Video Game / GoldenEye (1997)

aka: Golden Eye

One of the best reasons to have an N64.

GoldenEye 007 (also known simply as GoldenEye or GoldenEye 64) is an FPS video game adaptation of the James Bond movie of the same name, made by Rare for the Nintendo 64 in 1997, notably two years after the movie came out.

The majority of the game's missions are directly lifted from the film, with some slight alterations and omissions. Two hidden missions were also included, inspired by other Bond movies. The game's split-screen multiplayer mode allowed players to control classic Bond villains (and, through the help of cheat devices, three of the other Bonds^note George Lazenby is left out.), and featured many different gameplay combinations based on weapon selection and game rules, such as "You Only Live Twice" (two lives, last man standing), and "License to Kill" (one hit kills, no matter the gun, except the Klobb sometimes).

The Motion-Sensor Bomb from this game would later show up in Super Smash Bros. 64 and Melee before being drastically redesigned, making GoldenEye the only licensed game (and one of only two non-gaming franchises) to get any form of representation in the Super Smash Bros. series. ^note The other non-video game IP being Mickey Mouse, by way of the emblem on Sora's keychain in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Complex licensing issues between Nintendo, Microsoft (who purchased Rare in 2002), and James Bond rights holders Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Eon Productions initially prevented any sort of rerelease — most notably, a planned Xbox 360 Live Arcade remaster that was nearly completed — but two new releases of the game were eventually announced in September 2022 to commemorate the title's 25th anniversary. The original N64 version would be made available for Expansion Pack tier Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, with online play supported via the app's built-in online multiplayer functionality; meanwhile, Xbox Game Pass subscribers would receive a remastered version developed by Code Mystics in collaboration with Rare featuring achievements, 4K resolution, a smoother framerate and local split-screen multiplayer, with owners of digital copies of the compilation title Rare Replay getting it for free. Both versions released on January 27, 2023.^note The Japanese NSO release was delayed until November 30. Due to having a CERO Z (18+) rating in Japan, Nintendo created a new "Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online 18+" app for the title, in order to avoid having to bump up the age rating for the main N64 app.

See also GoldenEye (2010), a Video Game Remake developed by Eurocom and published by Activision for the Wii in 2010, with an Updated Re-release for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 following in 2011. And despite the name, the 2004 Bond game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is not plot-related.

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This game contains examples of:

