In the Eon Productions James Bond series, which began in 1962 with Dr. No, SPECTRE plays a more prominent role.

SPECTRE ( SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion ) is a fictional global terrorist organisation featured in the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, the films based on those novels, and James Bond video games.

In Ian Fleming's novels, SPECTRE is a commercial enterprise led by Blofeld.

In 1963, Fleming settled out of court with McClory, which awarded McClory the film rights to Thunderball, although literary rights would stay with Fleming and thus allow continuation author John Gardner to use SPECTRE in a number of his novels.

* Number 1, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, chief of SPECTRE in James Bond novels and films

Film versions of novels where SMERSH appears substituted either SPECTRE or independent villains in order to avoid fomenting hatred of the Soviets, and so contributing to unstable relations with the USSR.

Both McClory and Fleming claim to have come up with the concept of SPECTRE ; Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett and John Cork both note Fleming as the originator of the group, Lycett saying that " proposed that Bond should confront not the Russians but SPECTRE ..." whilst Cork produced a memorandum in which Fleming called for the change to SPECTRE:

Largo eventually became the second-in-command of the terrorist organization SPECTRE.

In the film series, Bond's archenemy became SPECTRE, which first appeared in Fleming's novel Thunderball ( 1961 ).

The Russians were originally the villains, but this was later changed to the international organised criminal organisation, SPECTRE.

The film version contained some changes to the novel, with the leading villains switching from SMERSH to SPECTRE, a fictional terrorist organisation.

Apparently disbanded afterwards, SPECTRE is said to be active again in the next book, The Spy Who Loved Me, although the organisation is not involved in the plot.

Despite speculation that SPECTRE would return for the Daniel Craig era of Bond films, 007 has instead tackled an underground terrorist organisation similar to SPECTRE, known as Quantum.

Dr. No and Auric Goldfinger appear as SPECTRE members, with Dr. No "...( Doctor Julius No ) having broken ranks with our organisation.

Although the From Russia with Love video game mirrors much of the plot of the eponymous film, it uses an organisation called OCTOPUS rather than SPECTRE to avoid copyright issues.

SPECTRE and its characters have been at the centre of long-standing litigation starting in 1961 between Kevin McClory and Ian Fleming over the film rights to Thunderball and the ownership of the organisation and its characters.

Blofeld is head of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE and is commonly referred to as Number 1, an official numerical position given to members of SPECTRE.

The Prime Minister receives a communiqué from SPECTRE ( SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion ) explaining that the organisation has hijacked a Villiers Vindicator and seized its two nuclear bombs, which it will use to destroy two major cities unless a £ 100, 000, 000 ransom is paid.

For more than a year, James Bond, British Secret Service operative 007, has been involved in " Operation Bedlam ": trailing the private criminal organisation SPECTRE and its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Blush and her charge, a United States Air Force pilot named Jack Petachi, are operatives of SPECTRE, a criminal organisation run by Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Bond teams up with CIA agent Cedar Leiter, daughter of his old friend, Felix Leiter, to investigate one Markus Bismaquer, who is suspected of reviving the criminal organisation SPECTRE, which was believed to have been disbanded years earlier following the death of its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, at the hands of Bond ( in You Only Live Twice ).

In both stories, the returning protagonist ( Schofield in Scarecrow, James Bond in NLF ) is the target of a monetary contract posted by a villainous organisation ( Majestic-12 in Scarecrow, SPECTRE in NLF ) that requires delivery of the target's severed head, and both stories include the protagonist's loved ones ( Gant in Scarecrow, May and Moneypenny in NLF ) being used as leverage against the protagonist.

Blofeld's SPECTRE volcano base complete with spacecraft-swallowing rocket shuttle, helipad and attack helicopter, and command center in the 1967 film You Only Live Twice ( film ) | You Only Live Twice.

Blofeld, with a weakened SPECTRE would appear for the final time in You Only Live Twice.

SPECTRE thus works with both sides of the Cold War.

In the films, SPECTRE usually replaced SMERSH as the main villains, although there is a brief reference to SMERSH in the second Eon Bond film, From Russia with Love.

It is interesting to note that in the Bulgarian subtitles of Quantum of Solace, the name Quantum was translated as SPECTRE, with the title changed to " Spectre of Solace " (" Спектър на утехата ").

* Giuseppe Petacchi – Domino Vitali's brother ; kills the crew aboard the NATO test flight carrying the bombs and flies it to rendezvous with SPECTRE, only to be killed upon delivery

While attending prep school at Warfield Academy, James Bond Jr. with the help of his friends IQ ( the hitherto unmentioned grandson of Q ), and Gordo Leiter ( the son of Felix Leiter, also not previously established ), fights against the evil terrorist organization SCUM ( Saboteurs and Criminals United in Mayhem, which is an offshoot of organizations like SPECTRE ).

Once there, Petacchi is killed and the plane, with bombs, are taken by Emilio Largo ( aka SPECTRE Number One ) on board the cruiser yacht Disco Volante.

Academic Christoph Linder sees Thunderball as part of the second wave of Bond villains: the first wave consisted of SMERSH, the second of Blofeld and SPECTRE, undertaken because of the thawing of relations between East and West, although the cold war heated up again shortly afterwards, with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis all occurring in an eighteen month period from April 1961 – November 1962.

Others, such as continuation Bond author Raymond Benson, disagree, saying that McClory came up with the SPECTRE concept.

In 1963, she was cast as the SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love, starring Sean Connery and Robert Shaw.

While doing so, he replaces the dummy warheads in two cruise missiles with live nuclear warheads ; SPECTRE then obtains the warheads to extort billions of dollars from NATO governments.

The yacht is a hydrofoil craft purchased with SPECTRE funds for £ 200, 000.

Henchmen working for SPECTRE, one of its members, or directly for Ernst Stavro Blofeld:

While Blofeld considered the possibility that the sexual relationship was consensual, it was more important that SPECTRE was reputed to keep its word.

Blofeld is absent from the next book, The Spy Who Loved Me, though its events take place while Bond is battling SPECTRE in North America.

The introduction of SPECTRE and its use over a number of books gives a measure of continuity to the remaining stories in the series, according to academic Jeremy Black.

* In the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia with Love, the strategy of the criminal organization SPECTRE is compared to three Siamese fighting in the same tank: Two will fight each other to the death while the third will wait its turn to fight the exhausted victor, symbolizing the conflict between the USA and the Soviet Union, with SPECTRE as the fish that waits.

Although he has been set up to be killed in the ensuing attack by SPECTRE forces on the base, Bond regains his personality and his memory.