Film / No Time to Die

As the Grand Finale to the James Bond films starring Daniel Craig, spoilers for all preceding entries, including Spectre will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

♫ I should have known...
I'd leave alone... ♫

"As long as we're looking over our shoulder, the past is not dead."

— Madeleine Swann

The one where Craig gets replaced as 007.

No Time to Die is the twenty-fifth film in the James Bond series by Eon Productions, the sequel to Spectre and the fifth and final outing for Daniel Craig as Bond, directed by Cary Fukunaga and released in 2021. Franchise veteran screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade returned for the script, with the additions of Fukunaga, Scott Z. Burns and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

After he had Spectre's leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld arrested, James Bond left active service, and a new agent 007, Nomi, replaced him. Just as he was trying to build a happy new life with his newfound love Madeleine Swann, Spectre agents attacked them in Italy and they ended up separated. Five years later, Bond's CIA friend Felix Leiter enlists his help in the search for a missing Russian scientist. When it becomes apparent that the scientist was working on a deadly bio-technological weapon that has been stolen by Spectre then hijacked by another criminal group (and, worse, that said weapon was developed under the supervision of the chief of MI6, M himself), Bond must confront a threat the likes of which the world has never seen before, and it has connections to Madeleine's own past.

Léa Seydoux returns as Madeleine Swann and Christoph Waltz returns as Blofeld (both from Spectre), Jeffrey Wright returns as Felix Leiter (last seen in 2008's Quantum of Solace). Newcomers include Rami Malek as Lyutsifer Safin, Lashana Lynch as Nomi, Ana de Armas as Paloma, David Dencik as Dr. Obruchev, Billy Magnussen as Logan Ash and Dali Benssalah as Primo/Cyclops. Returning regulars include Ralph Fiennes as M, Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as Q, and Rory Kinnear as Bill Tanner. Hans Zimmer, Steve Marazzo and Johnny Marr composed the score, and Billie Eilish wrote (with her brother Finneas O'Connell) and performed the Title Theme Tune.

The film was released worldwide between September 29 and October 8, 2021 ^note The film was originally slated for a November 2019 release but was pushed back for years due to both production delays and the COVID-19 Pandemic. then was released on PVOD one month after its US release. Unlike the prior Daniel Craig entries in the series, which were co-produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures, No Time to Die was solely produced by Eon and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and was released by United Artists (North America) and Universal (international).

Previews: BehindThe Scenes, Trailer 1 (preview,) Super Bowl TV spot, the Oscars TV spot, NBA All-Star Game TV spot, the theme song, US TV spot, Trailer 2, International Trailer, "Meet Safin," Billie Eilish's Music Video, Final International Trailer, and the Final US Trailer.

Not to be confused with the 1954 World War II novel by Ronald Kemp, and its 1958 film adaptation starring Victor Mature^note Interestingly, that film shares some connection to the James Bond franchise through three key crew members: director Terence Young (director of Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Thunderball), writer Richard Maibaum (recurring writer until Licence to Kill), and Albert R. Broccoli (the producer who co-started the Bond film franchise and the father of current Bond producer Barbara Broccoli — he was working with Irving Allen under Warwick Films at the time).

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No Time to Trope:

