I was thinking a lot about Bond today, specifically the timeline issue. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the issues in the timeline. Are the new movies prequels? Are they set after? What is the chronological order of events? I'm in the party that thinks the release order is the chronological order of the story. There are two theories in this party. 1: All of the actors are the same person. This presents obvious story and continuity issues that I won't go into. 2. James Bond is a codename that each new 007 agent is assigned. Again, obvious issues to anyone who knows the movies well. After a long time of wrecking my brain thinking, I've come up with a third theory that works as a compromise to the two above: They are all different people, but they don't know that. Now, this is very Jason Bourne-esque, so take it or leave it. When the current 007 is killed or retires, the next agent in line is stripped of his memories and given the memories of the previous agents, so in their minds, they ARE all of those previous agents. This explains a lot of strange things like Blofeld not recognizing Bond, while still explaining why Bond is still out for revenge against him. And explaining why he still remembers his dead wife even after actors switched. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense.