Francisco Scaramanga is a fictional character in the James Bond film and novel The Man with the Golden Gun. In the novel, the character is actually named Paco "Pistols" Scaramanga. For the film, Scaramanga was played by British actor Christopher Lee. Lee is actually Ian Fleming's cousin and was Fleming's pick to play the role of Dr. Julius No in the film Dr. No. According to some Bond film historians, Lee was also considered for the role of Bond as well.

Character Bio

Francisco Scaramanga is a high-priced freelance assassin charging one million (USD) per hit. He's best known for being "The man with the golden gun", which is also Scaramanga's weapon of choice. The golden gun can fire a custom made 4.2 caliber golden bullet. The gun also separates into a gold cigarette lighter, a gold cigarette case, a gold cuff link, and a gold pen so as to avoid detection. This weapon was used to assassinate agent 002, Bill Fairbanks.

All of Scaramanga's dealings go through his henchman Nick Nack, which allows for Scaramanga to take on a role of anonymity. Not much is truly known about Scaramanga due to this, however, Bond reveals that one feature of Scaramanga's is a supernumerary nipple or third nipple. This information later comes in handy to Bond who uses Scaramanga's anonymity and only known physical feature to get into contact with Scaramanga's current employer Hai-Fat.

Francisco Scaramanga lives on a personal island somewhere off the coast of south-eastern China that has it's own self-sufficient solar power plant. Scaramanga's home in addition to the power plant also includes a sort of "funhouse". Nick Nack will use the facility to often hire other assassins to murder Scaramanga as a sort of challenge to Scaramanga or perhaps to just keep him on his toes. In addition, Scaramanga also has a private junk, which Bond later steals to get off the exploding island.

After taking Goodnight (Bond's semi-partner in the film) hostage, Scaramanga lures Bond to his private island. There Bond and Scaramanga have a duel, which Bond eventually wins.

Scheme

Francisco Scaramanga was hired by Hai-Fat to assassinate a British scientist named Gibson, thought to be in possession of information crucial to solving the energy crisis by creating a virtually unlimited amount of energy using a new technique of harnessing the sun's power. Gibson is assassinated and his invention, the solex agitator, is stolen at the scene by Nick Nack. The solex agitator is a a critical component of Gibson's solar energy device. With it in Scaramanga's hands it allows for him to sell the device to the highest criminal bidder or use it for his own nefarious plans.

Henchmen

• Nick Nack

Video games

Francisco Scaramanga's weapon, the golden gun, was initially added to the multiplayer portion of the video game GoldenEye 007. Due to its popularity it was also added into subsequent James Bond games Agent Under Fire, Nightfire, and GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. In the games, the golden gun would count for an instant kill, which reflected that the villain Scaramanga never missed.

In 2004, the character of Francisco Scaramanga was brought back to life in the game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. In the game Scaramanga is an ally of Auric Goldfinger, the villain of the film and novel Goldfinger.

See also

• List of James Bond villains
• The Man with the Golden Gun
• GoldenEye: Rogue Agent