SPECTRE ("Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion")[1] is a fictional organisation featured in the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, as well as films and video games based in the same universe.

The presence of former Gestapo members in the organization can be considered as a sign of Fleming's warnings about Nazi fugitives after the Second World War, as first detailed in the novel Moonraker (1954).

Members are drawn in groups of three from six of the world's most notorious organisations — the Nazi German Gestapo, the Soviet SMERSH, Yugoslav Marshal Josip Broz Tito's OZNA, the Italian Mafia, the French-Corsican Unione Corse, and KRYSTAL, a massive Turkish heroin-smuggling operation.

The organisation's third appearance is in the eleventh novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963) where Blofeld, hired by an unnamed country or party—though the Soviet Union is implied—is executing a plan to ruin British agriculture with biological warfare.

By this point, the organisation has largely been shut down, and what remains is focused on maintaining Blofeld's alias as Dr. Guntram von Shatterhand and his compound in Japan.

Their objectives have ranged from supporting Dr. Julius No in sabotaging American rocket launches, holding the world to ransom, and demanding clemency from governments for their previous crimes.

Its long-term strategy, however, is illustrated by the analogy of the three Siamese fighting fish Blofeld keeps in an aquarium aboard SPECTRE's yacht in the film version of From Russia with Love.

For example, in the film Thunderball, it simultaneously blackmails a Japanese double agent, distributes Red Chinese narcotics in the United States, kills a defector to the USSR on behalf of the French Foreign Ministry, and threatens NATO with stolen nuclear weapons, while continuing ordinary criminal operations such as advising on the British Great Train Robbery.

To heighten the impact of executions, Blofeld had been known to focus attention on an innocent member, making it appear his death is imminent, only to suddenly strike down the actual target when that person is off guard.

SPECTRE is headed by the criminal mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld who usually appears accompanied by a Chinchilla Silver Persian cat in the films, but not in the books.

This particular example of numbering is perhaps deliberately borrowed from revolutionary organisations, where members exist in cells, and are numerically defined to prevent identification and cross-betrayal of aims.

In the novel, Blofeld electrocutes one member in his chair for sexually molesting a girl who had been kidnapped by the organisation; he had previously strangled a second to death with a garrote and shot a third through the heart with a compressed-air pistol.

Later, the John Gardner Bond novel, For Special Services introduces a revived SPECTRE led by Blofeld's daughter, Nena Bismaquer.

Although Bond ultimately prevents SPECTRE from reforming, the organisation continues under the leadership of Tamil Rahani to play a part in Role of Honour and Nobody Lives for Ever.

The next Bond novelist, Raymond Benson, reintroduces Irma Bunt, Blofeld's assistant, in his short story "Blast From the Past", which is a sequel to You Only Live Twice.

SPECTRE also serves as the primary antagonist of the film, orchestrating a plan to humiliate and kill James Bond as revenge for the death of Dr. No.

In film number six, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Blofeld develops a biological warfare program and plans to demand clemency and recognition of a claimed title of nobility.

The organisation returns in the rebooted Daniel Craig series of Bond films, which are set in an entirely separate universe to the earlier movies.

This iteration of SPECTRE returns in the 2021 film No Time to Die, where they remain at large despite Blofeld's imprisonment and attempt to assassinate Bond in Matera.

The main antagonist of the film, Lyutsifer Safin, seeks revenge against the organisation after Blofeld ordered Mr. White to murder his entire family.

Although the From Russia with Love game mirrors much of the plot of the eponymous film, it uses an organisation called OCTOPUS rather than SPECTRE to avoid copyright issues.

The organisation however didn't appear in the comic books until Eidolon, a miniseries published by Dynamite Entertainment in 2016, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Jason Masters.

Loyalists endured as plants and sleeper agents in the aftermath of a Warsaw Pact surge, waiting for the right moment for SPECTRE to have a reformation and resurgence.