Every James Bond movie/show/skit/cartoon/commercial is in the same universe. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

 From Guest Author and TVCU Crew Member 

Sidney Brett Graham

So I have this theory in which almost every single visual James Bond depiction we’ve ever seen, down to his appearances in TV commercials, sketch comedies, and Saturday morning cartoons, are all in the same universe. I know you think you’ve heard this one before, but bear with me. (Also, to get this out of the way now, although occasional reference to Ian Fleming may be made, this theory deals only with onscreen Bonds, not with the literary Bond[s] or with the video games. I realize the games sometimes use the actors’ likenesses; maybe they fit in this theory and maybe they don’t. I’ll let you be the judge. I have cheated by incorporating one non-visual piece of media.)

We’ve all heard the theory that “James Bond” is a code name, and that all the different 007 actors in the EON films are playing different agents that have donned the name and the number (“this never happened to the other fella!”). 

But this seems not to work with the Daniel Craig films: Craig is obviously playing a guy whose real name is James Bond, son of Andrew Bond of Skyfall. We’ve also all seen the rebuttals to this argument: Roger Moore’s Bond recognizes old friends from university who know him as “James Bond,” Moore avenges Tracy Bond’s murder even though she was married to Lazenby, etc.

However, there are a couple things to recognize right away:

1. The climax of John Buchan’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps, one of the first and most important spy thrillers, hinges on the fact that spies who have assumed a false identity fully commit to it, to the point where they act like that false identity even when they think no one is watching. As the protagonist (Richard Hannay) recounts, “If you are playing a part, you will never keep it up unless you convince yourself that you are it.” So it’s totally plausible that post-Lazenby “Bond” agents would need to maintain the facade that they were all the widowers of Tracy Bond–and would maintain standard Bond habits, like the famous preference for a particular method of martini preparation.

2. Obviously, Judi Dench plays M in both the Brosnan and the Craig films. Now, it’s possible she’s playing two different characters (with two different perspectives on the Cold War), but in No Time to Die, we see some portraits of previous Ms hanging on the current M’s wall. Not only do we see Dench, but we also see Robert Brown’s M from the Moore and Dalton films. This strongly suggests the Craig movies are indeed in continuity with the older Eon films. And, importantly, the Blofeld in the Craig movies freely admits that Blofeld isn’t his real name; he assumed it later in life, though he says “Blofeld” was his mother’s maiden name. So we know that people using names of previous James Bond characters is something that happens here.

Now, with those in mind, before we get into the theory proper, let’s look at four pieces of non-Eon Bond media and see what clues we can glean to lay a foundation.

1. The 1967 Casino Royale spoof movie. In this film, David Niven plays “Sir James Bond,” who is explicitly called “the original James Bond.” He has been retired for 20 years at this point. There is a reference to another spy, a “sex maniac,” who was using Bond’s name, but who has since retired to work in TV. Bond comes out of retirement to battle SMERSH, an evil organization which is trying to kill him. To befuddle SMERSH, several different agents, including women, are all given the code name “James Bond.” We end up discovering that Bond’s American nephew, Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen), is the real leader of SMERSH. What we get here is: 1. The original James Bond was working during WWII. 2. When he retired, his name was used as a code name by another agent. 3. That agent has since retired (meaning it can’t be Sean Connery, who was still Bond at this point). 4. M16 is willing to give multiple agents the name “James Bond” at once. 5. Sir James Bond has relatives who are also involved in espionage.

2. The 1954 “Casino Royale” episode of the series Climax!, the first filmed James Bond adaptation. In it, the American actor Barry Nelson plays James Bond, or “Jimmy Bond.” He works for “Combined Intelligence” and works alongside Clarence Leiter, who is British in this version. This is before Connery and not too long after the end of WWII, so Nelson’s Bond could very well be the agent Sir James was thinking of.

3. A 1964 sketch on the series Mainly Millicent in which Roger Moore plays James Bond. If we take this as canon, it means Moore’s character was already using the name “James Bond” even while Connery’s Bond was operating. This is supported by the fact that, in 1983’s The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E., Lazenby is playing a spy known only as “J.B.” who is clearly supposed to be James Bond–and in 1989 he once again played a spy named “James” in the Alfred Hitchcock Presentsepisode, “Diamonds Aren’t Forever.” This was going on even while Moore and Dalton were playing Bond on the big screen. It seems like multiple James Bonds are allowed to work at the same time.

