On Her Majesty's Secret Service

"We have all the time in the world..." —James Bond or Louis Armstrong

The sixth James Bond film, starring George Lazenby in his only appearance.

James Bond saves the life of a beautiful, but emotionally broken woman via keeping her from commiting suicide. The lady turns out to be countess Teresa "Tracy" Di Vincenzo; her father Marc Ange Draco, the leader of one of Europe's largest organized crime syndicates, asks Bond to woo and marry her in order to help her deal with her issues. Bond points out the ridiculous nature of this idea, but agrees anyway because Draco has access to information beyond the reach of official organizations and can help him get a lead on the head of SPECTRE, Enrst Stavro Blofeld. Blofeld, meanwhile, has developed a biological agent to induce sterility in plants and animals and potentially wipe out entire species, which he will use if he is not granted amnesty for all past crimes and an official acknowledgement of his claim to French nobility.

Easily the most down-to-earth Bond film (except maybe From Russia with Love, Licence to Kill or the 2006 version of Casino Royale), it has a polarizing effect on fans. Some like it for its emotional depth and realism, some hate it for its (admittedly inexperienced) actor and lack of over-the-top theatrics (though others have come to think he did great).

One undeniable aspect is that unlike most Bond villains, the Blofeld shown in this film has both a realistic goal and a chillingly realistic plan (albeit, a completely over the top execution of said plan). The film is one of the few where James Bond himself has actual emotional depth as well. There is also a twist Downer Ending that is quite unusual for the series, but sadly, it has fallen victim to casual spoilers.

Tropes used in On Her Majesty's Secret Service include:

• Acceptable Breaks From Reality: The skier that Bond sends over a cliff ends up in freefall for fifteen seconds, meaning the cliff would have to be taller than the Empire State building. However, they had to use a dummy for this scene rather than, say, a skier with a parachute, and dummies weigh less than actual people and would therefore fall slower than them.
• Action Girl: Diana Rigg as Countess Teresa (Tracy) Di Vincezo. Also a Badass Driver.
• Adaptational Badass: Also counting as an inversion of Adaptational Curves, Blofeld is portrayed by Telly Savalas, a fairly buff dude. In the books, Blofeld is described as someone whose "muscle has all turned to fat."
  • The bobsled scene and the raid on Piz Gloria occur simultaneously in the book, so Bond doesn't participate in the former raid. In the film, Bond storms Piz Gloria with the Union Course in order to rescue Tracy, then pursues Blofeld down the bobsled track as well.
    • Bond is also knocked out by the grenade Blofeld pulls on him during this chase, and he wakes up to the institute exploding. In the film, he bails just before the grenade can hurt him, rolls down the hill and ends up in front of Blofeld, ultimately putting him in a neckbrace thanks to a passing tree.
• Adaptation-Induced Plothole / Pragmatic Adaptation: Bond and Blofeld don't seem to recognize each other, even though they met in the previous movie. Even though both being different counts, it happens because the book is set before You Only Live Twice.
  • Originally, it was to be established Bond had plastic surgery done to explain why he doesn't look like Sean Connery anymore.
• All There Is to Know About "The Crying Game": It's basically known as the movie Bond gets married... but not for long.
• Arranged Marriage: Draco and Bond agree on having the latter marry the first's daughter. Then he and his wife end up loving oen another for real.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Blofeld renames himself "Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp" by having his earlobes surgically removed to back-up his phony claim to the title. Once 007 is in Piz Gloria, he learns that Blofeld secretly plans to contaminate and ultimately sterilize the world's food supply using biological warfare, carried by his brainwashed Angels of Death. Blofeld claimed he would not carry out his plan if all his past crimes were pardoned and he is recognized as the current Count de Bleauchamp.
• Artistic License Geography: "Piz" is a part of the name of many mountains in Swiss areas where Romansh is spoken, as it means "peak" in that language. However, in this movie, Piz Gloria is directly next to a mountain called Birg, a real-life mountain which is in a part of Switzerland that does not speak Romansh and, consequently, does not name their mountains that way. The novel version of the former mountain is established to be around Saint-Martin, where the term "Piz" is used as a title for mountains, whereas the movie version does not confirm the mountain's location.
• Aside Comment: In the opening scene, after James Bond rescues a woman from drowning and fights a group of mooks, the woman drives away. He faces the camera and says "This never happened to the other fella", a reference to Sean Connery.
