The James Bond Easter Egg You Probably Never Noticed In Steven Spielberg's Jaws

Like many boys growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, Steven Spielberg loved James Bond, the debonair, globe-trotting spy for Her Majesty's Secret Service, and the films starring the dashing Sean Connery. Spielberg told IndieWire that " the only franchise I cared about and wanted to be part of was James Bond," and it was his "pie-in-the-sky dream to make a little movie that would get some notoriety, and then [Bond producer] Cubby Broccoli would call me and ask me to direct the next James Bond picture."

In his early work, Steven Spielberg got to flex his action and thriller genre muscles for the television series "Columbo," which had twisty plots, and his television movie "Duel," which had high-stakes car chases. These were the ideal showcases of his abilities to helm a James Bond movie, but it still wasn't enough to hear from Broccoli. Instead, it was Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown from Universal Studios who came calling for an adaptation of Peter Benchley's "Jaws," which would end up giving Spielberg notoriety beyond his wildest dreams. Still, Spielberg wanted to make his pining for James Bond known, and he did so in a sly way.

When Chief Brody and Matt Hooper perform the autopsy on a tiger shark, they find everything but the little Alex Kintner boy they're looking for, only to find some mashed up fish, tin cans, and an old Louisiana license plate that reads "007 o 981." 007 is James Bond's famous code name. Entertainment Weekly also points out that the bottom numbers in the left and right corners, 72 and 73, are referencing the year "Live and Let Die" was shot in Louisiana and released in theaters the next year. The "Sportsman's Paradise" slogan at the top of the license plate appears on a billboard in the film. 

"Live and Let Die" star Roger Moore stepped into the secret agent's shoes after Sean Connery completed his six-film run. In his memoir "My Word Is My Bond: A Memoir," the actor recalls bumping into Spielberg in Paris in the early 1970s, where Spielberg made it clear he was pining to direct a James Bond movie. It wasn't until after the massive success of "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" that Moore approached Broccoli about the possibility of Spielberg taking on a project. "Do you know how much of a percentage he'd want?" Broccoli retorted. At the time, Bond directors were only offered flat fees.

Spielberg had a lot of swings and misses when it came to directing James Bond, but he found a way to whet his appetite by creating a Bond-esque action series of his own about Indiana Jones, a handsome, whip-smart archaeologist with a devil-may-care attitude. After dabbling in espionage during World War I and working for the Office of Strategic Services in World War II, he became entangled in heart-pounding adventures around the world, full of danger, mystery, and romance.