A-C

• Action Girl: Natalya in the Jungle. She uses her Cougar Magnum and delivers many one-liners. This is handwaved by explaining she got some firearms training in-between levels.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Boris in the film is presented as a scumbag sellout who got all his co-workers killed and would've sent England into financial ruin just for money, and Natalya beats the crap out him for it the moment she meets him face-to-face again. In the game, he is portrayed as a victim of Janus who was forced to work for him against his will. Killing him directly causes Natalya to tell you off and the mission to fail.
  • General Ourumov's Bad Boss tendencies are heavily toned down here. This is most obvious in "Archives"; whereas in the film he is interrogating Bond personally and ends up shooting one of his own guards and Defence Minister Mishkin to maintain his deception, in the game he leaves it to two of his men, and Mishkin is Spared by the Adaptation.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: Because the game adds a number of original levels, including locations that Bond never visited in the film, Natalya is artificially dropped into multiple levels where Bond saves her, only for her to be inexplicably kidnapped again at the start of the next level. MI6 specifically sent Bond to Russia to find the survivor of the Severnaya massacre, so they should have whisked her away right after Bunker II.
• Adaptational Modesty: Xenia Onatopp's favourite method of killing understandably goes unmentioned here; the change in context around the "Frigate" level means the Canadian admiral she sleeps with is absent, and we never see her get flustered over the Severnaya massacre since it now occurs off-screen.
• Adaptational Name Change: The prototype Tiger helicopter Xenia steals in the movie is renamed "Pirate" here.
• Adaptation Distillation: A number of events from the film are condensed or shuffled around here so they can better fit within gameplay.
  • In the film, Bond spends a while chasing leads until he meets Valentin Zukovsky at a cabaret, who then directs him on where to find Janus. Here, Zukovsky is already waiting for Bond in Statue Park, with the Janus reveal shortly afterwards.
  • Natalia's capture between "Archives" and "St. Petersburg Streets" instead happens in the film during the archives shootout, when the floor collapses beneath her from the gunfire and she falls into the Russian troops. In the game, she escapes the archives with Bond but is captured during the level transition... somehow.
• Adaptation Expansion: While most of the game's levels are taken directly from the movie (albeit modified and expanded), there are a few new ones too, as well as other plot changes made.
  • Level 1, "Dam", sees Bond fighting his way atop the dam, jamming the base's communications before making the bungee jump that served as the film's opening scene. This level is loosely based on a invokedDeleted Scene from the film, which saw Bond cut the telephone wire at a guard post as the first scene before the bungee jump.
  • Levels 4 and 5, Surface and Bunker, take place 'Four Years Ago' (1991), where Bond travels to the Severnaya base to investigate suspicious activity, whereas Bond never visited Severnaya in the movie.
  • Level 6, Silo, takes place 'Two Years Ago' (1993), and is the first completely original level in the game, where Bond investigates unscheduled test firings from a missile silo and encounters Ourumov.
  • Level 7, Frigate, expands Xenia Onatopp's stealing of the Eurocopter on the La Fayette from a simple grab and go into a full on hijacking of the ship, with Bond needing to rescue hostages and defuse bombs.
  • Levels 8 and 9, Surface and Bunker, where Bond visits Severnaya a second time and meets Natalya after being imprisoned, while in the film he didn't meet her until after he was captured at the statue park.
  • Level 17, Caverns, is another completely new level, where Bond chases Janus through a cavern en route to the giant satellite dish.
  • And finally, the game has two bonus levels after the main game is cleared, based on other Bond films:
    • Level 19, Aztec, unlocked for completing the prior levels on Secret Agent, is based on Moonraker, with Bond entering into the Drax Corporation's shuttle base and fighting Jaws.
    • Level 20, Egyptian, unlocked for completing the prior levels on 00 Agent, is based on Live and Let Die (Baron Samedi's appearance), The Man with the Golden Gun (the titular Golden Gun and how it belonged to Francisco Scaramanga), and The Spy Who Loved Me (the Egyptian setting).
• A.K.A.-47: None of the weapons have real names. For example, Bond's trademark Walther PPK is renamed "PP7", the Norinco Type 56-1 (a Chinese copy of an AK-pattern rifle) is called the "KF7 Soviet"), and the Skorpion vz.61 is called the "Klobb". The closest to a real name is the RC-P90, which is based on the FN Herstal P90 with a few changes either because they didn't know much about the gun (like its very weird wooden grips) or coding errors (its magazine capacity is bumped up to 80). The actual weapon names can be seen in a few beta screenshots, one of which also showed that the aforementioned Klobb got this trope applied to it twice over (it was originally meant to be called the "Spyder" - the name is also present in the instruction manual).
• Alien Sky: The sky often has odd colors, particularly in Surface II where the night sky is crimson, or in Complex where the sky is red.
• Always Close:
  • The bomb in "Statue" is a proximity-triggered mechanism that sets the remaining time to 15 seconds if it was higher when you got close. Although tricky, it is actually possible to approach the helicopter and rescue Natalya without triggering the proximity fuse if you are careful enough — but it blows up a moment later anyway.
  • The bomb in "Train" on 00 Agent always leaves you with about four seconds to escape, unless you wound Xenia after killing Ourumov. If you do it, you will get around 18 seconds to escape because you still need to wait for Natalya to finish hacking into Boris' account to figure out Janus' hideout.
• Anachronism Stew: A minor example, but the Russian Commandant character model has a shoulder patch featuring the modern Russian tricolor, even in the early missions set during the time of the Soviet Union. Curiously, this was fixed in the unreleased XBLA version, where he now has Soviet-era symbols (and where it's perfectly plausible that the uniforms haven't been replaced by 1995).
• Arbitrary Gun Power: The RCP-90 is stronger that the AR33 Assault Rifle, even though the RCP uses pistol ammo and the AR33 rifle ammo.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Enemies cannot shoot you if you're up in their face and slapping them which allows you to kill lone guards without wasting ammo and taking damage. Because of this, Jaws can be easy to defeat if you can remove or lure him away from any supporting troops.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions:
  • The hostages in "Frigate". Generally, they simply run away and disappear offscreen (with the message "Hostage Escaped"). If you follow them, however, they never disappear, and you can see that they simply run aimlessly about the ship at top speed. Although there's nowhere for them to escape to anyway (the only possible way to leave the ship would be via Bond's tiny one-man motorboat, unless they wanted to try swimming it).
  • Enemies react to being shot in various areas, and have a variety of deaths. When they're not fighting you, they'll stand around, scratch their bums, or patrol if set to do so. The scientists in the Facility level will go sprinting for the bathroom once you leave them alone (where they simply dematerialize without explanation). The same thing happens to Boris if you follow him in "Control". The civilians in the Street level simply run around in little circles... through minefields.
• Artificial Brilliance: Whereas enemies in older FPSes were usually limited to "shooting or running after you when you walk into a room" along with some randomly generated movement, the enemies in GoldenEye were a little more cunning. They dodged bullets, set off alarms if you made too much noise, etc. Along with Half-Life, this game set a lot of standards for enemy AI (though still rough, as the next trope shows).
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Enemies will not open fire unless they have a clear line of sight. Railings, glass, bottomless holes, and invisible walls count as obstacles for the purpose of aiming. This turns Xenia into much less of a threat, as you can gun her down as she crosses the bridge (she treats the bridge as a corridor). This also stumps Jaws, since he'll never fire if you simply run up and down the staircase.
  • Enemy soldiers make no effort to take cover or even protect themselves against your fire, save if they execute a combat roll and end up rolling behind a wall. Their battle strategy tends to boil down to "get into line of sight with Bond and fire in full-auto". Depending on the difficulty, enemy soldiers also tend to have poor situational awareness, often not seeing Bond shooting their comrades a good 30 feet away in front of them. They tend to cluster into large groups and go through doors one by one, leading to easy kills. Also, they fire one burst, and then stand around defenseless for a short period of time.
  • Natalya during the Jungle mission. If you're not aware of where she is while you're shooting with the AR33, she'll wander into your line of fire and end up getting a few hi-power rounds in the back of the head.
  • Enemies are simply not programmed to avoid explosions and will very likely get themselves killed when explosive weapons are used by either you or them. An example of this is when one of the guards suddenly throws a grenade, as they often do so quite recklessly and can get their comrades or even themselves killed with it. Another example is when "Enemy Rockets" is enabled. Enemies will not fire if you're less than 3 feet away from them. More than that, however, and they fire, regardless of whether or not you're surrounded by their allies.
  • Civilians or scientists running around will not be aware of explosions or a line of fire.
• Artistic License – Physics: The explosions in GoldenEye, which are obviously unrealistic, are called "rolling explosions" because they last for three seconds. Real explosions only last for several milliseconds.
• Artistic License – Ships: The La Fayette looks nothing like a La Fayette-class frigate and rather more like an American Kidd-class destroyer. The unused multiplayer version of the map is even called "Destroyer."
• Ascended Extra: The original film is one of the smaller appearances of the MI6 regulars, with each of them generally being a One-Scene Wonder. While they don't make a physical appearance in this game, M, Q and Moneypenny all give you their own mission briefings at the start of every level, making them a more consistent presence throughout the game.invoked
• Attack Drone: Various levels have ceiling-mounted autoguns which will shred the player given the chance.
• Auto-Save: The game saves your progress automatically after completing a mission.
• Awesome, but Impractical: For mission-based levels, explosive weapons.
  • Sure, explosions look cool and can instantly kill a group of enemies or machines caught close to the explosive blasts. Unlike other first-person shooters at the time, you have non-lethal and non-destructive objectives where you shouldn't be trigger-happy or else risk failing the mission.
  • Due to Artificial Stupidity, it is very easy for a main character or several civilians to get caught in an explosive blast. Natalya's AI in the Jungle will make you not want to use that awesome RCP-90 and Grenade Launcher combo.
  • Using explosives in stealth-like missions and at the wrong spots will trigger a lot of noise, which will alert the guards or even trigger the Respawning Enemies script, making missions like the Bunker much harder to complete.
  • Using explosives near machines or barrels can cause a chain of explosions, which then in turn destroy objective-based items or machines. The Bunker and Cavern are notorious for this.
• Background Music Override: After inflicting enough damage on Alec Travelyan in the final mission, Settle the Score with 006 plays as he runs to go descend the ladder to the bottom of the cradle.
• The Backwards Я: There's Cyrillic script all over the place in some levels, some of which is genuine Russian (funnily, many crates are marked БАНАН, or "banana") and some is just transliterated English (like СТОП, which says "stop", or ВЭПОН АРМЭД, which is "vepon armed").