A - F

• The '90s: The opening scene where Safin murders Madeleine's mother is set sometime during this decade. Young Madeleine is shown playing with a Tamagotchi, and a TV in her house is playing a scene from Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.
• Accidental Murder: Blofeld's death, twice over; Madeleine is coerced by Safin to kill Blofeld with Heracles nanobots, but she can't bring herself to do it. Bond, however, unknowingly got the irremovable nanobots on himself, and infects Blofeld with them after attacking him in a moment of rage. Neither Bond nor Madeleine intended to kill Blofeld with them, but they both end up causing his death.
• Acid Pool: The Heracles "farm" at Safin's base doubles as an unintentional one, hence why the workers wear hazmat suits. Nomi finds out about said farm's acidic properties when the body of a guard falls in it and ends up throwing Obruchev in it after he suggests genocidal applications for Heracles, such as on people (like her) of West African descent.
• Action Dad: Turns out Bond fathered a child with Madeleine, and does everything he can to protect them from Safin.
• Action Girl: The two female agents - Nomi and Paloma - are very skilled with firearms and hand to hand combat. Madeleine also gets some action scenes, even taking out a primary henchman at one point.
• Action Prologue: The film starts with a flashback to Madeleine Swann's youth in snowy Norway, when a masked Lyutsifer Safin killed her mother and herself barely escaped death at his hands. Cut to present-day, Bond is enjoying his retirement in the Southern Italian city of Matera with Madeleine and goes to visit Vesper Lynd's grave. He is ambushed by SPECTRE (starting with a bomb in the grave) and a chase on bike and in the Aston Martin DB4 ensues (highlights include the DB4 now being fitted with miniguns). It ends with Bond breaking up with Madeleine and sending her off on a train, believing she had something to do with the attack. Clocking in at twenty minutes, it is the longest prologue in the history of the series.
• Actor Allusion: Bond tells Rami Malek's Safin that history is not kind to men who play God. One of the first monologues in Mr. Robot has Elliot Alderson, Rami Malek's character, rant about men playing God. Bonus points for the fact that both this and Mr. Robot have tragic scenes in the climax related to fatherhood and both Bond and Elliot sacrificing themselves to save the world, only difference is that while Elliot survived due to Karmic Jackpot, Bond unfortunately didn't.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: The film incorporates elements of the book and film versions of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and the You Only Live Twice novel, while featuring a high-stakes plot reminiscent of classic films like The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.
• Adaptational Sexuality: One quick line established that like his actor Ben Whishaw's incarnation of Q is gay (or possibly bisexual), when he mentions that he was having date with another man as Bond and Moneypenny drop in on him.
• Advertised Extra: Despite being promoted as part of the main cast, Ana de Armas only appears in one sequence and has around ten minutes of screen time (perhaps Daniel Craig wanted his Knives Out costar on). This was perhaps hinted at by the various trailers which only ever showed Paloma in the same outfit and one action sequence.
• Aesop Amnesia: Averted by Q, who has evidently learned from his mistake back in Skyfall and accesses Valdo Obruchev's flash drive from a virtual sandbox. Played straight by M, who had previously taken firm stances against his predecessor's risky leadership choices and the over-reaching global surveillance that C had proposed in Spectre ... only for him forget all that, and create a highly risky gene-targetting nanovirus behind the government's back in what turns out to be an insecure facility.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: Bond's replacement as agent 007 is a black woman. It also turns out that this Q is either gay or bisexual.
• Age Cut: Young Madeleine is trapped and drowning under ice ... and the adult Madeleine suddenly comes up from the water, indicating that this was a Flashback she was having.
• Agents Dating: Hilariously averted twice:
  • Nomi comes to Bond in Jamaica to warn him that he should stay in his lane, but not before toying with him a bit as if seduction was happening between them. Then, when she takes her wig off and explains the real reason she approached Bond (namely that he should stay off her lane on the Obruchev case).
    Bond: Well, that's not the first thing I thought you'd take off, but, uh...
  • Then, in Cuba, CIA agent Paloma drags Bond in a wine cellar and starts opening his shirt much to his surprise, to which he jokes that they should get to know each other a little more first... only to reveal that she has a tuxedo ready for him for the SPECTRE party. Nothing romantic happens between them otherwise.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Craig's Bond is the only one in the franchise to fall to his knees and tearfully beg for the villain's forgiveness, so he can keep Mathilde, his little girl, from being harmed by Safin... though it is also subverted by the fact that Bond then pulls out a concealed gun, showing that the entire manoeuvre was most likely not genuine and just a distraction. Even then, it shows how a parent would react when their child is being threatened by a madman.
• Alas, Poor Villain: While you can't say at that point that Safin didn't have it coming, that he was so clearly effected deeply by the immense loss of his loved ones and even showed regret about infecting Bond with the nanobots once their fight was over does grant him a somewhat melancholic send-off as both this Bond era's final nemesis and a very strong Worthy Opponent.
• The Alcatraz: Blofeld is imprisoned in the Real Life high security prison of Belmarsh, Thamesmead, South East London.
• Alcoholic Parent: Madeleine's mother is shown to be one in the flashback to her childhood.
• All There in the Manual: Safin's family who were a powerful pharmaceutical manufacturer from Kazan, Russia actually owned the Kuril Island facility that is Safin's base of operations. His father was the one who used it as his lab and planted the garden of death as a display to impress his clients. After Safin's family was killed, the facility fell into disrepair, only being rebuilt and made operational once more by the events of the movie.
• Anachronism Stew: Safin uses a CSA Sa vz. 58 Compact in Norway in the Distant Prologue, which takes place in The '90s. That assault rifle was introduced in 2007.
• And This Is for...:
  Bond: I had a brother. His name was Felix Leiter.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Bond to Madeleine after he finds her in Norway, telling her that he doesn't regret a moment that they spent together and does regret leaving her. They exchange even MORE anguished "I love yous" during their final phone call.
• Answer Cut:
  • Right after the theft of the Heracles weapon, M asks where "007" is. Then we cut into Bond in a sailboat. However, this instance turns out to be a play on the trope: M was referring to the new 007, Nomi, though it turns out she's not too far from Bond anyway.
  • Later on, this is played straight. When Q reveals that there's only one person that the imprisoned Blofeld would speak to, Bond asks him who they are. Cue a cut to Madeleine.
• Anyone Can Die: Three high profile characters that were untouchable (or at least difficult to kill) in previous Bond movies are seen off in this one: Felix Leiter, Blofeld, and — if those weren't shocking enough — Bond himself.
• Arc Words: "All the time in the world" and variations thereof.
• Artistic Licence:
  • The Type 45 Destroyer HMS Dragon isn't actually equipped with Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles in real life, but is capable of being armed with them once extensive modifications are made.
  • In the beginning at Vesper's grave, a bomb explodes with Bond only two feet away from it. He gets a scalp cut and temporary deafness, which fades in 30 seconds. This is not how bombs work. At all. Even assuming Blofeld had it rigged to be less-lethal, somehow, which itself should be impossible.
  • In the climax, a grenade explodes literally inches away from Bond in the stairwell. It knocks him back into a wall instead of killing him instantly because that's how grenades work. Good thing he was wearing his Plot Armour.
• As Long as There Is One Man: Bond responds to Safin's assertion of his redundancy with one of these:
  Safin: I want the world to evolve, yet you want it to stay the same. Let's face it — I've made you redundant.
  Bond: No. Not as long as there are people like you in the world.
• Asshole Victim: By the end of the movie, all of SPECTRE is dead. Considering that they were a network of some of the worst criminals in the world, nobody's shedding any tears.
• As You Know: During the final battle, Bond and Q have a long conversation about how the former has to open the silo doors for the missile strike. There's no way Bond wouldn't already know this, so this is clearly for the audience's benefit. And so that viewers understand why Bond has to turn back when Safin closes them again.
• Award-Bait Song: The Title Theme Tune, which has followed in its predecessors footsteps, winning the Grammy, Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, and Oscar for "Best Song".
• Babies Ever After: The movie ends with Madeleine and Mathilde, hers and Bond's daughter, driving along an Italian highway.
• Back for the Dead:
  • Felix Leiter, not seen since Quantum of Solace, reunites with Bond in this film. He is killed in his second scene.
  • After being the main villain in the previous movie, Blofeld only appears in person in one scene halfway through, and he's killed with very little fanfare. As is the whole of SPECTRE, in fact.
  • Speaking of SPECTRE, operative Vogel (Brigitte Millar) also returns, and dies during the "birthday party" in Cuba.
  • Bond himself, in-universe, who gets enticed into coming out of retirement and rejoining MI-6.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: It's Lyutsifer Safin who rids the world of SPECTRE by sabotaging a party of them that was intended to be for Bond's death, turning the nanomachines-based virus they stole against themselves.
• Badass Adorable: CIA agent Paloma has a kind, friendly, sweet-natured disposition, as well as a cute-and-cuddly appearance more befitting a fresh out of highschool Girl Next Door, and yet, when all chips are down, she is hands-down the deadliest lady in the film series since Wai Lin of Tomorrow Never Dies.
• Badass Longcoat: Bond wears a Massimo Alba Duster coat during the chase in Norway, and demolishes the entire pursuing enemy force bar Safin in the helicopter.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • During the Cold Open, young Madeleine is trapped under the surface of a frozen lake while escaping from Safin. The assassin, standing over her, unloads his firearm into the ice, seemingly shooting her dead. He's actually making a hole in the ice to free her.
  • As an adult, Safin threatens to kill the one Madeleine loves if she doesn't kill Blofeld for him. It looks as if he means Bond, but he's actually referring to her daughter.
• Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: Safin stalks Madeleine through her house while she cowers under her bed. Her toy chimes, alerting him to her location. He raises his gun. . . and she jumps up and fires first, revealing that she actually set him up so that she could shoot him.
  • Bond is carrying Mathilde to safety when he's confronted by a gunman. He turns to protect her as a shot rings out. ..fired by Madeleine, who has snuck up behind the guy.
• Batman Gambit: SPECTRE plants a bomb at Vesper's grave and has assassins ready to ambush Bond when he visits it. Although Bond assumes that Madeleine arranged this, since she was the one who encouraged him to go there, the truth is much simpler: Blofeld knew that Bond would eventually visit the grave of The Lost Lenore for one reason or another, all he had to do was set his trap and wait.
• Beautiful Dreamer: In one of the trailers, Bond stands in a doorway and watches Madeleine as she sleeps.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Rather than lying there on the floor bleeding to death from the multiple gunshots Safin has inflicted, Bond summons the strength to climb to the roof of the facility and take the missile strike head on. (It’s also a conscious decision to stay behind and die in the blast rather than dying because he failed to escape in time.
• Big Bad Ensemble: SPECTRE are the bad guys for the first act of the movie, as they attack Bond in the Cold Open and later steals the MacGuffin that kicks off the main plot. Safin, though, is the actual Big Bad of the movie and sees SPECTRE as his enemies, sabotaging their plans for his own sinister scheme.
• Big Damn Kiss: Bond and Madeleine when they reunite, for all of two seconds before they're interrupted by Mathilde. They get a more typical one before he sends them to safety, which sadly ends up being One Last Kiss.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Bond and Madeleine happily whisper "Je t'aime" (French for "I love you") to each other as they fall into bed.
  • The clues of Safin's past that are written in Russian indicate his family was from Kazan.
• Birthday Party Goes Wrong: Bond finds out the SPECTRE meeting in Cuba is a birthday party for Blofeld, who runs the organisation from his high security prison cell in Belmarsh via his electronic eye. What Blofeld didn't expect though is that Bond wouldn't die but instead the whole board of SPECTRE would, due to Dr. Obruchev reprogramming the Heracles bio-technological weapon to kill them instead of Bond on Safin's orders.
• Bittersweet Ending: SPECTRE is destroyed for good, and a worse threat is obliterated before it can kill untold millions of people — but at a great cost. Before dying, Safin manages to shoot Bond in the back multiple times and then inject Bond with nanobots programmed to kill Madeleine and Mathilde in the final battle. With no way to remove them, Bond completes the mission by opening the island's silo doors to ensure the complete destruction of any nanobots there — including those in his system — and says one last goodbye to Madeleine before dying in the missile strike. Though Bond dies, he dies knowing that he saved the people he cares about, his friends, the woman he loves, and his child, from going down the same fate as Vesper did. And his memory lives on through his friends (Q, Mallory, Moneypenny, Tanner, and Nomi) and family (Madeleine and Mathilde). Particularly in the latter's case, as Madeleine promises to tell her daughter the story of her father.
• Black Dude Dies First: Felix Leiter, though Bond eventually follows suit.
• Blatant Lies: Madeleine tells Bond "She's [Mathilde's] not yours." But given that she clearly IS, this is meant to be taken symbolically, not literally.
• Board to Death: Bond is lured at a SPECTRE party in Cuba, which was organized for Blofeld's birthday from Blofeld's own high security prison cell in the UK. Bond gets spotted and showered with a gas...that ends up killing all the present SPECTRE agents around him instead of him. It turns out the bio-technological weapon Heracles that was used here was reprogrammed by the other villains of the film to destroy SPECTRE instead of Bond, to Blofeld's total surprise.
• Bond One-Liner: The film only includes one true example, a post-mortem comment to Q after Bond kills Cyclops by using an EMP gadget to make his electronic eye explode:
  Bond: [to Q] I showed someone your watch. It blew his mind.
• Book Ends:
  • Casino Royale's gunbarrel moves away from the screen, but this film inverts it by having it slowly move towards the opening scene.
  • During the cold opener, Safin gets shot multiple times by a Beretta 92FS fired by Madeline. At the end of the movie, 007 executes Safin with the man's own Beretta M9A3, the updated, current generation version of the 92FS.
