Many James Bond fans are prepared to accept an actor or actress who inherits the 007 mantle (such as Lashana Lynch) and carries on the lineage in future movies. However, one Reddit user has posited an interesting theory that goes a step further. It isn’t just 007 which is a codename, but ‘James Bond‘ itself. And that James Bond’s backstory has been programmed into seven different agents so far.
A seemingly glaring plot hole across the 60+ years of the spy movie series so far is that the secret agent always appears to tell everyone – including the most villainous nemeses possible – his full, real name as soon as he meets them. And he says the name twice just in case they missed it the first time.
Reddit user AbeFromanSKOC poses “the possibility that James Bond is the cover name for all agents given the 007 number. But that seems to collapse every time James’s backstory is brought up in a film. How can it be a name passed down to all agents if we keep hearing the same story about his parents, or how he was married once, or how he was in the Navy, and we hear those stories for every James Bond for the last 70 years?”
“Because the agents that become 007 have had their minds wiped, and they have all been programmed with the persona of James Bond, a made up backstory formulated by MI6.” The Redditer also says that both Bond’s American CIA equivalent Felix Leiter and his arch-nemeses Ernst Blofeld are a result of the same technology.
One of their supporting arguments is that in No Time to Die; “we see M sitting in a small portrait gallery, where we see paintings of the two previous M’s, both of whom worked with multiple 007s. This implies a unified and continuous timeline across all Bond films.”
This is a neat little theory and it would be cool if it were embraced more explicitly in future James Bond movies. While we continue waiting for them to cast the next Bond, check out our guide to the best action movies and the best thriller movies.