Continuity mistake: In the opening story, Bond flies in the small plane with a single jet engine. When the plane approaches the hangar to fly through it (the shot taken FROM the hangar towards the plane) you can see that the plane has TWO engines at the back.
Continuity mistake: The knife-thrower attempts to use a welder to temporarily blind Bond - we can see in that shot that it's an acetylene torch. However, in earlier shots when the welder is being used (off-camera), the sound is that of an arc welder.
Plot hole: When Bond wakes up in the monsoon palace, his watch is still beeping with the activated tracking mode. Wouldn't somebody have noticed the constant beeping while he was brought there? The tracker is shown to have a range of several hundred meters, so it would certainly have been in range of the transmitter at least part of the time while Gobinda dragged him back to Kamal's palace.
Continuity mistake: When Bond is fighting the twin on the top of the train, there is a carriage behind them, but when both of them fall off the train, the carriage has suddenly disappeared.
Continuity mistake: When the Mercedes is hit by the train head on, the car flies through the air boot first, and not turning. When it hits the water the car has turned around and is now engine first.
Other mistake: In the end credits, Jeremy Bulloch's surname is spelt as "Bullock."
Factual error: Bond pulls his mini jet out of the path of the missile racing in from behind, making it narrowly miss his aircraft. Like most such piloting stunts from Hollywood, it wouldn't have worked. Modern anti-aircraft missiles have proximity fuses and fragmentation warheads or continuous-rod warheads. They actually deliberately pass by the aircraft they are trying to destroy and explode next to them, because the cross-section is greater that way. There have even been cases when a missile actually hitting an airplane just disintegrated without exploding, thus saving the target.
Continuity mistake: Gobinda kills the two helpers at the Monsoon Palace and throws them on the floor in the freezer and we hear the thumps. Minutes later Bond hides in the freezer. The bodies now hang on meat hooks, and have already turned gray.
Continuity mistake: When we see the Monsoon Palace from the lake, it is set very high on a barren brown mountain. When Bond escapes on foot, he very quickly is in a dense and moist jungle - and walking out in a low-lying marsh land with a wide river. That can't be the same lake, since we don't see him running down a steep barren cliff-side.
Visible crew/equipment: During the climax on the plane Kamal Kahn asked the henchman with the turban to get Bond. When Bond uses the antenna to push him off the plane, you see the henchman fall off from a below view, you can see that the henchman is wearing a parachute.
Continuity mistake: When 009 is knifed in the back, the knife goes in all the way to the handle. When he crawls out of the water, the blade is visible. And if the knife had moved out by itself, it would be loose and would have fallen out.
Continuity mistake: In the Circus scene towards the end of the movie James Bond holds up a program to cover his face, and you can clearly see a clown's face on the back of the program. A few seconds later (and in subsequent shots) the back of the program is blank.
Revealing mistake: When the plane comes out of the horse box you can see that the undercarriage is fixed and that the wheels cannot retract like they do in the next scene. This version of the plane is the same one at the petrol station where the controls are the same as a motorbike with handlebars and a throttle, steering was done using the front wheel.
Audio problem: In the opening scene, Bianca says to Bond, "They moved the flight up to this afternoon", but her mouth does not match what she is saying.
Revealing mistake: When Bond throws the baddie on the bed of steel spikes, the spikes bend revealing they're made of rubber (despite a crunch and a yell of pain being heard).
Continuity mistake: When Bond escapes from the train and drives away the number and position of the bullet holes changes between shots.
Revealing mistake: When Bond is driving on two wheels, the stuntman behind the wheel is very noticeable, mainly because of his toupee.
Revealing mistake: On top of the plane, Gobinda's stunt is noticeable because he has less of a beard.
Other mistake: The opening scene is at a military airbase which is hosting an equestrian event near the hanger that Bond blows up, and what an explosion that is, but all the civilians are more interested looking at Bond flying off instead of reacting to the massive explosion that just happened nearby.
Revealing mistake: When Grischka pins Bond to the cabin door with his knives, he takes out a knife and attempts to kill Bond for killing his twin brother. Bond then opens the cabin door and then kills Grischka by opening the cabin door and throwing a knife into his stomach. If you watch carefully, you can see the cabin door begin to open before Bond pulls the cabin handle down.
Answer: It wasn't meant to be related at all. It was just an action sequence to start off the film as Bond completes a previous assignment before a segue into the familiar 007 opening theme and a new song. I recall there were some other earlier Bond films that also used this formula. After the opening bit, the story starts as Bond meets with "M" for a new mission, then a briefing with "Q" about the latest spy gadgets. There was also the obligatory flirtatious banter between Bond and Miss Moneypenny.
raywest ★
I see what you mean. I'm thinking of those films where the opening scene has some link to the main plot (e.g. The Spy Who Loved Me), but Moonraker is like this one, it starts off (spectacularly) with Bond at the end of a previous assignment.