62 Years Later, Viral Clip Explains James Bond Gun Swap

If you played GoldenEyeon the Nintendo 64 back in the 1990s, you probably remember that your default weapon was always something called a "PP7." This little pistol was fictional, but it was meant to reference James Bond's most famous concealable gun, the Walther PPK, which, in Dr. No, Bond (Sean Connery) is given at the start of the movie by Major Boothroyd (Desmond Llewelyn) better known as Q in later films. The iconic 1997 video game didn't call the gun a Walther PPK for presumptive legal reasons, but if the PPK has always been Bond's gun since the start of the movies, why did the first movie make such a big deal about giving him a new gun?

The answer can be found in a recently unearthed viral clip, which has been trending on X for the past week. In 1964, Sean Connery, from the set of Goldfinger, explains how and why Bond got his iconic gun. And, as many hardcore Bond fans know, it all goes back to one very specific guy, who wrote Ian Fleming a letter dated May 23, 1956, in which he made it clear that he flet that James Bond was using the wrong gun.

Geoffrey Boothroyd was a gun aficionado who wrote to IAN FLEMING asking him to change Bond's signature gun – a Beretta.

Here SEAN CONNERY - on the set of GOLDFINGER (1964) - introduces Boothroyd who shows us why he thought 007 needed a gun with more oomph.pic.twitter.com/xlgYPAAKks

— Michael Warburton (@TheMonologist) February 4, 2026

Although it was the first movie filmed by EON, Dr. No was actually author Ian Fleming's sixth James Bond novel ever, eventually published in 1958. But, back in 1956 while editing the manuscript of From Russia, with Love (published in 1957), Fleming received a fan letter from a firearms expert named Geoffrey Boothroyd, who informed him that he felt that the gun favored by Bond in the books up to that point, a .25 Beretta, wasn't realistic partly because it didn't have enough stopping power. Oddly, fellow author Jack Thomas claimed in 1965 that in the early 1950s, he also tried to convince Fleming that the Beretta wasn't the right gun for Bond. But, because Boothroyd's correspondence was so detailed and convincing, Fleming decided to change out the gun.

This is where the viral 1964 clip comes in. While filming Goldfinger, Connery explains how this change came about, which again, happened way before there ever was a fully cinematic James Bond. Interestingly, Boothroyd really wanted Fleming to give Bond a revolver, but because Fleming wanted the aesthetics of an automatic compromise was the Walther PPK. The "armorer" who gives Bond the gun in the Dr. No novel was named Major Boothroyd in honor of the fan who enthusiastically detailed all the options to Fleming.

The rest, is, in a sense, history. Though, it's worth pointing out that nearly half of the Fleming-penned Bond books were published prior to Dr. No, meaning, if you pick up a book at random, you're chances of getting a book in which Bond has the Walther PPK just as high as him rocking the Beretta.

The next James Bond movie is currently in preproduction. Bond's weapon of choice in the new movie is currently unclear, as his the name of the man playing him.