4. The early 90s animated series James Bond Jr., in which the title character is a teenager at prep school with his friend Gordo Leiter (the supposed son of Felix) and is already working for M16. Perplexingly, even though his name is “James Bond, Jr.,” the story is that he’s James Bond’s nephew. Not only would this mean James Bond would need to have a brother also named James Bond, but, at least going by what Fleming says, Bond is an only child. So, what we have is a teenaged operative using the name "James Bond" and offering a confused backstory as to why he has that name.

All this suggests that his supposed family connections are just a cover story. James Bond, Jr. indicates that, by the early 90s, M16 is training young agents at the high school level and already giving them the name “James Bond” to work with. 

So, taking these as our basis, let’s get into the meat and potatoes here.

This theory proposes that all of the following people have been James Bond:

– Sir James Bond (I) (David Niven) (Casino Royale 1967)

[uncle to Jimmy Bond, uncle to Andrew Bond, great-uncle to James Bond II]

– Joe Tracey (Barry Nelson) (Climax! 1954, A Yank on the Burma Road 1942)

– John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery) (The Rock 1996)

[brother to Dr. Neil Connery Mason, granduncle to David Mason, father of Jade Angelou]

– Dr. Jason Love (George Lazenby) (Passport to Oblivion audiobook)

– Brett Sinclair alias Simon Templar (Roger Moore) (The Saint, The Persuaders!)

– Charles Lord (Timothy Dalton) (Permission to Kill)

– “James Bond Jr.” (Corey Burton) (James Bond Jr.)

– Remington Steele alias Peter Deveraux (real name unknown even to himself) (Pierce Brosnan) (Remington Steele, The November Man)

– James Bond (II) (Daniel Craig)

In basically chronological order, here’s how it went down.

During WWI, Sir James Bond [David Niven] established a reputation as a great British spy, which continued into WWII, when he did espionage work on behalf of the Allies. At some point, he sired a daughter, Mata Bond (whose mother was supposedly the infamous WWI traitor Mata Hari). Bond chose to retire around 1947, but his name and essence had become almost legendary. Indeed, his American nephew, Jimmy, would be jealous of this fame and end up founding the evil organization SMERSH to undo his legacy.

M16 and the CIA, which worked together as “Combined Intelligence” at this time, came up with an idea to continue this mystique to their advantage. What if multiple agents all used the “James Bond” name? Particularly if they carried on some of Bond’s habits (his car, his tuxedo, his proclivity for shaken martinis, his family motto of Non Orbis Sufficit, etc.), it could give him an aura of being almost omnipotent. And, given that more than one Bond would be working at once, even if one of them were killed, injured, or retired, there would always be another one, giving him a further suggestion of invincibility and immortality. 

Bear in mind that this was just a development of something M16 already did. They already used code names like Q and M; indeed, the "M" title had existed since at least the Victoria era (as seen in the 2003 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film).The innovation here was that, this time, the code name would be the name and identity of a real person. 

The retired Sir James granted permission for this, and the first spy “Combined Intelligence” used was an American agent named Joe Tracey [Barry Nelson], a former taxi driver who had gotten involved in espionage after capturing wanted some murderers for the police and who had later helped get supplies past Japanese authorities into China before the Pearl Harbor bombing (A Yank on the Burma Road). Tracey worked for “Combined Intelligence” throughout the 1950s using the name James Bond (though he preferred to be called “Jimmy”). Clarence Leiter was a British agent sent to work alongside Tracey and observe how well the experiment worked. Together, Tracey and Leiter had the adventure depicted in the 1954 “Casino Royale” episode of Climax! in which they battled Le Chiffre. Note that the name “Le Chiffre” just means “Number One,” so other characters we see named “Le Chiffre” are likely also simply using it as an “agent number” rather than a real name.

