The Trope Namer and Trope Codifier is the James Bond series of movies, which have used almost every conceivable variation of the trope. In fact, most of the examples in the trope's description have been used at some point in a Bond film. The vast majority of the time, it's Bond himself throwing out a one-liner after dispatching an enemy, although other characters can get in on the action. And it didn't take too long for the series to start poking fun at its own Running Gag.
Examples:
- Dr. No:
- The very first instance in the series involves Bond dropping off a man who had just used a Cyanide Pill at the governor's palace. Sold by the poor sergeant's baffled reaction to Bond just nonchalantly walking away from a corpse.Bond: Sergeant, make sure he doesn't get away.
- Bond is attacked by mooks in a hearse who try to ram him off the road, but pulls some Assassin Outclassin'. After the hearse rolls down a ravine and explodes, Bond quips to an astonished bystander:Bond: I think they were on their way to a funeral.
- The very first instance in the series involves Bond dropping off a man who had just used a Cyanide Pill at the governor's palace. Sold by the poor sergeant's baffled reaction to Bond just nonchalantly walking away from a corpse.
- From Russia with Love:
- Kerim Bey enlists Bond's help in sniping a man through a painting, specifically a hole in the subject's mouth. When he succeeds, Bond quips:Bond: She should have kept her mouth shut.
- After blowing up a SPECTRE helicopter and forcing it to crash, Bond quips:Bond: I'd say one of their aircraft is missing.
- While taking a motorboat to safety, Bond and Tatiana are waylaid by yet more SPECTRE mooks in other boats. Their drums of spare fuel are holed by machine gun fire, so Bond shoves them overboard and then fakes surrender long enough for their pursuers to follow into the oil slick, which he promptly lights on fire with a flare gun.Bond: There's a saying in England: where there's smoke, there's fire.
- After Tatiana kills Rosa Klebb to stop her from kicking Bond with a poisoned spike in her shoe, this exchange occurs:Tatiana: Horrible, horrible woman.
Bond: Yes. She's had her kicks.
- Kerim Bey enlists Bond's help in sniping a man through a painting, specifically a hole in the subject's mouth. When he succeeds, Bond quips:
- Goldfinger:
- Bond kills someone by means of an Electrified Bathtub:Bond: Shocking. Positively shocking.
- Goldfinger's Dragon, Oddjob, dispatches a reluctant investor by shooting him in a car and sending the car to the crusher. Bond, who had previously been told that that the investor was heading home, is shown the steel cube when Oddjob gets back, to which he says in a rather shocked tone:Bond: As you said, he had a pressing engagement.
- Bond finally dispatches Oddjob by electrocuting him and has this exchange with Felix:Felix: You okay, James? Where's your butler friend?
Bond: Oh, he blew a fuse. - Bond finally dispatches Goldfinger when he's sucked out of a plane:Pussy Galore: What happened? Where's Goldfinger?
Bond: Playing his golden harp.
- Bond kills someone by means of an Electrified Bathtub:
- Thunderball:
- Bond shoots a mook with a harpoon:Bond: I think he got the point.
- Bad girl Fiona gets shot by friendly fire in a dance club, and Bond sits her down at a table and nonchalantly asks:Bond: Mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead.
- Bond shoots a mook with a harpoon:
- You Only Live Twice:
- The British Hong Kong policeman discovers Bond "dead" in his bed in the opening sequence and has this to say:Policeman: Well, at least he died on the job. He'd have wanted it this way.
- After Tanaka arranges Bond's pursuers to be dropped into the ocean by a helicopter:Tanaka: How's that for Japanese efficiency?
Bond: Just a drop in the ocean. - After the Giant Mook falls in a piranha pool, Bond goes "Bon appétit."
- The British Hong Kong policeman discovers Bond "dead" in his bed in the opening sequence and has this to say:
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service:
- A mook falls prey to a snowplow, and his blood and guts start flying everywhere.Bond: He had lots of guts!
Tracy: [Eye Take] - Also, while fistfighting Blofeld on a speeding bobsled and the latter gets snared by a broken tree:Bond: He's branched off.