  • At the end of the first act of the movie, Felix Leiter dies when Logan Ash guns him down with a Beretta M9A3 leading to his death by blood loss. At the end of the movie, Safin ensures Bond's death is all but certain by shooting him with another M9A3.
  • The film begins with Bond and Madeleine driving along a highway to Matera. At one point, there's a shot of the car from behind as it exits a tunnel. It ends with Madeleine driving their daughter, Mathilde, along the same highway, and the final shot of the film is of the car from the FRONT as it ENTERS the same tunnel. What's more, versions of "We Have All The Time In The World" accompany both scenes.
  • In Bond's first and last fight with Primo, he gets the SPECTRE assassin in a chokehold to disable him, also finishing the fight with a move that target's Primo's bionic eye.
  • James Bond and Felix Leiter's personal and professional relationship comes full circle. They first met in Casino Royale when Leiter helped Bond in his mission against Le Chiffre. In this film, it is Bond who helps Leiter in the latter's mission to recover Obruchev.
    • Speaking of Felix, Bond and Paloma drink a toast to him before he dies, ironically. At the end of the movie, the MI-6 gang drinks a toast to the now equally deceased Bond.
  • Casino Royale began with Bond earning his status as 007. After years of retirement, he is redesignated as 007 in this film just before his final mission.
  • The Craig era began with Bond violently struggling with an opponent before shooting him dead. That is more or less what he does to Safin at the end of this film.
  • Additionally, the Craig era begins and ends with the death of a father, who suddenly lose their lives without their wife and daughter by their side. In Casino Royale, Bond did this to Dryden, a corrupt MI6 section chief. But for this movie, it happens to Bond at the end.
    • Similarly, the movie starts with Safin depriving Madeleine of her mother, and ends with him depriving her daughter of her father.
  • The first and last films of the Craig era end with almost the same phrase:
    Casino Royale: The name's Bond. James Bond.
    No Time To Die: His name was Bond. James Bond.
  • At the beginning of the movie, Bond visits Vesper's grave and declares "I miss you". By the end, they could be considered Together in Death.
  • In the title sequence of Dr. No, the only graphics shown were dancing, flashing balls. This film's opening sequence starts the same way. As well, Bond and Leiter meet for the first time in Dr. No, but for the LAST time in this movie.
  • At the beginning of the movie, Madeline teases Bond about "looking over your shoulder", regarding his paranoia about people stalking them (which turns out to be completely justified). By the film's end, she tearfully declares "There's no one left to hurt us!", as Bond has finally eliminated all their enemies, meaning that they can live in peace. And despite Bond himself being killed, she and Mathilde can do just that.
• Bond Villain Stupidity:
  • Safin averts this trope by acting like a pragmatic, logical & underhanded villain, unburdened by ego or theatrics, the No-Nonsense Nemesis accomplished what no other villain across 25 films and nearly 60 years could do; successfully slay James Bond.
  • Played straight with Spectre: Blofeld lures Bond to the Spectre gathering in Cuba, where he's easily outnumbered and caught off guard. But instead of doing something simple like having him surrounded and shot or poisoning his Martini, Blofeld goes the dramatic route and exposes the room to the Heracles nanobots, intending for them to only infect and kill Bond. Safin ends up hijacking this plan and killing off SPECTRE's leaders... although the fact that he doesn't also have Obruchev code the nanobots to target Bond is an oversight that could qualify for this trope.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • During the Norway chase, Bond finds himself at a severe disadvantage trying to use a 1990s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado to flee from Safin's goons who are driving substantially more modern and more powerful top of the line Range Rovers and Land Rovers. However, the Land Cruiser makes up for its lack of power by proving to be extremely capable on rough, muddy terrain, and tough enough to bash some of its pursuers fatally off the road. Not only that, Bond's Aston Martin only seats two. There would have been no room for Mathilde. They really didn't have any choice but to take Madeline's car.
  • In the climax, the Walther PPK. While it's not as modern or as powerful as the assault rifle and SIG Sauer Bond arms itself with, its small size and low recoil means that 007 is able to conceal it without Safin or his guards noticing, ready it and quickly shoot dead the guards before they can even open fire on him with their AKs.
• Bottomless Magazines: Mostly averted; during the lengthy gunfights all of the agents frequently drop empty weapons and scoop up full ones, mainly from freshly downed mooks.
• Breaking Old Trends: This is the first Bond movie to start with a Flashback, the first where the gunbarrel doesn't have blood dripping down the screen after Bond fires his gun, and the first to have the previous Bond Girl return. More tragically, it's also the first time in a non-parody work to kill off James Bond.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Daniel Craig looks skyward—and directly into the camera as Bond speaks his last words—"I KNOW"— essentially telling the viewers that he knows he's Mathilde's father.
• Break-In Threat: Bond returns from a fishing trip and finds evidence that someone's been in his house. Unusually for this trope, this person is an ally—his old friend Felix Leiter has tracked him down.
• Bullying a Dragon: Being the racist douchebag that he is, Obruchev threatens to kill Nomi's entire ethnic group right in her face, in a desperate attempt to make her release him. What does she do? She kicks him into a vat of toxic liquid, which kills him in seconds.
• By-the-Book Cop:
  • Nomi comes across as one, especially in comparison to Bond. She never questions M's orders or doubts his motives, and even seeks approval from him before executing her mission to capture or kill Logan Ash.
    M: Your predecessor was far less deferential.
• Call-Back: Right before avenging Felix's death, Bond says "I had a brother, his name was Felix Leiter." This is an echo of when Felix introduced himself to Bond in Casino Royale with "Should've introduced myself, seeing as how we're related. Felix Leiter, a brother from Langley..
• Calling Card: Madeleine Swann brings Bond to Matera specifically because Vesper Lynd is buried there, so he can forgive her and turn the page on her death once and for all. That's the moment SPECTRE chooses to ambush him, by first setting up a bomb in Vesper's grave, which explodes when Bond finds a SPECTRE Calling Card among the grave's flowers.
• Casting Gag: Valdo Obruchev is dubbed in Japanese by Yohei Tadano, who also played Heinz Doofenschmirtz and Rick Sanchez, two other mad scientists.
• The Cameo: One of Obruchev's colleagues is played by British comedian Hugh Dennis.
• Car Fu: Bond runs several of the cars chasing him, Madeleine, and Mathilde off the road, then lures the others into a fatal crash, and caps it off by dropping one on Logan Ash.
• Catch and Return: Bond does this with a grenade - sort of - more a case of Grenade Hot Potato (see below)
• Celibate Hero: The only woman we see Bond bed in the entire film is Madeleine (granted, he could have been sleeping around offscreen in Jamaica). Nomi rebuffs him (and probably wasn't interested in sleeping with him in the first place) and he actually asks Paloma to turn away as he's getting dressed for the party, rather than seizing the opportunity to show off his body and/or seduce her.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • As a child Madeleine sees the Beretta her father has stashed in the kitchen, and uses it to defend herself shortly after when Safir attacks.
  • Bond is shown brushing his teeth under an open air fountain at his house. The toothbrush is later used to get a sample of Bond's DNA when SPECTRE tries to kill him with Heracules in Cuba.
  • Q gives Bond an EMP device disguised as a watch to help him knock out the security systems on Safin's island during their infiltration. During Bond's final fistfight with Cyclops, the EMP device activates, frying Cyclops' Electronic Eye and causing it to explode inside his head. Notably, Bond didn't plan for that to happen, it was an honest accident that resulted from their close-range scuffle, but he certainly doesn't let the opportunity for a Bond One-Liner pass him by
• Child of Two Worlds: Matilde, the daughter of Madeline Swann, herself the daughter of Quantum and SPECTRE agent Mr. White, and James Bond, English MI6 agent and Mr. White's archenemy.
• Children Are Innocent: Mathilde is relatively unaffected by the chaos going on around her.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Madeleine is in a white dress during the Matera chase sequence, telling us that she hasn't betrayed Bond, in black when they meet again in London, representing their now estranged relationship, and back to white when he finds her in Norway.
• Combat Pragmatist: Paloma lives by this trope in spades. During the chaos of the Cuba scene, she speedily kills as many of the Spectre security men she can with speed, overwhelming firepower via Guns Akimbo, a surprise attack where she bludgeons several of the bodyguards with her empty submachine gun, and finally a jump kick where she deliberately incapacitates the surviving hostiles before snatching up one of their pistols and shooting them dead with rapid head shots.
  • Bond grovels before Safin but uses the opportunity to sneakily ready his compact Walther PPK which allows him to speedily gun down the henchmen covering him with their assault rifles.
• Complexity Addiction:
  • Spectre's/Blofeld's plan. Steal an experimental nanomachine weapon, lure Bond to a grand party at a club in Santiago de Cuba, surround him, spray Bond with the weapon designed to kill him, and then sit back and watch while broadcasting it all to Blofeld via bionic eye. It gets hijacked by Obruchev and Safin, who reverse the target so that it instead kills the SPECTRE agents that have Bond surrounded, leaving Bond alive.
  • Safin's plan, in contrast, is a much much simpler one, albeit kept vague. He wants to subjugate the world with the same nanomachines, but how and why are never really explored.
• Composite Character: This film makes Madeleine one of Tracy, Bond's Second Love and Kissy Suzuki, the mother of his child.
• Concussion Frags: A grenade explodes about two feet from Bond, but fortunately the Russians cheaped out on their bombs because it just lightly swats him against the wall and he's back on his feet in seconds.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: Bond has to go through a huge amount of security precautions to talk to the imprisoned Blofeld. Unlike most examples of this trope Blofeld ends up dying.
• Contamination Situation: Bond is infected with the nanobots that will kill Madeleine and Mathilde, and so he decides to stay on the island.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Casino Royale:
    • Bond is poisoned with digitalis, which is a toxic compound extracted from plants in the genus Digitalis - Foxgloves. In her first meeting with Safin in the present day, attention is bought to the foxgloves in Madeleine's office.
  • Skyfall:
    • Nomi mentions the time Moneypenny shot Bond.
    • The bulldog ornament that Judi Dench's M bequeathed to Bond in is seen stored in the garage where Bond keeps his Aston Martin V8 Vantage.
    • A painting of Judi Dench's M can also be seen in the current M's office at one point. It stands opposite Robert Brown's Admiral Hargreaves M from the original continuity.
    • When Bond presents Q with the swiped USB thumb drive, Q initially looks as though he's going to access it on his main terminal. Then, clearly remembering the dropped drive hack from Skyfall, he instead tests it on his air-gapped laptop first.
    • At the conclusion of Skyfall following the previous M's death, M asks Bond if he's ready to get back to work. At the end of this movie, he gently, but firmly declares "Back to work" following the crew's toast to the deceased Bond.
  • Spectre:
    • Q's "Smart Blood" makes a return.
    • As does Dr. Vogel, glimpsed briefly at the meeting Bond infiltrated, now at the party in Cuba.
    • Q was reluctant to help Bond off the books because he had "a mortgage and two cats to feed." When Bond and Moneypenny arrive at Q's house in this film, we get to meet said cats.
    • More subtly, we once again venture outside of MI6 and into the home of a staff member. And just like we only got vague glimpses of M's husband and Moneypenny's boyfriend, we never see Q's date either.
    • The Distant Prologue depicts an event that Madeleine described as the reason she dislikes guns, with some additional details about the identity of the shooter.
• Conveniently Empty Roads: Justified. The car chase doesn't stay on the road long, but when it does, it's a remote country road that wouldn't see much traffic.
• Cool Boat: The two-seater glider that can fold into a mini-submarine. The film also has the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon.
• Cool Car:
  • In addition to the Aston Martin DB5, the Aston Martin V8 from The Living Daylights makes a re-appearance.
  • Nomi drives an Aston Martin DBS Superleggera — a more advanced version of the same model that Bond drove in Casino Royale.
  • In the opening pre credits sequence, part of the SPECTRE hit team use two souped up Jaguar XFR V8 sedans to pursue Bond's Aston Martin.
  • In Norway, Safin's men utilize the powerful Range Rover SVR off roaders and the new second generation Land Rover Defender SUVs to hunt down Bond and Madeline who attempt to flee from them in a substantially less powerful Toyota Land Cruiser.
• Cool Plane: In the final act, Nomi pilots a hi-tech folding glider (with Bond in the rear seat) that retracts its wings to convert into a submersible vehicle. This allows the MI6 agents to access Safin's island base through an old WWII era submarine pen.
• Creator In-Joke: Daniel Craig faced some derision over his blue eyes when he was first cast as Bond. In this, his final film, the first thing he notices about Mathilde are her blue eyes, leading to his confusion when Madeleine tells him "She's not yours". By the film's end, the last words that they exchange are her confirming "She does have your eyes" and him responding "I know".
• Creature of Habit: While in Matera, Madeleine teases Bond about his secret agent tendencies—"You're always looking over your shoulder"—that he can't shake despite having quit. Even five years later, he instantly senses someone's been in his house and immediately draws his gun.
• Crucified Hero Shot: We get something pretty close to this in Bond's final moments as he stands on the roof of the facility, bracing himself for the missile strike.
• Danger — Thin Ice: While fleeing Safin as a child, Madeleine runs across an iced over lake. No surprise she falls through it.
• Darker and Edgier: Easily the darkest Bond film to date, complete with Bond actually dying at the end. The film opens with a child witnessing her mother's murder and nearly being killed herself, Bond and Madeleine get a major Happy Ending Override, there's a plot to wipe out potentially millions of people with a virus that can be altered to target specific people or even entire families, Bond loses yet another person close to him and the climax involves a child in mortal peril, all of which is played very seriously.
• Deader than Dead: When Bond dies in the bombardment of the island, we explicitly see his body get consumed in the explosion, just so we don't picture him somehow surviving certain death like so many times before.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • The film ends with James Bond's death, something that never occurred in the original novels or to any other iteration of the character thus far. Bond was supposed to die in From Russia with Love, but Fleming changed this to him recuperating from being poisoned by Rosa Klebb in Dr. No.
