James Bond and other 00 agents as seen in The World Is Not Enough
00 agents are elite special operatives of MI6 who have a discretionary 'Licence to Kill' in the field in order to complete their mission. Standard mandatory retirement age is 45 though various writers including Ian Fleming, Sebastian Faulks and John Gardner have contradicted this as a matter of Poetic License. Although Fleming only mentioned five 00 agents, others have been added over the years across various franchise media.
00 agents
The following list is of the known members of this elite order who have been referenced in officially licenced James Bond fiction: novels, films, video games, and comic strips.
This does not include the Imposter 00 agent.
| Agent # | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 001 | Edward Donne | Referenced in the Raymond Benson novel, Doubleshot. |
| 002 | Bill Fairbanks | Assassinated by Francisco Scaramanga, a.k.a. The Man with the Golden Gun, in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1969 (film version: The Man with the Golden Gun). |
| Unknown | In The Living Daylights (film version), another 002, played by Glyn Baker, was in the training exercise at Gibraltar, with 004 and 007. | |
| 003 | Unknown | Found dead, in Siberia, in A View to a Kill film. |
| Jack Mason | Another (presumably unrelated) MI6 agent, referred to as 003, or "Jack", is killed by Diavolo, the villain, in the Everything or Nothing video game. | |
| 004 | Unknown | Accompanied 002 and 007 to Gibraltar in The Living Daylights film; murdered by an individual pretending to be a KGB agent who left a tag on the body that read "Death to Spies" in Russian. |
| Unknown | Another 004 appears in the Benson novel The Facts of Death. | |
| Unknown | In the GoldenEye video game on the Silo mission briefing, Q mentions to 007 to "remember to treat the timed explosives with respect - you remember what happened to 004 in Beirut" - whether this is another agent or the same one as above is unknown. | |
| Scarlett Papava | In the Sebastian Faulks novel Devil May Care, Bond girl Scarlett Papava is unveiled as 004, replacing the previous agent who was killed in Berlin. | |
| 005 | Stuart Thomas | Was 005 until an eye defect had begun to impair his ability to use a firearm. Was transferred and is the head of Station G (Greece) in Colonel Sun. |
| 006 | Alec Trevelyan | Major character in GoldenEye. One of Bond's best friends, he betrayed MI6 and Her Majesty's Government by faking his death and then, years later, in aiding the theft of the secret Soviet satellite system, GoldenEye. His motive was avenging his parents, Lienz Cossacks, betrayed to the Communists by the British government after World War II. He also begrudged Bond's not allowing him time to escape unscathed from the Soviet chemical weapons factory they were to destroy in the mission shown in the teaser of GoldenEye. Portrayed by Sean Bean. |
| Unknown | Another apparent 006, a former Royal Marine commando, is mentioned in the Fleming novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service. | |
| 007 | James Bond | To date, James Bond is the only agent known to have had the code number 007. During the timeframe of the You Only Live Twice novel, Bond was transferred into another branch and given the number 7777, suggesting there was no active 007 during that time frame. Bond was subsequently reinstated as 007 in the following book, The Man with the Golden Gun. In the John Gardner novels, 007 is the last remaining active 00-agent, the section itself having been dissolved by the 1980s; Raymond Benson later contradicted this in his novels. |
| 008 | Unknown | In the films, agent 008 is mentioned briefly when M threatens to replace Bond on an assignment, e.g. Goldfinger and The Living Daylights. The James Bond 007 role playing game released in the 1980s suggests 008 is a woman. |
| "Bill" | In the novel Goldfinger, Bond thinks to himself that 008 would likely avenge Bond by killing Goldfinger. As Bond thinks this, he ruminates that 008 is "a good man, more careful than Bond." In the novel Moonraker, 008 (called "Bill" by Bond) is mentioned as being on recuperative leave after returning from a mission behind the Iron Curtain. | |
| Unknown | In the 2014 comic VARGR, Bond was sent to Helsinki, Finland to avenge a fallen 008. This 008 was confirmed as male, and was killed by a gangster for no other reason than because he loved killing. | |
| 009 | Unknown | Assassinated by Mischka and Grischka in the film version of Octopussy. |
| Unknown | M sent another 009, in the movie The World Is Not Enough, to assassinate Renard; despite 009's shooting him in the head, Renard lived. | |
| Unknown | Another 009 dies in Issue: #7 of the Swedish James Bond comic James Bond, Agent 007 (8th July 1986) in story Dödlig Dubbelgångare (Deadly Double). | |
| Unknown | Yet another unlucky holder of the rank is killed in Peru in Dark Horse Comics' 1991 graphic novel Serpent's Tooth. | |
| Unknown | Another holder of 009 status was supposed to get the Aston Martin DB10 featured in Spectre, however the car was stolen by James Bond. | |
| 0010 | John Wolfgramm | Referenced in the Benson novel The Man with the Red Tattoo. |
| 0011 | "Cederic" | Mentioned briefly in the novel Moonraker as vanishing while on assignment in Singapore. |
| 0012 | Sam Johnston | Although unmentioned on screen, the novelization of The World is Not Enough indicates that Bond is investigating 0012's death at the film's start. Nothing is known of 0012 except that a photograph of the agent shows the late 0012 to be a male with dark hair. |
| 0013 | Briony Thorne | A female 00-agent who appears in the comic strip Fear Face (published January 18, 1971 to April 20, 1971 in the The Daily Express). Thorne was framed as being a double agent for China. |
| Unknown | "GoldenEye" | A former 00-agent featured in the video-game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. He was shot in the right eye, and was dismissed by MI6 for "reckless brutality". He joined up with Auric Goldfinger against the shooter, Dr. Julius No, and eventually received a gold-hued, synthetic orb as a replacement for his right eye. After killing Goldfinger and Dr. No, he becomes Ernst Stavro Blofeld's bodyguard. Unlike other 00 agents listed here, it is difficult if not impossible to reconcile GoldenEye with the continuity of the films, comic strips, or novels. |
| Agent York | Killed in the comic strip River of Death (published June 24, 1969 to November 29, 1969 in The Daily Express). Agent York is a 00 agent but his number isn't revealed. | |
| Suzi Kew | A recurring character in the Daily Express comic strip series of the 1960s and 1970s, Suzi Kew is a 00 agent but her number is not revealed. |
Sean Connery's 007 and other 00 agents seen in Thunderball
Additional 00-agents are glimpsed in the briefing scenes of Thunderball and The World Is Not Enough, but no additional information about them is provided. The latter film suggests that at least one 00-agent is a woman. There is fan speculation that suggests that M, being the head of MI6, is also 001, but this is not supported by any novel or film, and in fact Raymond Benson references a 001 in his novel, Doubleshot. Likewise, speculation that only nine 00-agents exist (001-009) is contradicted by Fleming himself in Moonraker, and likewise is contradicted by later writers.
In addition to the above, the John Pearson novel James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 mentions "real life" 00 agents 002 (named Bill Fairbanks as per Man with the Golden Gun), 003 (badly injured in 1951), 008 (died in 1951), 009 (died in 1955 in Hungary), 0011 (died in 1951).
Trivia
- In The Pink Panther, there was an agent named Nigel Boswell codenamed Agent 006. Whether this is canon or non-canon is unknown.