Oddjob

Oddjob (often written as "Odd Job") is a fictional character in the espionage novels and films featuring James Bond. He is a henchman to the villain Auric Goldfinger in Ian Fleming's 1959 James Bond novel Goldfinger and its 1964 film adaptation. In the film, Oddjob was played by the Japanese-American actor and professional wrestler Harold Sakata. Oddjob, who also appears in the James Bond Jr. animated series and in several video games, is one of the most popular characters in the Bond series.

In the 1959 novel Goldfinger, Oddjob's real name is unknown. Auric Goldfinger names him to describe his duties to his employer. A Korean, like all of Goldfinger's staff, he is extremely powerful, as shown in one sequence where he breaks the thick oak railing of a staircase with knife-hand strikes (colloquially known as 'karate chops') and shatters a mantel with his foot. When James Bond expresses surprise at these feats, Goldfinger explains that Oddjob trains extensively to toughen the striking surfaces of his hands and feet, which have developed a tough callus, significantly increasing his striking power.

Oddjob is described as being a "squat" man with "arms like thighs", black teeth, and a "sickly zoo-smell". He is over six feet tall, as the novel describes his breaking of a mantelpiece that was "about seven feet off the ground — six inches higher than the top of the Korean's bowler hat." In an early edition, Oddjob is described as having a black belt in the Japanese martial art of karate; in later editions it is learned that Oddjob practised taekwondo and hapkido in his native Korea but went on to earn his black belt in karate in Japan. The earlier novel tells of his hatred of being mistaken for Japanese, mainly due to Korean anger at the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910–1945).

Oddjob's signature weapon is a razor-edged bowler hat, which he wears at all times and can throw with deadly accuracy. He is also a skilled archer, able to fire an arrow through a ring as it is held aloft. Due to a cleft palate, he has a speech defect that renders his speech unintelligible to everyone except Goldfinger. In addition to killing people who might cause trouble for Goldfinger, Oddjob functions as his guard, chauffeur, and manservant (though not his golf caddy, as depicted in the film).

He is killed when Bond uses a knife to shatter the window next to his seat on an aircraft, which depressurizes the plane and blows Oddjob out of the window. In the film version, this fate was instead given to Auric Goldfinger.

At the beginning of the 1964 film Goldfinger, Oddjob (Harold Sakata) is seen only as a silhouette against a wall as he knocks James Bond (Sean Connery) unconscious at the Fontainebleau Hotel, after which he and/or Goldfinger kills Bond girl Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), with whom Bond had spent the night, through "skin suffocation" by painting her entire body with gold paint.

When Bond meets Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) for a round of golf, Oddjob is seen in full for the first time. Goldfinger describes him as "an admirable manservant but mute". He only has four lines of 'dialogue' throughout the film: in his first line, upon pretending to have found Goldfinger's missing golf ball, he exclaims, "Aha!". The second time, after killing Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet), he instructs his men to dispose of her body by merely pointing at them and saying, "Ah! Ah!". The third time, he says "Ah!" to order Bond to put on a gas mask before entering Fort Knox. The fourth time, as Bond electrocutes him in Fort Knox, he yells a final long, loud "Arrgh!".

Oddjob acts as Goldfinger's personal chauffeur, bodyguard, and golf caddy. He wears a bowler hat with a sharpened steel rim, using it as a lethal weapon in the style of a chakram (an Indian throwing weapon) or a flying guillotine. It is powerful and capable of cutting through steel and decapitating a stone statue. He uses it to kill Tilly Masterson by breaking her neck.