Are You a serious Quinten Tarantino Fan and still looking for facts about Pulp Fiction that you might have missed?
Then read on as you might find some here.
Pulp Fiction, the epic 1994 crime movie by Quentin Tarantino with tons of hidden details we try to explain in this post, is arguably one of the best movies of all time.
Several stories intertwine which are in some way all connected (even though you don’t realize this until you watch the movie completely).
We have to admit that this is our favorite movie, not simply because of the amazingly constructed plot, but also because the movie gets better and better the more you watch it.
Very few movies have this quality, and that’s the main reason we believe it’s an absolute masterpiece of cinema.
Even if you watch the movie a dozen times, there will still be things you don’t quite fully understand or things about Pulp Fiction you don’t realize yet.
In this list, we go all-in and try to create the ultimate list of Pulp Fiction facts and trivia, while trying to explain the movie plot in ways you most probably didn’t come across yet anywhere else.
1. Pulp Fiction Can Be Watched Chronologically
The main reason you need to watch the movie several times to get everything is that it intertwines 3 main stories about the leading characters.
Everything that happens in the movie takes place in two days and can be broken down into 8 main sections:
- A prologue
- An epilogue
- 3 preludes
- 3 main segments
If you place each of these segments correctly, you can actually watch Pulp Fiction in the correct chronological order of events.
We feel this is important as it will explain some of the connections we will put to dialogues and events that appear to be random, but actually aren’t.
Let’s take a closer look.
Flashback Story Of The Golden Watch
The golden watch plays an important role in the movie, as it’s the main reason one of the main characters, Vincent Vega, gets killed.
The reason why Butch values the watch so much is elaborately (and with all bells and whistles attached) explained by Captain Koons, a man who spent time with his late father in a POW prisoner camp during the Vietnam war.
Later in the movie, it becomes very clear that this story has had a big impact on the young Butch, and he will do whatever he can to retrieve it, even if it means risking his own life.
Jules Winfield And Vincent Vega In The Car And Apartment
Two hitmen working for crime boss Marcellus Wallace, Jules Winfield, and Vincent Vega, are driving up to an apartment to pick up a mysterious briefcase.
It’s clear that it’s the first job the two men are doing together in a long time as Vincent explains he has been in Europe for a while and he explains how they call a quarter pounder with cheese in France, a Royale with cheese.
Obviously, this is a reference to the famous hamburger scene inside the apartment where Jules mentions that “hamburgers are the cornerstone of a nutritious breakfast.”
Walking down the hallway of the apartment, another important discussion is going on as Vincent explained in full detail how a foot massage is a highly erotic thing, reason enough to kill a man if he would ever touch his wife’s feet. This refers to a later event, namely Marcellus’ wife overdosing in his company, which is way more reason to be killed than a foot massage.
The most important event, after retrieving the briefcase, is Jules and Vincent being shot at by one of the guys hiding in the apartment bathroom. None of the bullets hit the two men.
Jules sees divine intervention, Vincent merely sees a case of good fortune. An opinion that will determine the future of the two men later on in the movie.
The Bonnie Situation and the Wolf
As the two men are driving away from the apartment after killing three guys and picking up their associate inside the apartment, Marvin, and Vincent can’t stop the discussion about divine intervention.
He wants Marvin’s opinion on the matter, and when leaning back from the front seat still holding his gun, he shoots Marvin in the face causing a huge mess.
Obviously, they can’t keep on driving around like this so Jules calls one of his partners Jimmy, his only friend living in the area near Toluca Lake.
It’s clear from the initial discussion at Jimmy’s place that he isn’t too happy with the two guys intruding on his morning routine with a body with its head blown in the trunk of their car.
There’s only one solution, which is presented by Marcellus Wallace: Call The Wolf!
The Wolf solves problems, and the way it looks at this point, the 3 men have one. Even more so because Jimmy’s wife Bonnie is about to arrive home from the graveyard shift at the hospital, and is known to be an explosive figure who will wave with divorce papers the moment she sees the 3 guys doing some gangster stuff.