• Bad Boss: During the second ski chase, when Bond and Tracy enter an avalanche-risk area, Blofeld sends three of his men after them, before deliberately causing an avalanche only moments later that kills his men who he sent into danger for no reason.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Subverted. While Blofeld's main plan is an utter failure, he takes perhaps the most horrific revenge on Bond possible — robbing Bond from one of the few women he truly loved.
• Becoming the Mask: Bond was supposed to seduce Tracy to gain access to her fathers connections (and maybe convince her to stop trying to kill herself), but he ended up growing fond of her for real.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Bond and Draco, supported by the hitmen and mercenaries of the Unione Corse, show up in helicopters to do the job that Her Majesty's Government refuses to do.
  • Bond is trapped in the ice-skating rink while SPECTRE mooks search through the crowd. Bond is in despair, expecting to be captured again when suddenly Tracy (whom he last saw in Portugal) appears in front of him, with an ice-modified fast car to get Bond the hell out of there. An impressive achievement for a Bond girl!
• Biggus Dickus: Complete with "It's true!" when Bond seduced Ruby.
• Blind Idiot Translation: Some foreign subtitles translate Bond's one-liner of "He had lots of guts!" during the second ski chase as "He was very brave". The context to this is that the mook he's referring to had just been shredded to pieces by a patrolling snowblower, resulting in his actual guts being sprayed all over the place.
• Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Tracy is gunned down on her wedding night while driving home following the service. While the wedding dress in particular isn't seen bloodied, the shot of Tracy with a headshot on the forehead is clearly meant to evoke a similarly shocking image.
• Bond One-Liner: Bond gets a particularly brutal one when a mook falls into a large snowblower and gets cut to pieces by it

"He had lots of guts!"

• Bond Villain Stupidity: Despite knowing how resourceful and dangerous Bond is, Blofeld decides to keep him alive as he may "prove useful during the negotiations". Of course Bond soon escapes. This is in stark contrast to Blofeld's attitude in the previous film where he killed a beautiful mook for her failure at eliminating Bond. Admitedly, killing Bond would just make things more tense in Blofeld's quest for a pardon. He also specifically mentions that Bond would be an external witness to his activities to verify his claims that he can actually release a "Virus Omega" and is not merely bluffing. From a Doylist perspective, the movies were filmed out of order with the books; OHMSS is the first time Bond and Blofeld meet in the books. That's why they don't know each other as well as they do in YOLT.
• Book Ends:
  • Bond and his Aston Martin in Portugal driving down the same road, stopping the car each time for Tracy. The first time, he stops the car to save her from drowning. The second time, they're married, discussing their future when she's shot to death.
  • Musically, the beginning of the film when Bond saves Tracy and the end where Bond pursues Blofeld both use similar musical motifs (on the OST, the first track is called "This Never Happened to the Other Fella", while the latter track is called "Bobsled Chase").
  • On a related note, the movie's choice of using the James Bond Theme as the ending credits theme means that the first and last musical pieces heard in the movie are the James Bond Theme.
• Brainwashed: Blofeld's latest scheme involves turning young women into unwitting bioterrorists.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The teaser ends with Tracy running away from Bond after he saves her, to which he turns to the camera and says "This never happened to the other fellow." The in-universe justification for the comment is that he's describing Prince Charming.
• Brick Joke: The film opens with Q indicating that miniaturization is the way to go with their agent's equipment, using an (actually very practical) piece of radioactive lint as an example. Later in the film Bond has to crack a safe and in order to do so he needs to use a large and cumbersome piece of equipment the size of a big suitcase. Played With in that the safecracker also contains a portable photocopier, which is needed to make copies of documents found within the safe.
• Broken Bird: Tracyi s barely recovering from a traumatic divorce (and her ex husband's death), drug addiction, and her child's death. And once she and Bond are married, she's shot to death.
• Cable Car Action Sequence: A non-action but still nail-biting suspense scene involves Bond's escape from Piz Gloria. Bond is locked up in the cable-car room, and the only way out is by crawling out over a sheer drop along the cable, and then dropping onto the roof of a cable-car just before his fingers are severed.
• Call Back:
  • References to Bond's dead wife were made repeatedly in other movies, often cutting off before saying what happened to her; since OHMSS is slightly obscure, quite a lot of people do not know that we actually saw what happened.
