8 Popular Fan Theories That Completely Ignore The Movie They're About

5. The Movies Repeatedly Disproves That James Bond Is A Code Name

Urgh, this one. Every time a new Bond movie comes along, some loudmouth hears the theory that James Bond is actually a code name and runs around screaming it as if he's just found out Christoph Waltz is playing Blofeld; this explains how you can have a series span fifty years with the same character who changes looks and never ages (well, except in Roger Moore's case).

Yeah, yeah, it's a nice way to place all the Bond movies in a single continuity, but the only people who actually care about all the Bond movies having a consistent canon are people who've never seen all the Bond movies. Because if they had, they'd not only realise Bond is an archetype rather than a character, but also understand there is, and never has been, a way for this theory to work.

Both Roger Moore (in The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only) and Timothy Dalton (in Licence to Kill) are seen mourning Tracy Bond, who died in George Lazenby's film (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), which in turn has plentiful references to Connery's original run. And that's before we get to the tombstones in Skyfall that confirm Daniel Craig's character's birth-name is Bond, something that seems put in there to explicitly put this theory to bed (although the resurrected hype around the release of Spectre seems to suggest that didn't work).