Ultimate James Bond Trivia–50 Facts for 50 Years of 007

Skyfall is being released on this side of the pond tomorrow and on November 9th in the States. To celebrate what is shaping up to be a pretty spectacular Bond movie, here is 50 pieces of trivia for 50 years of 007. The first 10 are to do with Skyfall exclusively. The rest are everything else from the 007 universe.

1. At one point it was rumoured that Skyfall would be shot in New York, even leading to gossip that it would be based on the Fleming short story "007 in New York" and even be titled that; however, it turned out to be untrue and it appears that New York was never under consideration.
2. Daniel Craig's third outing playing James Bond. Craig's first was Casino Royale and his second was Quantum of Solace. The film is Daniel Craig's first James Bond film not to use an original Ian Fleming story for its title as his first two Bond movies used Fleming titles.
3. Development and production on this movie was delayed for around 8 to 9 months during 2010-11 due to the bankruptcy and delayed sale of studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), with the production being officially suspended on 19th April 2010
4. Kevin Spacey was considered for a role, but declined due to scheduling conflicts. Spacey worked with this movie's director Sam Mendes on American Beauty.
5. As Shanghai has been announced as a shooting location, this movie is the first time a Bond movie has filmed in China. Licence to Kill was originally to be set in China but production difficulties became insurmountable. When the Chinese Government made a number restrictive demands such as veto rights over the script, the viability of the location fell through.
6. Judi Dench's seventh time playing the M character. With the release of this film in 2012, Dench will have played the role of M for seventeen years. This record will tie with Bernard Lee's stretch playing the M character although in the same amount of time Lee appeared in eleven Bond movies while Dench has been in seven
7. Daniel Craig has said that he was worried by the delay in production, and was eager to get back into the role because, at the age of 43, he feels he is already getting too old to cope with the extreme physical demands of playing James Bond.
8. Most of the first scenes in this movie, shot around the 7th November 2011, involve a car sequence through the streets of London. The clapper-board slate details of the first scene shot (in a grubby bathroom) on the first day of principal photography was Scene 45, Take 1 , a day interior shot, at 8.45am on 07/11/2011.
9. he first James Bond film to be released in the IMAX format. Unlike most films blown up for an IMAX release, this did not go through their DMR (Digital Media Remastering) process, as cinematographer Roger Deakins thought that the film's image quality was high enough to make it unnecessary.
10. The film's original script title was "Silver Bullet" whilst for a long time in development and pre-production "Skyfall" was simply known as "Bond 23". Its fake rumored titles at different times were "Carte Blanche" and "Red Sky at Night".
    
    
    
11. Turkey has featured another of times in Bond movies over the years. This years 'Skyfall' included Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, marking the third time in 50 years of Bond films that Istanbul has served as a backdrop for 007's adventures, as well as the picturesque coastal resort of Fethiye on the Mediterranean coast and the historical city of Adana in the country's southeast.
12. The lesser-known city of Adana in Turkey's southeast also features with its historical Vardar and Kasim Gulek Bridges and train station forming the setting for a dramatic scene involving trains.
13. Turkey has also served as the backdrop for two other Bond films: 'From Russia with Love' (1963) and 'For the World is Not Enough' (1999)
14. Sean Connery wears a toupee in all the James Bond movies he appears in.
15. Jaws (the dude with the teeth) actually has a name. In the screenplay he is revealed to be Polish and his real name is Zbigniew Krycsiwiki.
16. The close-ups of Carole Bouquet and Roger Moore for the underwater scenes were actually filmed in a studio with a windfan to produce the effect of floating hair. The scenes were then played in slow motion with the bubbles added in.
17. Maurice Binder designed the gun barrel opening at the last minute, by pointing a pinhole camera through a real gun barrel. The actor in the sequence is not Sean Connery, but stuntman Bob Simmons. Connery didn’t film the sequence himself until Thunderball
18. It's estimated that more than 2 billion people (nearly a third of the world's population) have watched Bond movies.
19. James Bond attended Fettes College in Edinburgh, the public school attended by Ian Fleming's father and by Tony Blair. Sean Connery was once the school's milkman.
20. Bond is more popular than Harry Potter - In 2003, the Fleming estate commissioned Charlie Higson, co-creator of The Fast Show, to write a sequence of five novels about the young James Bond at Eton in the Thirties. Sales of the first volume, SilverFin (2005), in which a 13-year-old Bond overcomes killer eels, surpassed the first Harry Potter novel.
    
