Dr. No/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Enforced Method Acting: Sean Connery is truly terrified of spiders. The legs of a stuntman were used when the tarantula crawled onto Bond. Note the shot when the spider is on his shoulder -- it's walking on a pane of glass. Once you've seen it you can't unsee it.
  • Fake Nationality:
    • Joseph Wiseman, who played the half-Chinese Dr. No, was Canadian.
    • Ursula Andress (Honey Rider) is a Swiss playing a Jamaican descended from an old-established (presumably British) colonial family (though not all Jamaicans have dark skin).
  • Fountain of Expies: Dr. No: the first of all Bond villains, though not the most emulated (that distinction goes to Blofeld, followed by Goldfinger).
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Felix Leiter is Jack Lord of Hawaii Five-O fame.
  • It Will Never Catch On: First, it was ignored by many studios. Then United Artists gave little money and attention on the US release. 22 movies later...
  • No Budget: United Artists only lent $1 million. The art director got an extra cash from the producers' own pockets, and the special effects people convinced UA to give an extra $100,000 to do the Collapsing Lair.
  • Same Language Dub: Strangways and the photographer are dubbed, and Nikki Van der Zyl dubbed over Eunice Gayson and Ursula Andress...
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot: The idea of Rider being trapped among crabs was scrapped because the crabs that would attack her weren't moving (being flown frozen from the Caribbean helped...).
  • Shout-Out: The title character was Fleming's tribute to the iconic Yellow Peril villain Fu Manchu.
  • Similarly Named Works: The 2007 Systems in Blue song "Dr. No" is not intentionally related to the film, but there's a Fan Vid using clips from the film.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: The making-of featurette on the DVD has a scene that adds extra explosions to Bond's signature line.

"Name's Bond. *EXPLOSION* James Bond *ANOTHER EXPLOSION*"