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Before the interrogation scene with Blofeld a huge deal is made out of the woman applying the Heracles robot poison to her wrist, and James Bond then grabbing her wrist. I'm assuming to make us think "oh no, he's got the poison on him". However, far earlier in the movie, James Bond is already sprayed with poison lethal to every single Spectre member.

The movie explicitly shows that Blofeld was one of the targets of the poison from earlier on (scene at Q's house), and very explicitly tells us that the poison "never ever" disappears once in your body.

My memory might betray me, but could James Bond not already have known that he was contaminated and lethal to Blofeld?

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    Too short for an answer but: Yes.
    – WolfieSmith
    Commented Aug 20, 2022 at 19:57

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The virus is coded to specific targets

This is what makes the virus such an effective weapon: it can be "programmed" to only kill specific targets.

But it's not like a computer whose programming can be changed later. Each strain has its targets hard-coded into it, and those are the only targets it will kill. (This is actually a good thing from the perspective of the people who use it to kill.)

The virus that was used to kill all the Spectre members was coded to kill those Spectre members, and only them. That strain of the virus could never kill Bond or anybody else.

As far as I recall, the villain never makes a strain that would kill Bond. The strain he infects Bond with at the end doesn't target Bond either, it targets the woman he loves (and it always will). The movie doesn't confirm this, but my understanding of this is that not only can Bond never have direct contact with her, but he really shouldn't have contact with any other human who is part of society because the virus is very contagious and will eventually spread to somebody who does have contact with her -- kind of like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.

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    You missed the part about the scene at Q's house. They were looking through the "drive"-thing which the scientist used to make the poison target the Spectre members, and Blofeld was on the list, the only one of them still living. So he should have been targeted by the poison from earlier on.
    – ricky
    Commented Aug 20, 2022 at 15:10
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    I'm afraid I'd need to re-watch it to be sure, and I'm unlikely to watch No Time To Die again because I thought it was not good and I consider it apocryphal. All I can say for now is that I was tracking this element of the plot carefully when I saw the movie, and I did not detect any inconsistencies. But maybe I missed something.
    – Tom
    Commented Aug 20, 2022 at 18:14
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    This answer doesn't address the question of Blofeld specifically.
    – WolfieSmith
    Commented Aug 21, 2022 at 9:04
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    @Tom, as the question notes, Bond, Q, etc, found the list used to target the Spectre people on the drive, and it included Blofeld.
    – WolfieSmith
    Commented Aug 21, 2022 at 21:59
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    @WolfieSmith: I think you are wrong in assuming that the programming for the first release included Blofeld. The data shown at Q's house includes DNA for Blofeld, but it is never stated that his profile was added to the programming (something the data couldn't confirm or disprove). It seems typical for a Bond villain to single out Blofeld for a separate hit after making him watch the death of Spectre, and to use Madeleine (the "daughter of Spectre") to deliver the virus to him personally. Incidentally, he could then offer Madeleine his "protection" from the wrath of MI6.
    – Daniel Sk
    Commented Oct 1, 2023 at 19:24

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