• Bag of Spilling: You always start each stage with the PP7 and nothing else, save for Caverns where you also get a ZMG. This happens even in stages which start immediately after another one, where you built up an arsenal. Justified in Bunker II, since you were captured at the end of Surface II and your weapons confiscated.
• Beating A Dead Player:
  • In Singleplayer, you are treated to a third person replay of Bond keeling over, from three different angles, while the enemy continues to shoot him relentlessly.
  • In Multiplayer, a dead player's body will still remain after disappearing which allows the other players to keep attacking it until respawns.
• Big Damn Fire Exit: The Silo is a Timed Mission in which you must get to the elevator before either the Self-Destruct Mechanism or your own bombs go off. On Agent, the timer starts when you plant the first bomb (or if, since it's merely optional there), but on other difficulties, the timer starts as soon as the level does.
• The Big Damn Kiss: The ending has an extensive one between Bond and Natalya.
• Big Head Mode: DK Mode is a Big Head and Arms Mode. It can be activated with a cheat.
• Blackground: One of the bonus levels has 007 face off against Baron Samedi in an Egyptian Temple no less than three times. Once Samedi has been killed twice, the level's normal blue distance fog fades to an ominous black, both signifying the final battle and an attempt to intimidate the player with his voodoo powers.
• Blatant Lies: The D.D.44 Dostovei. The manual states that the weapon is Loud but powerful, yet the weapon does the same standard damage as the regular weapons like the silenced PP7.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: The Golden Gun. Also, the Gold and Silver versions of the PP7.
• Bloodier and Gorier: It's not a Doom-style gorefest, but enemies react realistically to pain, actually do bleed, and a big chunk of the game involves shooting up hallways with automatic weapons as enemies charge down them. Compare the game version of the archives escape to the film version, which in comparison actually plays Bloodless Carnage straight and uses Bullet Sparks for everything.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: When you pick up body armor, it will completely protect you from head to toe and absorb all of the damage that you receive until it runs out, even against headshots and explosion burns. The flip side of this is any damage to your health cannot be healed in the middle of a level.
• Bond One-Liner: It's done with on screen texts, but Bond will still give the occasional quip on taking out a mook. Natalya does it also in Jungle.
• Bonus Feature Failure: The Frigate's unlockable cheat is toggling the radar on/off in multiplayer. While this isn't bad on its own, it pales in comparison to the other unlockable cheats, and this cheat's exclusively for multiplayer, so it's useless to anyone who plays single player.
• Boom, Headshot!: A frequent result of using the sniper rifle, and the quickest way to kill someone, especially considering that the sniper rifle isn't particularly more powerful than any other weapon. The game tracks all limb, torso and headshots as well.
• Boring, but Practical: Missions-only. Despite a large amount of cool weapon types in the games, only 1 or 2 of them are commonly usable in the missions. You do not carry weapons from previous levels and are preset each time you begin a level.
  • The silenced PP7 will be your most common pistol to use 2/3rds of the game. It doesn't alert enemies, which can either cause Respawning Enemies or an accidental fail to the mission (i.e. alert a guard to accidentally shoot or throw a grenade at an innocent victim). You mostly start with this weapon and 100 ammo, which is plentiful for missions. Enjoy this throughout the first half of the game.
  • The main 3 rapid-fire weapons: the KF7 Soviet, D5K Deutsche (especially silenced), and AR-33 Assault Rifle. Despite being the most common rapid-fire weapon that almost every soldier carry, these will be your most-used guns next to the silenced PP7. For the silenced D5K Deutsche you begin with in the Frigate, it becomes your only weapon to use due to its safety. Every other rapid-fire weapon not listed above is either useless, secondary, available very late in the mission, unobtainable, or risky to use.
  • The Moonraker Laser. Unlimited Ammo. Not much else can be said.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Two of the energy weapons (the Moonraker Laser and Taser) have unlimited ammo. The Watch Laser, however, does not, though it is more than sufficient for the task.
  • Your enemies never run out of ammo, even when using the same weapons you do.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The hardest cheats to earn - Invincibility, All Guns, and Infinite Ammo - are the hardest to obtain in the game, requiring beating 00 Agent levels with extremely strict time limits. If you're good enough to clear them with such strict time limits, you certainly don't need them.
  • 007 mode is unlocked by beating every stage on the hardest difficulty. If you're good enough to beat every stage on the hardest difficulty, you aren't going to need a mode where you can set enemy health and damage.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Aztec bonus mission has tons of insidiously accurate enemies in optimum positions armed with lasers and AR33s to take you out before you can blink, many drone guns in inconvenient positions forcing you to take them out under duress, quite a confusing layout and difficult objectives. Additionally, Jaws is present, dual-wields AR33s and has a high amount of health, but you have to take him out to get a key to complete an objective. Killing Jaws (or completing Objective 1 if you bypassed Jaws via door trick) will trigger Respawning Enemies.
• Bullet Proof Human Shield: The KF7 and most guns that use 9 mm don't penetrate the victim, but more powerful guns like AR-33 and RC-P90 will.
• Bulletproof Vest: You can pick up a bulletproof vest that essentially acts as a second health bar. Headshots still hurt, though.
• The Cameo: Alongside the Goldeneye cast, you can also play as Oddjob, Baron Samedi, Jaws, and Mayday in multiplayer. In the credits they are introduced as 'Guest Stars'. As a piece of trivia, this lineup of past villains is identical to the boss fights in the previous Bond video game, 1993's James Bond 007: The Duel.
• The Can Kicked Him:
  • The Facility begins in the vent above a bathroom, and you can easily kill the first enemy by shooting him in the head as he sits on the toilet. There is another soldier in a different stall there, and one at the open area of the bathroom who, judging by his initial position, probably was using one of the urinals.
  • There are also several bathrooms on the train level; while most of them are locked, you can still kill some people by walking in on them taking a dump.
• Cap: You can plant a large number of remote mines but the program and hardware limitations won't allow all of them to detonate at once (otherwise it would've frozen or crashed the game). Instead, the remote mines will detonate in sequence going from the first mine that was planted to the last one.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Trevelyan and Bond when they first meet. Natalya also does this a lot.
• Chaos Architecture: You visit the same place twice. It's seven years between visits, so naturally they've added extensions to the place, but the old parts of the building remain the same, so much so that when you are navigating your way around with relative ease, your companion asks if you have been there before.
• Cherry Tapping:
  • With most weapons (but especially the Klobb) it's possible to shoot enemies quite a few times before they die.
  • Tapping multiple enemies with a shot or two each to keep them staggered and unable to fire back is a viable strategy.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Natalya's AI chooses her lines at random, so there can be moments where she will shoot someone, then comment on a nice plant.
• Cold Sniper: Literally. Bond gets a sniper rifle in the first Surface level, in an area covered with snow.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Enemies seem to follow a Law of Chromatic Superiority where green mooks are regular soldiers and aren't much of a threat, brown mooks are officers (and seemingly the weakest, given that they almost exclusively use pistols) and black mooks are Janus operatives and are by far the most dangerous. Blue mooks (Spetsnaz) are all over the place though, what with some being barely stronger than green mooks and others being even stronger than the black ones. Headgear is another form of identification among the Janus Special Forces; black/hatless is base health, red headgear is medium, and blue-hatted mooks have the most armor.
• Commissar Cap: Ourumov wears one all the time, just like in the film.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Natalya will sometimes do this, especially on Control. She will tell James to quiet down since she can't hear herself think...even as Bond frantically guns down Janus grunts who are trying to kill her.
• Composite Character: In multiplayer mode, Oddjob is much smaller than other characters. In Goldfinger, Oddjob is not much shorter than Bond. For the game, he was likely combined with Nick Nack.
• Computer Equals Monitor: Destroying a critical monitor during the "Protect Natalya" mission in the Janus base will cause you to fail the mission. Justified in that you don't have time to go around fixing computers. However, you can destroy everything except that monitor without consequence, and it's in fact recommended due to everything being Made of Explodium and blocking your line of fire against the mooks trying to kill you and Natalya.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Enemies have Bottomless Magazines and can shoot through other guards while you cannot. As well, bosses have far more health than you do, and Trevelyan can run much faster than you can on the cradle level. They also know exactly where you are on the level, whether or not an alarm has been sounded. Fortunately, your Mercy Invincibility and the fact that you don't keel over in pain from each shot help to balance this.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Subverted. crates and other scenery objects will explode if shot.
• Container Maze: Several levels have this feel, including the Depot (consists almost exclusively of containers) and Control (the end).
• Coup de Grâce Cutscene:
  • Cradle: After Bond has shot Trevelyan, he falls to his death in a cut scene.
  • Egyptian: It's possible to shoot Baron Samedi a 4th time during the final cutscene with the right controller layout.
• The Cracker: Boris and his hacking abilities. Here he's Bond's only way to crack the computer in Bunker.
• Crate Expectations: The game has towering piles of crates Made of Explodium. Sometimes there are guns inside. Special mention goes to the crate on the penultimate level which holds a smaller crate, which breaks open to reveal an even smaller crate, and that one can then be broken to find an even smaller crate, and in turn that one holds a TV that's larger than the previous crate itself, and inside the TV is the only pair of dual-wieldable assault rifles in the entire game.
• Critical Existence Failure: Played with. On one hand, people will often react to getting shot. Weaker enemies on most difficulty levels will respond to locational damage: if they get shot in the arm or leg, they may stop what they are doing and clutch at the affected area for a bit. After a few seconds however, they will return to normal, without any indication that they were ever injured other than a bloodstain. This is almost completely played straight with Elite Mooks and other characters with absurdly high hit points, who can take up to several dozen bullets while barely flinching. In addition, because of how explosions work in the game,^note (Essentially a localized fireball emitting pulses of damage over a few seconds.) a sufficiently durable enemy standing at the edge of a fireball may show no signs of taking any damage — until their HP count hits 0, at which point their corpse may go flying.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Most of the time when Bond offs a Mook, they crumple to the floor, or leap into the air like typical action movie bad guys do, but sometimes they don't go down well. Some of the death animations are downright gruesome, even without seeing blood. Shoot a guy in the neck, and he'll clutch his throat like blood is gushing out uncontrollably, hit them in the stomach or groin and they slowly sink to the ground as they 'bleed' out, sometimes rocking back and forth in agony.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The ending of Surface II shows Bond running into a bunker and getting captured without even putting up a fight. ^note Made all the more hilarious if you utilize timed explosions to off the soldiers.

