol and the other Soviet leaders are more interested in making peace with the West. The Breshnev Expy explicitly states that the Soviet nuclear arsenal is purely defensive.
      • During the final third of the plot, Gogol is pursuing Orlov to stop him.
  • The Danza: Bond's ally Vijay is played by... Vijay Amritraj.
  • The Dragon: Gobinda.
  • Disney Villain Death: Gobinda
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Played with. Bond tries to avert a nuclear attack. But a woman hogs the only phone booth. Bond promptly steals her car, instead.
  • Dueling Movies: With Sean Connery's Never Say Never Again. Neither film really wowed critics or topped the box office.
  • Exploding Fishtanks: This time the fishtanks get their revenge! When the title character is targeted by assassins her pet blue-ringed octopus (who's clearly watched Alien) facehugs a thug to death after its tank gets broken during the struggle.
  • Foreign Queasine: Sheep's eye, anyone?
    • Bond actually manages to get in a good Double Entendre, when he complains that he loses his appetite when he's being watched (both the meal and Kamal's Dragon, who is intently watching him.)
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: "I need refilling." And another rather obvious one, of course.
  • A Glass in the Hand: Gobinda and the dice.
  • Glory Hound: General Orlov.
  • Groin Attack. Narrowly averted -- Bond is sliding down a stairway railing, blazing away at mooks with a captured AK-47. He then quickly uses the rest of the magazine to shoot off the knob at the end of the railing.
    • For that matter, what kind of Lovecraftian nightmare *is* an Octopussy, anyway? It'd certainly make for a hell of a bed scene, that's for sure...
  • Hero Stole My Bike: Bond swipes the car off a woman in a phone booth he wanted to reach.
  • Hey, Catch!: Done to a sword wielding mook at the market chase/fight.
  • High Altitude Battle: Bond against Gobinda on top of a plane.
  • Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Khamal and his mooks' hunt for tiger on elephants after Bond escapes the Monsoon Palace. Bond is the tiger of course.

Khamal: Let the game commence!

Q: 007 on an island populated exclusively by women? We won't see him till dawn!

Security Guard:: Captain, some nut went through here in a stolen car! Wants the base commander, and he's wearing a red shirt!

  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: A new M apparently makes his debut in this story. No-one mentions what happened to the previous one, which has caused many to claim that this is actually a case of The Other Darrin, and that it's still the original M but with a different actor playing him.
    • There's also the theory that the new M is really Admiral Hargreaves, actor Robert Brown's character from The Spy Who Loved Me.
    • Note that this was because the original actor had died, which actually happened before For Your Eyes Only. M was absent entirely from that one, stated to be on leave, but here they had to get a new actor. And if it is Hargreaves then he's been demoted; he was a Vice Admiral in The Spy Who Loved Me, but is stated to be a Rear Admiral in The Living Daylights.
  • Technology Marches On: If this movie was set in the 21st century one fact remains: the entire last half hour of this film could have been avoided with the use of Bond's cellphone...
    • Cellphones existed since the 70s... but Bond would have probably been better off without one of those bulky, expensive, short-accumulator-lived things...
  • Theme Tune Cameo: Vijay introduces himself by playing a bar of the James Bond theme on a snake charmer's pipe.
  • Time Bomb
  • Title Drop: Well, the main Bond Girl's nickname is Octopussy, but the first instance:

Bond: (looking at Magda's tattoo, on the small of her back) What is that?
Magda: That's my little Octopussy.

  • Traintop Battle: Bond has to fight Gobinda Grishka on top of Octopussy's circus train.
  • Understatement: How do you tell the audience of a circus that they were barely seconds from being in the epicenter of a nuclear detonation? "Ladies and Gentlemen, we had an emergency..."
  • Wicked Cultured: Kamal Khan.
  • You Killed My Father: Subverted. Octopussy is actually grateful to Bond for allowing her father to commit suicide, as it saved her father the shame of a military trial (Bond was tasked with arresting him).
  • You Look Familiar: Maud Adams had previously played Andrea Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Octopussy?oldid=1759814"