Die Another Day/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Okay, standard Bond sex scene... wait a minute... where'd Jinx pull that knife from?!?
    • Hammerspace
    • It looks more like a fruit knife (yes, there is such a thing), and would probably have been included with the bowl of fruit they were sharing.
  • What exactly was Bond's plan to assassinate Moon at the beginning of the movie, assuming his cover stayed intact? Setting off the explosives in the diamond case during the deal? Great, now he's unarmed and surrounded by enemy soldiers. Setting off the bomb after the deal, at a safe distance? Moon will probably never be physically close to the diamonds again, preferring his mooks to do the heavy lifting. The diamonds will be put away until they're needed, and the bomb will go off, killing a few nobodies.
    • Didn't he have a gun? And perhaps those South Koreans he was with earlier were planning on rescuing him?
    • I don't think it was necessarily an assassination attempt. Bond had some mission there (much like he showed up to steal the nuclear weapon away from terrorists in The World Is Not Enough), and the explosive was probably part of that (ranging anywhere from "distraction" to "try and keep them from actually making use of the diamonds"), but does anyone but the one who tattles on him actually claim he was there just to kill Moon?
  • Speaking of which, why does Bond look so shocked when Moon calls him by his real name? Isn't obvious that Moon's figured out who he is? Why doesn't he realize it earlier? He's looking right Moon and Zao (and seems to even be within hearing distance while they talk and cast furtive glances at him).
    • "We think you are a spy" and "We know you are James Bond, 007, who works for MI6" are two different things.
  • How exactly could Bond stop and start his heart at will?
    • Not sure how, but some people can (through meditation) willfully slow their heartbeats down to almost nothing without killing themselves.
    • He seemed to be putting himself into a meditative trance and reliving some of his torture so that his heartbeat would become irregular enough to trigger the alarm.
  • So, the movie is about a Kill Sat and diamonds... Diamonds Are Forever anyone?
    • To celebrate the 20th movie, they put bits of most of the previous films into this one. A laser cutter used for execution, playing the villain at their favourite sport for their favourite precious material and winning, a rogue MI-6 agent, a new piece of technology designed for peaceful, eco-friendly things being turned into a weapon, etc., they just mixed it all up. The Spy Who Loved Me did the same, being the 10th film.
  • Icarus's self-defense system was just firing the laser at anything that threatened it. Why didn't the military fire more than missile at it from more than one direction? Icarus doesn't look like it can turn on a dime, and the missile they launched at it was pretty close before Icarus fired at it. Fire two missiles from two directions and BAM, suddenly it's raining little of Icarus everywhere. Better yet, they could've done a Macross Missile Massacre.
    • Short version: You don't understand the mechanics of firing something from the surface and hitting something in orbit.
  • When Bond and Jinx are positioned on the lawn outside the airfield to snipe Graves, a squad of soldiers are checking the perimeter in a jeep. They shine their spotlight right at them. They're only hidden by a brown blanket and they managed to leave the barrel of their sniper rifle poking right out of it! Somehow, the squad manages to miss this very obvious security threat that's right in front of their face.
    • Its a Bond film. Not all the villians are smart.
  • How does anyone Graves hits with his 100,000 volt weapon not die instantly? More to the point, how in the hell does Bond endure for several seconds and A-Okay immediately afterwards?
    • I always thought he could turn the voltage up and down. Bond probably didnt get hit with that much voltage.
    • It's the Amps that kill you, not the Volts
    • In fact, most stun guns clock in at well OVER 100k volts. 100k for a stun weapon is pretty much entry level. There are commercially available models that clock in at 5 MILLION volts.
    • As for how he's just peachy afterwards, he only won by pulling the chute cord at the end. Many stun gun hits can be shrugged off though once the voltage is shut off, specially one so low powered as 100k volts.
  • This movie (like Diamonds Are Forever), ended with a powerful, combat proven death ray satellite...fully operational, just sitting in Earth orbit. Awaiting orders. Or a prize crew. Fridge Horror and (albeit unusable) Sequel Hook, two for the price of one!
    • Don't forget the second GoldenEye satellite, that's still in orbit and contains a fully operational nuke that could instantly vaporize any city's electronics. Granted, the control devices for all three satellites were destroyed in their respective movies, but that's nothing a little Hollywood Hacking won't solve.
      • Natalya re-routes the 2nd Goldeneye satellite so that it burns up on re-entry (That's what she was doing during the hellish Escort Mission in the video game), so that threat is averted at least.
    • One presumes that destroying or taking control of such things is part of MI6's post-mission cleanup.
  • How long was Bond imprisoned in North Korea? The film implies it's only been a couple of months, but wouldn't it taken Gustav Graves years to build up his Bond-ian reputation? Not to mention how long the "gene therapy" would've taken to transform him from Col. Moon.
    • Most fans hand-waved that with the idea that Moon murdered the real Gustav Graves, who had already established himself, and assumed his identity. Bond was imprisoned for 14 months and we've seen how rapid Zao's transformation already is, so it's not too much of a stretch to think that Moon's transformation could have been just as fast
    • Coming from complete obscurity and becoming such a darling of the media and high-roller set overnight is part of Gustav's mystery and charisma, one of the news stories introducing him says as much. And we know that Bond was in captivity long enough to miss 9/11 and a lot of the aftermath, which is why M scolds him about how the world's changed while he's been in captivity... it was probably at least a year, in all likelihood more like two or three.
  • How exactly are those diamonds still sticking to Zao's skin? At the very least, you'd think they would either fall off, or be removed during application of first aid (not to mention they'd have been a handy source of petty cash).
    • He keeps them in as sheer badass-cred. Plus, any time he comes up short for his magic surgery, he pops one out to pay for it
    • It's not like the diamonds were just placed gently on his skin, they were essentially shrapnel. First aid probably consisted of slathering on some antibiotic cream and then putting on some bandages to try and keep him from bleeding to death, and at some point his skin just healed up around the diamonds. Besides, slightly cartoonish villains have always been a standard of the original Bond movies.