The World Is Not Enough/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Artistic License: Biology: According to the MI 6 file, Renard lost his senses because the bullet hit his medulla oblongata. The medulla oblongata, in fact, controls basic functions like breathing and heart rate, so he'd be dead.
    • They did try to Hand Wave it somewhat, saying he's going to die soon anyway as the bullet was slowly moving further in.
    • Actually they never said it hit it at all; the doctor just said it was moving through it. Presumaly it entered somewhere else.
    • On a broader level, we are also told that Renard does not feel pain, and that he will grow stronger until he dies. It is darn hard to avoid injuries - which would make Renard weaker - if one does not feel pain.
      • She was speaking poetically; he actually gets shot at one point and only notices because he sees it. Given that he's a violent terrorist who is going to die, for all intents and purposes, all he's done is become a more dangerous enemy.
  • Artistic License Nuclear Physics: Renard gets hold of the plutonium sphere from a bomb, forms it into a rod, and tries to insert it into the reactor of a submarine and cause a meltdown. Among the reasons this would never work: weapons-grade plutonium is less radioactive than reactor-grade plutonium. The reason you don't use reactor-grade Pu in a bomb is that the nuclear reaction will blow it to pieces part of the way through the detonation process, and you'll only get a small explosion.
    • Not to mention that Bond and Renard handle the plutonium bar with their bare hands. A rod of Pu that size would weigh at least 50 pounds, which is big enough to be a critical mass. It would be exceptionally hot to the touch, and also would be emitting lots of neutron radiation. Canadian physicist Louis Slotin was killed handling a much smaller critical mass of plutonium in a 1946 experimental accident; Slotin received a fatal dose in less than one second, and died of radiation sickness nine days later.
    • The fact that Bond straddles the rod briefly may be a kind of Lampshade Hanging on why, in spite of his proclivities, James Bond never gets any Father's Day cards.
    • The reactor of the 1967-vintage nuclear sub had fuel assemblies (that plutonium rod) which could be manually inserted and removed. That's not how a Russian sub reactor is designed (though it is closer to certain heavy water power reactors.) To refuel the sub, they first need to shut down the reactor for 90 days so the fuel is not too hot from a radioactive and thermal standpoint. Then they cut open part of the sub's outside hull to remove the fuel assemblies. Big job, needed once every 5 to 10 years. The bullet stuck in the Renard's brain would have killed him by then and the audience would be quite bored.
  • Fake Brit: Elektra King, being half-British and half of Azeri descent, although her family had fled the Soviet Union many years earlier, manages to fit both this trope and Fake Russian at the same time, since she's played by Frenchwoman Sophie Marceau
  • Fake Russian: Zukovsky, Renard, some others and half-way Elektra King- see above.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Basil Fawlty as R and Mr. Gold as Renard.
  • What Could Have Been: You know how the Cold Open in this movie is the longest in the whole series? It was originally supposed to end after the bank scene in Spain, but test audiences thought that was too short. There had also been a plan for Elektra to survive and for Bond to visit her in the hospital where she was being treated for Stockholm Syndrome, but this was considered too downbeat.
    • Video game tie-ins for PlayStation 2 and PC were planned but cancelled.
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