Auric Goldfinger was voted the most sinister James Bond villain, beating (in order) Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Dr. No, Max Zorin and Emilio Largo.

Instead, Bond thinks the red-haired, blue-eyed man to be a Balt, being proved correct when Goldfinger is revealed to be a Latvian émigré.

[8] Following naturalisation as a British citizen in Nassau, in the Bahamas, Goldfinger has become the richest man in England, although his wealth is not in English banks, nor does he pay taxes on it, as it is spread as gold bullion in many countries.

This incident also establishes Goldfinger as boundlessly greedy, as whatever sums he can gain by this elaborate cheating are negligible compared with what he already has in his possession.

In both the novel and film, Goldfinger is aided in his crimes by his manservant Oddjob, a monstrously strong Korean who ruthlessly eliminates any threat to his employer's affairs.

Goldfinger is the owner of "Enterprises Auric A.G." in Switzerland, maker of metal furniture which is purchased by many airlines, including Air India.

Twice a year, Goldfinger drives his vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost car from England to Enterprises Auric.

In the novel, Goldfinger captures Bond and threatens to cut him in half with a circular saw as Oddjob tortures him using his pressure points.

While working at this job, Bond discovers that Goldfinger is plotting to rob the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in an action codenamed "Operation Grand Slam".

Goldfinger plans to contaminate the water supply at Fort Knox using the nerve agent GB (also known as Sarin), killing everyone at the base.

Then, using an atomic bomb designed for an MGM-5 Corporal intermediate-range ballistic missile that he had purchased for US$1 million in Germany, Goldfinger would blow open Fort Knox's impregnable vault, before removing roughly $15 billion in gold bullion by truck and train with the help of American criminal organizations, including the Mafia, the Purple Gang (an organization that existed in real life), the Spangled Mob (a fictional gang featured in the earlier Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever), and the Cement Mixers, an all-female gang led by lesbian and former trapeze artist Pussy Galore.

Bond foils Goldfinger's plan by writing a note to his American colleague Felix Leiter, containing the details of the impending operation, and taping it to the underside of an airplane toilet seat.

After publication of the novel, the details of "Operation Grand Slam" were questioned, with critics noting it would have taken hours, if not days, to remove $15 billion from Fort Knox, during which the U.S. Army would have inevitably intervened.

Although Bond initially believes that Goldfinger intends to steal the bullion, he soon realizes that the true plan is to set off a Chinese-supplied dirty bomb within the vault.

Fröbe was chosen to play the villain because producers Saltzman and Broccoli had seen his performance in a German thriller titled Es geschah am helllichten Tag (It happened in broad daylight, 1958), based on the story Das Versprechen (The Pledge) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

In that film, Fröbe played a serial killer named Schrott, who kills children to vent his frustrations with his domineering wife.

Goldfinger cheats with help from Oddjob, but Bond figures out the deception and tricks him into playing the wrong ball on the last hole, costing him the match.