D-I

• Damsel in Distress: Natalya gets captured how many times in this game? Let's see. First in Severnaya, where Bond meets her in the same predicament. Then at the Statue Park in St. Petersburg. Then after the Russians arrest them. Then Ourumov gets a hold of her, leading to the tank chase, and you only recover her two missions later. That's four in total, before she takes a level in badass. Moneypenny even lampshades this to a degree in the Train briefing: "That girl again, James?"
• Dark Action Girl: Xenia uses guns more than her bearhug legs in this game. She is a tough opponent in "Jungle".
• Deadpan Snarker: Natalya gets a few snarks of her own in. However, they're chosen at random so they might be, for example, about how nice a plant looks.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • CIA agent Jack Wade does not make a physical appearance here, only being mentioned in the briefing to "Jungle" to explain where Natalya's sudden gunslinger skills came from, and later he has a single line via radio during "Caverns" to confirm your escape.
  • Xenia Onatopp's role is also heavily diminished; her early encounters with Bond and her role at Severnaya are reduced to passing mentions in briefings, and she doesn't make her first in-person appearance until as late as "Train". Even the game's cover art snubs her, with the spot where she was on the film poster now covered up by the 'Only For Nintendo 64' graphic.
• Destroy the Security Camera: You will be doing this quite a bit, as if you're spotted on a security camera, the alarm will sound after a short time, alerting nearby guards.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Look straight up and fire a rocket launcher in an open area. If you wait a minute or so around the same area, you will eventually see the rocket fall back to the ground and explode.
  • Shooting at a scientist twice causes them to pull out a gun on higher difficulties. In the Facility mission, they even throw hand grenades. Likewise, shooting at Dmitri Mishkin or 006 (only in the Facility mission) will cause them to fire at you, though this instantly results in a mission failure.
  • The slides of all the semi-auto pistols lock back when out of ammo. Similarly, the grenade launcher's cylinder and the Cougar Magnum's hammer work every time the trigger is pulled, detail rarely seen in games of the era.
  • Also, the shotgun weapons have a shell holder that gradually empties as you reload if you have five shells or less in reserve.
  • "Depot" ends with a cutscene of Bond entering a train and killing two Mooks. The gun he uses is the same one you had out when you ended the mission with, with the exception of explosive ones or being unarmed/combat knives. The cutscene even changes to account for you killing one (where Bond only kills one mook) or both of them (where Bond instead just adjusts his tie like at the end of "Frigate") before triggering it.
  • During "Statue Park", before you unmask him, the leader of Janus contemptuously tells Bond to put his gun away, just like in the movie. Unless, of course, the player has put their gun away already prior to that cutscene, in which case he makes a quip about how bad MI6 budget cuts must have gotten, to send Bond out with no gun. Clearly Trevelyan thought Bond would kill him on sight, and never thought that the agent would be polite enough to holster his weapon.
  • Lower difficulties in The Runway don't require you to destroy the Gatling Guns on the runway, if you don't the cutscene will show them shooting at you when you fly away. More impressively, the game will actually adjust to have one gun firing if you destroyed one but not the other. Also if you left the tank past the plane, you can see it on the runway during the cutscene.
  • Aztec has no defined exit, so the player can finish the game anywhere, with no known bugs coming up.
  • Caverns has the so called "race". When Bond is for whatever reason faster than Trevelyan, all doors will be opened up and the level can be done much quicker (the doors open painfully slow).
  • Enemies have a variety of death animations depending on where they were shot. Hitting them in the groin causes them to clutch their private parts and fall slowly to the ground, and even as they're lying down, they will wince in pain for some time before dying. Blowing them up causes them to be sent flying through the air and land on their front or back depending on which way they're thrown, the size of the explosion and where they were standing.
  • If you manage to knock 006 off the platform during the Final Boss fight in Cradle, a short cutscene will play of him plummeting to his doom, similar to the movie.
• Diagonal Speed Boost: Strafing makes Bond a lot faster. Speedruns more or less require that you strafe everywhere.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Nearly everything can be destroyed, some even explode after shooting them. This actually comes in handy in the Runway level, as chucking a grenade at the guards by the desk in the side building will blow up the desk, the filing cabinets and the guards, but not the key.
• Diegetic Interface: James Bond can switch weapons using the readout on his laser watch. The bad guys will kindly stop shooting and wait for him to finish what he is up to before resuming the firefight.
• Dirty Communists: The main enemies of the campaign. Come in many varieties, from basic soldiers to officers to Spetsnaz to a Lienz Cossack, though Janus isn't interested in Mother Russia.
• Disney Villain Death: Trevelyan simply falls off the Cradle and dies, unlike in the movie (where the entire thing collapsed and fell on him), though as the cradle level appeared to be in the clouds in the game, so perhaps the fall would kill him. There is a patch that fixes this, and the XBLA remaster would featured a skybox based off of the actual jungle and well seen in the movie.
• Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Enemies will continue clutching their guns until their very last hit point is taken away. Blasting It Out of Their Hands will make them recoil as though shot, but they'll still hold onto their weapon. Given that enemies often dramatically keel over, seeing the weapon drop is the best way to be sure they're dead.
• Doomsday Device: The GoldenEye satellite. Set to fire on London by Janus.
• Dual Wielding:
  • Jungle features Xenia with a grenade launcher in one hand and a submachine gun in the other, allowing you to use them once you manage to kill her. Unfortunately, ammo for the two weapons is virtually non-existent in the level, so you're not going to be able to have a whole lot of fun with them.
  • Bond himself can dual wield some weapons, but he needs to kill enemy who is dual wielding and then take their guns in order to do so. The "All Guns" cheat can let Bond dual wield every single gun in the game.
• Easter Egg: One of the programmers hid a ZX Spectrum emulator in the game's code just to see if it was possible. It didn't get put to use in this game, but it was later used to include a pair of old arcade games in Donkey Kong 64.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Bunker, Control, Aztec, etc. They all are deeply underground and contain heavy weapons and military equipment.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Some levels have troops in black, usually with better weapons, and wearing body armour (especially in Statue and Caverns). They are quite difficult to kill.
  • In both versions of the Surface level, setting off alarms will result in blue-uniformed soldiers wearing red berets and sunglasses being sent after you. These are tougher than even the elite Janus troops. Justified, though, since they're apparently supposed to be Spetsnaz.
  • The soldiers in Jungle are also difficult to deal with, being armed with powerful weapons, wearing helmets, and supplemented by sentry guns.
  • Likewise, the golden jumpsuit-wearing soldiers in the bonus Aztec level are also extremely challenging due to their enhanced reaction times and accuracy, as well as their powerful weapons.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: Only in multiplayer, as single player has no map/radar whatsoever.
• Energy Weapon: The Moonraker Laser and Watch Laser both have clearly visible trails.
• Escort Mission:
  • "Protect Natalya" while she tries to reprogram the satellite. You have to gun down waves and waves of mooks coming in from 180 degrees, all before even one gets a shot off at her.
  • Inverted in 'Jungle'. Natalya is armed with the Cougar Magnum and has suddenly become an extremely good shot. In addition, enemies are more likely to target James, which often results in Natalya killing more mooks than you. Doesn't work on the drone guns, though.
• Every Bullet is a Tracer: This was among the first games to employ this, despite using hitscan weapons.
• Everything Fades: Enemies just disappear when they die, although their guns don't. There is even a limit to the amount of bullet holes, explosion marks, and destroyed objects allowed in-play.
• Evil Laugh: Baron Samedi cackles a lot while you try to dispatch him three times in the Egyptian level.
• Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Some enemies may be dual wielding guns, which you can use for yourself once you kill the mook and take their guns. This includes Xenia's RC-P90 and Grenade Launcher Dual Wielding combo.
• Finger Poke of Doom: In the multiplayer mode "License to Kill", any attack, no matter how minor, is fatal. Yes, even the basic slap attack. Only the Klobb has per-shot damage so laughably small as to be capable of non-fatally wounding a player on this mode.
• Gadget Watches: Your watch is a little computer containing the game's menu, a laser, a magnet and a detonator. Oh, and it tells time.
• Game Mod:
  • Thanks to the Setup Editor and emulators, there have been plenty of fan-made levels for the game, with their own objectives, weapons and even briefings.
  • One popular mod among fans is GoldenEye with Mario Characters, which is exactly what it sounds like. It even adds female Mooks to levels for variety.
  • Another popular mod, made in conjunction with a modified 1964 emulator, allows the game to be controlled with a mouse and keyboard setup like a modern PC shooter. This vastly changes the pace of the game and even the difficulty as the enemies weren't quite made with such speedy players in mind. The same mod is also available for Perfect Dark.
