About a third of the way into the movie, Gilbert and Sullivan are quarreling about their next work. Sullivan would like more realism. Gilbert remarks facetiously that if Sullivan would like to compose an opera about "a prostitute dying of consumption in a garret" he should seek out "Mr. Ibsen, in Oslo." This is a meant to be a screenwriter's joke, because Puccini's "La Boheme" will be that opera, but not until 1896, eleven years after the events portrayed in "Topsy Turvy". However, the reference to Oslo is erroneously anachronistic -- the capital of Norway will not be renamed from "Christiana" to "Oslo" until the early twentieth century.