After Jules and Vincent are properly showered with Jimmy’s garden hose, the car is disposed of and Jules and Vincent head over to the diner to have a relaxing breakfast.
The Diner Opening Scene
This is where the movie starts. A couple of low-life criminals called Pumpkin and Honey Bunny discuss how easy it is to rob restaurants, and better yet, collect everybody’s wallet.
The last statement will turn out to be a big mistake at the end of the movie.
The Diner Closing Scene
The last scene of the movie also takes place in the Hawthorne Grill diner and shows how Pumpkin and Honey Bunny execute the plan they discussed in the first scene.
Before this, however, to make Pulp Fiction chronologically correct, we see the discussion Jules and Vincent are having inside the diner. Moving the topic from pork chops to miracles is very significant because Jules clearly explains why he feels he needs to quit life after the miracle he witnessed earlier that day.
As Vincent goes to the bathroom, the robbery starts.
The result: As Pumpkin tries to collect Jules’ wallet, he also wants the briefcase and gets held at gunpoint himself. To solve the situation, he offers him all the money in his wallet, and that works to resolve the predicament they are in.
Jules and Vincent tuck their guns into their volleyball shorts and head over to Marcellus Wallace to deliver the mysterious coffer.
Gold Watch Scene On Current Day
It appears that the story told by Captain Koons was a flashback to Butch’s childhood years, a dream he still has about this story (which basically shows how important the watch really is to him).
It appears Butch is in the middle of a boxing fight and as the scene ends, is all pumped up to head back to the ring.
Vincent Vega And Marcellus’ Wife On A Date
Remember the foot massage story from the scene in the car earlier?
Nothing compares to what happens as Vincent brings Mia Wallace, the wife of Marcellus Wallace, back home.
As Vincent cools down in the bathroom, she’s overdosing on the heroin Vincent bought earlier that day from his drug dealer Lance.
Luckily, in an epic scene of suspense, the adrenaline shot Lance has in his house works out and Vincent is finally dropping Mia off safely at her house while ensuring Marcellus never needs to know anything about this.
The Gold Watch Full Episode
The boxing match of Butch is happening at the same time Mia and Vincent are having their “date.” This scene begins right after the boxing match, and it’s clear Butch ripped off Marcellus and bet on himself rather than going down in the fifth.
The next morning, Butch discovers his girlfriend Fabienne forgot his father’s gold watch at their apartment and there is no other way to retrieve it than to go back, knowing Marcellus’ and his associates will be waiting for him to kill him.
And it’s true, Vincent, who is yet again in the bathroom, gets killed by Butch the moment he comes out.
As Butch drives away with his gold watch, he runs into Marcellus and both of them get into a fight that ends in a dodgy-looking pawn shop.
Before they realize it, they are trapped in the basement with a couple of rapists (one of them a cop) and Marcellus is the unlucky one.
Butch, however, manages to escape, kills the rapist, and frees Marcellus, which effectively clears his debt.
Whatever happens to Zed, the cop-rapist would make our list of medieval torture techniques look like a walk in the park. Well, most of them. 🙂
Butch then takes Zed’s chopper, goes back to the hotel, and drives off with his girlfriend to freedom in Bora Bora.
The End.
As you can see, Quinten Tarantino deliberately shuffled all these scenes, making it hard to understand how just about every event and dialogue in the movie connects.
Apart from explaining all these things, we’ll provide you with a lot of other facts and trivia about Pulp Fiction that you might not have noticed or know just yet.
2. Only $5 Million was paid to the actors
Despite having some of the best-paid actors in history in the movie, the combined salary of the actors was only $5 Million.
Obviously, at the time, John Travolta was just being relaunched and Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman became big starts because of Pulp Fiction.
Overall, the movie cost just $8.5 Million to make, and after a week it made $9.3 Million. In total, the movie generated a total amount of $213 Million.
Additional note: $10 Million was spent on marketing.
