Film / Casino Royale (2006)

♫ The coldest blood runs through my veins,
you know my name. ♫

"James Bond – 007 status confirmed"

— Opening title sequence

The one where it all began — again.

Casino Royale is the twenty-first film in Eon Productions' James Bond film franchise, the third adaptation of the very first James Bond novel, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, and the second film to be directed by Martin Campbell in the series, introducing Daniel Craig as James Bond. It was the first Bond film distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing under Columbia Pictures, and was released November 16, 2006. Chris Cornell performed the Title Theme Tune, "You Know My Name".

Released four years after the much-criticized Die Another Day, the movie is essentially a Continuity Reboot for the franchise, serving as an Origins Episode of how Bond acquired his licence to kill and became the Tuxedo and Martini secret agent he is today. However, Eon still refer to it officially as the twenty-first film in the series.

In the film's expanded first half, Bond earns his 00- status and tracks down a terrorist financier known only as Le Chiffre. In the second half, adapted from Fleming's original novel, Bond must win a high-stakes game of poker against Le Chiffre to bankrupt the criminal and capture him. Along the way, Bond is nearly killed twice, gets tortured by Le Chiffre, and falls in love with Vesper Lynd, the gorgeous accountant in charge of staking him in the game.

The film was noted for being Darker and Edgier than most of the previous ones, with the fight scenes brutal and bloody, and the story hewing closer to a political thriller about tracking down the cash flow of terrorist organizations than an adventure yarn about a superheroic secret agent saving the world from megalomaniacs using elaborate home bases, kill sats and pilfered nuclear weapons.

The film also features several changes to the original novel in its second half, some of which have to do with the time period of the filming: the card game goes from Baccarat to Texas Hold 'Em Poker, the time period from the 1950s to the 2000s, the setting from France to a newly-independent Montenegro, and Bond from a Shell-Shocked Veteran to a Wisecracking Sociopath, which makes the torture scene a different affair altogether. Lastly, the film exchanges Vesper's quiet final scenes and a long discussion between Bond and Mathis on the nature of evil^note (Oddly enough, this latter sequence is referred to in Quantum of Solace, in a brief exchange between Mathis and Bond when they reunite) for an action-packed showdown in the grand canals of Venice.

Ian Fleming had sold the rights to the novel separately from the rest of the series, which is the reason that it took so long for a proper adaptation of it. Additionally, Casino Royale is the first film since The Living Daylights nearly 20 years prior to be based on a James Bond publication by Ian Fleming.

Under absolutely no circumstances should you confuse this with the 1967 film of the same title, a zany parody with only a few scenes in common with the source material, nor should you confuse it with the 1954 television movie/episode of the anthology series Climax!, which was a Compressed Adaptation of the novel to fit the hour-long format.

Followed by Quantum of Solace, one of the few direct sequels in the Bond film franchise.