• Gatling Good: The sentry guns rapidly spray bullets at the player, but they can be avoided by staying out of their line of sight. The ceiling mounted version can be destroyed by shooting or firing a rocket at it, while the version found in the Jungle and Egyptian levels comes with two Gatling guns mounted on a tripod, with the Jungle variant destructible via assault rifle fire.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Or game breaking cheat in this case. The Invisible Bond cheat makes you become just that. Sure, enemies can't see you and won't fire at something they can't see, but mission critical NPCs also can't see you, so they won't talk or give you what you need, making some missions Unwinnable. There's also a button-code that allows you to toggle invisibility on and off, so it's not as debilitating as that, but it does result in Guide Dang It! when the code is never mentioned in-game.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The fight with Trevelyan is a deadly game of tag where he runs all over the level shooting at you while you evade gunfire from his mooks.
• Grenade Launcher: The game has the cylinder type and the shots can bounce off walls. With the All Guns cheat, you can wield two of them!
• The Guards Must Be Crazy:
  • Enemies will walk right past dead bodies and ignore bullets smacking into their bulletproof helmets, since they only attack if they see or hear you. On the other hand, they also appear to be rather deaf and nearsighted.
  • Guards also don't react to NPC gunshots, only your own. Granted, several levels would be nearly impossible if this wasn't true.
  • Inverted by the jailer's reaction to Bond trying to pull the "sick prisoner" gig is simply to state "You must think I was born yesterday."
  • In Archives, the guards holding James for interrogation have not only left him unrestrained but also left his pistol and extra ammo magazine just lying on the table in front of him. In the movie a similar scenario at least made some sense as Ourumov wanted to frame James for killing Mishkin.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Getting the Golden Gun in Egyptian. Bond has to cross a tiled floor using a very specific sequence of steps that are nowhere hinted at. The only way to figure it out is either through trial-and-error or a online guide.
  • In Silo, you need to acquire a DAT by robbing a completely nondescript scientist standing in a corner. This is not mentioned at all in the mission briefing and is not something that would occur naturally through gameplay, especially since you're rushing through on a countdown timer.
  • In Archives, if you either haven't seen the movie or haven't seen it in a while, it's likely it won't be clear to you that you're supposed to escape the building by shooting out the windows on the upper floor of the library and jumping out (instead you're apt to waste time searching for a front door that doesn't exist).
  • In Statues and Street, Valentin (who you're required to find and speak to) is hiding in out-of-the-way locations which you're unlikely to come across naturally unless you search every square inch of the level.
• Guns Akimbo: Almost all of the game's weapons can be wielded with both hands using cheats. (It's possible to do this in single-player mode without them, but only if taken from an enemy carrying both.)
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: The RCP-90's magazine becomes a huge white block that's wider than the gun frame, and the weapon ejects right instead of down. Additionally, certain guns have an incorrect magazine size. In the RC-P90's case, it has 80 bullets instead of 50. This is probably because Rare entered the amount of ammo as 50 in hexadecimal, which is 80 in decimal. (For the record, 50 in decimal is 32 in hex.)
• Hand Cannon: The Cougar Magnum is ridiculously overpowered, to the point of being able to shoot through metal doors.
• Hand Wave: As a consequence of not being able to depict Natalya being captured during the archives escape like in the film, how Natalya is captured between "Archives" and "St. Petersburg Streets" isn't clear, since the two missions are directly sequential and take place seconds from each other. The mission briefing for the latter is hilariously blunt in how even it doesn't know what happened.
  After escaping KGB interrogation at the military archives, Natalya has been recaptured by General Ourumov.
• Harder Than Hard: Beating the game on 00 Agent unlocks "007" difficulty modes, which is basically 00 Agent in terms of objectives, but it can be customized to be as hard as the player wants. (1000% damage? Yes.) This has led to the custom License to Kill (one-shot, one kill applies to both the player and enemies) and Dark Agent (all maxed out stats) difficulties. Known in the community as a DLTK run (Dark Licence to Kill) and it is almost impossible^note As of 2023, a full-run has only been officially completed by nine players in the world.
• Hard Mode Filler: The game has two missions set on Severnaya Zemlya. The Surface level of the second is at night and noticeably difficult, while the second trip to the Bunker starts as a No-Gear Level and has several new rooms added.
• High-Speed Missile Dodge: Rocket launchers fire rather slow projectiles to compensate for how much damage they deal.
• Hold the Line: Defending Natalya as she hacks the Control Room computers. On higher difficulties, this can be more challenging than the Final Boss.
• Hollywood Hacking: Apparently, Natalya can hack into an advanced, secure network and disable a multi-million-dollar piece of military equipment in about three minutes. Then again, she was part of the team that programmed it to begin with.
• Hollywood Silencer: Silenced weapons are very quiet, though because of the rather strange mechanics they're not much more effective than single shots with unsilenced ones.
• Hostage Situation:
  • Frigate: Bond has to rescue several hostages (increasingly so on higher difficulty levels)
  • Train: The bad guys hold Natalya hostage and Bond has to free her.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Natalya in Jungle, sometimes blasting enemies with her Cougar Magnum before you even spot them.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Bond has somewhere around 50-60 different weapons, including a tank cannon with the "All Guns" cheat.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: "Agent", "Secret Agent" and "00 Agent", from easiest to hardest. The unlockable 007 mode is customizable, and can be made Easier Than Easy, Harder Than Hard, or anything in-between.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: On lower difficulties, enemies are terrible shots at long range, being unable to hit you with any degree of accuracy using sniper rifles. Enemy aim does steadily improve as the game progresses, even for basic mooks.
• Implacable Man: Jaws especially, but also Trevelyan. Both shrug off gunfire and keep firing away at you. They're actually coded to have a very high HP value and not flinch from getting shot. After this surplus HP is gone, they'll return to behaving like a normal enemy soldier (flinch from getting shot).
• Improbable Aiming Skills: This trope comes to light several times in-game.
  • Natalya on the on the aforementioned Jungle level never misses her target.
  • The scientists (on any level they appear) will make short work of players who provoke them by flashing out a previously concealed DD44 Dostovei which they wield with frighteningly high accuracy.
  • All enemies, who previously on lower difficulties gave Stormtroopers a run for their money, will suddenly drain your health in a matter of seconds at point-blank range during 00 Agent difficulty. The biggest offenders are the Moonraker Elite enemies in Aztec, who can easily snipe Bond at a good few paces with their assault rifles or laser guns, attributing another factor to that level's high difficulty.
• Incredibly Obvious Bug: Twice. You plant a "covert" modem in the dam at Arkhangelsk, and a tracker "bug" on the Pirate helicopter in Monte Carlo. Both are the size of your head. And planting it at the dam requires placing it directly on the monitor.
• The Infiltration: Several levels, including the Bunker, and Jungle, feature Bond infiltrating some kind of complex.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The fabled Golden PP7, which can absolutely destroy anything in one shot. It's obtained by beating Cradle on the Agent difficulty which isn't that hard with some practice.
• Insecurity Camera: Several missions involve destroying these. They promptly explode. Instantly if you shoot them through the lens.
• Instant Death Bullet: The famous Golden Gun, as well as the Golden PP7. In "License to Kill" mode, every bullet is this.
• Instant-Win Condition: On Aztec your objective is to reprogram and launch the shuttle. Once you do this, after a short countdown, the level ends no matter where you are or what you're doing. This is the only level where you don't have to reach an exit.
• Invisibility Cloak: The "Bond Invisible" cheat.
• Irrelevant Importance:
  • Killing people after they help you with objectives will usually not fail the mission.
  • Double Subverted. In the Statue Park level, you can feel free to gun down Valentin after he's arranged your meeting with Janus, but he'll still be there, two levels later, if you're playing at the right difficulty level.
  • That's not the only example, either. In fact, it is possible with proper timing to gun down Big Bad Alec Trevelyan virtually every time he appears, only for him to be there to taunt you next level.
  • The Control level is an exception to the above rule. Your main objective is to defend Natalya as she hacks the Goldeneye satellite in what is probably the most infamously difficult scene in the game. After a long and difficult fight, you still can't relax even after you've receive the message stating the satellite has been reprogrammed: In the few seconds between finishing her work and escaping to safety, Natalya can still be targeted by enemy guards, and her death will result in mission failure, despite the fact that—though it's pretty cold logic—she's outlived her usefulness. Then again, what's James Bond without his woman?
• I Shall Taunt You: Trevelyan loves to do this, especially on Control and Cradle.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Cradle ends with Bond falling off the antenna if you fall during the final duel.
• It Only Works Once: In both of the Severnaya missions, Bond has to find a way to get into the base covertly. The first time, he just has to destroy a padlock on a grate to sneak into a backroom of the facility. It doesn't work a second time as it has been welded shut. Bond is forced to walk in through the main entrance, leading to his capture.

