20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Living Daylights (1987)

17. “General Gogol Is Now With Their Foreign Service.”

The Living Daylights Timothy Dalton
MGM/UA

Even though Walter Gotell makes a brief appearance as General Gogol in the film's finale, General Leonid Pushkin was created to head up the KGB, despite sharing many of his predecessor's character traits.

This was because Cubby Broccoli was unable to insure Gotell for overseas filming due to illness, even though Cubby put up his own money to ensure Gotell’s involvement.

Pushkin was due to make a brief return in Licence To Kill (1989), demonstrating that James Bond's (Timothy Dalton's) personal vendetta still had an impact on Cold War politics, but John Rhys-Davies was busy filming Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989).

General Pushkin had also been scripted to return in GoldenEye (1995), but it was considered too political for a Bond film to imply that the old guard were running the Russian Federation, leading to the creation of Russian Defence Minister, Dmitri Mishkin (Tchéky Karyo) instead.

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