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Tropino Royale:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Bond sends in his resignation, but the death of Vesper makes him reconsider, keeping him at Her Majesty's secret service.
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Early on, Bond wins an Aston-Martin in a poker game. Later, he plays an extremely high-stakes poker game, both in dollar figures (up to $150 million to the winner) and global security.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Several of Bond's interactions alone with Vesper, especially their first, all wonderfully play into the audience feeling just as bad as Bond about her betrayal.
• Actionized Adaptation: The original novel was more of a thriller than an action romp, with one fight scene. The film adds more elaborate fight scenes and chases, both on foot and in vehicles.
• Actor Allusion: Bond refers to his role as a Double-0 agent as "half-monk, half-hitman." Daniel Craig once played a monk who moonlighted as an assassin.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Le Chiffre can't resist smirking when Bond says he won't consider himself in trouble until he starts weeping blood. Later on after "NO! NOOO! Nuuuh! Nuh! No. To the right! To the right!" while Le Chiffre is whipping his balls with a rope, Le Chiffre tells him sincerely "You are a funny man, Mr. Bond!"
• Adaptation Amalgamation: In addition to updating the original novel to a contemporary setting, the film takes Bond winning a car in a card game from Goldfinger, the plot of Bond coming between an unhappily married couple from the short story "The Hildebrand Rarity" and the name Solange from the short story "007 in New York".
• Adaptation Expansion: The film plays out the novel's story, but also has Bond involved in the events that lead up to the poker game (not the case in the book) and mentions that Bond is just starting out.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the book, Le Chiffre has virtually every physical trait that would've repulsed a 1950s British audience - overweight, Jewish features, "feminine" mouth, et cetera. Mads Mikkelsen, on the other hand, has been crowned multiple times as Denmark's Sexiest Man, and the eye-scar can only do so much to mitigate that.
• Adaptational Badass: Surprisingly, Bond doesn't actually kill anyone in the original novel, his first two kills being mentioned in passing. The film has him kill and severely brutalise multiple people. During the torture scene, Bond uses mental strategies to survive and passes out and is awoken to more torture. In the film, he survives through sheer physical endurance, even making flippant comments to Le Chiffre.
• Adaptational Location Change: The book is set almost entirely in France. The film follows the since established Bond tradition of a World Tour: the prologue is set in Prague, the first hour largely in Madagascar and the Caribbean, the crux of the story in Montenegro, and the climax in Venice.
• African Terrorists: Steven Obanno, an LRA commander, shows up near the beginning in a meeting with Mr. White, in order to negotiate a deal with the criminal international banker Le Chiffre to hold the funds of his organization for safekeeping. He was based on the real-life leader of the LRA, Joseph Kony.
• Agents Dating: Bond and Vesper break the tension between the Absurdly High-Stakes Game of Texas Hold 'Em. By the end, he's ready to retire and stay with her. Turns out she's The Mole.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Deconstructed with Solange, who married Dimitrios and suffered through a loveless, unhappy marriage. Out of spite, she hooks up with Bond, lamenting as she does that she had "so many chances to be happy" with "nice guys," but keeps on being drawn to "bad men" like them instead. Later in the film, her association with the man who helped orchestrate the bomb plot (Dimitrios) and the man who foiled it (Bond) are what gets her tortured to death.
• All There in the Script: In an early draft, Le Chiffre was believed to be dead, supposedly killed during the first Gulf War.
• Annoying Arrows: A nailgun version, after killing Gettler, Bond pulls out a nail in his back.
• Anti-Climax: The start of the film has Bond on a mission to take out a Section Chief leaking MI6 secrets. Dryden's contact provides one of the more intense one-on-one fights in the series, but Dryden is defeated simply by having his bullets stolen by Bond before he even makes it to the office.
• Arrested for Heroism: Subverted. A terrorist puts a small detonator on a fuel truck with the intention of blowing up an airliner. En route, James Bond fights with the terrorist (causing several crashes), but he gets away and a bruised and bloody Bond barely manages to stop the truck before stumbling out and being arrested while the terrorist looks on not too far away. But when he triggers the detonator, he finds out that Bond found the bomb and pinned it on the terrorist. Cut to Bond smirking when the terrorist blows himself up.
• Artistic Licence: The poker game's final hand:
  • The maths checks out on everyone's all-ins amounting to 115m. However, Bond wagered $40.5 million, whereas Le Chiffre goes all-in with $39.5 million. Professional poker players will almost never wager any more than their opponent's total pot if making an all-in bet, mainly because the extra 1m in the pot would just go back to Bond to begin with (so the amount in the pot is actually 114m). However, it increases the tension in the scene quite well.
  • Bond made the final raise, so he should've been the first to show his cards. Instead he shows his hand last, again to increase the tension.
  • The dealer inserts the players' hole cards onto the community (board) cards to illustrate the various hands, once again, to increase the tension. In real life, this would cause confusion as to which cards were on the board and which ones belonged to the player; the proper procedure is to keep the hole cards separate from the board (which he did with previous hands).
  • Also, based on the amount of chips in the pot, and the ultimate stakes, Bond's all-in raise would be counted down by the dealer or the tournament director to see if his count was accurate. Le Chiffre's would be as well, to see if it was 40.5 to 39.5 million respectively. Also, in this hand, and the earlier hand when Bond wins the Aston Martin, it's against protocol to just shove your stacks in the middle of the pot without being counted down first. The player can certainly state all-in, and declare their stack size, but still, it's counted to make sure that one person is covered, or if it's a "chip and a chair scenario, where the loser of the pot isn't eliminated, but is left severely crippled in chip counts after the hand. The chips would also be split up into separate pots, in case the lower stacked all in playyers won the hands. They'd only collect the chips equal to the amount of their bets. I.E., the five million all-in player would only get 20 million in total (five million from the other three players, and his original five million stake) if he had won the hand.
• Artistic Licence – Gun Safety: Averted. When Bond gets his new pistol from the dashboard compartment of his new car, he immediately removes the magazine, opens and looks down the breech (rather than the muzzle) to make sure the barrel is clear, and closes the breech before putting the magazine back in and then decocking the striker. Plus, he doesn't chamber a round into the gun until much later, just before he expects to be actually using it.
• Artistic Licence – Law:
  • Business seems to continue as usual at Miami International Airport even as Bond chases Carlos around the tarmac. In real life, any explosion or suspected terrorist activity would lead to the authorities locking down the airport, ordering all aircraft on the tarmac to be grounded, and all incoming flights diverted.
  • Security seems to be very lax, too: when Carlos sets off the metal detector at the security checkpoint, the TSA agent wands him down with a handheld metal detector. This would not occur in real life. If someone sets off the metal detector, they would be patted down by the TSA agent. Also, the keys he hands the agent would be sent through the X-ray machine.
• Artistic Licence Medicine:
  • Whenever Le Chiffre uses his inhaler he puffs out - thus exhaling (rather than inhaling) his medicine.
  • When Bond is poisoned:
    • He is advised to use the defibrillator and combopen. The former would not be used as it can increase the dysrhythmia, while the latter would have no effect (Combopens are antidotes for nerve agents).
    • The "combopen" (auto-injector) actually contained lidocaine, which alone would've temporarily eased the symptoms so Bond could reach a hospital for proper treatment.
    • The poison is identified as digitalis, which even in large doses would not have such an immediate effect when consumed (it has to be absorbed by the stomach first, then carried to the heart, which would have taken several hours).
• Artistic Licence Pharmacology: Played With. This trope seemingly is played straight with the scene where Le Chiffre's girlfriend slips the poison in Bond's drink. The substance he is poisoned with, digitalis, generally takes several hours to manifest, by which point the salt and water emesis which Bond attempts would have been ineffective. It continues to be played straight as Bond is in tachycardia with a heart rate of 135 BPM; digitalis poisoning generally causes bradycardia or slowing of heart rate. However, the trope is played with and averted in the end, as severe digitalis toxicity can, in fact, produce tachycardia.
• Audible Sharpness: Obanno's machete. Judging by the noise, it is very sharp indeed.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Bond, particularly in the film's final scene.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment
  • M finds Bond has broken into her apartment and says, "You've got a bloody cheek!" Only she's referring to his embassy cock-up (breaking into her apartment is so he can meet with her without being seen at MI6 right after he causes a huge diplomatic incident, helping to spare her from further embarassment).
  • Bond starts screaming a Big "NO!" when Le Chiffre is torturing him...because he's hitting in the wrong place to scratch the itch on his balls.
• Bald of Evil: Kratt, one of Le Chiffre's henchmen. Mostly because Clemens Schick looks hilarious with a full head of hair and mysterious and sexy without it.
• Balls of Steel: It's safe to say Bond has these - Le Chiffre busts his balls over the poker tournament, and Bond not only takes his testicular torture like a champ, he actively goads Le Chiffre into hitting him harder.
• Bathroom Brawl: James Bond gets his first kill fighting an informant in a bathroom. Bond shooting him turns into the Bond Gun Barrel, which segues into the opening titles and theme.
• Batman Cold Open: The opening shows Bond getting his first two kills, thus achieving "double-0" status.
• Batman Gambit:
  • M knows Bond isn't going to the Bahamas to lay low, but fails to interfere. Bond later calls her on it.
  • Mr. White. He finances Le Chiffre and sends assassins to terrorize him, forcing him to desperately focus his attention on defeating Bond in order to pay off his debts. This animosity strokes Bond's ego to the point where he blindly focuses on defeating Le Chiffre. Mr. White, then, puts Vesper (whom he is blackmailing as well, with her fiance) between the two men to mitigate their final confrontation, where Le Chiffre tortures Bond, giving White an opportunity to kill both (but he only kills Le Chiffre because only Bond knows the password to the account, and Vesper refuses to go through with the deal unless Bond is kept alive). This actually leads to White's downfall, after Vesper preempts this and leaves her cell phone with Bond before she kills herself, allowing him to locate White in the final scene.
  • M again, at the end of the film. Her phone conversation with Bond ("too bad, now we'll never know, come on back...") sets him on exactly the course she wants him to take.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Vesper Lynd's mascara does run when she sits crying in the shower, but oddly, it's not at all affected when she's submerged underwater and she decides to drown.
• Beeping Computers: There are computers that beep, click, and chirp as the characters go about saving and destroying the world. In one instance, James Bond is looking at a map on a computer, and every time he zooms in, the computer beeps then chirps.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Sparks fly every time Vesper and James engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Le Chiffre is introduced as a financier for criminal gangs like Al-Qaeda and the Lord's Resistance Army. Despite this, a risky bet causing him to lose the money reveals him as little more than a well-paid Smug Snake, as shown when he is left squirming from two terrorists threatening him if he fails to get the money back. After losing to Bond in a high-stakes poker game, he's reduced to a desperate state and decides to just torture Bond to get the money, and when 007 refuses, he totally loses it and decides to kill him in a fit of anger. Then Mr. White, tired of Le Chiffre's repeated failures, suddenly bursts in and clips him with half an hour of the film still left to go.