  • While Felix Leiter was maimed in both the book and classic film continuities, this is the first version of him to actually die. Fleming actually wanted to kill off Leiter in Live and Let Die, but relented after being talked out of it by his American publisher.
  • Inverted with Madeleine, who lives despite one of the characters that she's based on—Tracy—dying in the original novel and film based on it.
• Death by Despair: A possible alternate interpretation of Bond's actions at the end. Even if he miraculously survived the multiple gunshot wounds he's received, he's been injected with a virus that will be lethal to his love and to their daughter, meaning he can never see them again. It's very likely that his devastation at realizing this is why he positioned himself to take the missile strike.
• Death by Irony: Blofeld dies because of Safin's nanomachines, which are a symbolic poison, just like Blofeld literally did to Safin's family. Also, at the literal hands of Bond, an assassin who decided not to kill Blofeld, and Madeline, a doctor. Also, because Blofeld tried to taunt Bond into murder.
• Death by Racism: Nomi is trying to keep Obruchev alive as a prisoner while a gunfight is happening over the Heracles farm (which doubles as an Acid Pool), but is sorely tempted to put a bullet in his head because he is a hateful and murderous bastard... then he crosses the line by impotently suggesting to wipe out her entire race, so she kicks him right into that Acid Pool.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: The inability to trust anyone, usually an asset to secret agents, is shown as a Fatal Flaw that disconnects a protagonist from his loved ones and erodes his humanity. Even from behind bars, Blofeld tries to wreck Bond's morale even further and rubs it in his face by sending his thugs to ambush the man while he was visiting Vesper's grave. Though Bond and Madeleine overcome the assassins, Bond thought she had a part in the ambush and leaves her despite her pleas.
• Deconstructed Trope: Plot Armor is very rarely in effect here, as the Heroes are no longer Made of Iron, nor does the Instant Death Bullet exist. Being shot in the torso like Felix Leiter and Bond himself will critically incapacitate even the toughest veterans, leading to an agonizing and undignified demise. Even the villains such as Blofeld and Safin meet unglamorous ends.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Of all the Daniel Craig films, this film is the most brutal demolition of all the beloved James Bond tropes since the days of Sean Connery, leading to many Surprisingly Realistic Outcomes.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Nomi starts off incredibly frosty to Bond, taunting him about being his successor and occasionally gloating to him about her new position. Over the course of the movie, both she and Bond develop a heavy mutual respect for each other, and by the time of the climax, Nomi asks that Bond be reinstated as 007, remarking "It's just a number."
• Desecrating the Dead: SPECTRE putting a bomb in Vesper's grave in Matera to get Bond. The resulting explosion destroys the grave.
• Design Student's Orgasm: The opening credits.
• Determinator: Despite having been shot multiple times by Safin, Bond is still hell bent on escaping and getting back to his family, as evidenced by him asking Q, "How do I get it (Heracles) off?". Not until Q reminds him that it's permanent does he accept his fate.
• Didn't Think This Through: In a world where villains operate deep in the shadows without the need to be physically present, a Criminal Convention is both unnecessary and inadvisable. When all of SPECTRE gathers to watch Bond be killed in a needlessly complicated way, Safin hijacks the method of execution so it instead kills the SPECTRE operatives, wiping out the organization.
• Dissonant Serenity: Every time Safin is on screen, he is completely calm and serene, no matter what is going on around him, with the sole exception being his final grapple with Bond, but he goes right back to his calm and serene self immediately after. This is played up for maximum dread, as he speaks in a low crooning voice as well.
• Distant Prologue: The film begins with a flashback to Madeleine's childhood, when Safin attacked her home and targeted her and her mother to seek vengeance against her father, Mr. White. Then after the Matera sequence and the introduction, the action picks up five years later.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Despite being mortally wounded by Safin, Bond still finds the strength to get to the silo room and open the blast doors to ensure that Heracles will be destroyed, thus completing his mission. He also asks Q how he can get the Heracles off of himself, clearly intending to keep trying to escape and get back to his family despite how badly he's hurt, and not until Q reminds him that it's permanent does he accept his fate. Even then, he still manages to climb to the roof of the facility and stand tall, rather than than lie there on the floor bleeding out.
• Downer Beginning: The prologue starts on a scary note—Safin killing Madeleine's mother and trying to kill her—and ends on a sad one, with Bond and Madeleine separating.
• Double Take: Done thrice with Bond's return to MI6. The first is the guard reacting to James's iconic introduction of himself, then a blink and you'll miss it moment where a woman hands a report to Nomi and reacts to Bond right on saying "7". A third says "00...7?" as they walk by.
• The Dragon: Cyclops is the main SPECTRE operative who Bond encounters several times. He later switches allegiance to Safin.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: Madeleine guns down the mooks after her and her daughter, Mathilde. They only get captured when she runs out of ammo.
• Drowning Pit: On the ship where Bond, Felix Leiter and Logan Ash meet after the Cuba scene, Ash reveals himself as a traitor, shoots Leiter and locks him and Bond in the ship's hold then causes an explosion to sink it, filling the ship with water. Leiter succumbs to his gunshot wound and Bond manages to escape.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Rather than escape the barrage of Tomahawk missiles set to obliterate the villain's island of weaponized nanomachines, which he himself has been infected with a strain specifically targeted to kill his daughter, her mother Madeleine and their entire-bloodline, Bond calmly climbs to the roof of the lab, radios Madeleine one last time to affirm his love for her and their little girl, and with a warm smile lets the rain of missile fire vaporize him head on so that his family may live.
• EMP: Q gives Bond a watch that can generate EMP in a small radius. He uses it to open a door to enter Safin's base, and to kill Cyclops (by frying the latter's electronic eye, which then explodes in his head).
• Electronic Eyes: Cybernetic eyes have become a thing for one-eyed people apparently. Blofeld uses his and its network to run his organization from his cell, and his henchman Primo/"Cyclops" (as Bond nicknames him) also has one (which kills him when Bond fries it with his EMP watch in the Final Battle). Blofeld's is later taken away by Q so he can analyze images from the eye's network.
• Empathy Doll Shot: In the midst of the final battle, Bond finds the stuffed toy that Mathilde dropped and stops to pick it up, smiling as he does so, clearly anticipating giving it back to her and starting a new life with her and Madeleine. The moment gets absolutely agonizing when he doesn't get the chance to do so, but poignant if you realize that he has it with him as he dies.
• Empathic Environment: Cold and snowy Norway in the opening sequence when Safin tries to kill the young Madeleine is warm and sunny when Bond tracks her down and they reconcile. It becomes foggy and ominous when Safin and his men ambush them.
• Empty Chair Memorial: After the climax, M pours drinks for Moneypenny, Q, Tanner, Nomi, and himself and an extra glass for Bond. M Clinks the glass personally to end it
• Entitled to Have You: Safin feels this way about Madeline after saving her life when she was still a child. This is played for all of the creepiness you'd expect. He even tries to force her to drink a tea that will cause her to become completely obedient to suggestion.
• Environmental Symbolism: Madeleine and Mathilde are bathed in beautiful sunlight as they escape the gloomy facility. When we see the scene from Madeleine's point of view, Bond appears much the same way. But whereas Bond's view served to assure us that Madeleine and Mathilde would be safe, it also serves as the first hint that he's not going to make it and that this is the is the last time he'll see them.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Safin suggests that he and Bond are each nothing more than killers, ignoring how Safin's plans will kill innocents and he has killed at least one unarmed woman, whereas Bond targets murderers and never resorts to terrorism.
• Evil Plan:
  • Early in the film, SPECTRE throw a birthday party for Blofeld (still locked up in Bellmarsh prison) at a Cuban club, with the "gift" being the death of James Bond via the Heracles weapon. Every surviving member of SPECTRE is in attendance. Thanks to Safin's faction's intervention, all SPECTRE agents are wiped out instead, and Bond survives.
  • Safin plans to use the Heracles weapon to kill all of SPECTRE along with millions of other people. Unlike most Bond villains, we never learn the full extent of what his plans are, at least not beyond his immediate revenge.
• Evil vs. Evil: SPECTRE steals the Heracles weapons for their own nefarious purposes, but Safin hijacks it for himself and uses it to wipe them out in revenge for the murder of his family. Safin despises SPECTRE as they killed his whole family, but this doesn't make him a good person as he has his own terrorist agenda and needs to be stopped.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Bond calls up Q and M to tell for an update and asks about Nomi hunting Ash. They send him an image of a map with Bond recognizing the area as where he, Madeleine and Mathilde are.
  Bond: I thought she was following Logan Ash, not me!
  Tanner: What? She is.
  Moneypenny: James, where are you?
  [Cue huge Oh, Crap! look from Bond as he realises that they're about to be ambushed]
• Eye Spy: The henchman Cyclops has an electronic eye capable of recording and transmitting video. The same eye is used by Blofeld to watch a SPECTRE gathering in Cuba, through his own bionic eye.
• Eye Scream:
  • At one point, Madeleine is being made to drink a suspicious-looking tea by a henchman, one which she states one drop will cause blindness, so she throws it in his face. It's not clear whether she was telling the truth, but having boiling water thrown into your eyes hurts!
  • When Bond encounters Blofeld in Belmarsh prison, his right eye is completely missing, having had his bionic implant removed.
• Face Death with Dignity: James Bond keeps a stiff upper lip as missiles destroy Safin's lair, while he himself is on it. Safin himself doesn't show a trace of fear as Bond points his gun at him, though this is probably because he knows he got the last word anyway.
• Face–Heel Turn: Logan Ash.
• Family Eye Resemblance: It's brought up more than once that Matilde has Bond's blue eyes.
• Final Battle: Bond vs. many of Safin's men and Primo, and Bond's showdown with Safin himself.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • When Bond, Felix Leiter, Logan Ash bring back the scientist Obruchev to their boat to interrogate him, Ash suddenly becomes frantic for Bond to be dismissed from the interrogation and keeps defiantly shouting over Bond that Obruchev doesn't have to answer any of his questions. Then Bond finally demands to know how Blofeld knew he would be in Cuba, and that's when he notices Obruchev is glancing directly at Ash...
  • Later, when Bond and Madeleine are recuperating at Madeleine's childhood home, he calls up M to ask for an update on the defected agent Logan Ash who Nomi's tracking. He then gets sent an image of a ping in Norway.
    Bond: I thought she was tracking Logan Ash, not me!
    Tanner: What? She is.
    Moneypenny: James, where are you?
• Fond Memories That Could Have Been: The life he could have had with Madeleine and Mathilde is likely the last thing Bond thinks of before he dies.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: Church bells ring out in the town square as Bond stops the car and lets it get bombarded with bullets, possibly trying to kill himself and Madeleine. He finally snaps out of it and opens fire on the henchmen surrounding them, killing several of them.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When describing the antagonist of the movie, producer Barbara Broccoli said that Safin was 'the one who really gets under Bond's skin.' Come the movie, Safin literally and figuratively gets under 007's skin by infecting him with the Heracles variant that would kill Madeline and his daughter if he ever came into their vicinity.
  • The opening Bond Gun Barrel sequence, instead of blood dripping down the screen, has Bond's silhouette Fade to White as it segues into the opening flashback. Bond's death scene has him disappearing in a flash of white as the missiles hit Safin's island.
  • Bond says "We have all the time in the world" early on, and a version of the eponymous song appears in the score. Anyone who remembers that as the theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service - and remembers that as the one where Bond's wife dies - knows that things aren't going to end well.
  • Madeleine teases Bond about his inability to let his guard down—"You're always looking over your shoulder." When they're ambushed, he almost immediately thinks she was behind it, showing that indeed, he can't let his guard down and trust her completely.
  • During the scene where Bond visits Vesper's grave, there's a Latin inscription above it, which can be translated to: "What you are, I once was. What I am, you will become.". In the long run, Bond will share the same fate as Vesper.
  • The flowers containing the Spectre card at Vesper's grave have already started to wilt. Spectre was waiting for him there for a while. Blofeld knew that Bond would eventually visit Vesper's grave at Madeleine's urging once their relationship got serious enough and simply had to have his men wait for him there and frame Madeleine for leading Bond into a trap.
  • As they flee the Spectre gunmen, Madeleine says "There's something I need to tell you". She's pregnant.
  • When Bond coldly tells Madeleine "You'll never see me again" in the film's opening, her gripping her chest in pain implies it is borne as much from the morning sickness caused by his baby now growing inside her as it does from grief.
  • In the opening credits, the Britannia statue starts bleeding at her right cheek, alluding to where Safin smashes a vial of Heracles-laced blood on Bond's face during the final confrontation.
  • Nomi and Moneypenny snarking about her having once shot Bond—"Everyone tries at least once". At the end, Safin does so, several times.
  • Paloma knocking back an entire vodka martini in one and being apparently unaffected by it is a clue that she's not nearly The Ditz that she pretends to be.
  • Blofeld telling Bond "When her (Madeleine) secret gets out, it'll be the death of you". And indeed, it was.
  • When Safin demands an audience with Bond, Bond tells Nomi to blow the facility up if he doesn't make it. Which shows that he's willing to sacrifice himself to ensure everyone else's safety.
• Frameup: Bond thinks Madeleine has betrayed him because of what one of the SPECTRE gunmen says to him—"She's a daughter of SPECTRE!"—and when she receives a phone call telling her "Your father would be proud." Only later does he learn that this was all set up by Blofeld.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Bond and Nomi rescue Madeleine and Mathilde, he says "they're my. . .", then turns around as he either mouths or whispers "family".

