Golden Gun

The Golden Gun is the signature weapon of assassin Francisco Scaramanga. It first appeared as the titular weapon in Ian Fleming's posthumously published novel,The Man with the Golden Gun. In the novel it is merely a gold-plated .45-calibre revolver. In the film adaptation, the weapon is a custom-built, single-shot pistol assembled from four seemingly innocuous golden objects: a pen, a lighter, a cigarette case and a cufflink. Its popularity led to appearances in most of the James Bond games.

Novel appearance

In Ian Fleming's novel, the golden gun is a gold-plated .45-calibre revolver that carried gold dum-dum bullets with silver jackets. Scaramanga also carried a golden derringer whose bullet was coated with snake venom.

Film appearance

Overview

For the film, it was a single-shot weapon that fires a custom-made 4.2-millimeter (.165 calibre) golden (23-carat gold with traces of nickel) dum-dum bullet. Scaramanga used the golden gun in numerous assassinations of officials, political enemies, gangsters, and a 00-agent, Bill Fairbanks (002). Scaramanga later used the golden gun to kill British scientist Gibson and Scaramanga's own employer, Hai Fat. When Scaramanga was killed, and his island destroyed, the golden gun was presumably also lost.

Components

To evade security, the pistol can be assembled and disassembled into its component parts:

	Fountain Pen – Forming the ‘barrel’ of the pistol, the pen screws directly into the body of the lighter. Includes removable thread cap.
	Lighter – With a hidden ‘slide out’ section the lighter forms the main body of the weapon. The lighter ‘lid’ opens to reveal a breech chamber.
	Cigarette Case – The end of the case opens to create the handle and trigger housing.
	Cufflink – With sprung blades, the cufflink fits into the trigger housing to create the trigger which can be pulled.
	Bullet – A single custom-made 4.2 mm golden (23-carat gold with traces of nickel) dum-dum bullet can be fitted into the ‘breech’ of the cigarette lighter. For transit, the ammunition is concealed in the buckle of his belt.

Video-game appearances

Francisco Scaramanga's weapon, the golden gun, was initially added to the Egyptian level and multiplayer portion of the video game GoldenEye (video game). Due to its popularity it was also added into subsequent James Bond games The World is Not Enough, Agent Under Fire, Nightfire, Everything or Nothing, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, From Russia with Love, Quantum of Solace,GoldenEye (2010) and 007 Legends.

In The World is Not Enough for the Nintendo 64, the gun must be assembled from the pen, lighter, and case before it could be used. In each of the games (except Everything or Nothing and the single player portion of Agent Under Fire), the golden gun would count for an instant kill, which reflected that Scaramanga never missed, although in the games the player can and because of this, the golden gun is not available in single player mode (except Everything or Nothing) but golden versions of the game's standard weapon(s) are usually available (such as a golden Walther PPK, P99 and Desert Eagle).

Trivia

Interestingly, another first-person shooter game from Rareware, the makers of GoldenEye (video game), Perfect Dark, also featured a golden gun which would count for an instant kill, this time a customized Colt Python revolver belonging to NSA boss, Trent Easton.
In a game totally unrelated to James Bond canon, Killer 7, the main character, Garcian Smith, having just lost his team of heroic assassins to a new type of enemy, must use a Golden Gun to finish the team's mission. This gun is capable of killing ALL the enemies he comes across in one shot. It appears to be in a design similar to the Golden Gun depicted in the novels, rather than that found in the movie.

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