20 James Bond References You Might Have Missed In Die Another Day
3. These For Heat, These For Cold...
Even Pierce Brosnan's James Bond is stunned when he first sets eyes upon Gustav Graves's magnificent ice palace!
No sooner has he traded barbs with his host than he is confronted by the very cool Miranda Frost. Noting that the icy Olympic fencing gold medallist must feel right at home there, Bond is told by Frost that the human element necessitates a precise balance between heat and cold in order to survive. Double-0 Seven then flippantly remarks that he hopes that Graves got the balance right as the ice palace is built on a frozen lake and is filled with human beings, meaning that it could melt and sink - an important plot point that features later in the film.
The reference to striking a precise balance between heat and cold is a sly nod to the torture to which Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) subjects his mistress, Domino Derval (Claudine Auger) in Thunderball. Having captured Domino spying aboard his yacht, the Disco Volante, looking for two stolen NATO nuclear warheads, Largo notes that he does not need elaborate devices to make her talk; all he has to do is to apply a cigar and some ice cubes to her body "scientifically and slowly. Very, very slowly".
According to Graves and Frost, the level of human endurance must have come a long way since the mid-1960s...