James Bond, also known by his codename 007, is a fictional British Secret Service agent created by Ian Fleming and featured in numerous novels and short stories starting in 1953 with Casino Royale, and adapted into film starting in 1962 with Dr. No. Since then, the character has become one of the most iconic characters in all of cinema, starring in twenty-five official films of his series as of 2020 and played by several different actors over the years, starting with Sean Connery and most recently Daniel Craig.

The Bond series is one of the most prominent franchises in all of popular culture, and has defined numerous staples of the spy fiction genre and beyond, as well as inspired a great many other famous films and characters, including dedicated parodies and homages.

Franchise staples

Most of the Bond books and movies tell standalone stories chronicling unrelated missions undertaken by the titular character, who possesses a "licence to kill" and various fanciful vehicles, weapons and gadgets which are provided by Secret Service employee Q (for Quartermaster). Other recurring characters include M, the overall leader of the Secret Service (most notably played within the films by Judi Dench), Moneypenny, M's secretary, and Felix Leiter, a CIA agent and friend of James Bond.

The various installments of the series usually feature main antagonists in the form of financially and socially powerful megalomaniacs and terrorists with ambitions of world domination, most notably Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who is one of the very few recurring villains of the franchise. They are often supported by henchmen with colorful gimmicks or other unusual features, a famous example being Oddjob from Goldfinger, who attacked by throwing his razor-brimmed bowler hat at enemies.
Nearly every installment features at least one prominent female with whom Bond interacts sexually; some of the most famous are Honey Ryder (from Dr. No, the first film), Pussy Galore (the blatant double entendre of whose name has inspired a stereotype frequently used in spoofs) and Tracy Draco-Bond, the only woman to actually marry Bond, only to be killed soon after by the above-mentioned Blofeld.

Nearly every film of the series features an original song, usually sharing the name of the movie itself, that plays during the opening credits sequence, and have been performed by numerous legendary artists including Tina Turner for GoldenEye, Paul McCartney for Live and Let Die and Adele Adkins for Skyfall. The introductory segments of each movie furthermore usually consist of pre-credits action sequences that are often unconnected to the main plot, and a recurring iconic shot of Bond walking in front of and shooting an attempted assassin, shown from the first-person perspective of the gunman's barrel.

All of these recurring features and character archetypes of the Bond series have gone on to become staples not just of media overtly paying homage to the franchise, but throughout popular fiction in general.

Related memes and media

Casino Royale Poker Game Parodies

Casino Royale Poker Game Parodies refers to a series of image edits derived from a scene in 2006's Casino Royale where villain Le Chiffre plays poker against James Bond and declares that he has won the game. The edits replace poker with other tabletop games such as Monopoly and Dungeons & Dragons, and are usually accompanied by alterations of quotes from the original scene that adhere to the mechanisms of the games depicted.

Future casting idea controversy and hoaxes

Since Daniel Craig's adoption of the role in the aforementioned Casino Royale, speculations and ideas about who could eventually succeed him as the next James Bond have been common, often proposing people from categories that contrast with the character's iconic image as a white British male, such as the black Idris Elba and, in the most infamous specific hoax that claimed the casting was actually going to happen, the black and female Lashana Lynch. The proposals to radically alter the character's identity are often justified by invoking the long-standing fan theory that "James Bond", like "007", is just another codename that has been used by multiple people, and noting the discrepancies between the appearances of actual actors who have played him, despite none of these differences being so drastic as making Bond black, let alone female.

GoldenEye video game

GoldenEye is a 1997 video game within the Bond franchise, based on the film of the same name from two years prior and developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64. It is often considered superior to the film it's based on and one of the best movie tie-in games ever made, as well as an important step in the evolution of the first-person shooter genre. Some notably discussed features of the game include the iconic appearance of the titular device from The Man with the Golden Gun as a one-hit kill weapon, and the multiplayer presence of Oddjob from Goldfinger, who is infamous within the game due to being physically smaller than all the other playable characters and therefore very difficult to hit, giving him an unfair advantage

Austin Powers

Austin Powers is a trilogy of spoof movies released between 1997 and 2002 and starring Mike Myers as both the titular character, a spy who embodies outrageous stereotypes relating to British people and 1960s culture, and his nemesis Dr. Evil, a direct parody of Ernst Stavro Blofeld who has in some regards become more iconic in current popular culture than his counterpart. Being among the most iconic spoof and general comedy films in cinema and having a legacy all their own, many scenes and lines from the trilogy have become memes in their own right, including "How about no?", "I too like to live dangerously" and Dr. Evil's air quotes.

Search insights