  • The cheerful "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown" reappears during Bond's Cable Car Action Sequence as a more suspenseful tune, see below.
• Can't Kill You - Still Need You: Blofeld keeps Bond alive after explaining his plan, because he wants Bond to convince the governments of the world of the threat Blofeld's Virus Omega represents.
• Car Chase: With stock cars!
• Cartwright Curse: After marrying Bond Tracy is killed on their honeymoon.
• Chekhov's Gun: Savvy viewers will just know that eventually someone is going to get thrown into that spiky wall decoration. We aren't disappointed.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The mook Bond fought in the hotel? It's the same guy who: held him at knifepoint when going to Draco's place; turned up again at Piz Gloria killing one of Blofeld's mooks with a flamethrower; and finally, was a guest at the wedding.
  • Fraulein Bunt becomes a literal one when she ends up being the one pulling the trigger to shoot Tracy dead in a drive-by shooting (Blofeld was the driver).
• Complexity Addiction: The basic plot of holding the world hostage with a sterility virus is sound (and, for its time, quite original), but brainwashing a cadre of international beauties so that they will unleash the viruses by radio-induced hypnotic command, is just a tad over the top, don't you think?
• Continuity Cavalcade: When Bond takes his leave, he opens a drawer containing objects from his previous adventures, and snippets of the themes from the earlier films are even used as leitmotifs.
• Continuity Nod:
  • After turning in his resignation Bond goes into his office and pulls out of his desk Honey Ryder's belt and knife, Red Grant's garrote wire wrist watch and his own underwater breathing device. A bit of music from each film plays along with the props' appearances.
  • There's also a janitor whistling "Goldfinger".
  • The opening credits feature clips from all the previous films (none featuring Bond himself, of course).
• Cool Car:
  • Bond's Aston Martin DBS. Sadly, it's not as cool as Connery!Bond's DB5 from previous films, as it doesn't have bullet proof glass, as Tracy's death by drive-by shooting shows.
  • Tracy drives a red Mercury Cougar XR 7 convertible.
• Cruel Twist Ending: The ending is the heartbreaking scene where Bond and his newly wedded bride Tracy are sitting in his car when Blofeld drives by and has her assassinated, and she dies in his arms.
• Did I Mention It's Christmas?: The film is set around Christmas. Notably, Blofeld places an ornament on a Christmas tree during the mandated Evil Gloating scene and distributes Christmas gifts containing his Virus Omega dispensers to his brainwashed beauties. Also, the Winter festival scene where Bond and Tracy escape from Blofeld's goons to the tune of "Do You Know Where Christmas Trees Are Born".
• Did Not Do the Research: In-universe. Bond's cover was blown partly because he couldn't get his genealogy facts straight, as Blofeld himself states.
• Diabolus Ex Machina: Blofeld kills Tracy on her and Bond's honeymoon.
• Double Take: At the end of the movie. Still alive Blofeld drives by and Irma Bunt attempts assassination on Bond by shooting from a car window. When an infuriated James realises who was in the car, he explains "It's Blofeld!" He gets back in the car and repeats himself, assuming his wife didn't hear him and swiftly looks Tracy's way, then back back to the road... before looking immediately at her again, noticing she's dead.
• Downer Ending: The only Bond film to end on a complete downer note until No Time to Die. Even Casino Royale is more upbeat. Sure, Blofeld's plans are foiled, but it's a pretty sour victory when Tracy dies and Blofeld and Irma Bunt get off scot-free, with the exception of Blofeld's neck injury. For the first and only time in the whole series, the last thing we see in the whole movie is James Bond looking completely and utterly heartbroken.
• Dragon Their Feet: Something of a variation in that Irma Bunt returns with Blofeld in tow to take revenge on Bond, although she is still the one to pull the trigger to kill Tracy.
• Drugs Are Bad: Marc-Ange Draco, head of the Unione Corse, the biggest European crime syndicate, commits murders, extortion, theft, sexual slavery, and many, many other crimes. But he's a good guy because he doesn't sell drugs.
• Early Installment Weirdness: This was the first time the role of 007 had been recast and the film draws attention to it by reassuring the audience that this man is James Bond by referencing the previous films. The other films to introduce new actors didn't bother addressing it and just assumed the audience would just accept it and move on.