J-R

• Joke Weapon: The Klobb (named after Ken Lobb, one of the people who worked on the game, and based on the Skorpion Vz. 61 machine pistol), an incredibly inaccurate, slow-firing and weak weapon with a very small magazine. For perspective, if enemy and player health are both reduced to 0% in 007 mode, the Klobb is the only gun that won't always kill with one shot. Downplayed in that the Klobb is still completely viable on easy or normal difficulty, and only takes 1-2 more bullets to kill basic mooks compared to other weapons; in fact dual Klobbs can well exceed the damage output of a single semi-auto pistol, though they'll eat up your ammo.
• The Joys of Torturing Mooks: By enabling certain cheats (god mode, all weapons, and infinite ammo), you can have some fun on levels that have sections where infinite guards spawn (like Ourumov's confrontation with 006 and 007 during the Facility mission, or Bunker 2 after the alarm is raised). Hit the guards with an explosive device or round and watch them go flying and you can set up for another volley as more and more guards spawn in. In Bunker 2, you can effectively have a WW1 style meat-grinder at the final hallway before the level exit.
• Just Between You and Me: During your meeting with Janus in Statue Park, he delivers a Motive Rant before dispatching his bodyguards to kill you. He does the same thing in Cradle.
• Just Plane Wrong: The "Pirate" helicopter isn't a Eurocopter, it's an Apache.
• Knockback: Waves of enemy soldiers will become annoyances due to their shots pushing you back and preventing you from firing your gun for a second because you got hit.
• Last Note Nightmare: The music in "Surface II" becomes dissonant when Bond is captured in the final cutscene.
• Level in Boss Clothing: The final story level, the Antenna Cradle, has Bond pursue Trevelyan around the gangways while also fighting off his goons, before cornering him on the bottom platform and delivering him a Disney Villain Death.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Almost all levels begin with one, where Bond loads his PP7.
• Long Song, Short Scene:
  • Nearly every single stage has two sound themes, but the second and more urgent themes are almost never heard in full, if at all.
  • There are two tracks used in the elevators in the Control and Water Caverns stages, and are fairly detailed pieces that are each 30 seconds long. However, unless you deliberately stop and listen (as nothing requires you to be in the elevator for a lengthy period of gameplay time), the most you'll hear of each track is about 5 seconds.
• Lord British Postulate: There's a glitch involving using two controllers at once allows the player to fire on characters during cutscenes from the camera's perspective, instantly killing any that are hit. This includes Baron Samedi during his The End... Or Is It? moment. This has no gameplay impact whatsoever, though. A similar trick is to place explosives where a character will appear during a cutscene. The villain gets two words into their spiel before flying face-first across the room.
• Luck-Based Mission: Unlocking Invincibility in "Facility" depends on the random location of Dr. Doak.^note While the level is still winnable no matter where Dr. Doak is, only with one location it's possible to beat the very tough time required for the cheat.
• Made of Explodium:
  • Many items that aren't level geometry, glass, or an enemy, can explode. Yes, including doors, under certain conditions. This was partly due to the fact that the game creators couldn't implement a satisfactory physics system into the game, and thus the only way to make objects destructible in-game was to make them explode.
  • Miniature toy helicopters explode with the same force and sized fireball as an explosive weapon. ^note Mines, grenades, rockets, etc. This is quite a (fatal) surprise the first time it happens.
• Made of Iron: Bond himself, but also Janus, Xenia, Jaws and any other "boss" characters can shrug off multiple gunshots and even explosions. Xenia and Janus take a little over a full mag of assault rifle fire to bring down (and in the first half of the fight Janus only takes damage when standing still), whereas Jaws can shrug off several dozen rounds of assault rifle fire before finally falling. Baron Samedi also becomes increasingly durable every time you "kill" him, but since you fight him with the Golden Gun that hardly matters anyway.
• The Mafiya: Zukovsky's criminal gang and the Janus syndicate seem to have a Mob War of sorts going on between them. MI6 in this case favors Zukovsky.
• The Many Deaths of You: Whenever someone is killed, they crumple to the floor or leap into the air, but there are specific death animations whenever they're hit in certain areas:
  • For headshots, they hold one hand up to their ear and fall on one knee, bending their head down for a while before falling on their back.
  • For jaw or neck hits, they hold both hands up to their neck and squirm about for a while, then fall to their knees (still clutching their necks) and eventually collapse.
  • Groin attacks will cause them to clutch their private parts and fall slowly to the ground, and even as they're lying down, they will wince in pain for some time before dying. This is the longest of all death animations.
  • Hitting them in the torso causes them to rock back and forth in agony for a brief moment before collapsing on their back.
  • If they're directly in front of objects such as walls or crates, they will stumble backward and collapse against a solid object, dying in a sitting position with the legs spread out.
  • Blowing them up causes them to be sent flying through the air and land on their front or back depending on which way they're thrown, the size of the explosion and where they were standing. Sometimes, they will do a barrel roll before lying down.
  • Steamrolling with the tank or blowing them up causes them to fall back with the legs flying up in the air or leap to the side, then hit the ground and lay still.
• Marathon Level: The penultimate mission, Caverns, is an extremely long and difficult level. Playing carefully on Secret or 00 Agent, it can easily take 20-30 minutes.
• Matrix Raining Code: Most computers have scrolling lines of green text. They appear mostly in Bunker.
• Meaningful Name: Janus (the Roman god with two faces) and Xenia (Greek for "foreign" or "strange", even though she's Georgian, as we know from the film).
• Menu Time Lockout: Only applies while the menu is fully accessed. Time keeps moving while Bond is raising and lowering his wristwatch, and he's a sitting duck for those few seconds.
• Mercy Invincibility: Uniquely for an FPS, this is played completely straight, and one of the quirks maintained in GoldenEye Source.
• Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: Tropes Are Not Bad; despite the game's legendary reputation for its addictive multiplayer, it actually was designed as a total afterthought and thrown in at the last minute, even though most players never realized it. Some big giveaways are the fact that the maps are all from the single player campaign which were first and foremost designed to be coherent start-to-finish levels rather than deathmatch arenas, and it wasn't even an advertised feature on the back of the game box. This also is why the playable characters lack proper balancing due to differing sizes.
• Missing Mission Control: In some levels, you don't get briefing information due to your being captured.
• Missing Secret: There are 23 unlockable cheats, not the symmetric 24, generally assumed to be due to a missing level which would give a cheat called "line mode." This is accessible by a button press code, but has no legitimate unlock method in the final game.
• Mission Control: Your mission briefing from M and Q, as well as a remark from Moneypenny.
• Modular Difficulty: The unlockable 007 difficulty setting allows for fine tuning of enemy health, damage, accuracy, and reaction speed. This can be set as low as possible for a simple jaunt, or everything cranked up to maximum difficulty for a challenge well beyond even the standard 00 difficulty.
• Mooks, but no Bosses: The only boss you fight is Alec Trevelyan, who doubles as the Final Boss. During the rest of the game, you confront numerous mooks, solve puzzles and complete objectives, but no bosses appear. This is justified due to the game's efforts to remain faithful to the 1995 James Bond movie, where Trevelyan is the only villain whom James confronts recurringly.
• More Dakka: The RC-P90 is famous for this, as it fires 80 rounds in very quick succession. The Phantom also holds a large magazine (50) and the ZMG has quite a rapid rate of fire. You also do not want to be in the sights of the heavy drone guns in later levels.
• Multiplayer-Only Item: Some characters only appear in Multiplayer, and many others only become playable in Multiplayer. The most notable example is Oddjob, whose low height makes him infamously broken.
• Musical Nod:
  • The intro of the Frigate theme is a reference to the title theme of Goldfinger, which in turn was also referenced for the Licence to Kill theme.
  • The big riff of the Archives theme also bears a resemblance to the Live and Let Die riff.
• Mythology Gag: The game's controller settings are all named after Bond Girls. In the original N64 version, they are Honey, Solitaire, Kissy, Goodnight, Plenty, Galore, Domino and Goodhead. The XBLA version replaced these settings with Jinx, Christmas, Frost and Elektra.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Various characters and bosses based on the programming scripts. Scripts may cause characters to not take any damage at all or can only be damaged in certain timing windows. Here are a couple of instances:
  • General Ourumov cannot die until the end of Train. He's unkillable in both Facility and Silo, though dealing enough damage to him in Silo will cause him to drop his briefcase (which, due to being part of cut content, has no purpose in the final game).
  • Xenia Onatopp cannot die in the Train level. While you can trigger an event that delays the time, there is no way of killing her.
  • Trevelyan cannot die in the Statue, Train, Control, or Caverns. Trevelyan will either shoot, run, etc. based on player's location. He may just disappear from the game to allow more characters to spawn.
  • Trevelyan in the Cradle can only be damaged in certain spots in the game, particularly in standby positions or at the bottom of the Cradle itself. When he is running and not in the bottom of the cradle, he cannot be damaged at all.
• Nintendo Hard: 00 Agent is the highest (regular) difficulty setting. You have a lot of objectives that force you out of your direct way to end the level, the guards have good reaction and aim and you don't have much health, so this mode takes a huge step up from the already not so easy Secret Agent mode. Getting all the cheats makes the game even harder, especially on Facility and Archives.
• No Fair Cheating: Playing with cheats on will not unlock anything, and the game will not allow you to use cheats on any difficulty you haven't finished normally.
• No-Gear Level: This happens twice over the course of the game, and both of them are Escort Missions. In the first one, you have the option of leaving Natalya in her cell until you've cleared out the rest of the base.
• No Scope: The Sniper Rifle can be used as a (very unwieldy) pistol. If you adjust its scope to a lower zoom level, it can be even better at close range than the PP7.
• Noodle Incident: Mentioned by Q in the briefing of the Silo mission:
  007, remember to treat the timed explosives with respect — you know what happened to 004 in Beirut.
• No-Sell: Any enemy who is either outright invincible or has a ton of armor will simply shrug and not be affected by anything damaging at all. Most noticeable with Jaws in the Aztec level.
• One Bullet Clips: As one of the first games to include reloading weapons, it naturally plays this straight as an arrow: the only weapons that don't do this are the rocket launcher and Golden Gun, which only hold one round at a time.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • The Golden Gun. The only exception is if it hits an enemy's weapons box.
  • The Gold PP7, too. Except that it holds 7 rounds like the original instead of the Golden Gun's single clip.
  • You can kill guards with a single shot or slap to the back on any difficulty.
  • In multiplayer, everything is a one-hit kill on License to kill mode.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: The "License to Kill" multiplayer mode, every player is this.
• One-Hit Polykill: The Magnum can shoot through several guards at once with deadly force.
• Only Six Faces: The generic Mooks are nearly identical, leading to Deja Vu after you mow down the same set of machine-gun toting minions three times in a row. The game actually has over 40 random faces, but only a handful are used per load due to Nintendo 64's notoriously limited texture capabilities.
• Optional Stealth: The game has stealth elements, namely in silenced weapons and alarms that mooks can trigger. Some levels are impossible to complete in total stealth (think Control) while others are very difficult if you blow your cover (think Frigate). Most levels are easy enough to barrel through guns blazing even on the most advanced difficulty, though.
• Outrun the Fireball: The ending of the Train; except, instead of "the same six minutes you gave me" as in the movie, i.e. three minutes, you have only one minute to cut through the floor and get away with Natalya, unless you're quick enough to graze Xenia before she and Janus get away after you've killed Ourumov, which will retard the arming of the bombs and give you more time to laser cut the bolts restraining the escape hatch.
• Pause Scumming: Inverted, as the pause animation (Bond looking at his watch) happens in real time and you're helpless during that split-second delay, meaning you can indeed be killed if you pause in the middle of a firefight.
• Pistol-Whipping: If you have the Sniper Rifle, your "unarmed" weapon is the butt of the rifle instead of your fists.
• Player Death Is Dramatic: If James Bond is killed, blood fills the screen from the top (in a Call-Back to the films' iconic gun barrel openings). Then the player is forced to watch Bond be killed in a Repeat Cut as dramatic humming is heard along with a Heartbeat Soundtrack. Finally, the player is booted to the mission briefing screen and they bear witness to all of the objectives they failed.
• Prolonged Prologue: The game's prologue is greatly extended from the film's, with several original stories in the nine-year gap between the Dam operation and the film's present day, such as visiting the incomplete Severnaya bunker, and an Early-Bird Cameo by Ouromov in a nuclear silo.
• Punny Name: Bond's weapon of choice, the PP7, which is a play on the Walther PPK. Well, what comes before P in the alphabet?
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Multiplayer mode has no advantages or disadvantages to which gender you choose for your character.
• Purposely Overpowered:
  • The Golden Gun was just a gold-plated (and in fact purposely underpowered) gun in The Man with the Golden Gun, while in this game it's a one-hit-kill weapon.
  • The RC-P90 is incredibly powerful (its power is only matched by cheat weapons and explosives), has one of (if not the) highest rate of fire in the game, and has the largest ammo capacity to boot. To top it off, it uses the single most common ammo in the game.
• Rapid-Fire Typing: Whenever anyone is typing, usually Natalya's hacking. You can also crank this up to eleven with the Fast Animations cheat to make Natalya's typing go insanely fast.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Defense Minister Mishkin is willing to listen to Bond, and lives in this game.
• Recurring Location: The surface of Severnaya and the underground bunker within are revisited midway through the game.
• Recurring Riff: A brief snippet from the James Bond theme shows up in every level. (In fact, the 007 riff is used in nearly fifty pieces of music.)
• Red Filter of Doom: The screen turns red whenever Bond dies, mimicking the gunbarrel scenes from the movies.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: Your enemies' rifles will jam for no reason sometimes.
• Renegade Russian: Ourumov hijacks an old Soviet Kill Sat and murders his own Defense Minister. Needless to say, he does not have his government's backing.
• Respawning Enemies:
  • Usually caused by noise or alarms being set off; stealth is the best way to avoid them.
  • Bunker 2 on Secret Agent or higher makes you wade through droves of mooks with automatic weapons to complete two of your objectives. The only decent weapon you can get in this level is very, very noisy. Combine that with never-ending guards and a lack of body armor in the level for a prime example of Nintendo Hard.
  • Archives will drown you in angry guards if you go loud. However, unlike Bunker 2, the number of guards is finite and the building will eventually run out of respawning guards to throw at you (or at the very least, the respawn rate will drop to just a few guards every minute) if you keep killing them as they come.
  • Many levels, such as Surface 1 & 2, Statues, Depot, etc. have enemies respawn no matter how stealthy or loud you are, but the respawn rate is low enough that it's not annoying. Levels like Bunker 2 stand out in that the respawn rate is much higher than normal and the enemies that spawn in are Elite Mooks that delete your health incredibly fast.
• The Reveal: Janus is Alec Trevelyan, exactly like in the film.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The Cougar Magnum is a beast of a handgun, and prone to instant kills most of the time. It's balanced with a slow fire rate.

