10 James Bond Villains With The Most Sinister Plans

You know when s**t is about to get real when M himself has to leave his opulent office to brief 007 on a potential full-scale war between the United States and Russia, which feels very appropriate given the magnitude of the occasion: the Big Bad reveal of the head of super-criminal organisation SPECTRE.

It's a fittingly showstopping scheme from the supervillain: launching a spacecraft (Bird 1) that ingeniously opens from the front before swallowing up the American and Russian spacecrafts, thus ensues their standard blame game. Then when the US launches another rocket, off goes Bird 1 to gobble it up - and hey presto, Blofeld inaugurates his "little war" between the two Cold War rivals, leaving You-Know-Where as the emerging superpower. But not before Blofeld has extorted an advanced payment of $100 million in gold bullion from the government representatives of You-Know-Where. Well, they should've read what SPECTRE stands for more closely.

Perhaps Blofeld was worried about the spiralling running costs of his secret super-duper subterranean lair within an inactive volcano, what with a monorail (what is it with malevolent monorails? Marge Simpson can answer that one), and an extremely well-drilled crater roof operator.

But then Blofeld went and spoiled it all by doing something stupid like blowing it up. Tut-tut, Ken Adam will not be happy.