• Bilingual Bonus: At the end of the embassy shootout, an official tells James "laissez tomber" in unsubtitled French, which means "Drop [it]!", both literally and in the figurative sense of "Give up!"
• Bittersweet Ending: "The bitch is dead." The line's from the original novel, more or less. Interestingly, M's response to this line provokes a change in 007 that was not there in the novel. Rather than turning hard and misogynistic, he becomes obsessed with revenge. Of course in either case Bond was simply covering his feelings, showing hatred and contempt instead of the sadness he felt at being betrayed by and losing the woman he loved. Beyond that, the man they wanted to interrogate is killed and Mr White gets away with the money. That all said though, Le Chiffre's death means his terrorist funding schemes are finished and Bond at least gets to capture Mr. White in the last scene thanks to Vesper posthumously leaving behind his phone number to Bond.
• Bond Gun Barrel: The movie plays with this bit; a part of the actual narrative becomes the "Bond Shooting At A Gun Barrel's POV" scene.
• Bond One-Liner:
  • In The Teaser, Bond is sent to kill a traitorous station chief and his contact. While confronting him, the station chief starts to tell him It Gets Easier and Bond shoots him dead mid-sentence.
    Bond: Yes. Considerably.
  • Averted when Bond gives the aeroplane bomber a Pineapple Surprise, since Bond is in the middle of being arrested by the police at the time. There's a Gory Discretion Shot as the bomb clipped to the bomber's belt goes off, which cuts to Bond just smirking at the sight.
  • Bond asks Mathis if he had "any trouble with the bodies" of Steven Obanno and his henchman. Mathis comments, "Less than some," right before calling a cell phone he put in one of their pockets before he stashed them in Le Chiffre's henchman's car, getting him arrested by the police as Mathis and Bond look on.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Surprisingly Lampshaded when Mathis asks Bond if he knew why Mr. White spared him. Eventually it's revealed that Vesper bargained for Bond's life in exchange for the money.
• Boom, Headshot! : Le Chiffre, killed by Mr. White.
• Boring, but Practical: Le Chiffre lampshades how simple but brutally effective his way of torturing Bond is.
  Le Chiffre: You know, I never understood all these elaborate tortures. It's the simplest thing...to cause more pain than a man can possibly endure.
• Bottomless Magazines: Inverted with the Heckler & Koch USP Compact used by Mollaka. With the 13-round magazine (he's using the 9mm version); he uses six on the bulldozer Bond is driving, then one each on a pair of construction workers, which should leave him with five shots remaining when Bond catches up to him on the crane. Even then the slide has not locked back to indicate the magazine is empty.
• Bowdlerise: Some television edits—ION, for example—either trim down or very noticeably cut out the entire torture scene.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Bond being tortured in the chair with no bottom. Bond being heartbroken after Vesper's death, which causes his depression and weariness as seen in most of Quantum of Solace.
  • Vesper as well. She has to play along with everything to steal Bond's money and rescue her kidnapped/dead boyfriend.
• Break the Haughty: James Bond goes through this, first getting lectured by M, getting captured, stripped, and tortured via Groin Attack. Le Chiffre himself goes through this as well after his Evil Plan fails, getting attacked by the Africans he owes money to, losing to Bond after he thought Bond was out of the game, and then dying after scratching Bond's balls.
• Brick Joke: Bond seduces Alex Dimitrios' wife Solange, commenting that he finds sleeping with married women simpler. Several scenes later, when he and Vesper are in a car on their way to Casino Royale:
  Bond: (reading about their cover identities) We've been involved for quite a long while. Hence, the shared suite.
  Vesper: But, my family is strict Roman Catholic. So, for appearances sake, it'll be a two-bedroom suite.
  Bond: I do hate it when religion comes between us.
  Vesper: Religion, and a securely locked door. Am I going to have a problem with you, Bond?
  Bond: No, don't worry, you're not my type.
  Vesper: Smart?
  Bond: Single. (Vesper gives him a confused look)
• Briefcase Full of Money:
  • A large aluminium case full of money the African "freedom fighters" give Le Chiffre at the beginning.
  • The poker winnings—although initially, it is a 'briefcase full of computer for transferring money', but the trope is definitely being invoked. (Later, Mr. White casually takes a real briefcase full of $100+ million away after the building collapses.)
• Broken Ace: Bond, who is trying to adjust to the life of a secret agent throughout the movie. He's affected by his first kill and the death of Dimitrios' wife, and by the end of the film, he's lost Vesper after learning she was in Mr. White's payroll. By the end of the film, he's presented as the secret agent he was in the previous film series.
• Bulungi: In Madagascar, Bond storms the embassy of a fictional country named "Nambutu."
• Byronic Hero: Bond. This marks a completely different personality from the character presented in the franchise; however, he (mostly) returns to his iconic cold, calculating, womanizing personality in Skyfall.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Although an attempt by Bond on Vesper fails, it still counts as Bond gives up less than a minute into administration, and his technique doesn't focus so much on restoring circulation so much as copping one last feel.
• The Cameo:
  • In the Miami airport scene, look very closely at who is in the metal detection scanner opposite the Skyfleet plane. Richard Branson decides to make an appearance. This got cut from airings on British Airways flights.
  • Earlier in Nassau, Bond exchanges appreciative glances with a sexy tennis player—Victoria's Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio.
  • The film also has 2 cameos from Connery-era tertiary Bond Girls:
    • Madam Wu, one of the players at the big poker game who has no speaking line, and also seen playing against Le Chiffre in his yacht, is played by Tsai Chin, who plays a major role in the Action Prologue of You Only Live Twice as Ling, where she sets the trap that seemingly kills Bond.
    • Similarly, one of the player at Dimitrios' poker game (Credited as Poker Player #3), is a lady played by Diane Hartford, who plays the woman Bond dances with to evade Fiona Volpe at the Kiss Kiss Club in Thunderball. She memorably exclaims "You didn't tell me your wife was here!" after the dance.
• Camping a Crapper: 007's first confirmed kill occurs when he wallops a guy in the bathroom of a cricket club in Pakistan.
• The Can Kicked Him: Bond's first confirmed kill was in a bathroom.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You:
  • Steven Obanno is extremely angry at Le Chiffre for losing his money in the foiled attack at Miami, attacking him in his Montenegro hotel suite. He tells Le Chiffre "I would take your hand for this betrayal, but you need it to play cards," and briefly threatens Le Chiffre's girlfriend.
  • Bond and Mr. White do this to each other. The latter does this to the former because he needs the password to the account; the former does this to the latter at the very end, leading up to the events of Quantum of Solace.
• Catch and Return: As Bond pursues the bomb-maker through the construction site, the man tries to shoot him, only to find the gun is empty. He then throws it at Bond, who catches it and hits him with it.
• Chandler's Law: Happens when Bond is being tortured by Le Chiffre for information. Bond points out that he will never give up the information, and Le Chiffre can't kill him without it, so he decides to castrate Bond. Before he can do so, armed men (working for the Nebulous Evil Organization that Le Chiffre would have gladly snitched on to MI6 as a Plan B out of his situation) enter and kill Le Chiffre and his henchmen.
• Character Tics: Le Chiffre tends to place his fingers on his temple when he lies or bluffs, to still his nervous twitch (a minor plot point). Also, when particularly stressed, his medical condition — leaking blood from his left tear duct — kicks in.
• Chase Scene: Played straight with the Parkour scene, but subverted for the car chase. When Bond rushes out in his fancy modified Aston-Martin after the people who kidnapped Vesper, he's almost immediately driven off the road by them dropping her in the middle of the road. He is summarily captured. (This is close to the book; the cars are different and they use a spike strip.)
• Chekhov's Armoury: The scene where Bond looks through the secret compartments in his car is a more low-key version of the traditional "Pay attention, 007. You'll be needing all of these gadgets before the film is over" scene.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Near the beginning is a scene with Le Chiffre playing poker. "I have only 2 pair, and you have a full 17.4% chance of completing your straight". Guess what happens during the big poker game... (Le Chiffre actually gets a Full House, aces full of sixes, and Bond actually gets a straight flush, the probability of which is much lower than getting a regular straight.)
  • Early in the movie, Mollaka gets spooked when he sees one of the British agents holding a finger to his ear, giving away that he was using an earpiece. Later on, when Bond and Vesper are trying to evade Obanno and his henchman via Fake-Out Make-Out, one of the bad guys notices the earpiece that Bond was using to listen in on Le Chiffre with.
• Chekhov's Gunman: When Bond improvises his drink order (for what more dedicated fans will know is a Vesper Martini), several other players ask for the same thing. Only one player changes anything about the order, telling the barman to prepare his martini without the fruit. He later reveals himself as James Bond's brother from Langley.
• Chess Motifs: Variation, with casino and poker motifs.
• City of Canals: Including a scene where Bond sinks a floating building.
• City with No Name: Much of the story takes place in an unnamed Montenegro city.
• Climbing Climax: Subverted when Bond chases the courier, who is a Parkour expert. Yes, at one point, he flees to the top of a crane, but he has the skills to get back down safely.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Le Chiffre uses a knotted rope, a bottomless chair, and some very strategic blows to persuade James Bond to reveal some very vital information. Specifically, that he has an itchy scrotum.
  • According to M, Le Chiffre's men tortured Solange before killing her. And given her state of undress, it's implied that they raped her as well.
• Collateral Damage: One of the Embassy guards is accidentally gunned down by his comrades.
• Combat Commentator: For a while, it seems like René Mathis' entire purpose is to explain to Vesper what James Bond is doing for the benefit of audience members who don't know how to play Texas Hold 'Em.
• The Commies Made Me Do It: The post-Soviet version. Vesper Lynd turns out to be working for the bad guys because they have her boyfriend hostage.
• Conspicuous Consumption: Le Chiffre's fine clothes, yacht, and platinum inhaler are all testaments to his immense wealth.
• Construction Vehicle Rampage: Bond is chasing the bomb maker across a construction site, and gets in a loader and drives at the bomb maker; demolishing a lot of the construction site in the process.
• Consummate Professional: Daniel Craig's interpretation of Bond... even when he's shooting up embassies.
• Continuity Reboot: The movie did this to the Bond movie franchise, although they also have claimed in secondary material that it's a Prequel. It retains some Broad Strokes, keeping Judi Dench as M and the post-Cold War scenario from the Pierce Brosnan films, though now she misses the Cold War, when agents had the decency to defect after a big mistake, rather than seeing Bond as a relic of that era.
• Conveniently an Orphan: One of the first things Vesper and Bond learn about each other, and the first thing they're shown to have in common. Vesper notes that MI6 tends to look for "maladjusted young men" like him.