• Easily Forgiven: Bond commits a court martial offence in going against orders to attack Blofeld's base at the end and yet no one seems to care. All's well that end's well appears to be the hand wave here, even though Bond was playing with the extinction of all life on Earth.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Marc-Ange Draco, head of the Unione Corse, the biggest European crime syndicate (and Tracy's father), agrees to to assist Bond and the entire British Government against the efforts of SPECTRE to gain Bond's help with his daughter. Later, he personally leads an invasion of Blofeld's fortress to rescue Tracy and stop Blofeld's plan to destroy the world's food supply.
• Evil Plan: Blofeld's plan involves hypnotizing a group of 12 unwitting divas and arming them with a virus that causes infertility in the plant and animal life of his choosing, unless the world meets his demands of immunity from past crimes, enter private life after years of criminal activities and to be recognized as a Count.
• "Falling in Love" Montage: With Louis Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World" in the background.
• Fashion Dissonance: The film was made in 1968-69, at the height of the counter-cultural revolution. Which is why George Lazenby's Bond wears a puffy dress shirt with his tuxedo, the only Bond to do so (in promotional photos for Live and Let Die, Roger Moore's Bond also wore a puffy shirt with his tuxedo, although in the finished film, Bond doesn't wear a tuxedo at all).
• Feet First Introduction: Used for Tracy's rescie. Bond is trapped in an ice-skating rink while SPECTRE mooks search through the crowd. Bond is in despair, expecting to be captured again; he sits at a table with his collar up and his head down, hoping to blend in with the other tourists. Suddenly one of the ice skaters comes to a halt right in front of him. Bond looks up from the ice skates past well formed legs to...a smiling Tracy. And who has an ice-modified fast car to get him out of there.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: A flamethrower is featured in the attack on Piz Gloria fortress.
• First-Name Basis: It is a rule of the clinic that patients are only referred to using their first names. If the book is anything to go by, this is to make it harder to locate Blofeld's Angels of Death once they return home so they can spread their virus undisturbed.
• Foreshadowing:

Tracy: People who want to stay alive play it safe.

• • The Ominous Music Box Tune use of "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown" below.
  • "Teresa was a saint." In real life, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was sent to Auschwitz and died a martyr in 1942. Tracy died after saving the man she loved.
  • Meta example: The whole resignation from Her Majesty's Secret Service business would mirror Lazenby's decision to quit the series. Also, in the Bond Gun Barrel sequence, George Lazenby got on one knee as he fired the gun. Then, the blood that would normally turn everything red wipes him out of the picture as well.
• Genius Bruiser: Unlike other cinematic versions of Blofeld, Savalas’ portrayal is completely unafraid to jump into the action, most notably when he immediately joins in the ski chase against Bond and later shows himself capable of matching Bond in a fight during the bobsled chase in the end.
• Girl of the Week: Tracy is an odd example in that she actually gets married, but that still doesn't avert her from being sadly killed off at the end of the film.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: After Blofeld orders Grunther and a mook to take care of Tracy during the helicopter attack on Piz Gloria, she takes a wine bottle and smashes it on the mook's head. Afterwards, she briefly tries to defend herself from Grunther with the broken bottle, until he disarms her.
• Hair-Trigger Avalanche: Bond and Traci are skiing away from SPECTRE mooks when Blofeld detonates a flare above some hanging rocks and ice, triggering an avalanche.
• Happily Ever Before: The original ending on the film was Bond and Tracy happily driving off, and the Downer Ending scene was to be the opening scene of the next film.
• Heroic BSOD: Bond at the end of the film.
• Hollywood Acid: Bond guns down a lab-coated man who chucks a flask at him, then winces at the smoking hole that's being eaten in the glass door.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: Bond impersonates Sir Hilary Bray. The bad guys expose him when he is caught in his usual antics of seducing women. Apparently, the real Bray was gay or asexual, or at least not such a womanizer. Also, the Bleuchamp family crypt was located in St. Anna's Kirche, not in the Habsburg cathedral — which, as Blofeld notes, Sir Hilary should have known.
• Interrupted Suicide: Tracy was about to drown herself, but Bond found her in time.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: Occurs because John Barry didn't think the title could fit in a lyric—at least, not without coming off like Gilbert and Sullivan. Later films simply Take a Third Option by not requiring the movie's title to be in its theme song if it's something extremely awkward to fit in song lyrics.
