3. In-Jokes
As time went on, Bond films got more self-conscious. Skyfall harks back to that, with it's final third references to the past and the point at which he gets into 'that' car (no spoilers, because if you haven't seen it yet it's wonderful). Nothing so subtle in Octopussy though. Bond is in India trying to find his contact, who is disguised as snake charmer. The snake charmer changes the tune on his pipe to the James Bond theme. Roger Moore's double-take threatens to blow his eyebrows clean off. http://youtu.be/PxjeL_et8ig And it gets better. His contact is former Indian tennis star Vijay Amritaj, who ends up fighting off bad guys with - can you guess? you'll never guess? go on, guess?- a tennis raquet. He also quips "I play a bit myself". If the film winked at the audience anymore it would probably get conjunctivitis. It got taken to the extreme in Die Another Day, where the film was crammed with references to the 40 years of films that had gone before. My fave though, the moment in For Your Eyes Only where an MI6 coded door is accessed by a keypad that plays out the tones of The Spy Who Loved Me's 'Nobody Does It Better'. Now that is cool.