The World Is Not Enough/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Villain: Renard's death is almost a Tear Jerker.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Garbage's theme, which is widely considered the best Bond theme from Brosnan's tenure (and among a few, the best since at least A View to a Kill). It would also appear to be the only Bond theme song sung from an in-universe perspective; it's Elektra's Villain Song.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Say what you will about this film's faults, but few can deny it created a fantastic character in Elektra. She's typically found near the top of people's Bond woman countdowns, and amazingly enough accomplishes this without really having any "iconic" scenes like Ursula Andress or Honor Blackman did.
  • Of course considering her competition within the film is probably the worst Bond girl of the lot, that may have something to do with it.
• Evil Is Sexy: Elektra
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: This was Desmond Llewelyn's last appearance as Q in the Bond movies. He died in an auto accident shortly after the movie's premiere, and his last scene shows him descending through the floor on an elevator with a car. Ouch.
  • VHS home editions of the movie Lampshaded this with a tribute to Desmond Llewelyn.
  • Even then, it was one hell of an exit. Q left in style.
• It Was His Sled: Elektra being the villain was supposed to be a surprise.
• Jerkass Woobie: Renard.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: Tie-in games were released for Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Game Boy. The Nintendo 64 version was hit with this far less than the others, since it had a lot of what made Golden Eye 1997 great despite being made by a different developer.
• The Scrappy: Dr. Jones and Mr. Bullion.
• Strangled by the Red String: While one can hardly expect a relationship between Bond and his current Bond Girl to have any real substance, his fling with Christmas Jones is a glaring example of this. Her sole purposes in the film seems to be to completely botch Bond's first attempt to stop Renard's plot (making the second half of the movie literally her fault alone), and for Bond to have a warm body to be in bed with once Elektra is revealed as the villain and Bond kills her.
• Tear Jerker: Elektra's death may count. Also Q's farewell on a meta-level.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Elektra King. Yeah, that's right. Woobie. Bond villains. All those people who were saying the world would end in 1999 probably could've cited this as evidence.
• What the Hell, Casting Agency?: It speaks to how badly it was a misfire to cast Denise Richards that people considered it too much of a stretch for her to be a scientist, in a film series where most of the women casted on the criteria of looks first, second, and third. She won the Golden Raspberry Award, is often polled as the worst Bond Girl (or second to Tanya Roberts), and it virtually killed her career; Richards' biggest role after this film was middle-billing in teen-slasher-film-of-the-month Valentine two years later.