Tomorrow Never Dies/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • California Doubling: Bangkok doubles for Ho Chi Minh City, referred to as Saigon in the film. Also, London stood in for Hamburg for the carpark chase, among other scenes.
  • Enforced Method Acting: Specifically, the director told Brosnan and Yeoh separately that they were going to be the one driving the bike in the Saigon Chase Scene. Hilarity Ensues. Earlier in the film, Bond's car crashes through a dealership. Members of the public nearby were not told this was happening, so their shock is real.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Susan gets to sleep with Remington Steele.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: The plot was supposed to be about the reunification of Hong Kong and China, but someone realised they wouldn't be able to get the film done in time, resulting in rewrites that caused the last act to be all action and barely any plot.
  • Shout-Out: After Bond and Wai Lin are captured (first time for Lin, second for James), Carver shows them all the newspaper headlines mentioning the impending conflict. The last one reads, The Empire WILL Strike Back!

Carver: I rather like the last one. It isn't even mine.

    • "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" was the actual headline on an April 1982 issue of Newsweek during the Falklands War.
  • What Could Have Been: The writers originally wanted to base a story off of Hong Kong's turnover from British to Chinese control. But since the event happened (1 July 1997) too soon for them to finish the movie, and it happened without a hitch, they decided not to trivialise it or seem irrelevant.
    • There were three songs wrote up for the main theme. Two of them made it into the film as the main and credits music, respectively; the third, also titled "Tomorrow Never Dies", was later used for Hitman: Blood Money. Its the song sung by the Ax Crazy female assassin in the Heaven and Hell level.
      • Pulp also wrote a proposed theme (which had the film's original title, "Tomorrow Never Lies"), later issued as a b-side.