The experiment was regarded as a success, and M16 chose to go ahead with their 007 program. American intelligence decided to copy the program, and, in a tip of the hat to the U.K. for giving them the idea, the code name they used was that of the British agent who had been involved with the program launch, Leiter. Thus, we would see several CIA agents called “Leiter” (normally but not always “Felix Leiter”), always assigned to work with “James Bond.” M16 decided to expand this even to government functionaries, like secretaries. Thus, while Sir James Bond worked with a secretary named Miss Moneypenny, “Moneypenny” became a code name for secretaries, which served to protect them in their private lives from hostile forces.

M16 began looking for new Bonds in the early 50s, and tapped some promising young men who they could begin training for the part–and who they could assign the name “James Bond” to early on, so they could begin establishing themselves in that identity such that people would recognize them asBond. 

One was the roguish Scottish operative John Patrick Mason [Sean Connery]. 

Another was Lord Brett Sinclair [Roger Moore], who was about to enroll for a second degree at Cambridge University, having already graduated from Harrow and Oxford. Both were approached for this program and agreed to it, and began using the name “James Bond” professionally. Sinclair even completed his degree at Cambridge under the name “James Bond”, which is why, years later, a fellow Cambridge student, Sheikh Hosein, would recognize him as Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me. Sinclair had a penchant for gentleman thievery, which he did under the name Simon Templar, “The Saint” (a reference to his surname, “Sinclair” or Saint-Clair). This was tolerated by M16, as it was seen as a kind of in-field training. 

Finally, Dr. Jason Love [George Lazenby], a country doctor originally from Australia who had done some intelligence work in WWII, had been recruited by M16 to do some investigative work in 1964 for the events of Passport to Oblivion. Dr. Love ended up being a bit of a revelation, and M16 decided to hold on to him and train him as another “Bond-in-waiting.”

All of them were told that, before they were fully activated as Bond, they would be asked at times to perform smaller missions under the Bond name, as a kind of “practice.”

At the end of the 1950s, Joe Tracey retired from espionage to use his undercover skills for television acting. At this time, John Mason was activated to assume the role of Agent 007. (It appears Sir James Bond was not told about this, since he only seemed aware of one other agent using his name.) However, recognizing that Mason could be lost at any time, Sinclair and Love were told to follow his exploits closely so they could pick up wherever he left off. Sinclair also performed at least one mission as Bond, as seen in Mainly Milicent in 1962. 

Around this time, Mason stole FBI microfilm containing damning information about the Kennedy assassination. He was arrested and put in Alcatraz for it, but he escaped back to the U.K. and received official protection from British intelligence. American authorities demanded that the U.K. turn Bond over to be arrested, but M16 refused, given his importance for national security. However, this threat always lingered in the background.

Mason also discovered the evil SPECTRE empire of Ernst Stravo Blofeld, who had a penchant for using plastic surgery to change his appearance so he was harder to track, and, as we learn from Diamonds Are Forever, using plastic surgery to make his decoys resemble him more closely. Disciples of Blofeld, like Karl Stromberg, would often copy elements of his schemes for their own purposes; Stromberg’s plan in The Spy Who Loved Me is closely copied from Blofeld’s in You Only Live Twice.

Speaking of plastic surgery, Mason’s brother, Dr. Neil Connery Mason, a plastic surgeon who used hypnosis in his work, was recruited at one point by M for a particular mission (Operation Double 007). Note that Dr. Mason used his middle name rather than his surname professionally, perhaps to protect himself from his brother’s enemies. Dr. Connery Mason’s son would move to America and have a son of his own who would join the CIA, inspired by the stories of his grandfather and granduncle.

In 1967, Jimmy Bond and his SMERSH organization set out in earnest to kill his uncle, Sir James Bond, who was forced to come out of retirement and work with a new Miss Moneypenny, the daughter of the secretary he had once worked with, as well as his own estranged daughter, Mata. This plan borrowed elements from the original “Casino Royale” adventure in the ‘50s (including an operative named “Le Chiffre”), not the last time previous “evil plans” would be revived by enemies of James Bond. (If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.) To protect him, M16 temporarily expanded the 007 program to encompass several agents, all using the name “James Bond” at once. In the end, both Sir James and Jimmy were killed, as were several other agents. 

