Trivia
(Die Another Day)

This is the first Bond film to give the actress playing the Bond girl equal billing with the lead actor. Halle Berry is the first movie superstar to play a Bond girl; all previous Bond girls either became famous after their Bond film appearance, or were at best moderately popular at the time they paired up with 007.

Actress Deborah Moore makes a brief appearance in the film as the Air Hostess. She is the daughter of a former James Bond, actor Roger Moore.

In what may be the film's most obscure Bond movie reference, the opening surfing sequences were filmed at a location in Hawaii known as "Jaws". Jaws, of course, was a villain in Spy Who Loved Me, The (1977) and Moonraker (1979).

The R1 DVD release commentary reveals that the movie was inspired by the original Fleming novel of "Moonraker". The only element of the novel to survive to the end, after a fashion, was the duel between Bond and Graves in a club called Blades. In the original novel, Bond and villain Drax have a different sort of duel in Blades - a game of cards. This is the first Bond film since Licence to Kill (1989) to take inspiration from a Fleming novel.

The film also contains references to the novels in several points: the cigarette poster of a sailor seen behind John Cleese is referenced in "Thunderball", the basic plot is from "Moonraker" (Miranda Frost was even meant to be called Gala Brand, the novel's heroine) and the sheet of protective glass between Bond and M references "The Man With The Golden Gun".

The large hovercraft in the pre-title sequence is a British-made Griffon 2000TD

The brief shot of a missile being fired from a frigate (to destroy Icarus) is recycled footage from Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

When James Bond introduces himself to Gustav before they fight, Madonna was originally to introduce him with the catchphrase "Bond. James Bond." However, it was later decided fans may prefer the line coming from Pierce Brosnan.

Madonna's cameo was the final scene shot during principal filming.

A knee injury to Pierce Brosnan delayed shooting for a few weeks.

Ian Fleming took James Bond's name from the author of a book called "A Field Guide to the Birds of the West Indies". In this movie, Bond picks up the very same book in Cuba and poses as an ornithologist.

This is the first Bond film to feature during the opening music sequence scenes that actually advance the plot.

Director Lee Tamahori originally planned to film all the car chase scenes on ice in New Zealand.

Only the second Bond film to feature James Bond's office. It was last seen in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969).

When Q explains how the Vanquish works, he is explaining technology that the U.S. Air Force is actually developing for use in a new "daylight" stealth aircraft. However, the "invisibility" capability is only useful at extreme distance (miles), and would not in any way be as good as depicted on the car in this film.

When Bond enters the Cuban clinic through the hidden door, you can hear a sample of the brainwashing noise used in Ipcress File, The (1965). A nod to another British agent, Harry Palmer.

For the first time, the famous gun barrel sequence now includes a bullet zooming by after Bond fires.

Will Yun Lee plays a character named Colonel Moon. There is a little-known James Bond novel by Kingsley Amis, written shortly after Ian Fleming's death, entitled "Colonel Sun". It was Amis' only Bond novel, making him the George Lazenby of Bond authors. The full name of Colonel Moon is Colonel Tan-Sun Moon, making the connection to Amis' novel even more explicit.

Following her Best Actress win at the 2002 Oscars, Halle Berry became the first Academy Award-winner to be a "Bond Girl", although only just - she won the award while shooting this movie (Kim Basinger (Never Say Never Again (1983)) won her Oscar for L.A. Confidential (1997) long after she had been a "Bond Girl", and "Never Say..." isn't part of the official Bond series anyway).

At the pre production stage, Saffron Burrows and Salma Hayek were both considered for roles in the film. It was also rumored that Billy Connolly was asked to play the part of a villain in the teaser sequence, but turned it down.

Some location filming took place at 'The Eden Project' near St Austell, Cornwall in the United Kingdom in the first week of March 2002.

Sequences featuring a Korean beach were partly filmed at Holywell Bay near Newquay in Cornwall, United Kingdom over several evenings in February/March 2002. The local Holywell surf hut was transformed into a North Korean pill box and a small forest of pine trees were planted in the dunes behind to mimic a remote shore.

The frozen lake in Iceland that is the location for some car chases, does not freeze very often naturally. This is due to its closeness to the sea and its high salt content. To rectify this situation the river that links the lake to the sea was dammed and within two days the entire lake was frozen to a depth of over 2 meters.

To get the Aston Martin and Jaguar (both rear wheel drive) to perform on ice, the filmmakers had to modify them into four-wheel-drive cars.

Both the Aston Martin and the Jaguar were completely stripped of engine and running gear. These were replaced by the Ford V8, 4WD kit and 4spd Auto 'box from Ford's Explorer. This was to help them perform on ice.

