Goofs

When Anastasia is dancing with Dimitri on the ship, her hair is down to her butt. A few seconds later it is seen to her shoulders. The length changes throughout.

Throughout the movie Anya's eyes change from originally blue to green to gray and back to blue.

When they are at the ballet, the back of Anastasia's dress had two straight tails. Later, when she was packing, it was connected at the bottom.

In Vlad's first spoken line in the movie "Well, Dimitri, I got us a theater!" he has a very stuffy English accent, but throughout the rest of the film he has a thick Russian accent.

At the beginning of the movie, after "Once Upon a December" when Anya meets Dimitri and Vlad for the first time, we see the Tsar and Tsarina appear in one of the paintings with their son, Alexei, who has brown hair. In the painting it is clearly a platinum blonde.

The Empress's original name was Dagmar, but she took the name Maria (Marie) Feodorovna when she married Alexander III. She was daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and sister of King Frederik VIII of Denmark and Queen Alexandra of England.

Upon discovering Anya is really Anastasia, Vlad mentions they have found the 'heir to the Russian throne'. There was no Russian throne after Anastasia's father Nicholas II had abdicated, and the chances of the very unpopular monarchy being reinstated, especially considering the Communists were in power at that time, were practically zero. In addition, Anastasia could only rule if every other male Romanov, however distantly related to her father, were dead.

The Dowager Empress's wedding ring is shown on her third finger, left hand. In Russia at that time, married women wore their wedding bands on the third finger, right hand.

The fall Anastasia gets in the beginning that gives her amnesia would not have been hard enough to give her amnesia.

Throughout the film, Anastasia is often referred to as a Princess, while her proper title was "Velikaya Knyaginya". However, while the literal translation of this title is "Grand Duchess", it is essentially equivalent to the British title of a Princess, so it is a reasonably accurate semantic translation to English, which is the language of the film after all. In any case, Anastasia is also called a Grand Duchess during the film, which means that the filmmakers were fully aware of the alternative translation.

When Anastasia breaks into the palace looking for Dimitri, she finds the place almost intact, along with many precious items such as plates, fine tapestries, candlesticks, furniture, and, most notably, a painting in which she recognizes herself. Actually, the Winter Palace - depicted in the movie, as it is the only one located in St. Petersburg - was stormed and looted in 1917 by Russian revolutionaries of everything valuable. Besides, all the paintings were slashed with bayonets and, from the river, the cruiser Aurora used the facade for target practice. Moreover, by 1927, when the action is supposed to take place, the Palace was rebuilt and was seat of the Hermitage Museum, so the conditions in which Anastasia finds the Palace, as shown in the movie, are impossible. This is yet another example of the film not being intended as historical fact.

The Romanov family is said to have celebrated their 300th anniversary on the Russian throne in 1916, but actually, it was in 1913, since the first Romanov became Tsar of Russia in 1613. However, this film was never intended to be historically accurate.

Sankt-Peterburg (St. Petersburg) was called Petrograd during the period of the Great War because of anti-German sentiment. Subsequently, the Communists renamed it Leningrad after the Revolution (it did not revert to its Tsarist name until 1991). And yet everyone in the movie was referring to the city as St. Petersburg. This may have been done because the film's target audience by the time of its release in 1997 would've grown up knowing the city by its present name.

When Rasputin is outraged at the ball at the beginning of the movie, he destroys one of the big chandeliers in the great hall. We clearly see it crashing into the floor, yet 10 years later, when Anastasia returns to the same hall, all the chandeliers in the great hall are shown to be intact. However, there was a clear time gap between Rasputin's scene and the Revolution that ousted the Tsar. While we're never told exactly how much time had passed, if we believe Rasputin's curse it took a fortnight (i.e. two weeks), which is plenty of time to put up a new chandelier. In reality, the Revolution didn't happen until next year, so they would have had even more time to fix it.

In the song "Learn To Do It", when they're in the wagon and Dimitri says "Shot Potemkin" and then Vladimir sings "In the buttkin", Dimitri jumps up with his hands underneath him, then disappears for a second. You can see it if you pause right at that moment.

The 3D generated objects in the movie seem to clip very weirdly at some points. For example, during "In the Dark of the Night" when Rasputin puts down the reliquary, then later leans in, his arm is in front of it at first, but if you watch his back arm phases from in front, to behind it, then his whole arm and cloak phase through it again, as well as when he is swinging away the smoke.

At the opera house in Paris, the Russian ballet company perform a ballet version of "Cinderella" to music by Sergei Prokofiev. While several ballet versions of "Cinderella" had been staged up to this point, Prokofiev's score (now the standard score for ballet versions of the fairy tale) was actually written in the early 1940s and first performed in 1945, around 20 years after the film is set.

During the ball at the beginning of the film, guests are wearing the traditional attire of the Boyar, the ancient Russian nobility: long fur cloaks and hats, heavy tunics, staffs, and jewelry necklaces. This outfit was out of fashion since Peter the Great banned it around the 1650s. At a Russian gala in 1916, guests would be wearing full evening dress, with some men in military uniforms, pretty much like the ones Anastasia, Vlad, and Dimitri wear later in the movie, at the Paris Opera.

At the very beginning, when the Dowager Empress climbs into the carriage, we clearly hear the man say "Yah!", yet his mouth doesn't move.

When Rasputin places his eye back in after it pops out, Bartok's mouth doesn't open when he says "Yeah. Whoopsie."

At 40 minutes into the movie, Anya, Dmitri, and Vlad are travelling from Russia through Poland, towards Germany on their way to Paris, France. Seconds later a sign that says "Strasburg 30km" can be seen. It is the German city Strasburg the sign refers to, though many confuse the French city Strasbourg, with the German Strasburg, even though they are different cities a good 930 kilometres apart.

However, Strasburg Germany is about 47 kilometres from the Polish border, so technically, Dmitri is lying to Anya when he says they'll be taking a bus instead of walking to Germany as they would already be there if they only had 30 kilometres to Strasburg.

On the boat, Dimitri and Vladimir are playing chess. Vladimir moves his queen and calls checkmate. However, the position of his knight already had Dimitri in check. Dimitri would have had to move his king prior to Vladimir's move to continue the game. In addition, Vladimir's new position of the queen could have been captured by Dimitri's Bishop, which would prevent the king from being in checkmate (except for the knight which is an error anyway).

Anya describes the dress that Dimitri buys for her as a 'tent', yet when she wears it later it fits her perfectly despite the fact that earlier she was twice described as being skinny. Correction: Anastasia tailors the dress after Dmitri gives it to her, but before she wears it on deck.