• Ironic Echo: "We Have All The Time In The World"
• Just Between You and Me: Justified. Just for once Blofeld actually has a sensible reason for keeping the captured Bond alive and explaining the plot to him: Bond's credibility will lend weight to Blofeld's threat to the United Nations.
• Karma Houdini: Irma Bunt is the person who actually kills Tracy and she is never seen again in this or any other Bond film, which means that the murderer of Bond's wife got away with it completely. A case of Real Life Writes the Plot, the actress Ilse Steppat died mere days after the film's release. The comics ultimately rectified this, by having her show up again and killed off.
• Kidnapped by an Ally: After Bond saves Tracy's life, he's kidnapped by several men and taken to see crime lord Draco. It turns out that Draco is Tracy's father and wants Bond to marry her.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "This never happened to the OTHER fellow."
  • Double Entendre: He could be referring to Prince Charming, what with the shoes.
• MacGyvering: Bond does this at least twice at Piz Gloria.
  • He uses a document clip, an eraser folded in half and the brass edge from a ruler to open his electric room door.
    • Later, one of Blofeld's patients used a emery board (non-metallic nail file) to sneak into his room.
  • After his cover was blown and he was locked up in a machine room, he pulls out his pant pockets, tearing them off to improvise a pair of gloves that would allow him to grip the cable car lines, aiding in his escape.
• Mafia Princess: Tracy's father, Marc-Ange Draco, is the leader of Union Corse, an organized crime syndicate, though Tracy herself is not evil by any means.
• Magic Countdown: The climax features a detonator set to blow up Piz Gloria in 5 minutes. After the fuse is set, the camera cuts to Draco and his men talking for around 10 seconds. When we cut back to the detonator, only 10 seconds have passed, as it should have. Cut to Bond chasing Blofeld out of the complex, then Draco forcing Tracy into a helicopter for around 20 seconds. OK, now 2 minutes have passed on the detonator. Now only 10 seconds remain before the explosion. Five seconds later, Draco counts down from five to mark the explosion. Bond and Blofeld jump out of Piz Gloria several seconds after it is scheduled to blow up. Only a good 10 seconds after the countdown is supposed to be over does the explosion actually happen.
• Magic Plastic Surgery:
  • While it's not explicitly stated, it's a plausible explanation for Blofeld going from a horribly-scarred Donald Pleasence to a normal-looking Telly Savalas. The sequel openly invokes it to explain why he looks different again there.
  • This was going to be used to explain how Bond had changed from Sean Connery to George Lazenby; fortunately for the long-term survival of the Bond franchise, the producers dropped the idea.
• Men Don't Cry: Bond is perfectly — indeed, creepily — calm in the final frame. Lazenby's first take had him look up at the camera as normal, but with his eyes glistening and tears marking his face but the director insisted that Bond, a trained killer, is basically dead inside and can't shed a tear even if he wishes. Justified as Bond being in shock, though if you listen carefully, when he turns away and holds Tracy's body close, you can hear him softly weeping just before the "The End" appears on the screen - which is admittedly more effective than actually seeing him crying. This is also in keeping with how Fleming wrote the final scene of the novel, which plays out nearly verbatim in the movie.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Blofeld claims title of 'Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp' → plan by SPECTRE to abduct women from around the world and use them as pawns to spread a dangerous virus that is capable of destroying crops and livestock unless he gets a pardon for his past crimes.
• Mobstacle Course: After the ski chase, Bond arrives in a village during a winter festival. He has to intermingle with several drunken pedestrians and tourists while Bunt and her men close in... which is when Tracy re-enters the plot to save his bacon.
• The Mole: A deleted scene would have revealed that Phidian, Sir Hilary's assistant at The College of Arms, is actually a spy for Blofeld. This would have led to Bond chasing down and killing him, then staging a train crash to throw Blofeld off the scent.
• Mood Whiplash: The last ten minutes. Made more jarring by the soundtrack, which changes abruptly from a sad reprise of "We Have All the Time in the World" to a loud, brassy version of "The James Bond Theme" as the image freezes on the bullet hole on the windshield and the credits roll.
  • Made all the more perplexing when you consider that there are a couple of slow tracks on the soundtrack album (for example, "We Have All The Time In The World" has a slower, more melancholy-sounding strings arrangement that would have worked nicely with the credits).