When Mason was almost ready to retire in the late ‘60s, Dr. Love was activated, and went on the mission depicted in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in which he met and married Tracy Bond, who was killed by Blofeld. Love was so devastated that he stepped down from the official 007 role, though he agreed to still be available to play Bond for specific assignments. Mason, in turn, agreed to do one final official mission (which would have otherwise been assigned to Love), Diamonds are Forever. At this point, Blofeld had dramatically changed his appearance: Knowing that “Bond” would come after him, he could no longer maintain his iconic baldness and scar. 

As it was becoming clear that Mason’s time was ending and that Love was no longer able to be the main Bond, Sinclair was informed that he would need to set his thieving aside and instead focus on his crime-solving skills as the time for him to become the new Bond came nearer. Sinclair thus retired the Templar persona and teamed up with an American investigator to refine his detective skills, as seen in The Persuaders!

After his final official outing as Bond, Mason went to America and had a relationship with a woman surnamed Angelou, resulting in a daughter, Jade. Realizing he was a father forced him to re-examine his life. However, he could not hide from the American government, and was arrested from Angelou’s home at one point for his theft of the FBI microfilm. He was able to escape again, but sadly had to flee back to the U.K. to escape being imprisoned. There, he continued to work “part-time” with M16 in order to maintain their protection.

Upon Mason’s retirement in the early ‘70s, Sinclair became the main official Bond for the next decade. To maintain the illusion that he was the same Bond as the one in the ‘60s, Sinclair sought “revenge” for Tracy Bond’s murder by killing Blofeld. However, the Blofeld he killed was a decoy from the previous decade, who still resembled the bald, scarred Blofeld of the past. The real Blofeld was still alive and quietly active.

Around this time, another of Sir James Bond’s nephews, Andrew, and his wife, Monique Delacroix Bond, were killed in an accident. His son, James (II), grand-nephew of the original Bond, was taken in by the Oberhauser family, where the son, Franz, became jealous of him, to the point where he actually killed his father out of envy. Franz Oberhauser was aware of James (II)’s familial connections to espionage, and Franz’s own mother was a distant relation of Blofeld. Devoting his life to opposing Bond, Franz tracked down the aged Blofeld and became his protege. He would later take Blofeld’s name as his own and seek to carry on his legacy.

Meanwhile, M16 was keeping an eye out for future Bonds. They became aware of a government functionary named Charles Lord [Timothy Dalton]. Lord was gay, and his homosexuality was used to  was blackmailed by his homosexuality into an espionage adventure depicted in the 1975 TV movie Permission to Kill. During that mission, Lord was wounded, but not fatally. M16 saw potential in this angry and somewhat unwilling government agent, so they approached him to be the next Bond. He reluctantly agreed. M16 changed the official report to say that Lord was killed, so that he could disappear into training to one day become James Bond. 

Mason would come back for a final grand mission against Blofeld in 1983, who revived the old Thunderball idea as part of his training of Oberhauser. At the end of that adventure, Mason made it clear to M16 that he was really finished this time; he was so unwilling to continue in the Bond role, and even threw M16’s messenger, Nigel Small-Fawcett [Rowan Atkinson], into a pool rather than accept his invitation to go on another mission. (Instead, Love was sent on that mission, which was seen in The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.) Irritated by this, and no longer seeing Mason as useful, M16 turned him over to the Americans, who imprisoned him once again. To spare themselves the humiliation of acknowledging that the same convict had escaped twice, the official records only acknowledged that Mason had escaped Alcatraz, not the other detention facility.

Near the end of Sinclair’s tenure as Bond, M16 became aware of a con artist using the name Remington Steele [Pierce Brosnan] to work with private detective Lara Holt. Steele, like Sinclair/Templar, was used to using aliases–in fact, he didn’t even know his own real name. This ability to adapt new identities, along with his skills in fighting and crime-solving, made him a natural candidate to be a new Bond, so M16 sent Agent 006, Alec Trevelyan, to make contact with Steele, make the offer to him, and, when Steele accepted, to begin grooming him for the role. Thus his adventures with Holt, like Sinclair’s as Templar, doubled as a kind of training to one day take up the 007 identity.