G - L

• Gallows Humour: Leiter can't resist a quip at his own expense when he and Bond have been locked in the hold by Logan Ash, who had previously shot Leiter in the gut.
  Leiter: I don't know about you, but I've got a feeling in my gut that Ash isn't on our side.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: Moneypenny informs M of the attack on Project Heracles, pointing out that the lab isn't on the books and telling him there were casualties. He says it was a gas leak. She asks if she should inform the Prime Minister.
  M: It was a gas leak. I'll handle it.
• Gatling Good: The Aston Martin DB5 is fitted with concealed miniguns behind the headlights. The car's previous machine guns (seen in action in Goldfinger and Skyfall) were single-barrelled.◊
• Gender Flip: Although author Raymond Benson followed up on Kissy Suzuki's pregnancy, the child in question was a boy, whereas Mathilde is a girl.
• Girl of the Week: Notably averted. This is only the third Bond movie to have a repeat Bond Girl, and unlike Sylvia Trench, who was a secondary Bond Girl at best in Dr. No and From Russia with Love, and Maud Adams, who played two different Bond Girls, a secondary in The Man with the Golden Gun and the primary in Octopussy, this time Madeline is the primary Bond Girl in both movies. Consecutive movies, even.
• A God Am I: Safin thinks of himself as this, comparing himself to "an invisible god, sneaking under their skin." Bond promptly calls him out on it.
  Bond: You know that history isn't kind to those who play god?
• Godzilla Threshold: The threat of a factory producing Heracles nanobots targeted to whole ethnicities is enough for Bond to request, in no uncertain terms, that the entire area be levelled in a missile strike and the whole affair with the Heracles be kept a secret regardless of any inquiry from Japan, Russia, and the Americans asking what the hell a Royal Navy cruiser was doing launching missiles at a disputed island. M agrees.
• Go Out with a Smile:
  • Blofeld dies amused at having caused Bond to break his composure and try to strangle him. He barely seems more than mildly disappointed that he was the last living member of SPECTRE at that point.
  • Bond, after a conversation with Madeleine in which he affirms his love for her and their daughter Mathilde.
• Grand Finale: Unlike the previous final films of each leading James Bond actor, the film has been tailored as this for Daniel Craig's Bond, the marketing made a major selling point out of the fact that it would be Craig's final performance as his iteration of 007, with the filmmakers promising a strong send-off for him. The film resolves the major plot threads established during Craig's Bond films, and ends with Bond himself dying.
• Grave-Marking Scene: Madeleine brought James to Matera specifically because Vesper Lynd is buried there, so he can forgive her and turn the page on her death once and for all. That's the moment SPECTRE chooses to ambush him, by setting up a bomb in Vesper's grave, which explodes when Bond finds a SPECTRE Calling Card among the grave's flowers, then by sending agents after him in case the bomb doesn't kill him.
• Grenade Hot Potato: During the final battle, a grenade is thrown down a staircase at Bond. Bond quickly grabs it and chucks it back up. After the dust clear, the mooks drop three more and Bond has to dive for cover.
• Guns Akimbo: During her action scene Paloma fires a handgun and a submachine gun, one firearm in each hand.
• Gut Punch:
  • Figuratively speaking, in-universe when Bond coldly tells Madeleine that she'll never see him again. She clutches her stomach due to her emotional reaction and as we later learn, her pregnancy.
  • It seems like Bond is about to complete one last mission successfully and live happily ever after with his family... And then Safin repeatedly shoots him and injects him with nanobots that will kill his wife and daughter if he's exposed to them. With no good options, Bond completes his mission and opts to stay so that he won't become a weapon, and perishes when missiles hit the island.
• Hammerspace: The volume of ammo fired by the twin rotary guns in Bond's car would require all of the space under that little hood, leaving no room for, say, the engine.
• Hand on Womb: Madeleine clutches her stomach just after Bond puts her on a train, essentially telling the viewer that she's pregnant.
• Handshake Refusal: Madeleine does this to Bond when they meet again in Belmarsh.
• Harpoon Gun: Bond carries one for fishing in Jamaica. In an unused take, he readies himself to use it when sneaking back into his home after sensing there's an intruder in it. In the actual film, he uses a firearm instead.
• Happy Ending Override: The previous film ended with Bond and Madeleine driving off into his retirement. Not long after, they're attacked by SPECTRE agents and Bond abandons her as a result of Blofeld's framing it to look like Madeleine set Bond up to be killed by SPECTRE.
• Hazmat Suit: The "farm" of the bio-technological weapon Heracles that Lyutsifer Safin wants to mass produce is a pool of acidic liquid. Its workers wear hazmat suits, lest they want to be dissolved.
• Hellish Copter: Averted. The entire pursuing force (motorbikes and SUVs) that goes after Bond and Madeleine in Norway gets demolished by Bond except the helicopter with Safin in it, who then proceeds to kidnap Madeleine.
• Here We Go Again!: Yet again. We see Blofeld hold onto his glory days of torturing Bond by asserting his sadistic dominance over him and Madeleine by ruining their relationship and trying to kill the former after 5 years by spreading the Heracles which he will then use as one of his petty projects in SPECTRE. No wonder even Safin had enough of his over-pettiness and decided to have him killed himself, especially for killing his entire family for something they had nothing to do with in the first place.
• The Hero Dies: Bond gets poisoned with an agent specifically made to target Madeleine and her bloodline, which means that Madeleine and their daughter would die if exposed to him. Bond opts to stay on the island and die in the explosion, rather than take a chance on survival and risk killing his loved ones.
• Heroic BSoD: Bond goes into this during the opening sequence at the realization of Madeleine’s supposed betrayal (likely the reason he lets the car get bombarded with bullets without reacting) and spends much of the film in and out of it. It gets even worse at the end when he realizes that Safin has doomed him in several ways, but he still snaps out of it somewhat to make an emotional goodbye speech to Madeleine.
• Heroic Suicide: After Safin poisons him with an agent designed to kill Madeline and her bloodline, Bond willingly stays behind for the missile strike on Safin's poison farm, so that the poison will never get to Madeline.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: While Safin's actions regarding the nanobots are known, nobody really knows why. This ties into him averting the Bond Villain Stupidity, Stupid Evil, and Villain Ball tropes — why would he gloat about it to a man he plans to defeat as said man can later use it against him?
• Hide Your Children: Major aversion for once. Bond has spoken to exactly one child (a Thai boy in The Man with the Golden Gun) in almost sixty years worth of movies (1962-2021). Although children were occasionally visible in crowd scenes, they were always mysteriously absent when something violent happens. Here, there's the first part of the prologue in Madeleine's childhood in which she almost died by the hand of Lyutsifer Safin, and then Madeleine's daughter Mathilde who's been fathered by Bond. Bond even prepares her something to eat and goes all Papa Wolf to protect her in the climax.
• Hollywood Acid: Safin's technological bioweapon farm uses this, although the liquid is more blue than green. Still doesn't make the rest of life any less painful of anyone unlucky enough to fall into it.
• Honey Trap: A rare heroic version when Nomi picks up Bond outside of a bar and goes home with him, only to drop the seductive act and warn him and Leiter not to interfere in her mission.
• Hope Spot: Having defeated all the henchmen and opened the silo doors so that the missiles can destroy the facility, Bond finds Mathilde's stuffed toy that she dropped and stops to pick it up, smiling as he does so, clearly anticipating giving it back to her and beginning a new life with his family. It's precisely at that moment that Safin closes the doors again, forcing Bond to go back-—and giving Safin the opportunity to shoot him.
• Human Shield: When a henchman tries to shoot Bond while he's carrying Mathilde, he instantly turns around so as to protect her and even take the bullet if necessary. He also uses as henchman's body as one during the final battle in Safin's lair.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: When Bond happens to crash down into the bar during the Cuba shootout, he pours a couple of drinks for himself and Paloma, which they knock back before resuming the gun battle.
• Idiot Ball: M, of all people, takes a firm hold of this when you realize that he had no contingency plan whatsoever regarding the nanobots — no antidote, and no means to shut them down if they fell into the wrong hands, which is exactly what happens. He is therefore indirectly responsible for the events of the movie, including Bond's death. This is the same guy who blasted the previous M for a botched mission that resulted in crucial information (the identities of undercover agents) falling into the wrong hands, in addition to which he was firmly against C's global surveillance plans, so it also makes him a Hypocrite in addition to an extreme case of Aesop Amnesia.
  • Bond himself at end. He's preparing to leave Safin's facility without fulfilling the mission objective of killing him, meaning that he could still be a threat. Sure enough, Safin re-closes the silo doors so that Bond will have to turn back. And when he does, Bond further compounds his stupidity by rushing into an open area without any means of protecting himself, and of course, is shot almost immediately. That's a glaring error that a rookie would make, not a legendary agent like James Bond.
• If I Can't Have You…: Variation: "If I can't have her, you can't either." With his plan falling apart around him, Safin and Bond engage in one final grapple, and during the scuffle, Safin breaks the "insurance" cannister with the Heracles nanobots tailored to Madeline's and Mathilde's DNA in it (from the hair Safin was toying with before he reentered Madeline's life). If Bond so much as touches either of them, they will be killed by Bond's Heracles nanobots. Bond chooses to let himself be killed by the naval missile strike so as to eradicate the bots and prevent their deaths.
• Immediate Sequel: Madeleine's flashback aside, this picks up soon after SPECTRE. Although after the opening credits it jumps five years.
• Impairment Shot: Twice in the movie (during the opening sequence and during the final battle), Bond is stunned by an explosion. The audience experiences what he's experiencing—distorted vision, hearing, balance, etc—all of which last for a considerable amount of time.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Just about every mook in the movie fires directly in Bond's direction, yet they can't seem to even touch him.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: What Bond inadvertently did to Madeleine in the opening sequence when he allowed his car to be riddled with bullets.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Young Madeleine survives Safin's attempt to kill her, and later, so does her daughter Mathilde.
• Inexplicable Language Fluency: James Bond's 5-year-old daughter, Mathilde, understands English even though her mother Madelaine speaks to her in French and all the media she consumes is in French.
• Instant Illness: It takes maybe a second of exposure to be infected with Heracles, and if you're on the target list, you'll be dead in less than a minute.
• Internal Homage: At one point during the climax, Bond goes down a round-shaped corridor, and turns to face the camera as he shoots, imitating the series' trademark gunbarrel. The film also ends on one, with Madeleine driving down the tunnel producing an image similar to the white circles seen at the beginning of the trademark gunbarrel sequence.
• In Vino Veritas: In the prologue, under the effects of the alcohol, Madeleine's mother reveals to her that her father (Mr. White) is not a doctor as she believed, but rather that he kills people.
• Ironic Episode Title: A movie called "No Time To Die" features the first death of a James Bond.
• Irony: Bond telling Madeleine "We have all the time in the world" when that's exactly what they don't get—they don't have long together before henchmen are trying to kill them, resulting in them separating, and they only get a few hours to be a happy family before they're ambushed again, resulting in Madeleine and Mathilde being abducted and Bond eventually being killed.
  • During their final conversation, Madeleine tearfully declares, "There's no one left to hurt us." Indeed, they are FINALLY safe from all potential enemies. . . and they STILL can't be together.
• Ironic Echo: Safin and Bond approach and enter Madeleine's home in an identical manner, but where Safin was planning to commit murder, Bond is seeking information and reconciliation.
  • Madeline's mother tells her that her father is a killer and tauntingly asks her "Is that who you love? Murderers?" 30 years later, Safin says something very similar when he chastises her for her relationship with Bond—"You love a murderer! You bore his child!"
• Island Base: Safin's base of operations is an island facility, which includes a laboratory, garden and missile silo.
• It's Cuban: The "Delectados" get a Mythology Gag where Bond finds the remains of a cigar of that very brand at his house in Jamaica. It turns out the cigar was smoked by Felix Leiter, who appropriately recruits him for a mission in Cuba.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After ruining Bond and Madeleine's happy life for his own amusement, AGAIN!, Blofeld enjoys the fruits and rewards of his manipulation and plan being a success for 5 years and then goes onto assert his dominance over Bond, AGAIN!, by trying to having him assassinated with the Heracles virus during his own birthday party and then use it on the world to create chaos for fun. Thankfully, Safin ends up getting the upperhand by giving Blofeld a long-awaited karma for his over-pettiness and tendency to torture people for fun, including his entire family, Bond, Madeleine and others by reprogramming the virus to kill all of the SPECTRE agents present and then give him the taste of his own medicine by spreading the Heracles to whoever contacts with Blofeld, killing him instantly.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Paloma kicks all sorts of ass during the SPECTRE party shootout in Santaigo de Cuba while wearing her party dress.
• Killed Off for Real: This film does what no other canonical Bond film has so far done—it actually, and finally, kills James Bond onscreen.
• Knee-capping: Nomi threatens Bond with a bullet to the knee, should he interfere with her mission.
  Nomi: You get in my way, I will put a bullet in your knee... the one that works.
• Laser Cutter: A SPECTRE team invades a secret lab in London to steal a revolutionary weapon in it. They use laser cutters to silently enter the lab through a window.
• Last Kiss: Bond and Madeleine have a Big Damn Kiss just before he sends her and Mathilde to safety, but when he doesn't make it, it becomes this.
• Legacy Character: Nomi has succeeded Bond as 007 at MI6 following his retirement in SPECTRE. She definitively takes over the role following his death, though she had relinquished the 007 designation to Bond earlier.
• Little Miss Badass:
  • Young Madeleine pulls off shooting Safin with the same skill as an adult in the Distant Prologue.
  • Mathilde bites Safin in order to get away from him, then hides until her parents find her.
• Living Legend: Bond has reached this status, to the point two CIA agents, Logan Ash and Paloma, are very thrilled to meet him even though Ash is a traitor and attempts to kill him twice regardless.
• Logo Joke: In the international releases, a black and white Universal logo becomes the white dot that starts the Bond Gun Barrel.
• Long Last Look:
  • Bond and Madeleine take this at each other after he puts her on a train at the conclusion of the Cold Open.
  • They take what turns out to be one as she and Mathilde leave Safin's facility.
  • At the end of the movie, he figuratively invokes this by looking in the direction of the island Nomi has taken her and Mathilde to.
• Lost Food Grievance: Right after the title card, there's a scene of a bio-engineer looking for his lunch and discovering it got mixed up with a container filled with smallpox. He threatens to infect the co-workers responsible with similarly terrible diseases.
• Louis Cypher: Lyutsifer Safin. At closer glance, his name sounds a lot like "Lucifer Satan". Fittingly, both Satan and Safin have God complexes.
• Lured into a Trap: Safin reactivates the silo doors, forcing Bond to go back, thus giving him the perfect opportunity to shoot him. In all likelihood, this is EXACTLY why Safin did this.