- A mook falls prey to a snowplow, and his blood and guts start flying everywhere.
- In Diamonds Are Forever, the main quip-master is in fact not Bond, but the Depraved Homosexual assassin couple, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd:
- They drop a scorpion down someone's neck and explain his absence by saying he was "bitten by the bug."
- They dispatch a guy by blowing up a helicopter:Mr. Kidd: If God had wanted man to fly...
Mr. Wint: He would have given him wings, Mr. Kidd. - Other henchmen try their hand, but they're not nearly as good, as shown when they kill Shady Tree:Bert Saxby: We didn't get the real diamonds, so we need Tree... alive!
Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd: That's most annoying... - While on Saxby, after he tries to kill his supposed boss Willard Whyte but is gunned down instead, Whyte responds with: "Bert Saxby? Tell him he's fired!"
- Bond would later have this trope back after killing Mr. Wint by attaching a bomb to his tuxedo tails:Bond: Well, he certainly left with his tails between his legs.
- He gets one on a Blofeld lookalike earlier after killing one of his "replicas" during their confrontation in the Whyte House. Bond scared the white cat and then shot the Blofeld it jumped to, only to see Blofeld's real cat walk in a moment later.Blofeld: Right idea, Mr. Bond.
Bond: But wrong pussy. - Additionally, he has one for each time he survives an attempt by Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd on his life. First, when he's rescued from an incinerator after it's discovered he'd passed a smuggler counterfeit diamonds, he tells the smuggler in question and Mr. Slumber, "My condolences, gentlemen." Later, as he emerges from a pipeline in which he'd been left for dead, he tells the surprised pipeline workers, "I was just out walking my rat, and I seem to have lost my way."
- Even Blofeld himself gets in on the action after Bond kills another lookalike earlier on by sabotaging a cloning operation during the Cold Open. Evidently, said operation involved a substance resembling hot mud.Blofeld: Making mud pies, 007?
- Live and Let Die:
- After Dr. Kananga blows up from a gas pellet shoved in his mouth:Solitaire: Where's Kananga?
Bond: He always did have an inflated opinion of himself. - After killing Kananga's right-claw man Tee Hee by snipping the wires controlling his artificial arm and dumping him out the train compartment's window, Bond frees Solitaire from her fold-up bed and answers her "what are you doing?" question thusly:Bond: (dumps the mechanical arm out the window) Just being disarming, darling.
- After Dr. Kananga blows up from a gas pellet shoved in his mouth:
- The Man with the Golden Gun:
- The Spy Who Loved Me:
- While Bond escapes a biker mook as the latter's sidecar explodes and destroys a truck, the mook hits a box of feathers and falls off a cliff. Bond has this to say afterward:Bond: All those feathers and he still can't fly.
- Another one is this exchange when Bond interrogates Sandor on the roof of a flat, who is holding on to the spy's necktie for dear life.Bond: Where's Fekkesh?
(Sandor grabs Bond's tie as he struggles not to fall)
Bond: WHERE'S FEKKESH?!
Sandor: Pyramids!
(Bond slaps his tie out of Sandor's hand, who falls to his death, and then fixes his loose tie)
Bond: What a helpful chap. - Although not fatal, Anya Amasova gets one in during Bond and her's first battle with Jaws at the Pyramids. After having difficulty getting the truck they were in to go into gear, she finally gets it, and rams Jaws into a stone wall.Amasova: Shaken, but not stirred.
- While Bond escapes a biker mook as the latter's sidecar explodes and destroys a truck, the mook hits a box of feathers and falls off a cliff. Bond has this to say afterward:
- Moonraker:
- Early on Drax invites Bond to a morning hunt on his estate, a ploy meant to get Bond out in the open so that assassins can shoot Bond to stop his investigation. Bond sees through it, though:(Bond takes aim at a bird and fires, not hitting the bird as it flies away.)
Drax: You missed, Mr. Bond.