S-Z

• Same Content, Different Rating: The game has a CERO Z (18+) rating in Japan, as opposed to the ESRB Teen rating it has in North America. This actually caused some issues when it came to re-releasing the game for the Nintendo Switch Online service; since players download apps for each console rather than individual games (meaning all games get a blanket age rating equal to the game with the highest one), the Japanese release was delayed for an entire year before it was ultimately decided to create an entirely separate "18+" app to avoid having to bump up the age rating for the main N64 app.
• Secret Level: The Aztec and Egyptian levels. The former deals with the Drax Corporation from Moonraker, and the latter has Baron Samedi, who somehow procured the Golden Gun and is taunting MI6 with it (that level doesn't make a whole lot of sense story-wise, come to think about it). The levels carry their own unique challenges: the Drax soldiers have an over-reliance on grenades which sharp-shooting players can turn against them, and the Egyptian tomb has a Guide Dang It! method of getting the Golden Gun.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: In Silo, the whole place will explode in several minutes from the start of the mission.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Directly invoked by the game with the unlockable 007 mode, where the player can set up things like enemy health, enemy accuracy, etc., that go well beyond 00 Agent standard. The most popular ones are LTK (license to kill) where all stats are set to maximum besides enemy health and DLTK (dark license to kill) where all stats are maxed out, making the game only playable for very advanced players and some levels become almost unwinnable ^note Silo could not have been beaten for many years on DLTK even by world class players and up to this day, only four players have ever done it.
  • Also invoked with the "enemy rockets" cheat that gives many of the guards rocket launchers and can be combined with 007 mode.
  • Beating the game with the Klobb as your sole weapon. It has the worst accuracy and power in the game.
  • In multiplayer: Jaws has the largest hitbox due to being the tallest character in the game so picking him is an optional handicap for the player that wants to make things a bit more difficult for themselves. The inversion to this is Oddjob as he has the smallest hitbox due to being the shortest and, thus, picking him in multiplayer is considered an unfair advantage.
• Sentry Gun: Various levels have ceiling-mounted autoguns which will shred the player with bullets if they're in the line of sight, but are fairly easy to destroy. The Jungle and Egyptian levels have tripod-mounted variants as well.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • It's possible to beat Aztec level without killing Jaws and without even operating the open/close exhausting bay terminal. If the player attracts the yellow jump-suited guards in the corridor between the room with the terminal behind the glass doors and the exhaust bay and returns to the room and hides in the back, it's possible that the guards will open the glass doors and Bond can use the guidance data and recover the launch protocol and finish the mission in any place within the level, as the level has no defined exit. It's not quite clear if this is a glitch or not as the level normally has no exit too^note Speedrunners have assumed that guards cannot occupy the same spot as the glass door, thus opening it..
  • On Train it's possible to exit the train early and skip the hostage situation in the end. If the player stands in the right place and destroys the locks on the floor, then Bond doesn't actually have to save Natalya as she will will complete her objectives despite Trevelyan and Xenia still being around and then exit the train and follow Bond to safety.
  • It's also possible on Cradle to off Trevelyan well before reaching the base of the antenna. Either one well-placed grenade or shooting a drone gun to catch him in the explosion will do the trick. In this case, Bond just can exit the level at the base without a dangerous standoff with Trev.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: It's difficult, but not impossible, to get enemies to run into each other's line of fire. Mooks can shoot through each other without damage, with normal weapons though. However, turn on 'Enemy Rockets' mode in the cheat menu, and enjoy the fireworks. Or you can wait for one of the guards to pull a grenade, close a door in front of him, and have the explosion happen right in front of them.
• Ship Level: The Frigate level, where you must rescue hostages held by terrorists and place a tracker on a helicopter about to be stolen. The 2010 remake has the second half of the Dubai: Carrier level.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Some padlocks can be opened by firing at them, just like in the first level.
• Shoot the Hostage Taker: As in the movie, you shoot Ourumov to save Natalya. It's also how you save the hostages in Frigate.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: The automatic shotgun only works at full power when close to an enemy.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: When close enough to the target, the Automatic Shotgun is a great weapon and more powerful than almost anything else in the game.
• Shout-Out:
  • The soundtrack contains numerous musical elements from previous 007 film themes, such as Frigate's opening hook being inspired by Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill".
  • The micro-camera carried by Bond in some levels emblazoned with "007" on the lens is a direct nod to the camera from Moonraker.
  • Frigate's rhythm track was lifted from Faith No More's "We Care a Lot".
  • The labeling of crates with "banana" in Cyrillic is probably a reference to Rare's work on the Donkey Kong Country series.
• Shown Their Work: The giant screen in the bunker has Cyrillic lettering on it which reads Severnaya.
• Silliness Switch:
  • The Paintball Mode cheat, which replaces all bullet holes with colorful paintballs.
  • DK Mode changes all characters' heads and arms to huge and bizarre proportions, mimicking the body structure of Donkey Kong.
  • Fast Animations make all enemies and NPCs move at hyper speed, including Bond himself, in cut scenes. Slow Animations has everyone running in a speed that almost mimics the Slow Motion used in Baywatch.
• Slow Doors: The brownish metal doors from Facility and other levels like Caverns.
• Sniper Scope Sway: You need to be very careful when aiming to get the right shot.
• Sniping Mission: Surface I is easiest when taking out one enemy at a time, before they see you. You even start out with a sniper rifle.
• Songs in the Key of Panic:
  • Whenever a critical moment happens in a level, the music will often change into a faster version of the level's theme.
  • The music in the Silo has a high BPM, which is fitting since it's a timed mission. And when there's only 25 seconds left to escape in Silo, this music plays.