M - R

• MacGuffin: The Heracles weapon stolen from a London laboratory becomes the main focus of the plot.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Royal Navy destroyer fires fragmentation missiles with its Sea Viper system to destroy Safin's base in the climax. Bond dies when they reach their target.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Valdo Obruchev conceived Heracles, a devastating mix of Nanomachines and The Plague that spreads via touch and can be programmed to target specific people based on genetics. He gladly accepts working for Lyutsifer Safin and even suggests to use it to wipe out entire ethnicities. Saying the latter out loud ends up being his last mistake.
• Made of Iron: As always, Bond survives multiple things that would have killed anyone else, like a fall off of a bridge, as well as slamming into a post completely unfazed. Even at the film's conclusion, despite having been shot multiple times, his only question to Q is "How do I get it (Heracles) off?", showing that he's still determined to escape and get back to his family. When Q reminds him that it's permanent, he resigns himself to his fate, but although mortally wounded and clearly in pain, he still finds the strength to climb out of the silo room so he can get good enough reception to call Madeleine and bid her farewell..
• Make Way for the New Villains: While Spectre and Blofeld have been The Man Behind the Man or the outright Big Bad for every Craig Bond film so far and are a callback to their classic counterpart in the novels and original movies, Safin is a younger and more dangerous villain who doesn't work for them at all and is actually opposed to them.
• Malevolent Masked Men:
  • Safin wears a white Noh theatre mask when he attacks Madeleine and her mother. Ultimately the mask is broken when Madeleine shoots Safin in the face, and he never wears it again for the rest of the film. Much later - when Madeleine is an adult - Safin presents her with a box containing the broken mask.
  • Black garbed SPECTRE commandos wear hi-tech miltary gear and masks to raid the Heracles laboratory in London.
• Manly Tears: M, Q, and Tanner all appear on the verge of these at Bond's death and at the subsequent memorial service.
• Matching Bad Guy Vehicles: Two of them pass Bond, Madeleine, and Mathilde’s car, then turn around to chase them. They’re even tailgating.
• Meaningful Echo: Just before he leaves Madeleine to visit Vesper's grave, Bond asks Madeleine where they're going next. She replies, "Home". Five years later, after their run-in at MI6, she says the same thing when he asks her where she's going. He's soon seen tracking her down at her childhood home in Norway.
• Meaningful Name: Lyutsifer Safin's first name is the Russian version of "Lucifer", while his last is similar to "Satan", as well as only one letter different from the word "sarin", an infamous nerve gas often used in terrorist attacks. Given the kind of person he is and what he's planning, it's very appropriate. (though dioxin is his poison of choice)
• Mickey Mousing: In the opening credits, Safin's masks explode in time with the string melody in the bridge of the title song.
• Mid-Battle Tea Break: Bond and Paloma pause during their fight scene to finish their martinis.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Blofeld has managed to run SPECTRE from his cell in the high security prison of Belmarsh using his electronic eye, ruining Bond's relationship with Madeleine in Italy for five years and organizing his own special birthday party in Cuba among other things.
• A Minor Kidroduction: The film starts with Safin trying to kill Madeleine as a child. At one point, she falls through thin ice, which segues into the adult Madeleine coming up from the water.
• The Mole: Logan Ash is a double agent who has been feeding Bond's location to SPECTRE.
• Mood Whiplash: Bond and Madeleine are enjoying a romantic getaway in Italy, along with a poignant visit to Vesper's tomb. Suddenly, there's an explosion and they're running for their lives.
  • Yippee! Bond's defeated all the bad guys, has set the facility to be destroyed in an impending explosion and is smiling as he finds his daughter’s stuffed animal as he’s preparing to escape. It’s at that precise moment that Safin reactivates the silo doors, forcing Bond to go back. . .and giving Safin the chance to shoot him.
• More Diverse Sequel: In addition to Felix Leiter and Moneypenny who already underwent Race Lift to black in Casino Royale and Skyfall respectively, No Time to Die adds the black Nomi and the first non-white main villain of the Daniel Craig era films, Safin (Rami Malek is of Coptic Egyptian descent). In addition, Q is acknowledged as queer in the film.
• Mortal Wound Reveal: Even though we've seen him get shot, it's the steadily dripping Trail of Blood that he leaves behind him that tells you just how badly hurt Bond is.
• Motif: The film loves to explore the idea of "poison". Both literal (e.g., what killed Safin's family and scarred him), near-literal (e.g., the nanomachine Macguffin), and metaphorical (e.g., the words whispered in Bond's ear that prey on his doubts and fears about Madeline and his inherent paranoia). Perhaps fittingly, Blofeld is killed by the nanomachines, and the taunting he does to Bond, to make him doubt Madeline again. And we know Safin did it to avenge his family, which makes it kind of poetic.
• Musical Nod: The two themes from On Her Majesty's Secret Service are filtered throughout the film and "Vesper's Theme" from Casino Royale is heard when Bond visits her grave.
• My Greatest Failure: Bond tells Madeleine that his greatest regret is putting her on the train.
• My Secret Pregnancy: Madeleine giving birth to James' daughter is a very important part of the film. Safin uses this against Bond more than once.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond: James utters the immortal line when stating his identity to a security man at the entrance of an MI6 building.
  • The last line of dialogue:
    Madeleine:I'm going to tell you a story. It's about a man. His name was Bond. James Bond.
• Nanomachines: The Heracles weapon uses nanobots to target individuals by DNA, which is later modified to extend to killing targets' family members and entire population groups.
• Nasty Party: Safin and Obruchev turn Blofeld's birthday party into one of these, by reprogramming the nanobots that are intended to kill Bond to instead massacre all the SPECTRE members.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Paloma's party dress has a neckline that stops just short of her navel. For that matter, the back is virtually non-existent too.
• Never Trust a Title: Despite the title, Bond dies at the end.
• Never Trust a Trailer: One of the trailers shows Bond announcing M that the villains will cause the apocalypse and immediately cuts to a footage of missiles fired by a ship, suggesting those are part of the villains' plot. In context, the missiles are launched by Royal Navy warships in order to destroy Safin's lair.
  • The lyrics of the Title Theme Tune—"I'd fallen for a lie", "You were never on my side", etc. and the corresponding music video are edited in a manner that makes it seem as though Madeleine had indeed betrayed Bond by leading him into a SPECTRE ambush, as he himself believed to be the case (and indeed this belief is the central motif of the song). In actuality, Madeleine really was innocent; Blofeld set the ambush up to either kill Bond or break his trust on her, and thus their relationship.
  • Yet another implies that Madeleine is going to die by heavily featuring hers and Bond's relationship and concluding with Bond visiting a gravesite and burning a note that reads "Forgive me", as Madeleine was seen doing earlier, suggesting that Bond is posthumously apologizing to Madeleine for distrusting her. In truth, Madeleine survives and that's Vesper's grave Bond is at.
• New Child Left Behind: Not until he meets Madeleine's daughter Mathilde does Bond realize that she was pregnant when he broke up with her and that this is what she was trying to tell him in the midst of the attempt on their lives, which he mistakenly thought she was responsible for.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Bond didn't kill Blofeld at the end of Spectre because he didn't want to stoop to his level. Blofeld "thanks" him by arranging an ambush to either kill him and Madeleine or make Bond leave her after thinking that she's betrayed him.
• No Endor Holocaust: M makes it very clear that the missile strikes to destroy Safin's base will have serious repercussions from the Russians, Japanese and even the Americans, but the ending glosses over this. This trope could apply to some other films in the series, but is probably at its most egregious here.
• No Escape but Down: Trapped between two vehicles, Bond makes a dramatic escape from the armed pursuers by grabbing a electrical cable and leaping from a high bridge.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Though he occasionally taunts the heroes, Safin is calmly focused on achieving his goal and has multiple contingencies in place, lacking the exaggerated overconfidence of many previous Bond villains. During their final confrontation, Safin doesn't hesitate to pump Bond full of bullets and, even when defeated, he infects Bond with the Heracles virus to make him untouchable to Madeline and Mathilde, resulting in Bond's decision to Face Death with Dignity.
• Nonviolent Initial Confrontation: Technically, Lyutsifer Safin's first encounter with Madeleine Swann was violent as he tried to kill her in her childhood, but that's in the Distant Prologue. As for her adult life, he comes back into it pretending to be one of her new patients as she's a psychiatrist, reveals himself to her at her office, and simply has a conversation with her, tasking her to (unknowingly) infect herself with Heracles, which will kill Blofeld when she comes back at the latter in his prison cell.
• Noodle Incident: While trying to rally the injured Felix Bond states "we've been in worse scrapes than this". Obviously, the audience never saw these, so they must have taken place in between the other movies.
• No OSHA Compliance: Some of the components of Heracles are being produced in a large Acid Pool that is just sitting there in Safin's base.
• Not His Sled: The premise of Bond having retired from MI6 to be with the love of his life, along with the many references to On Her Majesty's Secret Service in the score and Bond telling Madeleine "We have all the time in the world" during the seemingly idyllic opening might lead one to believe that Madeleine will be killed off just as Tracy was. In the end, Madeleine survives the movie, while it's Bond himself who dies.
• The Not-Love Interest: Neither Nomi nor Paloma sleep with Bond, despite both seeming like good candidates to be one of his typical flings.
• Not Now, Kiddo: In the opening scene, a young Madeleine tries to alert her mother after seeing an intruder (Safin) outside their house, but her mother is too hungover to care and just tells her to go outside and play.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  Safin: James Bond. A history of violence. Licence to kill. Vendetta with Ernst Blofeld. In love with Madeleine Swann. I could be speaking to my own reflection.
  • Madeleine and Bond after he finds her in Norway:
    Madeleine: I understand you're not built to trust people.
    Bond: Neither are you.
    Madeleine: Then we were fools for trying.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Bond has one at Vesper's grave when he finds the SPECTRE card in front of it.
  • Bond when he realizes that assassins are coming to kill him, Madeleine, and Mathilde, then later when the cars that initially passed them on the road have turned around and are following them.
  • Bond has this again during the final battle when Safin’s men drops three grenades at him after having thrown back a first grenade at them.
• The Oner: The shootout on the staircase during the final battle is done in one take.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Bond kills Safin in a manner completely unlike the way he has taken down previous Big Bads. There's no witty pre-mortem quip, no Bond One-Liner, he doesn't even go into Tranquil Fury the way he does for a revenge kill. Instead, he very resignedly pumps a couple of bullets into Safin's head without any sense of catharsis, knowing that thanks to the Heracles nanobots he's been infected with, he has no choice but to stay on the island and die to keep his family safe.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: The opening scene feels like something out of a horror film rather than a James Bond movie.
• Phoney Call: When Dr. Obruchev is about to be kidnapped by Spectre along with his invention Heracles, he's contacted by Safin, and tries to make his call seem less suspicious to his colleagues by ending it with this very convincing line:
  Obruchev: ...Yes, I like animals! Bye bye!
• Poor Communication Kills: Literally. If only Madeline just had the courage to shout "I'm pregnant" during the car chase in the Cold Open, Bond would have hesitated and listened enough to give her a second chance, considering even a pathologically paranoid wreck like him still loved her enough to put her on a train rather than put three bullets in her head for her perceived "betrayal" (staged by Blofeld), thereby giving him All The Time In The World with his wife, daughter and future possible children; instead of leading to a chain of tragic events that gave him only less than one day with them and being forced to commit a Heroic Suicide just to keep them safe. Granted, this assumes she was aware of the pregnancy at that point.
• Posthumous Villain Victory: Zig-Zagged Trope regarding Lyutsifer Safin. On one hand, his genocidal Evil Plan to unleash the Heracles nanomachines on the world and unveiling it for other nations to capture and use is thwarted by Bond. On the other, his last, desperate goal of killing James Bond ultimately succeeds, with Bond mortally wounded and now infected with a strain of Heracles capable of killing his wife and daughter with a single touch. Bond himself is forced to stay on Safin's island and help destroy the virus for good, dying from the missile strike launched by the Royal Navy he himself had called in. This all happens just minutes after Bond shoots Safin thrice in the head.
  • However, Blofeld certainly gets this when you realize that his scheme resulted in Bond being separated from his daughter. This is unfortunately, quite fitting considering that Blofeld resented Bond for stealing his father's affection. Plus the sick thrill he likely got from provoking Bond to violence, even if it resulted in his death.
• Present Absence: Despite his death, Bond haunts the final scenes of the MI6 crew paying tribute to him and of Madeleine and Mathilde driving along.
• Primal Scene: A mild version when Mathilde walks in on the clearly post-coital Bond and Madeleine to matter-of-factly declare that she's hungry.
• Product Placement: There's yet another chase in Range Rovers, among other things.
• Prolonged Prologue: The pre-title portion is the longest in the series so far, clocking at around twenty minutes (precisely 23 minutes and 47 seconds if you count from the moment the gunbarrel sequence starts to the final frame of the opening credits) and surpassing The World Is Not Enough (which was about fifteen minutes long). The movie begins with a literal cold open in snowy Norway which focuses on Madeleine's childhood and her encounter with Safin. Action then shifts to Matera, Italy with Bond and Madeleine as adults on a romantic getaway, picking up where the previous film Spectre left off. Then we finally get to see Bond in action after SPECTRE operatives attempt to kill him, and - after that epic beginning eventually concludes - the credits and title song.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Literally. Bond has defeated all the bad guys and saved the day yet again. . .and dies in a fiery explosion in order to keep his family safe.
• Queer Establishing Moment: It turns out that Q was preparing for a romantic evening in with a "he" before Moneypenny and Bond storm in needing to have the flash drive decrypted. It's not shown if he ever gets to have that dinner.
• Race Against the Clock: Like in many films before, including its predecessor, Bond has only a few minutes to escape an impending explosion. Only this time, he doesn't. (Albeit, it's a conscious decision to stay behind rather than simply failing to get out).
• Race Lift: The Caucasian Madeleine is partly based on the Japanese Kissy Suzuki.
• Rage Breaking Point: During his interrogation of Blofeld, Bond remains his usual snarky self... until Blofeld spells out in gleefully sadistic detail, how Madeleine never betrayed him to SPECTRE, meaning that Bond threw away his Second Love for nothing. Bond seems calm for a moment... then starts strangling Blofeld, hatefully snarling for him to die. Ironically, while Bond stops himself from strangling Blofeld, he inadvertently infected Blofeld with the nanomachines, and Blofeld dies anyway.
  Bond: Die. [starts strangling Blofeld] Die, Blofeld, DIE!
• Ramp-rovisation: Bond rides a motorcycle up a staircase, launching it past the landing and onto the next terrace above. He also uses this trope several times against enemy vehicles; either to crash them or stop from being run over by them. He also takes out Ash by tricking him into driving into a hidden log that causes his SUV to flip upside-down.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: M lets Bond have it after Bond says that the former is "thirsty at the moment".
  M: You have no right to speak to me that way. You have no right to make insinuations about my judgment. If you've nothing left to give, you are irrelevant! You've done your bit and we thank you for your service, again! Goodbye!
• Red Herring: As Bond, Madeline, and Matilde flee Madeline's home, Matilde complains about a mosquito bite, and later on asks if mosquitoes have friends. Given this came shortly after Blofeld's death at the hands of Bond's Heracles nanomachines, the audience is led to believe something similar is about to happen. Nothing happens to Matilde and Madeline.
• Regional Riff:
  • When Bond is in Jamaica, there's some Reggae that can be heard in the streets.
  • When Paloma starts to kick ass in Santiago de Cuba, the soundtrack that plays ("Cuba Chase") switches to a salsa variation on the Bond theme.
• Resolved Noodle Incident: In Spectre, Madeleine mentions how, as a child, she once used a gun her father had hidden in a cupboard against an assailant. The Distant Prologue that begins this film depicts this incident, with Safin being revealed as the assailant.
• Retired Badass: Five years of retirement in the Caribbean haven't dulled James Bond's capabilities in the field in the slightest (unlike his "death" of a few months back in Skyfall apparently, though he suffered a gunshot injury in this one).
• Retirony: Felix offhandedly tells Bond that he wants to go home to his family and tell them that he saved the world one last time, indicating that he intends to retire after this mission. True to this trope, he dies.
  • Initially inverted with Bond, who gets pulled out of retirement for one last assignment, but played straight in the end, as he probably could have retired for good afterwards, given that he'd finally eliminated all possible threats to himself and his family, had he not been forced to sacrifice himself to ensure their safety.
• Reunion Kiss: Bond and Madeleine when he finds her in Norway.
• Rewatch Bonus: Madeleine gripping her chest as Bond coldly tells her "You'll never see me again" in the film's pre-credits sequence is more poignant the second time round, because it's eventually revealed that it comes as much from grief as it does from morning sickness caused by his child growing inside her.
• Revenge by Proxy: In the opening sequence, Safin is seeking to kill Mr. White's family because SPECTRE killed his family.
• Riding into the Sunset: Done at the end of the movie, with Madeleine and Mathilde.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Bond notices that Madeleine is preoccupied with something, and when they're ambushed, cites her "secrets" as the reason why she would double-cross him. He's correct that she's keeping something from him (even aside from her pregnancy), but it—and she—have nothing to do with the attack on them.
• Rule of Symbolism: When Bond shoots Safin, he does so three times, each shot representing himself, Madeline, and Mathilde, essentially avenging the little family that Safin has now destroyed by infecting Bond with Heracles.