• Conveniently Empty Roads: Justified. When Bond is chasing Vesper's abductors, the chase happens on a country road late at night.
• Cool Car:
  • Just look at Bond's Aston! Just freaking look at it! Even if it was completely stock it would still be gorgeous!
  • And the older Aston that Bond runs into isn't half bad either.
• Cool, Clear Water: In all the chaos of the final action sequence, it's easy to overlook that the water is as clear as in a swimming pool, when in reality, given that a building just collapsed into it, it should be murky.
• Corporate Conspiracy: Le Chiffre is a terrorist banker affiliated with Quantum and a mysterious man named Mr. White. Quantum has financed criminal groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Lord's Resistance Army, and has profited from the activities it sponsors, such as when they shorted airline stocks after the 9/11 attacks. Other known Quantum members included a high-ranking advisor to the British Prime Minister, an ex-KGB spy turned mining executive, a former Mossad agent turned telecom tycoon, a Bolivian army general, and a CIA section chief for South America.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: The film begins with James Bond confronting a corrupt senior intelligence officer. Played with in the fact that M had no problem with the officer taking advantage of his position to make money until he crossed the line by dealing in state secrets.
• Cosmopolitan Council: There is a very important poker game with a diverse set of players.
• Covers Always Lie: The poster above depicts Bond walking in a tuxedo with an undone bow tie armed with a suppressed Walther PPK, a boat chase with speedboats and helicopters, Bond and Vesper naked from the top up in the ocean, and the Aston Martian DBS V12 speeding away from an exploding building. NONE of that happens in the actual film. ^note  Though unlike the others, the Vesper & Bond scene was actually filmed, just deleted from the final cut. Another poster, as well as the DVD cover, has Bond in the same outfit/pose while Vesper stands on the stairs leading to the casino, looking on. Again, no such scene happens in the movie. In particular, though she's wearing the dress that she wore in the second casino scene, Vesper's hair is loose rather than in an updo as it was in the movie.
• Covert Pervert: Vesper Lynd.
  Vesper: I'll be keeping my eyes on the money, and off your perfectly formed arse.
  Bond: You noticed?
  Vesper: Even accountants have imaginations.
• Creator Cameo: Director Martin Campbell has a cameo during the Miami airport chase sequence, where Le Chiffre's replacement bomber Carlos breaks his neck and steals his fuel tanker truck.
  • Producer Michael Wilson makes his obligatory cameo as the corrupt police chief Mathis has arrested for bribery when he and Bond first meet.
• Cunning People Play Poker: The plot concerns the newly minted Double-O agent James Bond as he faces off against the devious terrorist financier Le Chiffre in a high stakes poker game. Le Chiffre proves to be a formidable match for Bond as he not only manages to get him knocked out of the tournament briefly, but also manages to have him and love interest Vesper nearly killed several times away from the table.
• Cutting the Knot: Bond pursues a freerunning enemy who nimbly scales obstacles and slips through narrow gaps. Bond finds simpler but equally effective means of traversing obstacles, such as running straight through a plaster wall and, eventually, hopping into the driver's seat of a bulldozer.
• Dare to Be Badass: The chorus from the opening song puts a darker spin on this trope, basically couching it in a warning that if you don't Take a Level in Badass, you will be dead very quickly:
  Arm yourself, because no one else here will save you
  The odds will betray you
  And I will replace you...
• Dark and Troubled Past: Heavily implied with Bond. After Vesper performs a Sherlock Scan, she comments that his immediate assumption that she's an orphan is because he himself is one, and while he clearly had private education, he's likely from a poor background, so it was only by the grace of someone's charity. She also believes that the other students never let him forget this, hence the reason for why he has such a massive chip on his shoulder.
• Darker and Edgier: The movie tries to be more mature and realistic than its predecessors—for example, instead of just adding extra blood, sex, and swearing (all of which existed in previous Bond films), the movie made more subtle changes. Interestingly, some of its darkest elements were actually taken straight from the book (such as the torture scene late in the film). We discover in this film that, for example, to become a 00 Agent one must have at least two confirmed kills under their belt.
• Dead Man's Chest: Not exactly a chest per se, but Bond stuffs the bodies of Obanno and his henchman in a nearby utility closet after their fight. Mathis later uses the bodies as a Punk in the Trunk to frame another bad guy.
• Death by Cameo: The director of the film Martin Campbell plays the truck driver who has his neck snapped at the Miami airport.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The pre-opening credits sequence, prior to Bond receiving his 00 status.
• Demoted to Extra: Felix Leiter, in the novel is in contact with Bond from near the beginning and doubles as The Watson. In the film, he only has a dozen or so lines, and the two don't meet until after Bond's been initially cleaned out.
• Design Student's Orgasm: With a playing card theme, in the opening credits. Bond is also hit with flurries of cards and Bank of England £10 notes.
• Determinator: Bond, whenever he's in chase mode. When going after the Parkour-adept bombmaker, he uses a bulldozer to smash through the obstacles.
  • Don't forget clinging to the wet, slippery roof of a speeding truck while it crashes through multiple buses, and fighting off two highly-trained assassins with a wooden chair after being gashed with a box cutter and shot by a nail gun.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the book, Vesper commits suicide via poison. In the film, she drowns herself.
• Dies Wide Open: Vesper drowns, and her eyes stare hauntingly at Bond for a few long seconds before they close..
• Didn't Think This Through: Mendel at the end. Bond is calling him and demanding to know where the money is going and who authorized it and he just keeps smiling away without any hint that he's noticed there's anything wrong. Usually you'd think something like that would be an automatic alarm that you need to freeze the transaction ASAP.
• Dirt Forcefield: Bond gets covered in blood after killing Obanno, a subversion to Bond's habit of simply straightening his tie and walking off afterwards.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Invoked. Bond has a gown delivered for Vesper with a neckline verging on Navel-Deep Neckline "so when you walk up behind me and kiss me on the neck, the players will be thinking about your neckline and not about their cards." She gets him back for it a few minutes later by having a custom-tailored tuxedo delivered for him, much to his disbelief.
• Distressed Dude: Bond gets tied naked to a chair and whacked repeatedly in the groin by a knotted rope.
• Double Entendre: In the opening scene, Bond's "Yes, considerably" can apply to Dryden's final words ("Well, you needn't worry, the second is..."), or to what Dryden asked right before ("Made you feel it, did he?").
• Double Meaning: In the theme song's lyrics "Life is gone with just a spin of the wheel" can refer either to the casino motif or a critical scene where Le Chiffre gains the upper hand while Bond is driving.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title can be taken as an allusion to the Casino Royale (literally "royal casino") where the poker game takes place, or to the "battle royale" (that is, a duel that can only have one winner) that takes place in the casino.
• Drink-Based Characterization: Bond's trademark Vodka Martini. It says a lot about how fed up he is about the situation when the bartender that served him a few scenes prior asks him if he wants it shaken or stirred and he growls out, "Do I look like I give a damn?"
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Vesper Lynd does a Sexy Soaked Shirt scene as a corpse.
• Driven to Suicide: Vesper, by drowning herself.
• Dungeon Bypass: While the mook is going through a building under construction with Le Parkour, James Bond just goes through walls, shoots down an elevated platform for it to fall, even smashes through several obstacles with a bulldozer...
• Establishing Series Moment: The black-and-white opening establishes the Darker and Edgier tone of Daniel Craig's Bond, as Bond notches the two kills required to become a double-0 agent, the first a brutal, Bourne-esque fight with Dryden's contact, and the second a cold-blooded assassination of Dryden himself, with a split-second view of a photo on Dryden's desk confirming that he is a family man to highlight the moral ambiguity of Bond's line of work. Just to reassure the audience that the classic Bond tropes will not be entirely absent, Bond does drop a Bond One-Liner after killing Dryden, and the scene ends with Bond shooting Dryden's contact, neatly cutting into the iconic Bond Gun Barrel.
  Dryden: Well you needn't worry. The second is...[Bond shoots him]
  Bond: Yes. Considerably.
• Euphemistic Names: In a joke over the franchise's use of the trope, Bond and Vesper Lynd (a Punny Name but not an example of the trope) start going over their cover identities. Bond tells Vesper her cover name is "Miss Stephanie Broadchest", prompting her to interrupt, "I am not!" We never actually find out for certain whether it's her real cover name or if he's just pulling her leg.
  Bond: (grinning and playing keep-away with the documents) You're going to have to trust me on this.
  Vesper: No, I don't.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, when Bond earns his second kill, we see a photo of the target's family on his desk.
• Every Man Has His Price: The local sheriff whom both MI6 and Le Chiffre will want to influence. Mathis, decides not to start a bidding war and instead forges evidence that they had successfully bribed the sheriff and leaks the evidence to the deputy sheriff, whom Mathis had bribed at a relatively cheap price. It's not always the highest bidder who wins.
• Evil Plan: Le Chiffre short-sells successful companies and engineers terrorist attacks in order to sink their stock values and turn a profit. The other bad guys are his superiors and clients who are pissed because he is doing this with their funds and behind their back. Bond screws up Le Chiffre's plan by foiling a terrorist attack and Le Chiffre has to hold and win a multi-million dollar poker tournament to pay his clients back. Bond is there to win it to force Le Chiffre to sell out his clients and superiors to MI6 in return for sanctuary before the other villains track him down and kill him.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: A villainous example from the opening scene, as Bond sits in silence while Dryden goes on about why he's not afraid of him.
  Dryden: If the theatrics are supposed to scare me, you have the wrong man, Bond. If M was so sure I was bent, she'd have sent a Double-O. Benefits of being Section Chief: I'd know immediately of anyone being promoted to Double-O status, wouldn't I? Your file shows no kills. And it takes...
  Bond: Two.
• Eyepatch of Power: Played With - the minor villain Adolph Gettler wears glasses that have one lens darkened.
• Eye Scream: In the final gunfight, Bond shoots Adolph Gettler in the eye with a nailgun. Ironically, the exact eye that is punctured by the nail was already blind (indicated by the opaque lense of his glasses), if not gone altogether.
• Fake-Out Make-Out: Well, until Obanno's henchman spots Bond's earpiece, it was going to work out.
• Fanservice:
  • Bond shirtless climbing out of the ocean. Many jaws dropped.
  • For the more traditional fanservice: Why is that woman in a bathing suit riding a horse on a beach?
  • Vesper in the purple dress. Her second dress even more so.
  • Valenka (Ivana Miličević) has a classic Bond Girl intro, climbing out of the water onto Le Chiffre's boat and walking past the game he's playing in a very high-waisted swimsuit.
• Fanservice Extra: The blonde receptionist at the Ocean Club.
  • Special mention goes to Victoria's Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio, seen very briefly^note to say she has ten seconds of screen time is quite optimistic as a "Tennis Girl" who passes Bond◊ in a parking lot.
• Finger-Suck Healing: Bond sucks on Vesper's fingers when she is going into shock.
