Trivia: For production designer Ken Adam's giant Pinewood volcano set, some 700 tons of steel were used, and some 250,000 square yards of canvas. It featured a working monorail and elevators and cost £1 million to produce.
Trivia: Akiko Wakabayashi (Aki) couldn't drive a car. In the sequence outside Osata's office, the illusion of her driving was created by six strong crew members pulling the car with a cable.
Trivia: German actress Karin Dor almost suffered decapitation by the helicopter rotors in the scene where she and the actor playing Osato meet Bond for the first time. Only an attentive crewman, who shouted a warning at her, prevented it.
Trivia: After the movie was shot, Sean Connery was asked by Japanese reporters whether he found Japanese women sexy. His answer, "No," was not very popular in Japan, and the Japanese started giving him bad names.
Trivia: During the work in Japan, hundreds of reporters appeared on the set and started firing away with their cameras so much that the noise was distracting, so the producers hired 30 private security guards to drive them away. On the second day, the guards themselves started taking pictures for the reporters. Some of them shot star Sean Connery while sitting on a toilet, and the picture was published in a Tokyo newspaper.
Trivia: The Toyota 2000GT convertible in the film is a one-off built for the movie.
Trivia: Reportedly, the noise made during the shooting of the film's grand finale on the volcano set scared Blofeld's white cat, and it ran away. It took several days to find the cat, and it was eventually discovered hiding in some of the set's rafters. The cat is not seen with Blofeld in many scenes because of this, but footage of the scared cat wound up in the finished movie very briefly when Blofeld's security shutters are enforced.
Trivia: One of the volcano base operators is Burt Kwok, who later became famous with his role of Inspector Clouseau's butler, Kato Fong, in the "Pink Panther" series.
Trivia: Osato translates roughly in Japanese to "sugar daddy."
Trivia: Kissy's name is not actually mentioned in the film. We only find out the name in the end credits.
Trivia: When a number of the female actresses were unable to perform the underwater diving sequences, Sean Connery's then wife, actress Diane Cilento, acted as their "stunt" doubles.
Trivia: Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast as Blofeld, but after only five days was replaced by Donald Pleasance. The reason for his departure is hotly debated: some sources say that Werich became ill and had to quit the production; others say that the producers fired him because he wasn't menacing enough.
Trivia: The movie had a number of firsts: First time the screenplay was not based on the original Ian Flemming novel. Only the Tokyo setting from the book matched what was on the screen. First time Bond is seen in his Navy uniform. First time Bond actually meets Blofeld. (From Encore channel's weekend with Bond, February 2009.)
Trivia: During the film, Helga Brandt is fed to Blofeld's school of piranhas after he is displeased with her failures. Actress Karin Dor lost her voice for the next four days after she screamed whilst filming her death scene.
Trivia: The first Bond film on which Richard Maibaum was not credited as a writer.
Trivia: Both the rocket pistol and the cigarette rocket featured in the movie were real-life weapons. The arms manufacturer that created these gadgets paid for their product placement in the film with the intention of later marketing the weapons to the military and intelligence communities. Unfortunately, the rocket pistol and cigarette rocket proved too expensive, too clumsy, and too unreliable for field use, and the manufacturer ceased production two years later.
Trivia: The producers were faced with an unexpected crisis on location in a remote area of Japan when local girls recruited to play extras went on strike because they refused to wear the bikinis required for a publicity stunt. The women eventually relented and wore the 'indecent' apparel after appeals from Albert R. Broccoli and publicist Tom Carlisle.
Trivia: This is the only official Bond film where Bond does not drive a car.
Trivia: In this film, a contact of Bond's, Henderson, was played by the actor Charles Gray, and he was killed in the first ten minutes of the film. Then, four years later, in "Diamonds Are Forever", the same actor, Charles Gray, played Bond's nemesis, Blofeld, and Bond killed him because Blofeld killed Bond's bride, Tracy, in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." Blofeld was played three times - Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas and Charles Gray; you couldn't get three more different actors; so odd to get a deceased good guy, Charles Gray, to play Blofeld four years later.
