This exchange between Scaramanga and Bond in The Man with the Golden Gun is one of the movie’s more revealing and unsettling moments. Scaramanga recounts a childhood affection for animals, only to describe how that sentiment curdled after he witnessed a handler abusing what he calls his “only real friend,” a bull elephant. He responds by emptying his pistol into the handler, serving as a grim origin story that attempts to frame his first killing as an act of warped moral outrage rather than cruelty.

What makes the monologue truly disturbing, however, is the line that follows: “Then I discovered that I enjoyed killing people even more.” Although we only get a glimpse of Scaramanga’s psychopathy origin story, it’s grossly abhorrent and explains his “exhilaration for assassination.” It defines Scaramanga as someone who has fully aestheticized murder and has made it his identity. Assassination, for him, is not a profession adopted for money or survival but a craft pursued for personal gratification.