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In Goldfinger (1964) Auric Goldfinger is last seen shooting at James Bond with a golden pistol.

However, the villain in the later film, The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), is not Goldfinger as might have been implied by the title.

I don't know if the title was deliberately, and misleadingly, hinting that Goldfinger was back in the later film or hinting at a connection between the two books that was cut from one or both of the films?

Which is it?

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I don't believe there was any intended deception.

The films were adapted from two separate novels with those respective titles, which had two distinct villains. For Goldfinger (1964), they chose to simplify the details of 'Operation Grand Slam' including not involving the Mafia and the Spangled Mob that Scaramanga worked for. Goldfinger and Scaramanga both wield gold-plated guns, but they are distinctly different weapons.

Scaramanga is the one known for killing with a golden gun, while Goldfinger, in the movie, simply has one because of this theming.

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    Also Scaramanga’s gun can be disassembled. Goldfinger’s was a singular stock weapon with gold plating (or similar template made entirely of gold).
    – MissouriSpartan
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 12:04
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    It's worth noting that actually making a gun out of solid gold would be a terrible idea. Beyond the obvious expense, It'd be too soft for the task and unusually heavy to boot. Gold plating on the outside surfaces is fine, but a solid gold gun would not last very long, nor would that in any way improve its function as a gun. (Gold bullets? Maybe - but they'd be lighter than traditional lead, which is a disadvantage in that case.)
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 17:58
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    @DarrelHoffman As shown here here the density of gold in g/cm3 is 19.3. The density of lead is 11.3. Why would gold bullets be lighter?
    – JimmyJames
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 19:00
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    @JimmyJames Hmm, my bad, I just thought since it's lower on the periodic table (79 for Au, 82 for Pb) A bit counterintuitive that their density would be the reverse, but whatever. Also I know that they sometimes use depleted Uranium for bullets because they're much heavier. So, okay, solid gold bullets: plausible. Solid gold guns? Still probably not a great plan.
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 19:07
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    @DarrelHoffman Au is not lower than Pb; they're on the same row. Elements tend to get denser as you go down the periodic table, but across the table it's more complicated.
    – Acccumulation
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 23:29
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The title is a deliberate riff on The Man With The Golden Arm (1955). I don't think there was ever any intent to tie it back to Auric G, but rather to create an "in-joke" in the title. Fleming did seem to have a 'thing' for gold here and there in his novels in general.

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    And do you have any source for those titles being tied together? I can't find any on my side.
    – Sean Duggan
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 16:02
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    @SeanDuggan Neither can I. All I know is that grownups back in the 1960s told me that was the "joke" in the title. Perhaps it was urban legend, tho' Fleming did toss sly references and in-jokes here and there in the Bond novels.
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 18:17
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    The Man with the Golden Arm was a novel and later a film that predates the Bond film and novel by about a decade or so. It was both highly praised and highly controversial at the time, and would have been well-known when Fleming wrote The Man with the Golden Gun. There are numerous other examples of popular culture allusions to the original novel in TIV and movies. Given Fleming's use of wordplay in previous titles (You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die) it's a very reasonable to think he was doing the same thing here.
    – barbecue
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 18:35
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    Huh - I would've expected a title like that to be about a baseball pitcher. Not sure how they work that into a story about drug addiction - is that a known side-effect of heroin or something?
    – Darrel Hoffman
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 19:33
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    @DarrelHoffman: Apparently the character is a card dealer of some renown and that's where his nickname comes from, but the double meaning is that his arm that he injects heroin into is very valuable for his dealer.
    – Sean Duggan
    Commented Feb 1, 2022 at 20:50

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