    
21. Since Dr.No in 1962 Bond has killed over 150 men and shagged over 50 women, most of whom tried to kill him.
22. The 007 stage is located in Pinewood studios in the UK, and was built because there wasn’t a stage big enough for the set pieces in The Spy Who Loved Me
23. The 007 stage is a whopping 59,000 sq ft. The biggest in Europe
24. In 2006, a 1965 Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger and Thunderball, was sold at auction for more than £1m.
25. During the shooting of Quantum of Solace an employee of Aston Martin, managed to lose control of his DBS and ploughed into a lake. He emerged telling the press he was “shaken, not stirred”
26. Jet Packs, devices used in the 1965 film Thunderball, are one of the few Bond gadgets that made it to commercial production, if only briefly. Powered by pressurised hydrogen peroxide, they were developed for the US army so that soldiers could leap over walls and rivers. However, the maximum flight time of 20 seconds proved too short
27. Sean Connery was NOT the first actor to play James Bond. It was Barry Nelson. He played "Jimmy" Bond opposite bad guy Peter Lorre in an excruciating adaptation of "Casino Royale" for a 1954 episode of TV's "Climax!"
28. Dr. No was titled License to Kill in Italy.
29. The longest James Bond film was On Her Majesty's Secret Service, at 140 minutes.
30. The Man With The Golden Gun was the first James Bond film to be shown at the Kremlin.
    
    
    
31. Roger Moore's contract demanded that he be provided an unlimited supply of hand-rolled Monte Cristo cigars.
32. Steven Spielberg nearly directed For Your Eyes Only, but was offered Raiders of The Lost Ark, and decided to go with a whip and a fedora.
33. Steven Seagal was the martial arts instructor for Never Say Never Again
34. The practice of using a disclaimer in movies stating "no animals were mistreated during production" got its start in Never Say Never Again. The disclaimer was the result of controversy over a horse jumping off a cliff in the film.
35. Christopher Walken was the first Academy Award-winning actor to star in a Bond film. He co-starred in A View to a Kill.
36. Pierce Brosnan's contract for Goldeneye specified that he could not appear in any other film wearing a tuxedo.
37. The satellite dish used at the end of Goldeneye was the same used in the film Contact.
38. James Bond spends a fair bit of time shagging, in lots of places including trains, forests, planes, submarines, hospitals and a motorized iceberg
39. Bond films have been nominated 10 times for Academy Awards, five times in technical categories and five times in musical categories
40. In Octopussy, during the scene the TukTuks are racing through the busy Indian street, a bike goes between the two vehicles. This was not a rehearsed stunt, but a local riding through not realising they were filming!
    
    
    
41. Dolph Lundgren’s first role was in a View To A Kill. He got the part due to his swapping of bodily fluids with Grace Jones at the time.
42. The last movie Elvis ever saw was a Bond movie. Days before keeling over on a toilet, The King watched The Spy Who Loved Me.
43. Despite being the third actor to play James Bond in the official films, Roger Moore is 3 years older than Sean Connery. Moore was born in 1927 and Connery in 1930.
44. When the real MI6 learned that ‘The World is Not Enough’ would shoot a scene around their headquarters, they moved to prohibit it, citing a security risk.
45. At first Eunice Gayson was to play Miss Moneypenny and Lois Maxwell was to play Sylvia Trench, but they switched roles.
46. Of the £1,000,000 budget, for Dr.No production designer Ken Adam was given £14,000. Adam argued for an extra £6,000 to create his now-exemplary sets.
47. In the radiation cleaning shower scene, Ursula Andress was NOT nude in the shower. She is wearing a flesh colored one-piece bathing suit.
48. Goldeneye on the N64 has been one of the best movie / video game adaptations in history.
49. Before Pierce Brosnan was cast as James Bond, Liam Neeson, Mel Gibson, Sam Neill,Hugh Grant and Lambert Wilson were all rumoured to be in the running for the role.
50. Goldeneye is credited with having the largest amount of model and miniature work ever utilized in a James Bond movie.