• Flashback Effects: Bond's flashbacks to his first kill are grainier than the present-day footage.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the opening credits, a crosshair moves over a card illustration of the queen of hearts, briefly showing Vesper's face. While it does tell the viewer that Vesper will become the true love of Bond's life, pay attention to what's below the reversed image of this card. It's a spade, which typically represents death. At the end of the movie, Vesper commits suicide.
  • Bond was only able to defeat Dimitrios in Poker because he had the absolute nuts (best possible hand) before the river card was even drawn.
  • As noted on the YMMV page, Bond getting knocked from the tournament is treated by Vesper as a result of his reckless behaviour, when in fact he was making a very sound judgment call in assuming he would win the hand. It makes sense upon subsequent viewings why Vesper would refuse to buy him back into the game, and it's not because he's reckless.
  • Even though both Bond and Vesper are being tortured harshly for the info on the account that the money is in after the card game, only Bond has to spend any time recuperating from it. In fact, he sees Vesper and Mathis standing over his bed when he's still in a haze. It seems likely that Vesper wasn't tortured at all, since she was in on the scheme to get the money.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Mathis manages to get Steven Obanno's murder pinned on Le Chiffre's accomplice Leo, sending the terrorist on a one-way trip to the French slam. Nobody cares.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When Dryden is shot, there's a brief shot of a portrait of him with his family, emphasizing the fact that no matter how you paint him, Bond is a killer.
  • During the scuffle on the fuel truck, just before the bomber jumps from the fuel truck, Bond grabs his belt. Later, the bomber realizes (far too late) that Bond clipped the bomb to his belt.
  • Right after White kills Le Chiffre, in the latter's final shot, his eye starts bleeding. Overlaps somewhat with Ironic Echo, when Bond taunts Le Chiffre earlier in the film, "I won't consider myself to be in trouble until I start weeping blood."
  • When Bond sends his resignation email to M, take a closer look at the names listed onscreen. They include Anne Bennett, Chris McBride, Neil Pinkawa, and David Hicks, all of whom worked on the movie.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Bond's discussion with Dryden (with flashbacks to a brutal fight between Bond and Dryden's contact) has shades of this. To be promoted to double-0 status, an agent must kill two people. The contact was Bond's first; the second is... *FWIP*
  Yes. Considerably.
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: The start of the film has a somewhat downplayed example. Bond is chasing a bomb maker who pulls off numerous astounding jumps with stunning nimbleness as he tries to evade the MI6. Bond goes for more straightforward methods, such as sometimes crashing straight through walls, and on at least one occasion fumbles the landing from a jump that the bomb maker made, resulting in him tumbling off his landing site whereas the bomb maker lands it perfectly.
• Grenade Tag: At the end of the sequence where Bond is trying to prevent the airport bombing, the bomber apparently gets away and triggers the remote detonator for the bomb — which is when he discovers that Bond planted the bomb on him while they were fighting.
• Groin Attack: Le Chiffre tortures Bond by stripping him naked, tying him to a wicker chair with the seat cut out, and whipping him in the balls with a knotted rope. He's just about to castrate Bond when Mr. White shoots Kratt and Valenka offscreen, then walks through the door to shoot Le Chiffre in the head.
  Le Chiffre: I'll feed you what you seem not to value.
• Has a Type: James prefers married women. They're less complicated.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: Heard during the DVD menu during a clip when Bond kills Dryden.
• Heroic BSoD: Bond has a variation at the end of one game after Le Chiffre deliberately uses his tell to fool Bond while everyone else leaves the table.
• Historical In-Joke: When M talks to Bond about the financial loss Le Chiffre has taken as a result of his plot at Miami being foiled, she mentions how the CIA discovered he short-sold large quantities of airline stocks after 9/11, and when the stocks plummeted in the wake of the attacks, someone made a fortune. This really was alleged to have happened in Real Life as people noted seemingly suspicious stock trading the day before 9/11, but a thorough investigation by the FBI amongst others concluded there was no Al-Qaeda connection.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Dimitrios is stabbed with his own knife by Bond.
  • Carlos Nikolic who tries to blow up a plane via remote detonator, only to find that Bond clipped the bomb to his belt while they were grappling.
  • In a less lethal example, before the poker game Bond gives Vesper a dress, stating that it is so she can draw the other players' attention from their cards to her. When she does this later, Bond ends up being more distracted than the rest of them.
  • Gettler is killed with the nail gun he used against Bond moments earlier in the climax
• Hostage Situation: Somewhat reversed, in that the hero is the one taking the hostage when Bond apprehends Mollaka. Subverted again in that when Gettler tries to take Vesper hostage, Bond doesn't care what happens to her, because he thinks she's a double agent.
  One Eye: I'll kill her!
  Bond: Allow me.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: James pours himself a stiff drink to steady his nerves after killing Obanno. When he returns to their suite after finishing the poker game for the night he spots a broken wine glass indicating Vesper tried to do the same thing before taking her Shower of Angst.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Fashionable: An inversion: Bond and Lynd are dressing each other up long before their relationship has had much development.
• Image Song: Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name", which also has cues in the score to act as the leitmotif before the final scene.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: During the climax, Bond kills the first of Gettler's men with a shot to the throat.
• Inopportune Impersonation Failure: James Bond and Vesper Lynn are eavesdropping on Le Chiffre in the corridor outside his hotel room when Obanno bursts out in a huff, forcing Bond and Lynn into a Fake-Out Make-Out so they won't look suspicious. For a moment, the ruse works perfectly, and Obanno passes them by without concern... but then Obanno's henchman notices that Bond forgot to remove his earpiece. Cue fight to the death.
• It Gets Easier:
  Dryden: How did he die?
  Bond: Your contact? Not well.
  [we see Bond trying to drown the guy in a bathroom sink]
  Dryden: Made you feel it, did he? Well, you needn't worry. The second is—[Bond shoots him in the head]
  Bond: Yes. Considerably.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: ELLIPSIS. Initially appears to be a codeword between the terrorists, but then it later turns out that it also unlocks a security door at Miami International Airport.
• It Works Better with Bullets:
  • In the pre-credits sequence, Dryden tries to shoot Bond with a hidden pistol in his desk, only to learn that Bond had already found and disarmed it.
  • The African bomber tries to shoot Bond while on the crane, but he's out of bullets. He throws the pistol at Bond in an act of desperation, but Bond deftly catches it and throws it back so that this time, it hits Mollaka in the head.
• Jack of All Stats: They make a point of establishing this about Bond early in the movie. He's athletic but can't match the Le Parkour skills of his quarry and has to use his brain, working the environment, to make up the difference.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Craig's Bond is shown initially as a cynical and tough guy, hardened from a troubled childhood and then years of elite military and intelligence service. However that doesn't mean he has no humanity or he doesn't feel compassion or pity. The "shower" sequence says all.
• Jump Scare: The moment when Steven Obanno jumps out of the dark in Valenka's room.
• Just Plane Wrong:
  • Czech Airlines (CSA) planes are seen during the Miami International Airport chase sequence where Bond is chasing down the bomber. Czech Airlines does not fly to the United States. Although it once had transatlantic flights, it has never flown to Miami. There is a wide abundance of American Airlines planes at MIA in real life, but there are no AA planes to be seen at all in the film. Both of these are due to the fact that parts of the sequence were filmed at Prague's Ruzyně International Airport.
  • The Skyfleet prototype airliner is said to be "the largest in the world", but the example onscreen is no bigger than a standard 747 jumbo jet. This makes its status as "largest airliner" an Informed Attribute. ^note The aircraft was in fact a re-dressed 747-200. Also, in fairness, the high-angle cinematography does make it look quite enormous (at least to a layman) to back up the Informed Attribute
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Bond does this early in the film on his second confirmed kill, the one that earns him his 00 status.
  Dryden: [Discussing Bond's first kill] Made you feel it, did he? Well...you needn't worry. The second is—
  Bond shoots him in the head before Dryden would have said "much easier"
  Bond: ...Yes. Considerably.''
• Kiss of Life: Bond tries this on Vesper. It doesn't work and quickly turns into a heartbreaking Last Kiss.
• Knee-capping: The film ends with Bond locating and kneecapping The Man Behind the Man.
• Kung-Shui: The freerunning bomber hops a fence, Bond hijacks a bulldozer. Freerunner flips through a narrow hole in a wall, Bond powers through the wall. Freerunner hops down several flights of unfinished stairs, Bond hops on a hydraulic lift and smashes the hydraulics. BOND SMASH!
• Laughing Mad: Bond, during his Cold-Blooded Torture from Le Chiffre.
  James Bond: Now the whole world's gonna know that you died scratching my balls!
• Lightswitch Surprise: Bond waits in a darkened office for his current target. He was only revealed when said target switches on a light to reveal that Bond has been in his safe.
• Logo Joke: The opening Vanity Plates, like the scene they lead into, are in black-and-white.
• Made of Iron: The soldiers at the embassy are engulfed in an explosion when Bond shoots some gas tanks, but all are still alive afterwards.
• The Magic Poker Equation: The final hand plays this straight. Well, straight flush, actually. The hands leading up to it play with it a bit, especially with Le Chiffre's tell.
• Magical Defibrillator: Bond pulls one out after being poisoned. At first it looks like it's going to be used to treat actual fibrillation, for a change, but in the end it turns into a use-the-defibrillator-to-restart-a-stopped-heart scene after all.
• Make an Example of Them: When his terrorist attack on Skyfleet gets thwarted by Bond, Le Chiffre figures out that someone must have talked. With everyone involved in the operation dead, he has Dimitrios's wife Solange brutally murdered before stuffing her body in a hammock as a message.
• The Man Behind the Man: Alex Dimitrios to the parkour bomber, then Le Chiffre to Dimitrios and Mr. White to Le Chiffre. Continues on into Quantum of Solace, where more men behind Mr. White are revealed. Spectre eventually reveals the top end of this long chain.
• Meaningful Echo: "Money isn't as important as knowing who to trust": what Le Chiffre says to Dimitiros when he reminds him what's important in their organisation and also the last sentence he hears before Quantum sends Mr. White to shoot him.
• Meta Casting: The parkour bomb-maker in the beginning is played by Sébastien Foucan, one of the developers of the running technique.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Elimination of a bomber-for-hire → the shut down of a banker to terrorist cells around the world.
• Mirror Character: Much like in the book, Le Chiffre and Bond are set up as mirror images of each other, in certain ways: both a Tuxedo and Martini Deadpan Snarker with a glamorous sexily-dressed lady serving as their sidekick.
• Misplaced Wildlife: An early scene in Madagascar has people watching a fight between a mongoose and a cobra... except the mongoose is actually a ferret.
• Mobstacle Course: The Le Parkour villain does this while trying to escape.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Bond and Vesper are beneath one while having sex.
• Monochrome to Color: The Action Prologue is in black-and-white, then switches to colour during the opening credits.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Bond's quiet confrontation with the SIS station chief abruptly cuts away to a brutal fight with his contact in a men's room.
