The character was originally written by Fleming as a physically massive and powerfully built man, standing around 6' 3" (1.90 m) and weighing 20 st (280 lbs, 127 kg), who had become flabby with a huge belly.

[3] The most recurring antagonist in the franchise, Blofeld appears or is heard in three novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and You Only Live Twice; as well as eight films from Eon Productions: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), possibly For Your Eyes Only (1981; the pre-title sequence of which shows an unnamed character resembling Blofeld fall to his death), Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021).

Blofeld has been played on-screen by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Max von Sydow and Christoph Waltz, among others.

Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence, then moved first to Sweden, then to Turkey, where he worked for Turkish Radio and began to set up his own private intelligence organisation.

Blofeld is described physically as a massive man, weighing roughly 20 st (280 lbs, 127 kg), who had previously been a champion amateur weightlifter in his youth before becoming obese in middle age; he has black crew-cut hair, black eyes (similar to those of Benito Mussolini), heavy eyelashes, a thin mouth, and long pointed hands and feet.

This is the third instance in which Blofeld kills an operative for a breach of discipline; he had earlier shot one through the heart with a needle fired from a compressed-air gun, and strangled another with a garrote.

In On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), Bond learns that Blofeld has altered his appearance radically – he is now tall and thin, having reduced his weight to 12 stone (170 lb; 76 kg); sports long silver hair, a syphilitic infection on his nose, and no earlobes; and he wears dark green tinted contact lenses to hide his distinctive eyes.

He is hiding in Switzerland in the guise of the Comte Balthazar de Bleuville and Bond defeats his vindictive plans to destroy Britain's agricultural economy (implied to be carried out on behalf of the Soviet Union).

Blofeld's depiction in film influenced with great effect the depiction of supervillains and (together with that of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather) that of Mafia bosses both in films and printed media, as, since his first appearance on the big screen in 1963, he established some "standards" imitated for decades, such as mysterious identities, being portrayed stroking a pet and with the face unseen by the spectator or the viewpoint character, and the concept of spectacularly executing underlings who fail to defeat the main protagonist.

Originally, On Her Majesty's Secret Service was to include the twist that Blofeld was Auric Goldfinger's twin brother, and would be portrayed by Gert Fröbe.

Upon his arrival at the Pinewood set, both producer Albert R. Broccoli and director Lewis Gilbert felt that he was a bad choice, resembling a "poor, benevolent Santa Claus."

During the opening sequence of Diamonds Are Forever, Bond searches relentlessly for Blofeld and finds him overseeing the transformation of a henchman into a decoy duplicate, using plastic surgery.

This metamorphosing matches Fleming's literary portrayal of a master criminal who will go to great lengths to preserve his anonymity, including the use of plastic surgery.

By November 2013, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the McClory estate had formally settled the issue with Danjaq and MGM and acquired the full copyright to the characters and concepts of Blofeld and SPECTRE.

Additionally, it is revealed that the villains of the previous Craig films – Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), and Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) – were all really working for Spectre.

Blofeld has operatives steal the "Heracles" bioweapon and lure Bond to a meeting of high-ranking Spectre agents in the hopes of infecting and killing him.

This incarnation wears a jacket without lapels and has a full head of hair, reminiscent of the Donald Pleasence, Charles Gray, and Telly Savalas versions of the character, respectively.

In the James Bond comic books by Dynamite Entertainment, Blofeld appears as the main antagonist in the Agent of SPECTRE arc, which ran between March and July 2021.

[18] Behind his veneer of respectability as a shipping billionaire, Blofeld is the leader of the resuscitated SPECTRE global criminal organisation, which had been thought dismantled since the end of the Cold War.

Blofeld appears in the end of the 2004 video game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, with the likeness of Donald Pleasence, voiced by Gideon Emery.

Legends, released prior to Blofeld's appearance in Spectre, portrays a feud with 007 that is not related to the film, thus rendering the video game non-canonical to the cinematic timeline.

[23] In 1987, an edition of Saturday Night Live presented a skit called "Bullets Aren't Cheap", featuring Steve Martin as a particularly penurious Bond.

That evening's musical guest Sting portrayed a villain called "Goldsting", who wore a Nehru jacket and, like The Big Cheese, carried a stuffed bunny rabbit.

Similar to The Powerpuff Girls example, General Viggo (a white Persian cat) is the villain of the video game Fur Fighters, while his pet is a small mutant human named Fifi.

One of the two main villains of the 2005 video game TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Khallos, is heavily based upon Blofeld, being presented as an evil genius with a white cat.