(Camera cuts to a man falling out of a tree dead — the assassin Bond was actually aiming for)
Bond: Did I? As you said, such good sport. - Later on Bond is captured outright by Drax's men, having already escaped another kill attempt by Drax via strangulation by python by killing it first:Drax: Why did you break up the encounter with my python?
Bond: I discovered it had a crush on me. - Near the climax of the movie, Drax appears to have Bond dead to rights, holding him at gunpoint:Drax: Desolated, Mr. Bond?
(Bond shoots a poison dart from his wrist into Drax's body)
Bond: Heartbroken, Mr. Drax. - Followed immediately by this:Bond: (preparing to open the airlock) Allow me. (pushes Drax into the gap between the ship and airlock) Take a giant step for mankind.
- And the exchange after Bond throws Drax out of the airlock is no slouch either:Goodhead: Where's Drax?
Bond: Oh, he had to fly.
- Early on Drax invites Bond to a morning hunt on his estate, a ploy meant to get Bond out in the open so that assassins can shoot Bond to stop his investigation. Bond sees through it, though:
- In A View to a Kill, Max Zorin gets in on the action when he has a guy thrown out of a zeppelin for refusing to go along with his Evil Plan:Zorin: So, does anyone else want to drop out?
- The Living Daylights:
- Necros is hanging out the back of a plane to Bond's shoe, when Bond slashes his shoelaces and sends him plummeting to his death:Bond: He got the boot.
- Bond dispatches Brad Whitaker by blowing up a statue of Wellington and crushing him against a diorama of the Battle of Waterloo, just so he could say:Bond: He met his Waterloo.
- Necros is hanging out the back of a plane to Bond's shoe, when Bond slashes his shoelaces and sends him plummeting to his death:
- Licence to Kill:
- The Big Bad starts getting into this when he has Felix Leiter lowered into a Shark Pool, and a shark bites his leg off (which also happens in the novel of Live and Let Die, where the villain claims to have "more good lines like this"):Bond: (reading the paper attached to Leiter's body) He disagreed with something that ate him.
- Averted when he dispatches Dario to a gruesome death in a cocaine grinder and finds himself hanging precariously over it. The Bond Girl Pam Bouvier shows up to save him and asks if he's all right; that said, the grinder is indeed a "bloody machine" now...
- After feeding Killifer to the sharks with a 2 million-dollar case, Sharkey instead gets the honor to do the one-liner.
- After dispatching a henchman for suspected betrayal via decompression chamber, Big Bad Franz Sanchez is asked by his other henchmen what to do with the blood-splattered money. It's probably the only time the villain does a better one-liner than Bond himself.Sanchez: ...Launder it.
- The Big Bad starts getting into this when he has Felix Leiter lowered into a Shark Pool, and a shark bites his leg off (which also happens in the novel of Live and Let Die, where the villain claims to have "more good lines like this"):
- GoldenEye:
- Pierce Brosnan's very first line as Bond is a Bond One-Liner. While infiltrating a Soviet chemical weapons facility, Bond hangs down from an air vent and into a toilet cubicle, where a soldier is reading a newspaper while relieving himself. Sensing something, the soldier looks past the newspaper and into the face of Bond, who quips:Bond: Beg your pardon. Forgot to knock.
[He knocks the soldier unconscious] - Q demonstrates a grenade disguised as a pen by blowing up a test dummy and seems to anticipate this problem:
- During Xenia's and Ourumov's attack on the Severnaya installation to steal the GoldenEye keys, Xenia slaughters everyone else present because they need to Leave No Witnesses. She hears the tinkling of porcelain around the corner in the kitchen alerting them to Natalya's presence, so Xenia goes to investigate while Ourumov finishes up. Xenia reaches the kitchen, notices the dislodged cover to the ceiling vent and the nearby chair, and riddles the vent with bullets before rejoining Ourumov and leaving. Natalya's actually in the cupboard and manages to survive that way, making it a Subverted trope.Xenia: I had to ventilate someone.
- After killing Xenia Onatopp, specialist in Murderous Thighs, by using a falling helicopter tied to her and garroting her to death with a tree, Bond has this to say:Bond: She always did enjoy a good squeeze.
