History YMMV / GoldFinger

* CrazyAwesome: Painting people gold, smuggling gold even though he could acquire it legally, planning to bifurcate Bond with a LASER, building a scale model map used ONCE for a short briefing, detonating a particularly dirty bomb in Fort Knox. Goldfinger's absolute obsessive mania for gold drives him to extreme action, and by accumulating it enables him in even more. Crazy begets awesome begets crazy...

* IronyAsSheIsCast: Fashion model Tania Mallet, who played Tilly Masterson, was never interested in acting and did almost no acting afterwards since; [[Creator/HelenMirren her cousin]], however...

** The one-on-one fight against Oddjob, which became the template for more final mano-a-mano battles of Bond against TheDragon, usually after TheBigBad is dead or escaping.

** Caracas, UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} is mentioned as one of the banking havens that Goldfinger keeps his personal gold stock. With the total meltdown of Venezuela's economy from 2013 onward, if Goldfinger were still alive and kept a gold hoard deposited in Caracas, he would have lost it all to government corruption and plundering.

** Goldfinger jokes that Oddjob is not a very good caddy because "Golf is not yet the national sport of Korea". From 2008 onwards, the top ranks of the LPGA have been heavily dominated by South Korean players.

and Bond have their moments.

** Auric's opinion on Koreans: "The cruelest people in the world." Actually downplayed from the novel, where it is made clear Bond ''agrees'' with him and thinks Goldfinger is absolutely right, making a point of calling Oddjob an "ape" repeatedly and thinking that Koreans are lower than apes for some reason. The film at least allows you to rationalize it as Auric's racism alone.

'''Instead''': Tilly rushes off to Switzerland with an [=AR7=] a .22 caliber rifle with pitiful stopping power and range, and is such a horrible shot that she [[EpicFail nearly shoots James Bond, a man standing several hundred feet away and up from her target, causing him to think that she was targeting him instead]].\\

** In the final scene, Goldfinger holds Bond at gunpoint with a [[Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun golden gun]]. Aside from being appropriate, this may have been an intentional nod to the recently deceased Ian Fleming's final novel, which at this point had not yet been published.

** Hoo boy, Bond's quip about something being "as bad as listening to Music/TheBeatles without earmuffs" ended up unintentionally getting a lot of mileage.[[note]]It should be noted that at the time ''Goldfinger'' was being written and shot, the Beatles were a boy band who did mostly covers. It was only two months before the film's release that ''Music/AHardDaysNight'' -- the first album of all-original material -- was released, and good as it was, it still didn't predict ''Music/RubberSoul'' or ''Music/{{Revolver}}'', much less ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'', ''Music/AbbeyRoad'' or ''Music/LetItBe''. At the time of ''Goldfinger'', making fun of the Beatles was the 1964 equivalent of making fun of Music/JustinBieber would be today (which perhaps itself has an ironic lesson in it). And of course, one has to figure that even in the "swingin' 60s" the Beatles represented philosophies and ideologies that were or would be very much at odds with the ideology of Bond. The Beatles crowd wasn't Bond's target audience in 1964. In the end, though, WordOfGod is that he isn't referring to their music, but rather the ''incredibly'' loud legions of screaming fans at the concerts.[[/note]]

* GrowingTheBeard: While ''Film/DrNo'' and ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'' are still well thought of, it was ''Goldfinger'' that was the first Bond to be a huge hit at the box office (to the point that some theaters were holding showings ''24 hours a day'' to meet demand), establish most of the tropes common to the series and show how flat out awesome Bond could be.

* FranchiseOriginalSin: The Bond franchise tends to go in waves of being more outlandish vs more realistic. This film cemented the more boisterous elements with epic action sequences, death traps, villainous masterminds and their creative defeats. This made the series more iconic and would go even bigger with lauded films like ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', but would reach full absurdism in films like ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'' and ''Film/DieAnotherDay''. This also made the series more ripe for parody, the Creator/DanielCraig era specifically tried to avoid comparisons with the ''Film/AustinPowers'' films.

*** Guess [[Music/PaulMcCartney who]] recorded the theme to ''Film/LiveAndLetDie'' ([[WhatCouldHaveBeen and was approached to do the theme for]] ''Film/DiamondsAreForever'', Connery's last official film as Bond)?
*** And guess who would later [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NUpOovSItA do a spoken word cover]] of "In My Life"?
*** Also, Music/RingoStarr married a Bond girl (Barbara Bach from ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'').
*** Funny enough, the ''Goldfinger'' soundtrack album outsold the Beatles.
*** Both ''Goldfinger'' and the Beatles film ''Film/AHardDaysNight'' even shared a couple of cast members. Richard Vernon, who played Colonel Smithers here, also played in ''A Hard Day's Night'' the man on the train that shuts the band's radio off (one could guess he wasn't a fan, either); and Creator/MargaretNolan, who played Bond's masseuse Dink at the beginning of this film, also appeared in ''A Hard Day's Night'' as the {{Gambler Groupie|s}} that accompanies Paul [=McCartney's=] grandfather at a casino. (And who, when she leans over his shoulder and [[BuxomIsBetter shows off her cleavage]], leads him to quip, "I bet you're a great swimmer.")

