Sean Connery's salary increased for this third Bond film, but a pay dispute arose during filming; after he suffered a back injury filming the scene where Oddjob knocks Bond out, Eon settled by agreeing to pay Connery 5% of the gross of each Bond film he starred in.

Honor Blackman was cast as Pussy Galore largely because of her role as judoka Cathy Gale in The Avengers, and the script was rewritten to make Pussy Galore a judoka as well; American censors refused to let the character's name appear on promotional materials, so she was billed as 'Miss Galore' or 'Goldfinger's personal pilot' in the US.

Orson Welles was considered for Auric Goldfinger but his financial demands were too high, and Theodore Bikel and Titos Vandis also auditioned; Gert Fröbe was ultimately cast after producers saw his performance as a child molester in the 1958 German film It Happened in Broad Daylight.

Because Gert Fröbe spoke little English and delivered his lines too slowly when spoken phonetically, he had to be redubbed for most of the film by TV actor Michael Collins; his only scene using his real voice is the Mafia meeting at Auric Stud.

Joan Collins was originally offered the role of Jill Masterson but turned it down because she was pregnant with her son, and the part went to Shirley Eaton, who took an hour and a half to have her body painted gold for the iconic scene.

Harold Sakata, an Olympic silver medalist weightlifter, was cast as Oddjob after director Guy Hamilton saw him on a wrestling programme; Sakata was actually badly burned while filming his electrocution death scene but kept holding the hat until Hamilton called 'Cut!'.

Cec Linder replaced Jack Lord as Felix Leiter after Lord demanded co-star billing, a bigger role, and more money to reprise the part from Dr. No.

For security reasons, no filming or photography was allowed inside the actual United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, so production designer Ken Adam invented the interior entirely from imagination, creating a 'cathedral-type' design of gold stacked to the ceiling; the set was later praised by the depository's own comptroller for its imaginative accuracy.

The gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5 was fitted with features suggested by the crew themselves: director Guy Hamilton came up with the revolving number plate because he kept getting parking tickets, while his stepson (and future producer) Michael G. Wilson suggested the ejector seat after seeing the idea on television.

The title song 'Goldfinger', sung by Shirley Bassey and written by John Barry with lyrics by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, featured session musicians Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones before their fame with Led Zeppelin.

Goldfinger was temporarily banned in Israel due to Gert Fröbe's past Nazi Party connections, but the ban was lifted after a Jewish family publicly thanked Fröbe for having protected them from persecution during World War II.

The surname of gangster 'Mr. Solo' was later reused by Ian Fleming when he briefly helped create the character Napoleon Solo for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., prompting Bond producers Broccoli and Saltzman to threaten a lawsuit and forcing Fleming to withdraw from the TV project.