  • During the exceptionally brutal torture scene, Bond informs Le Chiffre that he has an itch "down there". Le Chiffre takes another whack at the poor man's family jewels while Bond screams: "NO! NOOO! Nuuuh! Nuh! No. To the right! To the right!" before breaking down into hysterical laughter/tears and exclaiming: "Now the whole world's gonna know you died scratching my balls!"
• Mr. Exposition: Mathis' job is to provide running commentary on the poker games in case the viewers get confused or don't appreciate when something is significant.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Vesper's introduction to Bond ("I'm the money." "Every penny of it.") references Miss Moneypenny, who does not appear in the film.
  • Later in the film, a bartender asks him whether he prefers his martini shaken or stirred. Bond responds, "Do I look like I give a damn?"
  • And on their way to the casino, Bond jokingly tells Vesper her alias is "Stephanie Broadchest", referencing the naming style of Bond girls like Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder and Kissy Suzuki. Vesper is very much offended by the choice of alias.
  • When M chastises Bond early in the movie, she mentions "Christ, I miss the Cold War," a callback to her character's introduction in GoldenEye, where she chastises Pierce Brosnan's Bond for being a "relic of the Cold War."^note With that said, despite sharing the same actress, the character in the Craig era is not actually the same as the one in the Brosnan era
  • Bond wins a classic Aston Martin DB5, which is one of the best known cars from the older movies.
  • Can anyone say "Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shaken well over ice until chilled, and served with a thin slice of lemon peel"?
  • At the Bodies exhibition in Miami, Dimitrios' bag gets tagged number 53, in reference to the book's original publication year, 1953.
  • Mr. White's Pre-Mortem One-Liner before shooting Le Chiffre is, "Money isn't as important to our organisation as knowing who to trust." This calls back to Licence to Kill where Franz Sanchez tells Milton Krest, "Loyalty is more important to me than money."
    • In Die Another Day, M also talks about "knowing who to trust" being everything in their business.
  • M calls back to Die Another Day again when she calls Bond "a blunt instrument", just as Miranda Frost did.
  • One from the books. A primary reason why Bond wore Rolexes with metal bracelets was because they made good emergency knuckledusters. He uses one to kill a mook in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and beats down his captor with one in Diamonds Are Forever. In this movie, Film!Bond uses his Omega Seamaster to repeatedly clobber one of Gettler's subordinates in the collapsing Venice house.
  • To get this you have to read several of the original novels, especially Goldfinger. Throughout the series there are references to the game at the Casino Royale including the names and positions of the players. The large black gentleman? Mr. Big from Live and Let Die. The touristy woman to Felix's left? In the book Goldfinger, the DuPonts ask Bond to investigate Goldfinger cheating at cards.
  • Paired with invoked Throw It In!—the supposed homage to Honey Ryder's famous entrance in Dr. No occurred because Craig hit a sandbar while swimming, forcing him to stand up and walk to shore.
• Nail 'Em: Gettler attacks Bond with a nail gun in the climax. It appears to have rapid fire function.
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond:
  • Bond's iconic introduction serves as the punchline to The Tag at the end of the film, complete with the James Bond Leitmotif.
  • Said by Mathis. René Mathis.
• The Namesake: The film is named for the casino in Montenegro where a poker tournament which takes place over most of the second act happens.
• Neck Snap: At the airport, Carlos kills a fuel truck driver (played by the director) by twisting his neck.
• Neutral Female: Subverted in the fight with the African warlords. Vesper, idle and shocked, takes a while to react but eventually helps Bond by keeping Obanno from getting to Bond's pistol.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: Bond can handle the machete-wielding Obanno relatively easily.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Discussed by Vesper; if Bond loses the poker game, there's a chance that the British government might wind up financing terrorism, particularly if Le Chiffre wins. It turns out that this happens after all when Mr. White ends up recovering the winnings.
  • Bond probably shouldn't have shot out the inflatable supports to the building in Venice.
• Nice to the Waiter: Throughout the film, Bond is shown tipping porters, waiters and drivers serving him. As noted under Parking Payback, Bond crashes the car of a Jerkass guest who'd treated him rudely in the belief that he is a hotel valet. Perhaps the biggest example of this is when Bond wins the poker game and slides one of the red plaques to the dealer as a tip. Bear in mind that said red plaques are worth half a million dollars.
• Non-Answer: Bond recklessly signs into the hotel with his real name rather than his alias, and Le Chiffre requests an explanation.
  Le Chiffre: And you must be Mr. Bliss's replacement. Welcome, Mr. Beech. Or is that Bond? I'm a little confused.
  Bond: Well, we wouldn't want that, would we? [smiles stiffly and walks away]
• Non-Appearing Title: "You Know My Name" has no mention of "Casino Royale" because according to Chris Cornell, he "couldn't imagine it fitting into a song lyric that would come out of my mouth".
  Chris Cornell: "Casino Royale" didn't make a good rock title, but I would write a song named "Octopussy" just for fun.
• Non-Nude Bathing: Bond finds Vesper sitting fully-clothed under a running shower after she was attacked. Apparently the script originally called for her to have stripped to her underwear, but Daniel Craig pointed out if she were truly upset she would have either stayed fully clothed or stripped to nothing at all, so they went with the more conservative option.
• Obligatory Earpiece Touch: Early on Bond and another agent are surveilling a runner for a terrorist organisation. The other agent repeatedly fiddles with his earpiece (to hear better), much to the frustration of Bond, who scolds him for doing it and tells him not to draw attention to himself. Sure enough, their target notices the other agent while the agent is pushing on the earpiece and makes a run for it.
• Oh, Crap!: Carlos when he sets off the remote detonator in Miami. A second later, he realises to his horror that during their fight, Bond clipped it to his belt and he's about to be blown to bits.
  • Le Chiffre when Bond beats his full house with a straight flush. The smile is wiped off his face and he gets up and walks away from the table without looking at anyone.
  • Le Chiffre has another one when Mr. White kills Valenka and Kratt, and Mr White enters pointing a gun at him.
• Old-School Chivalry: The two times Bond and Vesper share a meal, he stands whenever she leaves the table, a classic rule of etiquette.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Bond's Stiff Upper Lip slips when Vesper refuses to let him buy back into the game.
  Vesper: Sorry.
  Bond: Sorry? Why don't you try putting that in a sentence? Like, "Sorry Le Chiffre is going to win, continue funding terror and killing innocent people, THAT KIND OF SORRY?"
• Overcomplicated Menu Order: The film puts a twist on the usual James Bond martini by having him order one consisting of: "Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it over ice and add a thin slice of lemon peel." And after three of the other people at the table decide they want one too (with Leiter telling the waiter to hold the fruit), Le Chiffre sarcastically wonders aloud if anyone's interested in playing poker instead of drinking. This is also a Mythology Gag to a specific scene in the books. Bond's order is recreated exactly, right down to the waiter's pleased expression.
• Parking Payback: Bond is mistaken for a valet and ordered by a very condescending guest to park his car. He does so — by backing it forcefully into a parking barrier, setting off many car alarms. This is not just for kicks and giggles; it's a handy distraction as well so Bond can get a good look at the hotel's security footage. Gets a Brick Joke when the guest spots Bond (clearly looking more like another guest this time) later that night, double-taking in surprise.
• Le Parkour: Sébastien Foucan, one of the innovators of the skill, plays a bomber running away from Bond. The bomber uses parkour, whereas Bond takes somewhat more of a ''direct'' route...
• Passive Aggressive Combat: Every interaction between Bond and Le Chiffre has loads of tension and false politeness on both sides.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish":
  • Subverted. Bond initially thinks "Ellipsis" is some sort of codename, but it turned out to be the letters corresponding to the number code on a security access door at the airport. Go figure.
  • And later played straight, when Bond uses the numbers corresponding to "Vesper" as a password — the name of the woman he's got on his side.
• Pineapple Surprise: The would-be-bomber of the Skyfleet prototype at Miami International Airport tries to use a tiny keyring bomb attached to a fuel tanker truck to blow up the plane. After a long fight with Bond, Bond is being detained by the Miami-Dade Police, and the bomber triumphantly pushes the switch on his detonator... only to realize five seconds too late that Bond had attached the bomb to his belt loop during the struggle.
• Pistol-Whipping: After Bond wrests the embassy officer’s pistol from him, he strikes him in the head with it before grabbing Mollaka and attempting to escape. The officer has a noticeable cut on his face when he confronts Bond toward the end of the scene.
• The Place: Casino Royale is the place where Bond has to beat Le Chiffre in cards.
• Playful Cat Smile: Valenka (Le Chiffre's girlfriend) looks very mischevious when she poison's Bond's drink, thus downplaying her deadly intent.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: While obviously more well-known and popular, Texas Hold 'Em is also far more of a psychological warfare game than Baccarat.
  • In the novel, Le Chiffre was in financial trouble due to making a bad business decision; namely, buying a chain of brothels in what would have been a savvy choice had the French government not banned prostitution a few months later. This was given in a memo-based infodump early on. Bond foiling his plans to destroy a prototype aeroplane is not only more suited for film, but also gives more agency to MI6.
• Precision F-Strike: When Bond asks "why should I need more time (to grieve)", adding "the job is done, and the bitch is dead."
• Product Placement:
  • Lots, especially for Sony. The most bizarre one has to be the hotel in the Bahamas storing its surveillance camera footage on Blu-Ray discs...
  • Vesper brings up Bond's watch when evaluating his personality, to which he corrects her Rolex guess to Omega. The marketing for the film also included Omega ads involving Bond.
    • On a meta level, this serves as a take that to Rolex, who's Submariner (actually from Sean Connery's personal collection) was previously the most identifiable "Bond watch" until the Omega Seamaster.
    • Gets a little funnier since the release of Skyfall, as Severine's actress Bérénice Marlohe is a brand ambassador for the watchmakers.
  • Aston Martin, both in the DB5 he gets in a poker game (also present in the original movie) and the shiny brand-new DBS he gets from M.
  • Bond drives a Ford to his hotel in the Bahamas.
  • Several Land/Range Rovers are seen throughout the film. A scene at the beginning of the movie even has several dirty Land Rover Defenders, and the only clean part of these cars is the plaque on the hood that says 'Defender'.
• Publicly Discussing the Secret: After making contact with Mathis, Bond and Vesper proceed to discuss their secret mission in a café just off the town square. Mathis also brings up blackmailing Royale's chief of police, with none of the other patrons noticing any of it.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  Le Chiffre: "You! Are SO WRONG!!"
• Punk in the Trunk: After Bond kills Obanno and his bodyguard, Mathis plants the bodies in the trunk of Le Chiffre's right hand man Leo's car to get him out of the way.
• Race Lift: Felix Leiter (a blond white Texan in the novels) is black in this movie and in Quantum of Solace (played by Jeffrey Wright). Leiter had previously been played by white actors in the EON films, although the non-canonical Never Say Never Again also had a black Leiter, played by Bernie Casey.