• Moral Dissonance: Bond is falling in love with Tracy throughout the film, but this does not stop him from sleeping with multiple women, one after the other, when he knows they are being experimented upon and brainwashed.
  • He doesn't actually fall for Tracy until after that. And he doesn't really know they are being brainwashed, though obviously he's suspicious of the (voluntary) hypnotism, which he only finds out about after he starts sleeping with them. And being Bond, it was obviously too late by then.
  • Also, the hypnotism might not have affected that part of their personality.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When Tracy drives off without thanking Bond for saving her, he says "This never happened to the other fellow," referencing the success Bond usually had with women in the films with Sean Connery in the role.
  • A janitor whistles "Goldfinger".
• Naughty Under the Table: Ruby secretly writes her room number on Bond's leg while everyone is eating dinner. When he is asked if he is all right, he replies, "Just a slight stiffness coming on... In the shoulder."
• No One Could Survive That: Blofeld gets caught in a branch by the neck at 45 mph while trying to escape Bond via bobsled, complete with a shot of his lifeless legs dangling in mid-air (bringing an execution to mind). He later reappears in a neck brace. Oops.
• No OSHA Compliance: A wall decoration near the elevator at Piz Gloria has ridiculously sharp spikes by the stairwell. Sure enough, Tracy manages to kill Grunther by throwing him into it.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Draco lost a few of his henchmen in Fort Knox.
  • At the start of the film, it is stated by M that Bond evidently has not been searching for Blofeld very effectively, ultimately leading to M pulling him off the assignment. Given his general hyper-competence in previous films, it raises the question of what noodle incidents between films occurred to make him somewhat fall from grace like that. An out-of-universe reason is that Bond started having adventures once every two years instead of back-to-back.
• Oh Crap:
  • Blofeld momentarily has a look of pure despair on his face when he escapes his condemned base, looks back and watches it, along with his overall plan, blow up in his face. He quickly subdues this and continues running for his life.
  • During the final bobsled chase, Blofeld drops an active grenade intended for Bond and desperately struggles to get it out. He barely manages to grab it and toss it out in time.
  • Bond, when Irma Bunt catches on to him and his escapades and stages a trap.
• Ominous Music Box Tune:
  • The first few notes of "Do You Know Where Christmas Trees are Grown" (a cheerful song that played in the background earlier) can be heard in a tense scene after 007 is locked in a cable car machine room. It foreshadows Blofeld's gift of a music box to the girls.
  • A rendition of the Bond theme's melody is played by an eerie synthesized music box during the gun barrel sequence.
• Only One Name: Fräulein Bunt refuses to let the patients reveal their full names, claiming clinic rules. She hurriedly lets Bond know even when he simply asks for the girl's names, presumably giving him the sense that something is wrong. Ruby Bartlett tells "Hilly" her last name anyway when they're alone.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: It is not particularly bad, but Bond occasionally slips into Australian in his vowel sounds.
• Organization with Unlimited Funding: It's mentioned that Draco has ties to the most powerful crime organization on Earth. Bond replies that SPECTRE is larger, given that it operates worldwide.
• Overt Operative: Averted by Bond adopting the secret identity of "Sir Hilary Bray," complete with hobbies, personal foibles, insecurities and professional experience.
• Parallel Porn Titles: Life On Mars had an illicit porn operation with a tape called "On Her Majesty's Secret Cervix".
• Percussive Prevention: During the Storming the Castle scene, Tracy's father knocks her out when she refuses to leave without James.

Draco: "Spare the rod and spoil the child, huh?"

• Porn Stash: One of several important documents in Gumbold's office is Playboy. Bond, the cold-hearted bastard, steals it and reads it out of the office. If you look closely, you'll see that Bond didn't steal the entire magazine - only the centrefold. Which makes him even more of a cold-hearted bastard.
• Pretty in Mink: Several, including a red fox coat Tracy wears.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Tracy is shot dead at the end of the film, and only has a small bullet wound on her head rather than parts of it being all over the car.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Bond is falling in love with Tracy throughout the film, but this does not stop him from sleeping with multiple women, one after the other, when he knows they are being experimented upon and brainwashed. Admitedly, he doesn't actually have his Love Epiphany for Tracy until after that, and he doesn't really know they are being brainwashed, though obviously he's suspicious of the (voluntary) hypnotism, which he only finds out about after he starts sleeping with them (and even then, the hypnotism might not have affected that part of their personality). And being Bond, it was obviously too late by then. One other explanation is that Bond sleeping with Ruby is just him trying to find out if anything strange goes on at night when no one else is around, which it does, and him spending the rest of the night with Nancy was to distract her from the book she wanted to see, which he'd left in Ruby's room. And him scheduling more meetings with them afterwards is to keep up the act he'd established and nothing else. With Tracy, he's clearly in love.