When Sinclair did retire around 1986, Steele was ready to take over. At this point, had learned a bit about his background (including the identity of his father), inherited a castle in Ireland, and married Laura Holt, allowing them to close the Remington Steele Detective Agency. He was available to now serve as Bond, and his bride had a castle to live in, so he periodically left her behind to go on missions as the new 007, working alongside his friend, Trevelyan. However, when Trevelyan was apparently killed in action, Steele was disturbed and, like Love before him, had to take a leave of absence to recover. 

Charles Lord took his place in 1987. Lord had always been resentful of essentially being forced into espionage. In the course of his service, he fell in love with the new Felix Leiter, though he recognized his romantic feelings were not reciprocated, and was the best man at “Leiter”’s wedding. When Leiter was maimed and his wife was killed, Lord took it badly, and went rogue in pursuit of avenging Leiter to the point where his License to Kill was revoked. Although the situation was resolved, and M initially offered Lord his job back, it was ultimately agreed that Lord should be stripped, or freed, of the Bond role and he was allowed to give up espionage entirely. However, Steele was not yet ready to resume the Bond position, so both Love and Sinclair/Templar had to take up the Bond role for various assignments, as seen in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode “Diamonds Aren’t Forever” and a 1988 Japanese commercial for Lark cigarettes.

The cases of Love, Steele, and Lord were causing M16, and the CIA, to realize it had to start training future agents at an earlier age if they were going to be ready for the psychological demands of the role. They decided to try recruiting teenagers to adapt the Bond identity, reasoning that training at this early age might better prepare them for the challenges of being 007. They did so with “James Bond Jr.” [Corey Burton] and “Gordo Leiter”, who trained together while at Warfield Academy, during which time they had encounters with SCUM, an evil organization made up largely of former Bond villains or their proteges. 

After a few years recovering in his castle with his wife, Steele was ready to return to active service by the mid-90s. His first recorded adventure, Goldeneye, involved discovering that Alec Trevylan had faked his death and was a traitor. This was around the time John Mason was offered a pardon from the Americans in exchange for helping a team break into Alcatraz, as seen in The Rock.

Around this time, a new M [Judi Dench] was recruited. This new M was no great fan of the 007 initiative, or of Steele as Bond, and wanted to take the program in a different direction. Thus, in the early ‘00s, the “James Bond” codename practice was officially retired. Steele was fired, and the teenaged “James Bond Jr.” never had a chance to use the alias as an adult. Sinclair, who had still been doing the occasional Bond mission, said a final goodbye to the woman he had known as “Miss Moneypenny” upon receiving this news (as seen in the 2005 short film Sport at Heart).

Incidentally, since retiring as Bond, Sinclair had been inspired to do with his own persona of The Saint/Simon Templar what M16 had done with the identity of James Bond: Enable others to use that alias to give the character a mystique and immortality. Thus, he quietly found ways to foster new “Saints” using the name of Simon Templar throughout the years, as seen in the 1997 and 2017 The Saint adaptations.

Steele was not only frustrated that he could no longer work as Bond, but, at some point, he had lost his wife along the way (either she divorced him because of his philandering as Bond or she was killed by some enemy the way Tracy had been). Taking advantage of the connections he had made, he moved to the CIA, where he donned the name Peter Deveraux and gained a reputation as The November Man. During that time, he trained and worked with David Mason, grandson of Dr. Neil Connery Mason and grandnephew of John Mason. 

But M did not want to abandon “James Bond” altogether. Instead, her idea was to go back to the source, and get a real James Bond to be 007 again. Thus, James Bond (II) [Daniel Craig], great-nephew of Sir James Bond, was recruited and given the 007 designation. He eventually took to the role, adapting some of the traditional mannerisms of previous Bonds, and at one point even having a small adventure involving the Queen during the 2012 Olympics. His first major adventure was a revival of the old “Casino Royale” plot, complete with another “Le Chiffre”; he would later learn that this, along with the events of Quantum of Solace and Skyfall, were being engineered by his old “brother”, Franz Oberhauser, who had trained under the original Blofeld, taken over his legacy as leader of SPECTRE, and even adopted his name. 