S - Z

• Sacrificial Lion: The death of Felix Leiter, one of the series' longest-running recurring characters and someone who would have been considered untouchable if this film weren't the Grand Finale of the Craig continuity, firmly establishes that all bets are off and Anyone Can Die. The film then lives up to this promise by proceeding to kill off Ernst Stavro Blofeld and James Bond himself.
• Scenery Porn: It wouldn't be a James Bond film without it, from the magnificent vistas of Matera, to the Jamaican coastline, to a villainous party in Cuba and so on. It culminates with the assault on Safin's island base, which features a really impressive mix of Russian brutalist architecture, Japanese zen decor, and futuristic research laboratories.
• Scylla and Charybdis: Safin offers to let Bond leave with Mathilde, but declares that Madeleine will stay with him. Needless to say, Bond doesn't accept those terms, even if they mean that his daughter will be safe.
• Shell-Shock Silence: This happens to Bond twice, during the opening sequence after the bomb detonates at Vesper's grave, and during the final battle sequence.
• Shout-Out:
  • The final moments of James Bond's Dying Moment of Awesome are virtually identical to that of the Nameless Assassin played by Jet Li in Hero (2002), as both men look straight on at a bright blue sky blotted out by a rain of missiles, and with a brave confident smile let the barrage obliterate them *onscreen* with dignity rather than live and let the world suffer as a result.
  • Bond and Madeleine's idyllic life in Italy being interrupted by assassins echoes the opening of The Bourne Supremacy.
  • Him realizing that he, Madeleine and Mathilde are about to be ambushed at the cabin is similar to a sequence in The Bourne Identity.
  • The final action sequence echoes the plot of The Rock—the need to destroy a villain's island facility so that he can't release a deadly bioweapon.
  • The Heracles weapon is similar to FOXDIE from Metal Gear Solid, and its use to kill Blofeld in the film is similar to how FOXDIE was used to kill members of FOXHOUND in that game.
  • Both "Madeleine" and "Mathilde" are the titles of songs by Jacques Brel.
  • Madeleine has a hairstyle that's similar to Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) from Scream and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) from Halloween.
  • When meeting with Felix and Ash, Bond derisively refers to the latter as “The Book of Mormon.”
  • Safin's facial disfigurement and its cause were reportedly inspired by the real-world Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko, who was left with similar skin conditions after what was allegedly an attempt to assassinate him by the Russian government.
• Snow Means Death: The film opens with Safin stealthily approaching Madeline's home through a cold and snowy forest.
• So Happy Together: Bond and Madeline get hit with this twice. First in the opening sequence, when their blissful interlude is interrupted by an attack, then five years later, when they have barely anytime together as a family before he's killed.
• Someone to Remember Him By: Mathilde, to Bond, for Madeleine, even when he was still alive, as she had no reason to think she'd ever see him again.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Madeleine lives despite being partly based on a character—Tracy—who died in the book that she's featured in.
• Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: Bond and Nomi find one in the manufacturing facility on the island, a simulation showing how far Heracles could potentially spread if it's released.
• Status Quo Is God: Averted. Unlike previous films where the previous Bond Girl disappeared without a mention while Bond set off on a new adventure, Madeleine returns from the previous film and Bond actually stays retired rather than returning to MI6 (though he's drawn back in eventually).
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Bond disappears from sight as Madeleine's train departs. It's too quick a change in shot for him to have simply walked away.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Mathilde is a child and she's Bond's daughter. She is literally a "Bond Girl", and the first true one in the franchise's history.
  • The character of Safin is partially inspired by Dr. No of the eponymous novel and film (see Decomposite Character in Safin's folder on the Characters page). Safin's personal symbol is a Noh theatre mask, and he apparently holds a doctorate. He's a Dr. Noh.
• Stereotype Flip: Both Nomi and Paloma completely avert the Bond Girl stereotype in this one. Even Madeleine herself gets to do this too.
• The Stinger: There's a bit of text after the credits that seems to undermine the movie's ending. It says "James Bond will return," even though he died. However, this is probably meant to be interpreted as "the James Bond franchise will continue" rather than "this James Bond will continue".
• The Stoic: Despite facing death in one of any three ways, Bond calmly contacts Madeleine to reaffirm their love and bid her farewell.
• Storming the Castle: The final act has Bond and Nomi infiltrate Safin's headquarters in order to kill Obruchev and Safin, rescue Madeleine and Mathilde, and destroy the nanobots.
• Suddenly Shouting: After Bond restrains himself from suffocating Blofeld, Tanner is at the receiving end of a outburst from him.
  Tanner: What the hell are you thinking?
  Bond: Yes, yes, yes, I know how to interrogate an asset.
  Tanner: This interrogation is over.
  Bond: TANNER, DON'T LECTURE ME!
  Tanner: Bond, you have violated the most important rule in the whole bloody playbook!
• Superweapon: The Heracles nanobots are: 100% lethal to those they are coded to target, have almost no incubation period, can be transmitted by touch and, most crucially, if an individual becomes infected while not being a specific strain's target, they are now a permanent asymptomatic carrier of that specific strain - the nanobots do not expire and there is no way to remove them. The moment it becomes clear that Safin is manufacturing them, with strains that target entire ethnicities, the rules go out the window, causing M to order a multiple-missile strike on the factory in defiance of international treaties while fully intending to keep the existence of Heracles a secret from anyone not already in the know, regardless of the fact that he is risking wars with those actions.
• Suicidal Overconfidence:
  • Bond should have known better than to verbally chew out Safin as he had provoked all his other nemeses, considering the psychopath literally has his daughter Mathilde in his grips accompanied by four heavily armed guards. Thankfully she narrowly avoided having to pay for her father's arrogance and lives to reunite with her mother Madeleine.
  • Also, Doctor Obruchev somehow thought it was a good idea to suggest to wipe out the entire African Race with his Nanomachine superweapon to the face of Nomi, the African-descended woman holding him at gunpoint while standing over a bubbling pool of said superweapon. Enjoy your Death by Racism swim, doctor.
• Television Geography/Traveling at the Speed of Plot: People frequently travel between various points in what appears to be an impossibly short period of time — Bond appears to travel from Cuba to London within a day (although this is possible by plane), then apparently drives between London and Norway overnight (apparently, Madeleine commutes daily over the same distance), and Safin is able to abduct Madeleine and Mathilde from Norway and whisk them off to an island in between Japan and Russia — with Bond and Nomi quickly following behind—in roughly the same amount of time.
• Tempting Fate: Just before he sends her and Mathilde to safety, Bond tells Madeleine, "I'll be just a minute" Given that this is the immortal James Bond, one can be forgiven for not realizing that a line like that all but guarantees that something bad is going to happen. And sure enough, just like if it had been been any other character making such a statement, he doesn't make it.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Although it's more like five-year retirement, James Bond is forced to do one last job in spite of enjoying retirement from active duty.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: First, Safin reactivates the silo doors, forcing Bond to turn back and delaying his escape. Then he shoots him several times, also slowing him down and likely leaving him fatally wounded even if he did still manage to get away. Lastly, he poisons him with nanobots meant to target Madeleine and Mathilde, ensuring that even if he survived the other two things, he'd be left dead emotionally from not being able to be with his family.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Child actress Coline Defaud played a younger Madeleine in the opening flashback and Léa Seydoux played her as an adult.
• Time Skip: Two relatively early on in the movie. The opening sequence has Madeleine as a child, and is set many years prior to the events of SPECTRE. This is followed by a sequence with Bond and Madeleine as adults, now set after the previous movie. After the opening credits, the narrative then leaps forward five years.
• Title Drop: With a full stop in the middle, but it works a lot better than A View to a Kill did. When Obruchev says he can reprogram the nanobots to kill anyone of African descent, thereby "wiping her race from the face of the Earth," Nomi sets one up before kicking him into the Heracles farm:
  Nomi: You know what time it is?
  Obruchev: ...What?
  Nomi: Time to die!
• Too Dumb to Live: Considering Nomi had Obruchev at gunpoint, suggesting to wipe out her entire ethnic race wasn't the smartest move.
  • Bond, of all people, who rushes into an open area without any means to protect himself and sure enough, is almost immediately gunned down by Safin.
• Too Happy to Live: Bond and Madeleine's blissful life in Matera is soon destroyed by a murder attempt by SPECTRE. The exchange they have just before he puts her on the train—"This is it." "This is it."— suggests that deep down, they both knew things were too good to last and that they would have inevitably broken up anyway. It gets worse in the the final third of the movie, where they reconcile, he learns that he's a father, and they only get a few hours of domestic idyll before Safin's gunmen interrupt them again, kicking off the final chain of events that lead to Bond's death.
• Toplessness from the Back: Madeleine is apparently sleeping nude during the prologue, but this is only conveyed by the fact that she's displaying this trope.
• Touch of Death: Quite literally what happens with Heracles. When an infected person who's not the genetic target of the nanobots touches someone who is targeted by them, death will occur in the span of a few seconds.
• Town Girls: The three main Bond girls: Nomi is the Butch, Paloma is the Neither and Madeleine is the Femme.
• Tragic Keepsake: Unusually for the trope, it doesn't belong to someone who died, but rather it's someone finding it who dies: The soft cuddly toy ("doudou" in French) of Mathilde that Bond finds inside Safin's base expecting to happily bring it back to his daughter — which will never happen. Bond carries it on himself as he dies with the missile strike.
• Trail of Blood: What Bond leaves behind him as he walks away from Safin's body, making it abundantly clear how badly hurt he is.