• Punch-Punch-Punch Uh-Oh: Bond is attacked by surprise by a henchman in Tracy's hotel room. He responds by hitting him with a chair and throwing five haymakers in a row, none even fazing the man, before taking some heavy hits himself.
• Rare Guns:
  • The hitman and some of Blofeld's men use SIG P210s.
  • Bond had a disassembled Armalite AR-7 in the glove compartment of his car.
• Red Right Hand: To impersonate the Count of Bleauchamp, Blofeld cuts offs his own earlobes. Sound familiar?
• Redundant Rescue: She still needs help to get out of the complex, but when Bond and Draco arrive at the end, Tracy has killed the man set on her and just needs a ride home at that point.
• Refuge in Audacity: The basic plot of holding the world hostage with a sterility virus is sound (and, for its time, quite original), but brainwashing a cadre of international beauties so that they will unleash the viruses by radio-induced hypnotic command, is just a tad over the top, don't you think?
• Sacrificial Lion: Tracy and Bond's ally Campbell.
• Safecracking: Bond uses a device that directly manipulates the dial automatically to open it, and has a photocopier function so Bond can put back the documents he wants so as to eliminate evidence of his break in. He then steals a Playboy in the safe.
• Saint Bernard Rescue: After the climatic bobsled chase, James Bond slides down the hill and into a mountain village, where he is found by a St Bernard. Bond jokingly berates it for pawing him, telling the dog to go get the brandy instead, and make it five-star.
• Same Language Dub: When Bond is passing as Sir Hilary, Hilary's actor is heard instead of Lazenby. Also, Draco is dubbed since the actor had a strong Italian accent.
• Scare Chord:
  • There are a few well-placed notes played during Bond and Draco's initial meeting, which heighten up the suspense.
  • Used when Fräulein Bundt pops out from under the sheets after Bond thought he was sneaking up on Ruby Bartlett instead. Cue Bond being knocked out and the screen becoming blurry.
  • The James Bond Theme of all things is used as one at the end. After the tragic ending scene, the serene melody used as background music ends, everything goes quiet for a moment... and then a loud brass arrangement of the James Bond Theme kicks in.
• Scenery Porn: They could not have chosen a better place in Switzerland to shoot the alpine scenes if they TRIED. Just WOW. From the helicopter ride to Piz Gloria to the iconic Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountain range in the background, the appearance of the country in this film will make you feel disappointed when it stops getting screen time.
  • The Piz Gloria building itself. The views from the full-length windows in the alpine room are nothing short of stunning in full daylight and sunset. The inside is also amazingly furnished, especially the luxury suites for the patients. It's actually a shame when it gets blown up at the end of the film.
• Series Continuity Error: The movies were filmed out of order with the books. This is the first time Bond and Blofeld meet in the books. That's why they don't know each other as well as they do in You Only Live Twice.
• Sex Equals Love: Draco encourages Bond to seduce his daughter because he feels that she needs love and a husband.
• Shipper with an Agenda: As said above, Dracon isn't just a Shipper on Deck.
• Show Some Leg: When Tracy recognises her father's voice on the radio from the approaching "Red Cross" helicopters, she immediately starts being nice to Blofeld, who gets annoyed when one of his men tries to draw his attention to them. "For thee the poet of beguilement sings" indeed.
• So Happy Together: Tracy and Bond's wedding and honeymoon drive, before her murder.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • The cheery festival music playing from the ice rink in a nearby village as a mook falls screaming to his death off the cliff.
  • The usual brassy James Bond Theme sounds as the audience is still reeling from the shock of the surprise ending.
• Source Music
  • "Do You Know How Christmas Trees are Grown" plays in a PA speaker in the background as Bond arrives in Switzerland, and later as Bond evades Blofeld and his men by hiding in the evening crowd.
  • An unnamed, unreleased festival track is heard at several points in the film. Namely when Shaun Cambell watches Piz Gloria from Birg, when Bond knocks an enemy skier off a cliff and when Bond arrives in the village the music in the last scenario was coming from.
