16 Easter Eggs In No Time To Die You May Have Missed

"No Time to Die," the 25th installment in EON Productions' James Bond series–and the final appearance of Daniel Craig in the iconic role–commemorated the franchise's silver anniversary with multiple references and callbacks to the history of the character on the screen and page. Speaking with The Official James Bond Podcast, veteran Bond producer Barbara Broccoli expressed that, "We wanted this film to really be an homage to all of the films that have come before."

The Bond films have been reverential since they first hit the screen, sometimes gratingly so (Bond's Tarzan yell in "Octopussy" and the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" melody on the security keypad in "Moonraker," for example). They've also been extensively self-referential, though "No Time to Die" takes that tradition to a whole new level. Here are a few of the Easter Eggs in "No Time to Die" that you may have missed. Spoiler warning: from the jump, this article will be discussing plot details including the shocking finale of "No Time to Die."

In the chilling cold open of "No Time to Die," Rami Malek's villainous Lyutsifer Safin wears a Noh mask, a Japanese theater tradition that dates back to the 14th century. This could be a pun on Dr. No, the first evil genius to square off against Bond on screen. 

The mask works as a disguise, hiding Safin's chemically scarred visage, and as an intimidation tactic. "No Time to Die" costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb told Esquire Magazine, "When [the mask] was lit from different angles, the expressionless face changed so much with each shot. It was aggressive, then serene, then terrifying, then caring..." Curiously, Safin's Noh appears to be a Zo-onna mask, which are used in kabuki performances to represent female characters.

The similarities to "Dr. No" don't end there, either. The workers at Safin's factory (some of whom were actually created via motion capture performances) wear hazmat suits strongly reminiscent of the ones donned by Dr. No and his nuclear technicians.

The island of Jamaica is a popular destination in the Bond series, with 007 having previously enjoyed its tropical environs in "Dr. No" and "Live and Let Die." The novel "The Man With the Golden Gun" is also set on the island. What's more, the Bond girls Solitaire and Domino borrow their names from birds native to the region; appropriately, James Bond's namesake is a British ornithologist who lived in Jamaica.

"No Time to Die" sees the character briefly retired from service and living in a modest abode not unlike the one where Bond creator Ian Fleming dreamt up the character. For the "No Time to Die" set, the production designers even went as far as to recreate Fleming's writing desk from his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye, which was named after a top-secret World War II operation planned by Fleming. For the initial press conference for "No Time to Die," EON Productions broadcast live from Goldeneye (now a world class resort) in April of 2019.

When Bond stashes his pistol in the secret compartment of his dresser, the return of Christoph Waltz's Ernst Stavro Blofeld (aka Franz Oberhauser) is telegraphed by a fleeting glimpse of a newspaper headline that reads "Life Imprisonment Sentence for Global Terrorist," with the subhead "Oberhauser found guilty under the Terrorism Act of 2000." Waltz's return to the franchise was kept secret until an announcement in July 2019.

But Blofeld isn't the only Bond villain to get a shout out in print. When Madeleine shows Bond the Russian newspaper article about the murder of Safin's parents and three siblings at the hands of SPECTRE's Mister White, it includes a mention of a "Doctor Zorin." Christopher Walken played the sinister Silicon Valley mogul Max Zorin in "A View to a Kill." While clearly not meant to be the same character (Walken's Zorin was a French industrialist and secret Nazi Übermensch), it's nonetheless a cool little Easter Egg hidden in the set dressing.

Eagled-eyed viewers may have spotted some blink-and-you-miss-it cameos at the SPECTRE party thrown in Havana. For example, Brigitte Millar can be glimpsed reprising her role as agent Dr. Vogel. Vogel first appeared as a member of the criminal syndicate's Board of Directors at their clandestine meeting in Rome in "Spectre." There, her dialog marked her as a high-ranking member of the nefarious terrorist organization and a pivotal figure in SPECTRE's human trafficking and surveilence operations.

Longtime Bond producer Micheal G. Wilson can also be seen briefly at the party. Wilson is the stepson of famed Bond producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, and has appeared onscreen in 13 other Bond films, playing everything from a Greek priest to a member of the Russian Security Council. He also lent his voice to "A View to a Kill" and "License to Kill."

At MI6 headquarters, you can glimpse portraits of three of Ralph Feinnes' predecessors as M: Dame Judi Dench, Bernard Lee, and Robert Brown. As revealed on The Official James Bond Podcast, set designer Vérenique Melery struck upon the idea of including the portraits when exploring the EON Productions archives. Lee's portrait previously appeared in "The World Is Not Enough," while the portraits of Brown and Dench were commissioned specifically for "No Time to Die." In another reference to Dench's M, the ceramic Bulldog with Union Jack paperweight that she bequeathed to Bond at the conclusion of "Skyfall" can be spotted in Bond's London storage locker, the hiding place of his Aston Martin DB5 in that film.

In the background, you can also see Bond that has stashed a pair of skis in his locker. While we've never seen Craig's Bond hit the slopes, skiing is a recurring trope in the Bond series, having appeared in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," "The Spy Who Loved Me," "For Your Eyes Only," "A View to a Kill" and "The World Is Not Enough."

Bond's murder of treacherous CIA Agent Logan Ash (Billy Magnussen) also recalls the Moore era, specifically 1981's "For Your Eyes Only." In that film, Bond dispatches a henchman named Locque by kicking his teetering car off of a cliff. Moore has been vocal with his displeasure at the brutality of the moment, stating that he felt the cold-blooded act was "Bond-like, but not Roger Moore Bond-like." Nevertheless, he acquiesced to the wishes of first-time Bond director John Glen (who later helmed "Octopussy," "A View to a Kill," "The Living Daylights" and "License to Kill"), and a Bond moment was born that was so memorable that the filmmakers of "No Time to Die" felt the need to reference it.

That scene certainly had a harder edge than was typical of Moore's take on Commander Bond, but Craig's Bond is a different story. He's a "blunt instrument" with a "history of violence," so it makes sense that he should take his revenge for Felix Leiter's death in a similarly violent fashion, crushing Ash to death with a casual push on a Land Rover Defender 110 SUV.

Safin menaces Mathilde in front of Madeleine in the "poison garden" where he and his lackeys developed Heracles, the film's deadly nanovirus. This is a nod to Fleming's novel "You Only Live Twice" and its villain Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, who maintains a "Garden of Death." In the book, the Garden of Death is located in a castle on the volcanic Japanese island of Kyushu. In "No Time to Die," Safin's island can be found in disputed waters between Japan and Russia, leading to a diplomatic crisis for Fiennes' M in the movie's gripping climax. In another tribute to "You Only Live Twice," Safin's garden is also of the Japanese Karesansui variety, with immaculately raked sand; the garden is of SPECTRE origin in both the novel and film.

"You Only Live Twice" subsequently reveals that Dr. Shatterhand is none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Bond's arch enemy. In Fleming's novel, Bond murders Blofeld, forming another parallel to "No Time to Die."

As M, Moneypenny, Tanner, and Q mourn Bond's sacrifice, M quotes author Jack London. In the San Francisco Bulletin in 1916, London wrote, "The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." London's quote was also used as the introduction to a posthumous collection of his short stories, which was published in 1956.

This same passage was used by Fleming in the novel "You Only Live Twice" as part of an obituary for the superspy (which turns out to be a ruse in both the book and in EON's film adaptation). In the novel, the quote was added to Bond's obit by his sometime-lover Mary Goodnight. While Goodnight was a recurring character in Fleming's books, she only appeared once on screen, portrayed by actress Britt Ecklund in "The Man with the Golden Gun."