- Pierce Brosnan's very first line as Bond is a Bond One-Liner. While infiltrating a Soviet chemical weapons facility, Bond hangs down from an air vent and into a toilet cubicle, where a soldier is reading a newspaper while relieving himself. Sensing something, the soldier looks past the newspaper and into the face of Bond, who quips:
- Tomorrow Never Dies:
- Bond dispatches a mook by tossing him into a printing press, resulting in his blood and guts getting pressed out onto the papers being printed:Bond: They'll print anything these days.
- Bond ejects a pilot from the rear seat of a fighter plane directly into the path of another fighter jet, and he quips, "Backseat Driver." But it comes back to bite him when Bond has to be a literal backseat driver in a later car chase.
- Bond dispatches a mook by tossing him into a printing press, resulting in his blood and guts getting pressed out onto the papers being printed:
- The World Is Not Enough:
- Bond kills Davidov to steal his identity and tosses the body in a dumpster. When another unsuspecting goon asks him where the henchman is:Bond: He was buried with work.
- Gets Subverted when Bond sends a fan-powered snowmobile off a cliff in Azerbaijan. He quips, "See you back at the lodge", only for the snowmobile to deploy a parachute, circle round, and start attacking him again. Bond seems most annoyed that his quip was ruined.
- One of the series' most famous comes when Bond dispatches former lover Elektra King, who taunts him by saying he couldn't bring himself to shoot a former lover:Elektra: You wouldn't kill me. You'd miss me.
Bond: [shoots Elektra] I never miss.
- Bond kills Davidov to steal his identity and tosses the body in a dumpster. When another unsuspecting goon asks him where the henchman is:
- In Die Another Day, almost everyone besides Bond seems to be doing it:
- Jinx does it twice when she kills Frost by stabbing her in the chest with a knife stuck through a book (appropriately enough, The Art of War). First, Frost taunts her:
- Bond gets the tables turned on him at one point:Bond: I missed your sparkling personality.
[Zao note punches Bond in the stomach]
Zao: How's that for a punchline?
- Casino Royale (2006):
- In the very first sequence, Dryden tries to distract Bond by giving him advice on his first kill—mistakenly thinking that Bond saying Dryden's contact "didn't die well" means he's having an emotional reaction to the murder, when really Bond was just annoyed at the amount of work he had to put into it.Dryden: Made you feel it, did he? Well, you needn't worry. The second is— (Bond shoots him)
Bond: Yes. Considerably. - A notable aversion occurs at the end of the airport chase. Bond is being arrested by the police, who have mistaken him for the terrorist bomber, while the real bomber looks on in satisfaction and presses the detonator. Unfortunately for him, Bond planted the bomb on the terrorist covertly during their fight. All we get - all we need - from Bond is a self-satisfied grin during the Gory Discretion Shot.
- In the very first sequence, Dryden tries to distract Bond by giving him advice on his first kill—mistakenly thinking that Bond saying Dryden's contact "didn't die well" means he's having an emotional reaction to the murder, when really Bond was just annoyed at the amount of work he had to put into it.
- Quantum of Solace got meta:Bond: Tell her Slate was a dead end.
Agent: (to M) Slate was a dead end.
Radio: Connection terminated.
M: (immediately reading between the lines) Damn him, he killed him! - Skyfall:
- Bond feeds a henchman to a pair of Komodo dragons and quips about the "circle of life".
- Bond knifes Silva and quips "Last rat standing", calling back to their first conversation.
- Immediately following:M: 007. What took you so long?
Bond: Well, I got into some deep water. - Bond blows up his old home (and all the mooks inside it) and manages to give a one-liner to a house:Bond: I always hated this place.
- Ironically, the best one in the whole film isn't even from Bond himself. Instead it comes from his elderly housekeeper after blowing a guy away with a shotgun.Kincade: Welcome to Scotland!
- After Spectre lacked a one liner, No Time to Die compensates once Bond causes a death by exploding prosthetic eye and tells Q "I just showed someone your watch. Really blew their mind..."note