• Stealth Hi Bye: Bond, Tracy, and Draco are having lunch outdoors. When Tracy leaves, Bond and Draco talk for a bit, but when Draco takes his eyes off him, Bond abruptly disappears to follow Tracy
• Stealth Insult: Sir Hillary, er, Bond tells Irma Bunt her name is a naval term for the baggy or swollen part of a sail. "Nothing personal, of course."
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Originally planned for Tracy, but changed at the last minute to keep the plot condensed.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Bond's defeated Blofeld's evil scheme and got the girl - in fact, for the first time in the 007 series, he's married her. It doesn't last. In the final scene, Bond is driving away from the wedding with Tracy when Blofeld drives by and shoots her dead.
• Suddenly Voiced: In the Spanish dub, the policeman who checks on Bond after Tracy is shot dead asks if he's all right once the camera is off of him. In the original, he has no dialogue.
• The Syndicate: The Unione Corse, Europe's largest criminal organization and where Bond can turn when his own government will not give him the support he needs.
• Take This Job and Shove It: When M takes Bond off Operation Bedlam, Bond dictates a letter of resignation to Moneypenny and is genuinely hurt when M accepts it without question. It turns out that Moneypenny altered it to a request for two weeks' leave.
• Talent Double: A double was used for Diana Rigg at the ice rink for scenes where she skates as the actress did not know how to skate. For the scenes where she is skiing with Bond and not against a bluescreen, she was doubled by a man wearing a wig.
• Ten-Minute Retirement: Bond effectively retires from MI6 after marrying Tracy, complete with M and Q giving him speeches that basically amount to "it has been a honour to work with you" and a weeping Moneypenny. We dare you, dare you, to guess the circumstances of why he came back.
• There Are No Therapists: Subverted. Draco asks Bond to seduce and marry his daughter in order to help her deal with her suicidal tendencies and crushing emotional trauma, but Bond points out that that is a ridiculous idea and she needs treatment and a psychiatrist, not sex. Then Bond does it anyway because Draco is offering information on Blofeld
• Title Drop: "Her majesty's secret service" is said twice, but never the full title. The World Is Not Enough is dropped thirty years early.
• Title Montage: Various clips from the five previous Bond movies can be seen during the intro sequence.
• Took a Level In Badass:
  • Perhaps in light of Telly Savalas' previous experience in action and war films, Blofeld as played by him is shown less as the seated, cat-stroking Smug Snake as in previous (and later) films. Here he's a brute, plain and simple. He is shown on skis chasing Bond himself with a few mooks once he escapes Piz Gloria, setting off an avalanche when Bond tries to escape even further and being pretty much an expert bobsledder.
  • Arguably, Bond is more willing to put up a fight than before (perhaps because George Lazenby was considerably younger than other Bond actors at the time of taking the role for the first time, or because he had some legitimate knowledge of martial arts). Some of his hand-to-hand combat in this film is positively vicious, such as when he throws two mooks off a cliff after crashing while skiing away from Piz Gloria.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Each of Blofeld's "patients" could only eat one and only one kind of food as part of their treatment: chicken for Ruby; flatbread for the Indian girl, bananas for the Jamaican girl; and so on.
• Turn in Your Badge: Subverted. After M takes Bond off the hunt for Blofeld, Bond tells Moneypenny to write a memo tendering his resignation (presumably with the intent of pursuing Blofeld as a rogue agent). Moneypenny instead writes a memo requesting two weeks' leave.
• Villain Exit Stage Left: Blofeld and Irma Bunt drive away after assassinating Bond's new wife. Bond is too shocked and grief-stricken to give chase.
• What Kept You?: She still needs help to get out of the complex, but when the Big Damn Heroes arrive at the end Tracy has killed the man guarding her and just needs a ride home
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The In-Universe location of Piz Gloria is quite unclear, other than that it's in Switzerland. As mentioned earlier, the word "Piz" is only used around eastern Switzerland, yet Piz Gloria is surrounded by several names of places in the Bernese Oberland. Tracy, upon finding Bond, tells him that the nearest post office is in Feldkirch, Austria (which would be around 200 kilometers away) and the place they wind up at is a phone box, surrounded with Swiss flags. Overall, very few hints on its exact location are dropped.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Bond losing his new bride Tracy.