GoldenEye was released after a six-year hiatus in the Bond series caused by legal disputes between MGM/UA and Danjaq, which arose after Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti bought MGM/UA and tried to sell off Bond distribution rights at cut-rate prices.

During the development limbo, Timothy Dalton's contract expired and he ultimately resigned from the role in April 1994, even though producer Albert Broccoli had hoped he would return for multiple films.

Early abandoned drafts for Bond 17 (dated 1990-91) included wildly different plots, such as Bond investigating a Hong Kong handover threat, a stolen stealth fighter plot involving American mobsters, and a Chinese coup d'état storyline.

Before Pierce Brosnan was cast, Mel Gibson, Hugh Grant, and Liam Neeson turned down the role of Bond; Neeson said his fiancée Natasha Richardson would not marry him if he took the part.

Ralph Fiennes met with the producers about playing Bond, and Paul McGann was the studio's second choice had Brosnan turned it down; Fiennes would later play M in later Bond films.

The villain Alec Trevelyan was originally written as the older character 'Augustus Trevelyan,' envisioned as Bond's mentor, and was reportedly offered to Anthony Hopkins and Alan Rickman before both turned it down and the role was rewritten as Bond's peer for Sean Bean.

Judi Dench's casting as the first female M is widely believed to have been inspired by Stella Rimington, who became the real head of MI5 in 1992.

Because Pinewood Studios was unavailable (booked for First Knight), the production converted an old Rolls-Royce factory at Leavesden Aerodrome into what became Leavesden Studios, its first-ever production.

Pierce Brosnan injured his hand while filming the extending ladder sequence, forcing producers to delay his scenes and shoot the Severnaya scenes earlier instead.

The French premiere of the film was cancelled after a dispute between producers and the French Ministry of Defence over Brosnan's opposition to French nuclear weapons testing and his involvement with Greenpeace; Brosnan boycotted the premiere in support of Greenpeace.

The opening 220-meter bungee jump, filmed at the Contra Dam in Switzerland and performed by Wayne Michaels, set a record for the highest bungee jump off a fixed structure and was voted the best movie stunt of all time in a 2002 Sky Movies poll.

For the tank chase through Saint Petersburg, the T-54/55 tank's steel off-road tracks were replaced with rubber-shoed tracks from a British Chieftain tank to avoid destroying the city's pavement.

General Ourumov shooting his nervously-firing soldier in the opening sequence was directly inspired by the 1969 western film The Wild Bunch.

Since producers could not find a round lake in Puerto Rico, the lake hiding the satellite dish was created as a miniature model by special effects supervisor Derek Meddings, whose work on GoldenEye was his last before the film was dedicated to his memory.

Swedish group Ace of Base had written a proposed theme song for the film, but their label Arista Records pulled them from the project fearing negative impact if the film flopped; the song was later reworked into their single 'The Juvenile.'

Composer Éric Serra's score was criticized by fans and critics, and director Martin Campbell was so unhappy with it that he had John Altman rescore the St. Petersburg tank chase after rejecting Serra's original submission, which still appears on the soundtrack as 'A Pleasant Drive in St. Petersburg.'

The BMW Z3 featured in the film as Bond's car was part of a three-picture product placement deal, and a limited-edition '007 model' sold out within a day of being available to order, despite the car barely being used on screen.

The title 'GoldenEye' comes from the name of Ian Fleming's Jamaican estate, where he wrote the Bond novels; Fleming himself had given multiple origins for the estate's name, including a WWII contingency plan he developed called Operation Goldeneye.