• Train-Station Goodbye: A rather tragic example: Bond and Madeleine are attacked by SPECTRE in Matera in the Action Prologue, and Bond thinks Madeleine has something to do with it and parts ways with her at a train station, putting her on a train and wishing they never see each other again. She had nothing to do with it, Blofeld was behind it and just did this to either kill Bond or destroy his newfound love relationship.
• Tranquil Fury: Bond displays this in absolutely bone-chilling fashion during the opening sequence when he stops the car and sits there impassively as it's bombarded with bullets, completely unmoved by Madeleine's hysterical screams and pleas for him to do something, so angry at her presumed betrayal that he'd willingly torture her like that.
• Trapped in a Sinking Car: Cargo ship, rather. How Ash abandons Bond and Leiter, succeeding in killing the latter.
• Trojan Horse: Obruchev is essentially a human version of one. Safin knows of SPECTRE's plan to kidnap the scientist, so he instructs him to download important files from his computer beforehand and swallow the flash drive. This is so Obruchev can later reprogram the nanobots to kill SPECTRE's agents instead of Bond, who was their intended target.
• Troubled Backstory Flashback: The first part of the film's opening, detailing Madeleine's gun-related trauma from Spectre. Turns out the killer who came for her father and her and got shot at by her was Safin. He took the life of Madeleine's mother, but spared Madeleine's life.
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: An example between versions. The versions of "We Have All The Time In The World" present in On Her Majesty's Secret Service are both in A Major, but when it is reprised in "Matera" here, it is in B♭ Major.
• The Unsmile: Bond notes that Logan Ash smiles too much and is put off by it; when it's revealed that he's a mole for SPECTRE, his smile becomes more unsettling.
• The Un-Reveal: Despite Nomi asking multiple times, it's never revealed what designation Bond was given when he was reinstated to 00 status, and if that number was transferred to Nomi when she turned over the 007 designation back to him.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Madeleine encourages Bond to visit Vesper's tomb to get closure and allow them to have a healthy relationship. He nearly dies in an explosive trap set for him and abandons her, thinking that she's betrayed him. Of course, this was another plot by Blofeld to mess with his foster brother out of spite.
  • Felix Leiter tracks Bond down in Jamaica to ask for his help, resulting in a chain of events that eventually results in both of their deaths..
  • Madeleine again when she applies the Heracles virus to herself after Safin threatens her. Bond becomes infected when he grabs her wrist and by the end of the film, Safin further infects him so that he'll be poisonous to her and their daughter, resulting in Bond's decision to commit a Heroic Suicide to keep them safe.
  • M, who came up with the idea of harnessing the power of the nanobots to kill bad guys, yet inexplicably hasn't been working on an antidote to them or a means to disable them should they fall into the wrong hands, which is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. Frankly, this borders on Idiot Ball and makes M indirectly responsible for Bond's death.
  • Even Bond himself. By not shooting Blofeld when he had the chance at the conclusion of the previous film, he enabled him to set up the ambush that resulted in him leaving Madeleine (no doubt Blofeld knew Bond would react exactly like this).
• Vader Breath: Safin's respiration under his Noh mask in the prologue makes him even more sinister.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Safin isn't really clear on precisely what his Evil Plan or motivations are. We know that he is planning on killing millions of people, but it is never properly explained why he is doing this or who the targets are. This ties into Safin being an overall aversion of the usual Bond villain tropes — why would he explain everything about his entire goals and motivations to a man he plans to defeat, especially whilst they're still underway?
• Villain Opening Scene: The first scene consists of a Flashback of Safin invading Madeleine's childhood home and shooting her mother.
• Villains Out Shopping: Bond and Paloma infiltrate a SPECTRE meeting only to find they are holding a birthday party for their boss, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. However, it turns out they knew Bond was coming because the greatest birthday present for Blofeld would be the death of James Bond.
• We Have Reserves: Bond runs the two Land Rovers pursuing him, Madeleine and Mathilde off the road, only to see a helicopter, three more Land Rovers and two motorcyclists suddenly emerge.
• Weaponized Car: The Aston Martin DB5 is back, this time fitted with miniguns.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • M. He worked with Russian defector Obruchev to develop the Heracles project as a precision weapon that would enable MI-6 to eliminate targets without risk of collateral damage. Unfortunately for him, and for the world, the weapon is stolen - first by SPECTRE, then by Safin - and repurposed into a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
  • Safin is implied to be this. Given his targeting of Madeleine and her mother years ago just to get to Mr. White for killing his own family and his saying that he believes what he's doing is what's right for the world, Safin—given he also wipes out SPECTRE in its entirety and doesn't have a penchant for cruelty when he later has Madeleine and Mathilde hostage—seems to genuinely believe in his rhetoric and that the ends justify the means of how he'll achieve them.
• Wham Episode: Felix Leiter, Blofeld, and James Bond all die.
• Wham Shot:
  • Bond is in the middle of a poignant visit to Vesper's grave. Suddenly, there's an explosion and all hell breaks loose.
  • Literally when Felix is shot by Ash and soon dies.
  • During an interrogation of Blofeld, Bond, unknowingly infected with Heracles, strangles Blofeld before Tanner restrains him. During a brief argument between the two, we hear a thud and the next shot we see Blofeld, slumped down in his cell, dead and infected.
  • When Bond tracks Madeleine to her childhood home in Norway, he expects to find her alone. This seems to be the case, until a young girl walks into the room, revealing Madeleine has a daughter.
  • Also literally when Safin shoots Bond several times, the first time in the series that we've ever seen him so genuinely and seriously injured. Even without having been poisoned or the impending missile strike, he would likely have died from this anyway.
  • And a final one as we see Bond being consumed in the Tomahawk missile explosion, ensuring us that this death is permanent.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Spectre had MI6 and MI5 merge to form the Joint Security Service. The movie inexplicably has MI6 being separate once more.
    • It is likely that within the five year timeskip, with C dead and SPECTRE's Nine Eyes project exposed as an operation to undermine the global intelligence community, M was able to exploit the power vacuum to retake the control of British Intelligence he had lost under C and get the now-discredited Joint Security Service dissolved back into its original two components.
  • Several parties were on the way to the island to buy the Heracles weapon before the base is destroyed. It's not shown what happened to them.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Bond chews M out thoroughly when it comes out that MI6 had secretly supported the development of the Heracles viral weapon — a weapon which of course falls in the hands of the bad guys.
• White Mask of Doom: Safin wears a Kabuki mask while killing Madeleine's mother. He later reveals his identity to her by giving her a box containing the same mask.
• White Shirt of Death:
  • Felix is wearing a white shirt when he's fatally shot.
  • Bond is in this when he's shot multiple times then is poisoned with nanobots and eventually does a Heroic Sacrifice to protect Madeleine and Mathilde.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Safin does a variant of this to Bond in the finale, breaking a vial of Heracles against Bond's neck that's programmed to target Madeleine and Mathilde, then saying that he made him do it so they can both die of heartbreak.
• "Will Return" Caption: Despite ending with his apparent death, the franchise's traditional "James Bond Will Return" message still appears at the end of the credits, though this is probably meant to be interpreted as "the James Bond franchise will continue" rather than "this James Bond will continue".
• The Worf Effect: The entirety of SPECTRE gets this pulled on them by Safin and Obruchev, who hijack their plan to kill Bond to kill all of them instead at a gathering using a bioweapon, destroying almost the entire organization in one fell swoop.
• Would Hurt a Child: Double subverted by Safin when he saves the young Madeleine's life during the prologue, but tries to kill Mathilde with DNA-targeting nanobots.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Bond prostrating himself before Safin to beg for his daughter's life conceals the fact that he's reaching for a gun hidden under his clothes, though he's ultimately unable to kill Safin with it.
• Xanatos Gambit: Blofeld attempts to assassinate Bond when he visits Vesper's grave at the start of the film, and frames Madeleine for having betrayed his location to SPECTRE. As he later gleefully points out to Bond, this plan is a win-win for him: if his assassins succeed in killing Bond, he dies thinking he was sold out by the woman he loves, but even if they fail, Bond's trust in Madeleine and their relationship will be destroyed and he'll be left to live a miserable, lonely retirement as a result, which is exactly what ends up happening.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Both times that it appears that Bond and Madeleine are going to be blissfully happy together, all hell breaks loose and they're separated —first at the beginning, then at the end. It's especially cruel considering that Bond has FINALLY defeated or eliminated everyone who was a threat to them, meaning that they could really and truly live in peace, only for him to have to sacrifice himself to ensure hers and Mathilde's safety.
• Ye Olde Nuclear Silo: Safin's base on what appears to be one of the Kuril islands is a former Soviet military facility. The submarine pen dates back to World War II but the missile launching doors scream Cold War.
• You Killed My Father:
  • In the prologue, a young Madeleine Swann watched in horror from behind a closet as her mother is killed by Safin. This is also why she did her best to protect her own daughter from Safin.
  • Safin himself wanted to destroyed SPECTRE because his parents were killed by Madeleine's father, Mr. White, under orders from Blofeld.
• You Must Be Cold: James wraps his jacket around Mathilde when she and Madeleine are about to escape Safin's island via motorboat, saying it is going to get really cold. A real fatherly moment.
• Your Kid All Along: Despite initially denying it, Madeleine eventually confirms that Bond is the father of her five-year-old daughter Mathilde.
• You're Insane!: Though he is in no place to talk, Blofeld's last word of "Cuckoo" is something to this effect, meaning both his belief that Bond is a "cuckoo" who stole his life and that he had "gone cuckoo" by briefly strangling him. He seems more amused than upset, though.

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James Bond Will Return.

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