** The film's most famous scene is undoubtedly the scene where Bond almost gets an over the top death by GroinAttack when Goldfinger points a death ray at his crotch, and reportedly Creator/SeanConnery was genuinely freaked out when the blow torch underneath the table creating the melting effect came too close to his privates. A little less than a decade later, Sean Connery would finally suffer a real (though not fatal) GroinAttack in ''Film/DiamondsAreForever'', the first film to feature Bond getting hit in the nuts (but not the last).
** [[Film/ANewHope A character called Solo ends up inside a compactor]]. Also, around the time of this film's release, Bond found himself [[Series/TheManFromUNCLE with a major TV competitor]] by this name (though Fleming was the one who actually named the TV character).
** In the golf scene, Goldfinger says that golf "is hardly Korea's national sport." By the 2010s, the women's game was dominated by Korean players.
** Isn't it funny how similar the positioning system in the Aston Martin is to modern-day GPS?

* {{Narm}}: The fight between Bond and Oddjob in Fort Knox. We all know it's supposed to be really scary that Bond, big rugged ''manly'' Bond (played by big, rugged ''manly'' Creator/SeanConnery), is being tossed around like a rag doll, but it's too obviously staged and comes across as being hopelessly phony.

*** Both ''Goldfinger'' and the Beatles film ''Film/AHardDaysNight'' even shared a couple of cast members. Richard Vernon, who played Colonel Smithers here, also played in ''A Hard Day's Night'' the man on the train that shuts the band's radio off (one could guess he wasn't a fan, either); and Margaret Nolan, who played Bond's masseuse Dink at the beginning of this film, also appeared in ''A Hard Day's Night'' as the {{Gambler Groupie|s}} that accompanies Paul [=McCartney's=] grandfather at a casino. (And who, when she leans over his shoulder and [[BuxomIsBetter shows off her cleavage]], leads him to quip, "I bet you're a great swimmer.")

*** It's also somewhat nullified by the fact that, according to the book, she's not ACTUALLY a lesbian, she was just molested by a male relative when she was a child and never got over it until meeting Bond, meaning that while it may be considered homophobic to not include Pussy's lesbianism in the film, it wasn't exactly a good representation of lesbianism in the first place, since it was 'cured' by sex with a man

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: Being a lesbian is bad, as the tragic fate of Tilly Masterton demonstrates. And to make sure the reader gets the point, there is also a CharacterFilibuster by Bond, musing on how our decadent society produces damaged and unhappy people like her through its permissiveness and political correctness:
-->Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality'. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits -- barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. [[CondescendingCompassion He was sorry for them, but had no time for them.]]

*** It's also somewhat nullified by the fact that, according to the book, she's not ACTUALLY a lesbian, she was just molested by a male relative when she was a child and never got over it until meeting Bond, meaning that while it may be considered homophobic to not include Pussy's lesbianism in the film, it wasn't exactly a good representation of lesbianism in the first place, since it was 'cured' by sex wtih a man

** While some of the film's treatment of women is not politically correct according to the generally prevailing standards of today, it does present women such as Pussy Galore as competent and in a generally positive way. This is especially noticeable when compared to the novel it adapts (written only a few years earlier), which not only seems to [[AcceptableFeminineGoalsAndTraits assume]] that an ActionGirl must be a psychologically damaged lesbian, but also includes an extended FamilyUnfriendlyAesop against homosexuality and women's suffrage.

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: Being a lesbian is bad, as the tragic fate of Tilly Masterton demonstrates. And to make sure the reader gets the point, there is also a CharacterFilibuster by Bond, musing on how our decadent society produces damaged and unhappy people like her through its permissiveness and political correctness:
-->Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality'. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits -- barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. [[CondescendingCompassion He was sorry for them, but had no time for them.]]

* WTHCastingAgency: Some fans and critics had this reaction to Cec Linder in the role of Felix Leiter, whom some found to be too old to play Bond's best friend, with one critic describing him as looking "more like Sean Connery's uncle than his best friend". A somewhat downplayed case, however, thanks to Linder's admirable performance as Felix.