The city railroad scenes were filmed in Spain, and many of the forest railroad scenes were filmed in Finland, countries with broad gauge railways (rails more than 5 feet apart). The plains and mountain railroad scenes were largely shot in Canada, where the rails are standard gauge (4 feet 8.5 inches apart). The distance between rails changes throughout the movie.
Before Yuri runs to catch the tram, the statue of Yuri Dolgoruky is behind him. When he starts running toward the tram, the statue is ahead of him.
When Komarovsky meets Lara and she is wearing a red dress, he forces her to drink, holding her fist. In the following shot he pushes her drinking cup with his fingers.
When Yuri, Lara, and her daughter are in the sleigh on the way to the ice palace, close-up shots show the three of them in the sleigh. When the sleigh goes over a bump in the wide shot, only the driver is in the sleigh.
The mountains which lord over the funeral procession for Yuri's mother disappear at her burial site.
Throughout the movie, church bells ring randomly or even "change ring," as in western Europe. Russian churches have always used "zvon" ringing, in which the high bells playing exactly 2 or 3 times faster than the bass bell.
When Yevgraf gives Tonya the book of poems, the authors are listed only by their initials. He says that he's not the author, and that Y. A. Zhivago stands for Yuri Andreevich Zhivago. The book is written in Cyrillic, so Yevgraf and Yuri's names would start with different letters.
The deacons at Yuri's mother's funeral and the parade where Yevgraf joins the army wear their stole on the wrong side. It should be buttoned to the top of the robe on the left side, not right.
During the protest parade, the text on the banner reads "Svoboda i bratsvo" (Freedom and Fraternity), instead of "Svoboda i bratstvo".
After the speaking officer in the desertion scene is shot and falls in the water barrel, several of the extras are clearly speaking Spanish.
When Yuri gets back to civilization after deserting the Red Partisans, he is almost run over by a train. After jumping out of the way, he asks a man where he is. The sign on the station is supposed to say "Yuriyatin," but two letters are transposed, making it "Yuryaitin."
The protest parade is supposed to take place on a bitterly cold night. Nobody's breath is visible, and observers on the balcony put their hands in "snow" on the railing.
In the teaching lab, Yuri's view through the microscope is time-lapse footage of what appear to be live cancer cells from culture. In real time, the cells move so slowly that it's barely noticeable, even through a microscope.
When Yuri runs to a window watch Lara leave with Komarovsky, he brushes against a banister covered in icicles. The icicles swing, revealing that they are fake.
Much of the Cyrillic in the film is post-Soviet Cyrillic, not the version used in Tsarist Russia.
In an early pre-Revolution scene, Komarovsky says to Lara, "I want to avoid Kropotkin Street." Before the Revolution, the street was called Prechistenka. Kropotkin was an anarchist, and a street would never have been named for him in Tsarist Russia.
When Dr. Zhivago first arrives in Moscow, he boards a tram on Tverskaya street. A statue of Yuri Dolgoruky, founder of Moscow, is in the background. The statue was placed there in 1947, for the 800th anniversary of Moscow's founding in 1147.
Many female extras have 1960s hair and makeup.
Near the entrance to Lara's flat in Yuriyatin, there is an old door-less gate with rabitz chain link fencing. Rabitz chain link fencing was used extensively throughout the Soviet Union, not in Tsarist Russia.
(at around 1h 40 mins) The balalaika player's finger movements don't correspond to the music, rhythmically or melodically.
In a close-up of the crowd during the peaceful protest, their mouth movements don't match the soundtrack.
Early on Zhivago is returning to the Gromeko house. As he enters, the right-hand door opens and director David Lean is seen in its reflection.
The Urals are gradually rising mountains, not snow-capped peaks visible from perfectly flat steppes.
In the movie, Varykino is in Siberia, east of Moscow. In real life, the city is west of Moscow.
The Gromyko Estate is 231 kilometers (143 miles) from Moscow, yet Yuri and his family are on the train for at least 36 hours.
When a commander speaks to the armies at the desertion encounter, he says that the Germans are ten miles down the road. Measurements in Russia are on the metric system, the correct word would be kilometer.
Yuri wakes at night and steals away from Larisa into the snow-filled great room at Varykino. Sitting at his old desk, he opens the drawer, finds pen, paper, and ink and taking them out, begins to write poetry. The temperature is clearly freezing, but the ink is still liquid.
The little girl who plays Tonya at Yuri's mother's funeral starts to cross herself in the Roman Catholic manner, but quickly corrects herself and finishes in the Russian Orthodox style.
Yevgraf talks about Tonya being "lost at the age of eight when the civil war broke out in the Far East". The occupation of Outer Mongolia by China occurred from 1919-1921, the third period of the Russian Civil War occurred in parts of the Far East from 1920-1922, the Soviet intervention in Mongolia occurred in 1921, the Mongolian Revolution occurred in 1921, the Far Eastern Republic retook Vladivostok from the White Russians in 1922, and the Suiyuan campaign occurred from 1935-1937. Tonya would not have been 8 years old when any of those conflicts took place.
When the message arrives from Komarovsky, Tonya answers the door. In such an upper-class household, a servant would have done so.
When Yevgraf visits Tonya, he and his guards wear uniforms trimmed in light blue cap bands and epaulettes, the color of the Soviet Air Force and Paratroops. Yevgraf is a state security general. In the NKVD era, the colors would be dark green trim or dark blue with red cap bands. In the early KGB era, the color would be royal blue.
Anna Gromyko reads the sign at the Bolshevik demonstration as "Brotherhood and Freedom". It actually says "Freedom and Brotherhood".