From Oddjob’s lethal bowler hat to Jaws’ steel teeth, the Bond films gave us eccentric, larger-than-life henchmen who became pop-culture icons. Importantly, these figures were creations of the movies, not of Ian Fleming. In the novels, Bond’s adversaries were far more restrained: professional killers and enforcers whose menace came from skill, brutality, and credibility rather than flamboyant gimmicks.
What IOI Says About Henchmen
At Gamescom, I asked IO Interactive’s Art Director Rasmus Poulsen which direction 007: First Light would take: the grounded realism of Fleming, or the flamboyant spectacle of the films?
“The approach is to found everything in credibility: credible dialogue, credible character motivation, credible story locations… Then to allow you to have fun on the other side of things like action moments and set pieces. I would say it’s a balance of these two forces and you can’t have one without the other.”
A Credible Menace – With a Twist
If we take Poulsen’s words literally, credibility is the baseline. Henchmen in First Light are likely to feel believable, with grounded motives and a physical threat that makes sense within the story world—closer to Fleming’s realism than to over-the-top caricatures.
This direction is also consistent with what IOI has said in earlier interviews: the Fleming novels remain a strong influence on First Light. Credibility as a foundation isn’t just a design choice—it’s baked into the very DNA of their interpretation of Bond.
Yet Poulsen’s emphasis on balance leaves the door open. IOI might be hinting that while plausibility anchors the game, there’s still room for the occasional splash of spectacle—the kind of theatrical touch that made cinematic henchmen unforgettable. In other words, players may face adversaries who are both convincing and surprising.
A First Glimpse: The Platinum-Blond Killer
The gameplay trailer may already give us a grounded first example. The contract killer Bond is assigned to track in London—who looks suspiciously like the bellhop glimpsed earlier in Slovakia—stands out less for gimmicks than for his sheer physicality. His most striking trait is his platinum-blond hair, immediately recalling Bond’s tradition of fair-haired enforcers:
- Red Grant in From Russia with Love (1963) – a cold, methodical killer, Bond’s mirror image.
- Hans in You Only Live Twice (1967) – the archetypal brute, strong but silent.
- Necros in The Living Daylights (1987) – efficient, charming, and lethal.
- Stamper in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) – an almost cartoonishly brutal extension of his master’s will.
This lineage shows how Bond films have used blond henchmen as shorthand for menace, whether rooted in realism or exaggerated into spectacle. First Light’s killer seems to lean on the credible side: no gadgets, no gimmicks, just brutal confrontation—culminating in the rooftop fight where he sends Bond plummeting with a vicious kick.
Playing With Expectations
Is that blond henchman a clever Easter egg for longtime fans—or is IOI leaning too much on nostalgia?
Perhaps not everything is as it seems. In Cologne, Rasmus Poulsen hinted that certain characters in First Light are deliberately designed to challenge audience assumptions:
“It’s important to us that you come to these characters with those expectations—and that we together play with these expectations in discovering this new Bond.”
Although the remark referred to rogue agent 009; the principle applies just as well to henchmen. IOI seems intent on taking familiar archetypes and twisting them into something more surprising.
So, what do you want to see: grounded menace, larger-than-life spectacle—or a mix of both?
