Blofeld is the leader and founder of SPECTRE, "Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion". First appearing in Ian Fleming's novel "Thunderball", he went on to appear in a number of film versions of the 007 stories. He is the archetypal evil genius and has inspired many a parody and imitator. He is notable for always owning a white persian cat and wearing a form of Nehru jacket in the films.
His origin is never really explained in the films, but in the novels it is mentioned that he was originally from Poland, and destroyed all records of his existence in the chaos of WW II. According to the books he periodically gets plastic surgery to mask his identity; this can easily be used to explain his changing appearances in the films. Based on his description in the novel version of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", he implicitly has suffered from a syphilis infection at some point in his life. He is also responsible for the death of Bond's wife, Tracy.
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