• Soundtrack Dissonance: Since the background music in the six multiplayer-only maps is randomly generated from the single player campaign (plus a few "extra" songs), it is possible to incessantly blow your buddies up with rocket launchers while the elevator music from "Control" is playing (it's every bit as hilarious as it sounds).
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Defense Minister Mishkin is murdered by Gen. Ourumov to frame Bond in the film, whereas here he uncovers Ourumov's treachery ahead of time and quietly leaves the archives, very much alive.
  • Boris is killed after the Cradle is destroyed by Bond in the film. In the game, he is allowed to escape after you confront him in the Control Room, and you not shooting him is required to complete the level.
• Speedrun Reward: Finishing particular level within a certain time gives the players cheats. These can't be used to help with progress (see No Fair Cheating) but are designed to play around with. The difficulty of beating the times varies greatly, with Runway and Egyptian being super easy and Facility and Archives the hardest.
• Spread Shot:
  • The Automatic Shotgun fires scatter shot that does up to 5 damage, depending on accuracy.
  • Bullets usually only hurt their intended targets. If someone gets in the crossfire, the bullets may stop. However, that isn't true of Rockets, or your own gun.
• Staying Alive: In one of the bonus levels, Bond has to dispatch Baron Samedi in an Egyptian temple after receiving an invitation. First, killing him requires retrieving the Golden Gun from another room, a One-Hit Kill weapon that kills any enemy instantly. But every time Bond shoots him, he lets out an Evil Laugh and reappears somewhere else in the level. After killing him three times and 'completing' the mission, Samedi again shows up.^note A glitch in the programming makes it theoretically possible to kill him again even in this segment.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Several, including both Bunkers. Run and gun won't get you far here because of Respawning Enemies. With avoiding noise you can even completely clear Bunker 2 of all guards.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • The end cutscenes of the Silo^note optional in Agent, which doesn't require you to plant the explosives and Train.
  • The computers, the monitors, the filing cabinets, the chairs, the boxes...
• The Syndicate: The Janus Syndicate. The main antagonist in the game with ties to the Russian mafia.
• Tank Goodness: The third level, and again later in the game where you reenact the tank chase from the movie. Just be careful with the cars and mines, you can still die.
• The Elevator from Ipanema: The elevators in the Control and Caverns levels have their very own background music. The former level features a light pop rendition of a portion of the James Bond theme, while the latter level features a smooth jazz version of that same theme.
• Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: The entire soundtrack is comprised of variations on James Bond's theme song.
• Themed Cursor: Your menu cursor is a crosshair.
• Timed Mission:
  • Silo is untimed by default on Agent mode. Planting one of your own bombs will activate a 6-minute timer, but doing this is completely optional, as it's not part of your objective list on Agent and otherwise does not benefit the player in any way. On the higher difficulties, however, a timer will start as soon as the level begins, giving you 7 minutes 30 seconds on Secret Agent, or 8 minutes 30 seconds on 00 Agent to finish the mission before the whole place explodes.
  • In Bunker II, once Natalya activates the control console, you have 1 minute to escape with her before the GoldenEye satellite fires on the bunker and destroys it.
  • Statue Park triggers a 3-minute timer once the conversation with Janus ends, and you have to return to the starting point to find Natalya before the Pirate explodes and kills her.
  • In Streets, you start with 5 minutes on Agent mode to reach the end of the level before Ourumov escapes with Natalya and you fail the mission. Valentin is hidden in the level and, after meeting with him, he'll contact his associates to delay Ourumov and give you more time. Doing this is optional on Agent, though it's still beneficial as it'll bump whatever is remaining on the timer up to 6 minutes. Secret Agent and 00 Agent both start the mission with 3 minutes instead and make the meeting with Valentin a required objective, although it'll still bump up the remaining time to 6 minutes.
  • After Trevelyan and Xenia make their getaway in the Train mission, you have 1 minute to escape the train car before it explodes and kills both you and Natalya. On Agent you can flee as soon as you laser the hatch door open, but it becomes trickier on higher difficulties as you have extra objectives which force you to wait for Natalya to finish hacking into Boris's files. It is especially tricky on 00 Agent, as you have only the bare minimum of time to make it out once Natalya finishes. Although if you manage to shoot Xenia just before she disappears, it'll delay her escape and the activation of the train bomb, giving you and Natalya a bit more time.
  • A short ways into the Cradle mission, Trevelyan activates the antenna control console, giving you 3 minutes to blow up the console controlling the satellite, though the rest of the level is untimed after that.
• Took a Level in Badass: Natalya is mentioned as having received basic firearms training between Train and Jungle, explaining how she suddenly knows how to use a gun and can hold her own in combat in the latter level. While it takes her an abnormally long time to acquire a target, once she decides to attack an enemy she's got great aim and her Cougar Magnum is a One-Hit Kill against basic mooks. In fact she's got decent odds of defeating Xenia if you get forced into cover while fighting Xenia.
• Translation Convention: Translated Russian is displayed in brackets instead of quotation marks.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Beating some levels requires remembering what traps and ambushes are from the last time you got a game over.
• Tuckerization:
  • The "Klobb" gun is named after Ken Lobb, a former Nintendo of America employee who helped develop the game.
  • Dr. Doak looks like and is named after David Doak, one of the developers at the time - who has a PhD in biochemistry, as a chemical and biological weapons expert might need.
• Unexplained Recovery: If you're not playing on 00 Agent difficulty, you're free to kill Boris in Bunker as the mission objective involving him is only active on 00 Agent or 007 difficulty. He'll still show up later in the game, perfectly fine.
• Unflinching Walk: The ending of Streets has Bond doing this. He walks away from the tank while everything blows up behind him.
• Unique Enemy: There are only three enemy Russian Commandants, each of whom use a unique weapon: The one in "Dam" uses a DD44 Dostovei, in "Surface 1" they use a Klobb, and in "Surface 2" they have a PP7.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Enemies love this one, although they're still difficult to hit then.
• Unwinnable by Design:
  • GoldenEye was one of the first games ever to include objectives you could actually mess up, to the point where the manual has an entire page warning the player that just destroying everything won't get them far. There are many ways to fail, e.g. destroying the plane on Runway, failing to rescue enough hostages on Frigate, encountering Janus with a gun equipped on Statue, destroying the radio on Caverns (00 Agent)... so many in fact that there's a whole guide on this topic. The game will tell you right away when an objective has been rendered impossible to complete, so while you still can continue playing the level, it's clear it's a failure. However there are instances where the game will NOT tell you that you messed up (or at least, not until much later) and it will not be obvious that you reached a dead end. Examples of these are:
  • In Facility there are two instances where you can get stuck in the level with no way to reach the bottle room. While destroying the consoles that operate critical remote doors (one in the beginning, two later on), this will not screw you, because there will be a scientist with a key card that opens all doors that you can use. However if this scientist is dead before you can pick up the card AND the consoles are destroyed AND you cannot lure any more guards to open the doors for you (which is possible on the 2nd door but only a limited amount of times) you will be trapped.
  • In Silo (00 Agent only), you have to put plastique on bottle tanks, and these tanks cannot be destroyed in any other way. If you misplace too many of your plastiques, you won't be able to do this, as there's not way to collect any more plastiques, and thus fail.
  • In Archives (Secret Agent and 00 Agent only) you have to get a safe key from Mishkin to complete an objective. In the room where he waits for you, if you shoot in his direction, even if you miss, he will permanently turn hostile, not helping you anymore, thus you cannot get the key.
  • In Train (00 Agent only), Natalya has to hack the computer after you saved her from Ourumov. The problem is, if you fail to hit Xenia as well during the hostage situation (after shooting Ourumov she's vulnerable for a short period of time) the countdown will not give you enough time to complete all objectives and the train will explode before you can leave with everything done.^note There are two known ways to still beat the level even if you don't hit Xenia, one is with a sequence break that allows you to exit the train early, the other is a million-to-one probability that Natalya survives the explosion), making the level unintentionally winnable again.
  • In Control there are three ways to reach a dead end: if you destroy either the computer in the elevator hall or the one in the main hall (where Natalya has to do her hacking) you will fail once Natalya notices what you have done (you can't undo any of this). Also, if you kill Boris, Natalya will refuse to help you any further and abort the mission. There won't be any indication of this until you meet her again.^note There is a glitch which allows to kill Boris and still complete the mission but this is not standard gameplay.
• Updated Re-release:
  • A remastered version of the game for the Xbox 360 was almost entirely completed in 2007 for the game's 10th anniversary, but was never released due to licensing issues. The remaster was leaked online in 2021; besides the expected resolution increases (including an option for 21:9 ultrawide in 2007) and an improved 60 fps framerate, the game also featured completely redone higher-quality textures, lighting, and character models to move the graphics forward several years, making the game look like something from the Quake III/Unreal Engine 2 era.
  • The 2023 remaster features the game's original graphics, though at a much higher and wider 16:9 widescreen HD / 4k resolution compared to the game's original 320x220 resolution, plus a more stable frame rate (though still capped at 30 fps), higher quality audio, and achievements. The Xbox version also has more modern aim controls (at the cost of removing the ability to lean while aiming), whereas the remaster of Perfect Dark and digital releases of TimeSplitters 2 both still retain Rare/Free Radical Design's distinct "floaty, snap-to-center" aiming of the original games. Notably, the remaster is only available as either part of the Nintendo Switch Yearly Pass, Xbox Live Game Pass, or the Rare Replay collection, not as a stand-alone purchase.
• Useless Item: In Silo you can collect Ourumov's briefcase and key, which are completely irrelevant for progression. While they do in fact open the silo's roof, there's nothing to gain from it. There are rumors that this was intended to be an objective related to launching nukes that was later dropped from the game and the items still left in there.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • In the "Facility", "Silo" and "Caverns" stages, one of the objectives is "Minimize Scientist Casualties". This means you fail the mission if 3 or more scientists die. It does, however, allow you to get away with killing two scientists each. This includes your ally Dr. Doak in "Facility", so long as you obtain the Decoder from him beforehand in Secret Agent and 00 Agent difficulties (not required in Agent).
  • In "Facility", you can also get away with killing Trevelyan from the moment Bond says "It was too easy, Alec..." onward (killing him before that will fail the mission). He still returns later in the game regardless.
  • In "Bunker I", you can get away with killing Boris. If in 00 Agent, you must wait for him to access the mainframe terminal first (this is not required in Agent or Secret Agent). Likewise, he will still show up in Control regardless.
  • In "Frigate", there are six hostages. You must rescue at least two of them in Agent, four of them in Secret Agent, and five of them in 00 Agent. This allows you to get away with killing four, two or one of them in each respective difficulty.
  • In "Statue", you can kill Zukovsky without consequence once he starts walking away after you've finished talking to him. He will still return in "Streets".
  • In "Archives", you can kill Mishkin without consequence, though only after he's given you the key to the safe in Secret Agent and 00 Agent (not required in Agent).
  • In "Streets", you can again kill Zukovsky once he starts running away after you've finished speaking to him. It won't count as a fail unless his body has disappeared before the objective says "complete".
  • Shooting or squishing too many civilians in the Streets stage will fail the mission. Note that it isn't any civilians, who will utter a Stock Scream when run over.
  • In "Control", if you kill Boris before summoning Natalya, she will refuse to help you, causing you to fail the mission. However, there are still two ways you can get away with killing him. 1) If he gets a slow death animation, you can rush upstairs and summon her. She will not acknowledge his death if you reach her before his body disappears. 2) If you go up using the main stairs at the back of the room, it will trigger him to talk to you and then runaway, meaning you cannot return to kill him later. However, you can use an explosive to blast open the windows and take one of the two smaller staircases to get to Natalya and summon her without triggering Boris' dialogue. This enables you to return and kill him after.
  • If you throw an explosive such as a grenade or timed mine in the location of the end cutscene just before you end the stage, it will go off during the end cutscene, potentially killing NPC's during the cutscene (Bond is invincible). This can include Natalya, and the game doesn't count it as a fail if she dies in the end cutscene. You can also shoot her and quickly end the stage. It won't count as a fail so long as her body hasn't disappeared yet when you finish.
  • There is also a bug that allows you to fire your gun during cutscenes if you have a second controller plugged in. Though you can't aim and can only shoot at the dead center of the screen, it enables you to shoot people during the opening or closing cutscenes if they happen to cross the center of the screen. This includes Natalya in a few of the end cutscenes. Again, the game does not count this as a fail.
  • Try using dual Klobbs on guards and only tap the Z button. Fast animation cheat might increase enjoyment.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • Killing too many scientists and civilians or Boris on Control will fail the mission.
  • Shooting scientists in the limbs may cause them to draw guns or even pull out grenades (though they're more likely to run away rather than retaliate).
• Video-Game Lives: The "You Only Live Twice" multiplayer mode is what its name says: you get two lives. Lose them both and you're out.
• Weak Turret Gun: Drone guns. They can put a lot of hurt on you in a short amount of time, but are fairly easy to destroy.
• We Can Rule Together: Trevelyan taunts you with this. Bond will never take this chance however.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Mishkin simply disappears after the mission "Archives", whereas he was killed in the movie.
  • It's never shown what happens to Boris either. You can follow him to the top area of the level, but he'll walk through a grate and disappear. And in the area where he vanishes, you can find a bulletproof vest. In the movie, Boris is frozen solid after the destruction of the GoldenEye.
• What the Hell, Player?: If you kill Boris Grishenko in Control, Natalya will scold you and refuse to help you complete the level.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Killing civilians? Pure evil. Killing dozens of soldiers? Awesome. ^note Killing too many scientists or civilians will fail the current mission. The player is never punished for killing soldiers in any way. Most likely because of the tradition "kill or be killed" nature of the FPS genre.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Sometimes, scientists will pull out guns and start shooting at you if you've wounded them, as will Mishkin and 006 (only in the Facility mission). On higher difficulty levels, the scientists may sometimes throw a (extremely deadly) hand grenade. Who knows why a scientist would have one.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Bond tries this on the guard watching his and Natalya's cell in the second Bunker mission. However, he doesn't fall for that (with Natalya also snarking at 007's failed attempt). Of course, Bond's plan isn't to make him open the cell - but to use his magnetic watch to get the keys from the guard without him noticing. Well, this latter part is actually a weird case of Gameplay and Story Segregation (it happens in a playable section, no cutscenes, and you can skip this entirely by just using the watch, getting the keys, and knocking the guard out before any dialogue pops up).
• You Are Too Late: Trevelyan will taunt Bond with this on multiple levels.
  Trevelyan: Too slow, James!
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Picked up a grenade launcher and an RC-P90? Want to dual-wield those particular weapons? Well, not until you've killed that one enemy who can actually do that.
• Zerg Rush: Whenever an alarm sounds. You can also tell by all of the bad guys that wear sunglasses. Also happens on some levels if you simply fire more than 1 shot at a time from an unsilenced weapon.

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