Only five cars in the entire movie do not belong to either Ford or Ford's Premier Automotive Group (Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo). There are two Ferrari F355's, a Porsche 911, a Mercedes SL and a Lamborghini Diablo. All of these cars (except possibly the Merc) get damaged / destroyed / dropped out of the back of a plane. None of the Ford's get damaged at all. It is also worth noting that none of the other manufacturers cars are examples of the latest models, whereas Ford is using all of it's latest or prototype models.

The Jaguar driven by Zao is not a production car, but only a prototype supposedly showcasing the next generation XKR. The design has now been changed, however, so the car in the film will never see production.

According to television news reports on 11 Nov. 2002, Sean Connery filmed a cameo as James Bond's father. However, when it was realized that GoldenEye (1995) and the Ian Fleming novels had established that Bond was an orphan, it was necessary to cut the scene to maintain continuity.

For the sword fight, film makers decreased the film speed to make it look as if the actors were moving faster than they actually were.

This movie set a new record for product placement with $120 million worth of deals with various companies from Aston Martin and Jaguar to Revlon and Brioni.

Bond returns to smoking (cigars) for the first time since Licence to Kill (1989). Also marks the first time Bond has smoked a cigar since Man with the Golden Gun, The (1974) (qv).

Sequences where James Bond travels in 1st Class aboard a passenger plane, and where he holds onto the front wheel of the plane as the landing gear deploys, and finally walks from the aircraft after it has landed, were filmed in March 2001 in British Airways engineering bases at Heathrow Airport, using green screens and a fan.

The fictional abandoned station on the London Underground where Bond meets M, Vauxhall Cross, is a reference to the address of the real MI6 headquarters in London, located at 85 Vauxhall Cross (approximately five minutes' drive from where Bond enters the station).

Bond (while talking to Q), refers to what looks like a fatal injury to M in a simulation program as a "flesh wound" - in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Cleese refers to the cutting off of various body parts in a battle with Graham Chapman as "merely a flesh wound." It's a common enough phrase, but the Python connection does give it more resonance.

The futuristic weapon that Colonel Moon uses during parts of the chase after the opening sequence did really exist when the movie was made, at least in prototype form. It's a Heckler & Koch OICW (Objective Individual Combat Weapon), a weapon developed as the future's infantry assault rifle as part of the US Army's "Soldier 2000" program. It consist of a grenade launcher mounted on top of a 'regular' 5.56mm (.223) caliber assault rifle, as well as a digital camera within the optic sights. This digital camera is supposed to be linked to a display within the soldier's helmet, enabling him to look/shoot around corners, as well as transmitting live footage of a combat situation to his troop commander or a higher superior.

The V12 engine in the Aston Martin Vanquish was switched with a small block Ford V8 to make room for machine guns etc. The 6-speed sequential transmission was also changed to a 3-speed auto transmission.

The odd-looking weapon Colonel Moon uses in the opening sequence is a prototype of the Heckler and Koch Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW), part of a current U.S. Army research and development effort. It really does fire grenades, although they aren't "anti-tank".

The magazine with the picture of Gustav Graves that Bond reads on the British Airways flight is the real in-flight magazine for British Airways for the month of November 2002. The Magazine in fact interviews the actor playing Graves about his part and includes an article on all previous Bond Movies and their respective stunts.

A huge 20,000-watt light array which took a week to construct was used for the Icarus demonstration scene.

Although it ranked fifth in the box office on its opening weekend in South Korea, Koreans began protesting the movie's unfavorable depiction of North Korea and it dropped out of the top ten by its second week. One theater in Seoul pulled it from the screens in response to the protests, and the smaller theaters that usually get second-run movies would not pick it up.

Published reports in 2001 indicated that Whitney Houston was being considered for a role in this film.

The device used to identify Bond in the beginning is a Sony Ericsson P800 PDA/Mobile Phone. Though it would require some custom programming to get that fancy look on the screen (not to mention someone on the receiving end making the actual visual match), it is actually possible for it to perform that task.

The uniforms which James Bond and Jinx wear in the climax action sequence have small Korean character name tags which read "Chang-Choen 1 dong dae". It means these are uniforms of civilian reserved troops of Chang Choen town in Seoul, part of a security training team.

In the first scene at the North Korean beach, two North Korean soldiers are talking. It means "What the hell is the taste of this cigarette? / I can give you American tobacco."

The character of Miranda Frost was originally named Gala Brand. This was the name of the Bond girl in Ian Fleming's original novel "Moonraker".

Icarus was originally called Solaris but was changed when the producers found out that Solaris (2002) was in production.

This is the only Bond film in which 007 and Moneypenny do not actually meet. Bond sees her "corpse" during a VR training simulation, and at the end of the film Moneypenny creates a virtual reality fantasy involving Bond, but otherwise the two never come face to face in "real life." In Licence to Kill (1989) the two don't meet either, but they do at least communicate by phone.