  • Le Chiffre himself is suspected by the British Secret Service to be Jewish in the original Ian Fleming novel (Peter Lorre — the 1954 TV version of Le Chiffre — was Jewish as well). In the 2006 film, they think he might be Albanian, while Mads Mikkelsen is Danish.
• Railing Kill: Bond throws Obanno's bodyguard over a stairwell railing before the drawn-out fight down the stairs with Steven Obanno.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: It's revealed that secret agents are only promoted to 00 status after being ordered to assassinate two targets (killing without intention to or in self-defence/heat of battle doesn't apparently count, otherwise MI6 would be loaded with 00 agents). This is also a plot point in the original novel, in which Le Chiffre is James Bond's third target; the film suggests the first two targets are Bond's first kills ever, while the books are ambiguous on this point.
  • On the other hand, Bond's SBS and other military experience would suggest that he has killed before.
• Red Right Hand: As many Bond villains do, most of the bad guys have one.
  • Le Chiffre weeps blood from a damaged vessel in his left eye when stressed. "Nothing sinister".
  • Mollaka in the opening of the movie has chemical burns on the right side of his head, presumably from a botched bombing.
• The Reveal: Vesper Lynd is a Love-Interest Traitor, playing along with Bond until she steals the money to get her boyfriend (who she's still in love with) back. However, it's suggested that she did fall for Bond as well, cutting a deal to save his life in exchange for going through with the theft. Bond's Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the next film culminates with the reveal that the original boyfriend is himself a traitor, seducing women with access to state secrets and using them to obtain and sell said secrets. Fortunately(?), Vesper's killed before she finds out about that facet of his personality. She dies thinking that she has at least saved the lives of the two men she loved.
• Revisiting the Roots: Producer Barbara Broccoli said her father, Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, advised her to go back to the books when not really knowing where to go, which happened after the sci-fi extravaganza of Die Another Day. Casino Royale has a more "back to the basics" and down-to-earth approach similar to the early Ian Fleming novels.
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Bond checks the security tapes at the Ocean Club. Note that optical disks' rewind function in reality isn't as depicted in this instance.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Le Chiffre's plan to sabotage the test flight of a new passenger jet was clearly inspired by the troubles Boeing was having in getting the 787 Dreamliner ready for its first official test flight around that time (the 787 was originally scheduled to start flying in 2008, but due to technological issues, it didn't take to the air until 2011).
• Road Trip Across the Street: Played for laughs. After playing poker with Dimitrios at the Ocean Club, Bond invites Solange Dimitrios back to his place for a drink. She asks him if it's close, he assures her it is, and they set off. Seconds later, he parks the car — back at the Ocean Club, which is also where he's staying. Making it funnier is the staff member saying "Good evening, sir and welcome back."
• Rule of Cool: Bond ultimately wins the card game against master poker players, not by outplaying them or by some great strategy, but because he gets a straight flush at the exact right moment in the ideal situation, where everyone else stays in because they all happen to have hands that are near impossible to beat (as opposed to folding when they realise Bond probably has a good hand, which would be the typical outcome), which has even more ridiculous odds. The only reason the audience does not question what is nearly mathematically impossible is that Bond getting a straight flush is flippin' cool.
  • Nearly mathematically impossible, yes, but ask any professional card player about their worst bad bet, and it'll sound almost exactly like Le Chiffre's. The odds of someone with aces full (or, better, quad aces) losing a hand are very low, and yet it happens. What's more, it's more likely to happen in Texas Hold 'Em because of how the game works. Given the cards that came up in the last hand, it would have been very difficult for any player in that last hand to fold, especially if they were low on chips.
  • Bond also tips over all of his chips when going all-in; in real life, this is highly annoying for players and dealers alike since it's easier and quicker to mark amounts when players keep their chips in stacks and shoving them in a pile is just a big messy headache. Especially in this case where several side pots would be involved.
  • After the final hand, Bond tips the dealer with one of his chips. In poker tournaments, the chips do not have actual cash value and are just markers to play with; nor does the banker holding the pooled funds indicate that tips can be given in this fashion.
• Rule of Symbolism: During the main titles sequence, Vesper Lynd's face is briefly superimposed on top of a female figure which represents the Queen of Hearts card. In The World Is Not Enough, Elektra King picks the Queen of Hearts card at a casino. Eagled-eyed fans would recognise it as a clue that Vesper, like Elektra, is a woman that Bond falls in love with and later betrays him.^note Also note that Elektra and Vesper are both played by French actresses
• Scary Black Man: Steven Obanno (and also his bodyguard) when threatening Le Chiffre and Valenka.
• Scenery Porn: Southern Europe is gorgeous, with Lake Como playing itself, and various Czech locations standing in for Montenegro.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Bond doesn't let the fact that a known terrorist and bombmaker has sought refuge in an embassy stop him from taking him down. M is naturally furious.
  Bond: I thought that one less bomb maker in the world would be a good thing.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: More like "Daniel Craig Is About to Shoot You". The film incorporates the gunbarrel sequence into the plotline, with the audience being treated to the POV of the mook as he is shot by Bond.
• Sequel Hook: Bond has Mr. White at his mercy and is ready to deliver him to justice. So much of a hook that the opening scene of Quantum of Solace continues right after Bond captures Mr. White (other than the drive time between the two locations in Italy).
• Setting Update: The novel was written in the 1950s. The film is pretty much the same story, only it's updated to the mid-2000s.
• Sex Signals Death: Vesper Lynd (drowned) and Solange Dimitrios (strangled).
• Sherlock Scan: Bond and Vesper do this to each other on the train.
• Shirtless Scene: Bond at the beach.
• Shoe Phone: Notably averted for the first time in a Bond movie since the Connery era. The most exotic piece of tech Bond receives is the medical kit stashed in his Aston Martin. The closest thing he has to the traditional Bond spy gadgets is some exotic but relatively plausible software applications.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: It sure took a long time for Bond and Vesper to go to Italy just for her to betray him and die. Hell, if the movie ended 10 minutes before it did the whole thing would've been a "Shaggy Dog" Story; the trail to the case died, Vesper died, and Le Chiffre died without MI6 getting the information from him that they wanted.
• Show Some Leg: To give Bond an advantage in the poker game, he gets Vesper a very low-cut dress. It backfires somewhat - Bond ends up just as, if not more distracted than the other players, especially since Vesper intentionally ignores his instruction to walk up behind him and instead approaches from the other side of the table so that he can see her coming.
• Shower of Angst: Vesper takes one fully clothed while Bond tries to comfort her.
• Slasher Smile: Bond gives one when the bomber who tries to blow up the prototype plane winds up blowing himself up.
• Snake Versus Mongoose: The film opens to a group of gamblers betting on a fight between a mongoose and a cobra.
• Soft Glass: Averted; after taking control of the gas tanker the bomber Carlos tried to use to destroy the Skyfleet prototype, Bond tries stopping the truck, only to crash into a bunch of cop cars that throw bits of glass at his face, scratching it up.
• Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: At the end of the sequence where Bond is trying to prevent the airport bombing, the bomber apparently gets away and triggers the remote detonator for the bomb — which is when he discovers that Bond planted the bomb on him while they were fighting. Cue Oh, Crap! from the bomber, and a sardonic grin from Bond.
• Soul Brotha: Felix Leiter formally introduces himself as "a brotha from Langley" to Bond when he offers to help him get back in the poker game.
• Splash of Color: Bond spies Vesper in the Piazza San Marco via her red dress. The DVD commentary reveals that she is intentionally the only one in this scene clad in this colour to make her stand out.
• Staggered Zoom: At the start of the airport chase sequence.
• The Stateless: Le Chiffre's nationality is given as 'stateless' on the MI6 file Bond is seen reading.
  • Le Chiffre lost his nationality, along with his former persona which he forgets.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Bond wonders why Vesper bought him a dinner jacket, and more importantly, how it perfectly fits him, to which Vesper says "I sized you up" on the train, not just physically but psychologically as well.
  • Felix Leiter, James Bond's Brother From Langley.
• Stock Sound Effect: The klaxon alarm at the embassy had also been used in Osato's office and Blofeld's volcano lair in You Only Live Twice and Sanchez's factory in Licence to Kill.
• The Stoic: James Bond. At first. As the film goes on, the stoicness starts to break.
• Stupid Evil: Le Chiffre's scheme — short-sell company stocks, then stage terrorist attacks on those companies to drive them into bankruptcy while he makes a fortune — has some problems to it. Namely, he finances it by dipping into his clients' money. His heavily armed, very dangerous clients who have no problem killing or torturing people to achieve their goals. Thus, when Bond sabotages his scheme on the Skyfleet plane, Le Chiffre loses $101.2 million in terrorists' money, and is forced to set up a poker tournament at Casino Royale in Montenegro to recover it, a game that is infiltrated by agents from MI6 and the CIA who want to bankrupt Le Chiffre to get him to seek asylum with one of them. And Le Chiffre himself gets attacked and threatened by a pissed-off client who has suddenly found himself out of pocket (and he very deliberately ordered Le Chiffre earlier to not invest his money into high risk ventures). He'd have avoided this whole issue if he simply created a private fund to deal solely with his dirty venture, just in case something goes wrong, one of his schemes is discovered and foiled, and he loses money. He probably wouldn't be able to invest as much, but he would at least avoid making his clients get affected by something they were not involved in. This is what gets him killed—Mr. White cared less about the money, and more that Le Chiffre couldn't be trusted. It is entirely possible that even if Le Chiffre had won the tournament, Quantum still would have killed him for even playing with his clients' money in such a reckless way; Mr. White and his organisation recommended Le Chiffre to his clientele, and his scheme damaged their reputation.
• Super Cell Reception: Bond is issued a super-awesome Sony Ericsson phone that can make calls from the most isolated places in the world, browse the Internet like it is plugged in with a 1024 kbps data link, with a GPS map that can follow tracker bugs. It follows in the tradition of Bond's obscenely advanced gadgets.
• Supermodel Strut: When Vesper shows up for Bond's poker game, she walks up to him while deliberately swaying her hips to invoke this, as she is (under his request) trying to distract the other card players. Which works very well as everyone turns to look at her as she passes by, including Bond himself and the camera.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Bond breaks into the embassy of a sovereign state to capture a terrorist. Not only does he get caught on camera, he also fails to capture the terrorist alive, which is what his original objective was. Even M thinks he's stupid and lashes out at him accordingly. However, it's not made clear by the movie quite how the media (or the embassy, or Madagascar on which the embassy resided within) recognised him as specifically a British agent, when he said not a word to any of the staff and presumably managed to covertly escape the country and return to the UK.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Bond gets poisoned and has to defib himself. Ouch.