As we all know, Bond (II) married Dr. Madeleine Swann, had a daughter, Mathilde, and apparently died on his final mission. 

What’s next? Will future films shed any light on any of this theorizing? Will this theorizing shed any light on it? At this point, who can say? Maybe there really will be an entirely new continuity at that point. But, for now, I feel confident in saying that every Bond story we have seen on screen up til now takes place in the same universe. 

Thoughts?

A few additional possibilities:

1. As mentioned in the article, the code name "M" had been used since at least 1899, as seen in the 2003 film adaptation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; at that time, the role was filled by Professor James Moriarty. The movie depicts his assistant as being an agent named Sanderson Reed. In the comic books, that same character is named Campion Bond. If we take this as being authoritative, we can assert that "Sanderson Reed" was a mere code name for an agent whose real name was Campion Bond, who was surely the father of Sir James Bond, who would work in espionage a decade and a half later during the Great War. If we accept the Reed-Bond identification, this would also establish that code names (beyond mere letters) was already being used by British Intelligence as early as the 19th century; we can also presume that Sir Allan Quatermain was the grandfather of John Patrick Mason.

2. The M who worked through the 1960s and early '70s ("Miles") appeared, along with several other investigators, in The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as we Know It, a film about Arthur Sherlock Holmes [John Cleese], the great detective's grandson, who works with a descendant of Dr. Watson to battle a descendant of Professor Moriarty. In that film, M was fatally injured; he lived long enough to be in Moonraker but died shortly afterwards. Arthur Sherlock Holmes went on to become “R”, the heir to Q who worked with the Steele Bond in The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day. But this raises a possible problem...

3. The modern Mycroft Holmes of the BBC series Sherlock refers to his “colleague” who states that Britain sometimes needs a blunt instrument (in contrast to his brother Sherlock, who is more of a scalpel). M refers to Bond as a “blunt instrument” in the 2006 Casino Royale, suggesting that Sherlock also takes place in this universe, adding significance to the “Flight 007” mentioned in the episode “A Scandal in Belgravia.” How can both the Victorian and modern versions of Sherlock Holmes exist in the same universe? Given that The Strange Case establishes that descendants of the original Holmes and Watson have been known to work together to solve crimes, and that Moriarty's descendants continue to be criminal masterminds--in "The Adventure of the Final Problem," Holmes even says that Moriarty had "hereditary tendencies" towards evildoing and that "a criminal strain ran in his blood"--the characters in the BBC Sherlock could also be descendants of their Victorian counterparts, which would also allow the events of "The Abominable Bride" to have happened in the same continuity as the more contemporary episodes.

4. Alec Trevylan's role as 006 would later be filled by Nigel Boswell (as seen in the 2006 reboot of The Pink Panther), who had formerly worked as “The Driver” (BMW Films). It’s possible that Boswell was originally being trained as a future Bond before M canceled the program, which would explain his general Bond-like demeanor and fashion sense.

5. I suspect John Drake of Secret Agent/Danger Man was approached to be James Bond. He turned M16 down because he was retiring from espionage in general. This was so surprising and perplexing that it led to Drake being trapped in an experimental controlled village as part of an attempt to understand why he had chosen to leave the spy world, as depicted in The Prisoner.

6. After his time working with John Mason in Never Say Never Again, Nigel Small-Fawcett could have gone on to use the code names Richard Latham (who appeared in commercials for Barclaycard) and Johnny English and work for M17.

7. Sir Godfrey Tibbett, the M16 agent who works undercover as Bond’s chauffeur in A View to a Killcould well be a retired John Steed from The Avengers and The New Avengers, who also worked with The Hardy Boys in the 1978 TV episode “Assault on the Tower.” (If he actually survived the events of A View to a Kill, he may have gone on to work with the band Oasis, as seen in the music video for “Don’t Look Back in Anger”. Patrick Macnee's character in that video Steed’s trademark suit and umbrella, but, like Tibbett, seems to be working as a chauffeur, obliquely indicating they may be the same character.) If all this is correct, Judi Dench’s “M”, at one point called “Olivia Mansfield,” could have once been called Emma Peel, who certainly must be a relation of Tracy Bond.