• Television Geography:
  • Shortly after Bond arrives in Nassau, he drives along a lovely Bahamian ocean road past some sort of charming open-air food market, toward the Ocean Club. ^note In real life, that road doesn't actually exist as shown, and the nearest coastal roads that match the distance given on his GPS certainly aren't that close to the beach, and the owners probably wouldn't allow those markets in such an upscale location. The beach is clearly on nearby New Providence Island, but he looks at his GPS, then drives past Compass Point^note You can tell by the distinctive colorful wall. There's also some schoolgirls in the wide driving shot, and Compass Point is a few minutes walk from a local primary school. (still New Providence), then arrives at the Ocean Club (Paradise Island), which is a half-hour away and across a bridge. West Bay St. matches the GPS pretty exactly, but it's by Compass Point, not the Ocean Club. ^note And also he'd be travelling in the wrong direction for the scenery. And also there's basically nothing on that road but homes, hotels, and retail. And also Paradise Island would be visible as he's driving along the road, if the GPS location was accurate.
  • The establishing shot of Montenegro is a high-speed train Bond uses to get to the casino, something Montenegrin audiences found rather amusing; Montenegro has no high-speed railway, and their trains are mostly leftover Yugoslav and Romanian engines from the '80s. The casino and its surroundings were in fact filmed in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.
• The Tell: Le Chiffre's is putting his left hand to his forehead just above his left eye, as if he's pondering his next move. Subverted when he does so on purpose to lead the other players to believe that he has a weak hand, with his earlier shows of this likely serving as misdirection (Bond says that losing some chips early on was worth it to learn Le Chiffre's tell.
• That Poor Car: Bond's valet parking sets off a chorus of car alarms, distracting security so that he can study the CCTV footage.
• Theme Music Withholding: Done so very well.
• These Hands Have Killed: Vesper Lynd goes through this during her Shower of Angst, after she's involved with Bond's confrontation with the African warlords. She didn't actually kill anyone, even indirectly (in fact, the action she's angsting over is technically the act of saving Bond's life), but she still has the symptoms. It's also possible foreshadowing that she's in league with the bad guys and is feeling some guilt bubbling up.
• Throwing Your Gun at the Enemy: A Mad Bomber, upon realising his gun is empty, throws his gun at James Bond. Bond promptly catches it and throws it back. Into his face. They are both on a very tall crane, but luckily this doesn't send the bomber plummeting to his doom.
• Title Drop:
  M: ...which would explain how he could set up a high-stakes poker game at Casino Royale in Montenegro.
• To the Pain: "You know, I never understood all these elaborate tortures. It's the simplest thing... to cause more pain than a man can possibly endure." (Then comes the Groin Attack.)
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Carter keeps putting his hand to his ear, thus giving himself away. When he tries to give chase to the bomber who he spooked by doing this, he trips and nearly falls victim to the cobra and mongoose.
  Bond: Stop touching your ear.
  Carter: Sorry?!
  Bond: Put your hand down!
  • Carlos doesn't realise that the time bomb he was going to destroy a plane with was attached to his belt despite the fact that it was beeping, until it's too late. Needless to say it doesn't work out for him.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Not really, but invoked by Bond as part of being Defiant to the End. He asks Le Chiffre to scratch an itch for him.
  *thump* "Yeaaaaaargh! NO! NOOO! '''Nuuuh!''' Nuh! No. To the right! To the right!"
• Torture Is Ineffective: It's James Bond, so naturally Le Chiffre torturing him elicits nothing but snarky remarks: after telling him to scratch an itch "down there", Bond tells Le Chiffre that the whole world's going to know "that you died scratching my balls."
• Touché: After Vesper gets in a few good barbs at Bond on their first meeting, she asks him how his dinner was.
  Bond: Skewered. One sympathises.
• Tracking Chip: MI6 implants a GPS tracker in James Bond to keep track of him.
• Tragic Hero: It's written basically as a tragedy, showing Bond's downward spiral of failure and futility. As a spy, he's clearly in over his head and only succeeds in a technical sense through sheer luck and outside intervention. It's only after he loses everything, including Vesper, that he embraces his profession as a super-spy, and also a determination to avenge her.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • The trailers for the film include the very last shot of the film, with Bond in the very nice suit and vest while carrying a silenced submachine gun. They do leave out the context and the line that makes that scene so awesome though.
  • The action in Venice, making it clear more than just post-victory celebration will occur there.
• Tranquil Fury: Daniel Craig's portrayal of Bond. Even M is unnerved at how he never visibly appears angry.
• Trespassing to Talk: Bond does it twice — once during the Cold Open in order to confront Dryden in his own office, and once in M's apartment after he's caught on camera shooting up an embassy and can't meet offically at MI6 headquarters because of it.
• Triumphant Reprise: The classic James Bond theme gets a triumphant trumpet reprise, just as Bond arrests Mr. White.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Vesper does this in a Shower of Angst. Originally she was supposed to be in her underwear in the scene, but it was argued, by both Daniel Craig and Eva Green, as it is claimed, that as Vesper is very traumatised from seeing Bond killing two men (and having to help by preventing one of them from grabbing a gun to fight back), she wouldn't have stopped to get undressed.
• Truer to the Text: It is the third adaptation of Casino Royale after the 1954 one-hour episode of the anthology series Climax! and the 1967 spoof. It's much more faithful to the novel than the bizarre 1967 film, though various things are changed due to the Setting Update, and some Adaptation Expansion occurs, with an Origin Story for Bond, a protracted climax in Venice, and many additional action scenes.
• Try and Follow: Bond chasing after the bomber.
• Two Decades Behind: Definitely an example of Pandering to the Base. The recipe for the Martini variant Bond names after Vesper Lynd is taken word-for-word from the novel. The problem is, Lillet stopped making one of its ingredients, Kina Lillet, in 1986, replacing it with a reformulated Lillet (sans the quinine that gave it the "Kina" part of the name) called Lillet Blanc. Not only that, Diageo dropped the alcohol content of Gordon's Gin by about ten percent in 1992, meaning shaking it with ice (originally meant to drop the sky-high proof to something more palatable) would turn it into the "weak martini" President Bartlett decries the Tuxedo and Martini. But the film is set in the present-day, and mentions Kina Lillet by name (this also shows up in Quantum of Solace).
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Dimitrios and Solange. Sure enough, the marriage is unhappy as well.
• The Unfought: Bond's battle with Le Chiffre is entirely of wits and cards. Bond never physically confronts him — the first, and thus far only, Big Bad of the franchise for whom this is true. However, Le Chiffre does torture him in an attempt to steal back the winnings.
• The Unreveal: Bond finds out what "M" actually stands for, but the audience does not.
  Bond: I thought M was a randomly assigned letter, I had no idea it stood for...
  M: Utter one more syllable, and I'll have you killed.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them:
  • The Animated Credits Opening has a sequence in which Bond fights a man armed with a knife. Bond takes the knife from the man and stabs him with it, causing him to dissolve into poker card diamonds.
  • The above scene is a reference to one in the movie proper in which Alex Dimitrios confronts Bond at an airport and tries to kill him with a knife, and both end up trying to redirect the knife at point blank range (without alarming anyone around them). Bond gets the upper hand and kills Dimitrios with the knife instead.
• Villainous Breakdown: Le Chiffre is stoic until Bond resists his torture, and actually mocks him for it.
  "You! Are SO WRONG!!"
• Villainous Rescue: Mr. White interrupting Bond's torture to shoot Le Chiffre in the face.
• Villains Out Shopping: Le Chiffre's poker game on board his yacht.
• Vomiting Cop: M's personal assistant, Villiers, when M and Bond are watching Solange's body get removed from the hammock. Which is kind of funny if you know that Villiers' actor Tobias Menzies plays Brutus on Rome, someone much more accustomed to that sort of thing.
• Watch the Paint Job: The effects crew managed to rotate Bond's Aston Martin 7 times for the scene where it's totaled. Makes any car fan weep, and it set a world record in the process. On the DVD extra featurette about how they performed the stunt, they felt it necessary to include a disclaimer noting the car was specially reinforced and Do Not Try This at Home. As if the average person who buys an Aston Martin's first impulse is to see how many times you can roll it...
• We Need a Distraction: See Parking Payback. Also the bomber at Miami airport turns on the fire sprinklers, allowing him to steal a gun and a police car in the chaos.
• Wham Line:
  M: "Right now, I have a lovely gentleman from the Treasury wondering if you're ever going to deposit the winnings."
  • The expression on Bond's face as he realises that Vesper never transferred the money and is therefore a double agent is stunning.
• Wham Shot: As Bond and Vesper are sailing in Venice, Vesper suddenly spots on the harbour a sinister-looking man with half-shaded glasses, who gives her a knowing look. She solemnly looks back at him... and then after something blocks him from sight momentarily, he disappears. It's the first clue to the audience that Vesper is more than she seems.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • What happened to Felix Leiter stepping in to bring in Le Chiffre?
  • Carter, Bond's incompetent colleague who bungles the operation in Madagascar, is last seen being trampled by a crowd. Bond never goes back for him, so we can assume he was either trampled to death or was bitten by a snake.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Subverted. M gives Bond a severe chewing out for shooting the unarmed bombmaker and blowing up an embassy, but her main complaint is that he got caught on videotape doing it.
• Why We Are Bummed Communism Fell: "Christ, I miss the Cold War." It's also a Mythology Gag, since in Judi Dench's first appearance as M, way back in GoldenEye, while chastising Pierce Brosnan's Bond about his trigger-happy nature, she refers to him as a "relic from the Cold War."
• Worthy Opponent: Vesper to Bond, after presenting him with a real tuxedo jacket for the game.
  Bond: It's tailored!
  Vesper: I sized you up the moment I met you.
  • Likely before this, when she reacts to Bond's Sherlock Scan with her own, expertly deconstructing Bond's character.
• Xanatos Gambit: Regardless of whether Le Chiffre or Bond won, Mr. White was still going to get his money: Le Chiffre was desperate to pay off his debts and save his own skin, and Vesper transferred the funds to White's account.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Bond, Happily Married? A beautiful dream, not gonna happen. Especially since it ended badly the last time it happened. And as with Tracy, Bond never truly gets over Vesper's death.
• You Can Always Tell a Liar: Figuring out Le Chiffre's tell (placing his left hand to his forehead above his left eye) is a key part of Bond's strategy in the poker game. He later tells Vesper that everybody has a tell, except her, which is foreshadowing that he can't tell she's been lying to him.
• You Can Keep Her!: After Bond learns that Vesper is taking the poker winnings to a meeting with Gettler, Gettler spots Bond, and puts a knife to her throat, saying "I'll kill her!" Bond replies "Allow me."
• You Have Failed Me: Mr. White shoots Le Chiffre in the face after he failed to get back the money.
• You're Not My Type: In an exchange between Bond and Vesper.
  Bond: Don't worry, you're not my type.
  Vesper: Smart?
  Bond: Single.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Le Chiffre has been defeated, Vesper and Bond get together, all is good... Vesper suddenly steals $120 million to pay for her fiancé's ransom. And dies.

---

"The name's Bond. James Bond."