3. It took a long time to reach $100 Million
It took a total of 178 days for it to generate $100 Million.
Compared to many other blockbusters, this is a very long time as it usually only takes days to reach this amount.
This is probably due to Pulp Fiction being played on much fewer screens than its counterparts.
4. Pulp Fiction wasn’t released first in America
The first place the movie was shown was at the film festival in Cannes, France in May of 1994.
Afterward, it was shown at movie festivals around the world, finally arriving at the movie festival in New York on September 23, 1994.
What’s even more interesting is that the movie was released in theatres in Japan, South Korea, and Slovakia before it was released in American theatres.
5. The F Word
Swearing and cursing play a major part in the movie. So much that the F word is used 265 times.
Obviously, we are dealing with a crime movie here so it would be unrealistic not to have the main characters swearing non-stop.
Reservoir Dogs, another of Tarantino’s crime movie masterpieces even tops the profanity level used in Pulp Fiction as the F word is used 269 times in it.
6. Samuel L. Jackson Nearly Wasn’t In It
Samuel L. Jackson’s career officially took off due to his epic role as Jules Winfield in Pulp Fiction. Better yet, the role of Jules was specifically written for Samuel by Quinten Tarantino.
You would imagine that this is reason enough to consider the audition to be a mere formality.
That’s not correct.
Quinten was so blown away by the audition of Paul Calderon that he nearly hired him instead of Samuel.
Reason enough for him to fly back to Los Angeles to audition again, and most probably put in a little more effort to assure he got the role.
7. What’s “Martin and Lewis or Amos and Andy?”
Vincent and Mia have a night out at the Jack Rabbit Slim’s restaurant and are being served by Buddy Holly, the waiter played by Steve Buscemi.
When Mia orders a $5 shake, much to the surprise of Vincent that there isn’t even liquor in it, Buddy Holly asks Mia how she wants it, Martin and Lewis or Amos and Andy?
In reality, he is simply asking if she wants a Vanilla Share or A Chocolate shake. Martin and Lewis were a white comedic duo and Amos and Andy black comedy sitcom.
8. Trouble if Vincent uses the bathroom
Vincent goes to the bathroom 3 times during the movie, and every tie something really bad happens.
The first time, he finds Mia overdosing after their night out. The second time, he actually gets killed by Butch and in the final scene, he comes out of the bathroom to find himself in the midst of a robbery at the diner he and Jules are having breakfast.
(Not so) Fun fact: Vincent is a heroin user and constipation is one of the side effects.
9. Walking the earth versus getting killed
Jules and Vincent have completely different opinions as to why they didn’t get killed in the apartment earlier that day.
Jules believes it’s divine intervention, and God is showing him he needs to change his ways or something really bad will happen.
Vincent dismisses this and plays it off as a stroke of luck. It happens, people shoot each other all the time and sometimes miss.
As the movie has shown us, Jules was right as he is the one moving on with his life after delivering the case to Marcellus, and Vincent is the one being killed by Butch while taking on the job of finding him and guarding his apartment (where his girlfriend forgot his gold watch).
10. Is Jules Rufus in Kill Bill 2?
Quinten Tarantino loves to use characters from his old movies to star in new ones. There are several examples of this (which you will learn about later on) and of those is the role of Jules.
As you know, Jules decides to become a drifter who walks from place to place to get on adventures.
In Kill Bill Volume 2, Samuel L. Jackson appears as a piano player called Rufus, most likely this is Jules from Pulp Fiction.
11. The dance wasn’t good enough
At the diner, Mia has her mind set on getting the trophy in the dance competition. She will win it whatever it takes.
Not quite.
While Mia and Vincent give their best, one would assume that they won the contest because they are holding it when they walk towards Mia’s house.
In a later fragment, however, you can hear on the radio (all be it very quietly) that the trophy has been stolen, which simply means they lost the competition and then stole the trophy.
12. Vincent’s reference to his car
Before he picks up Mia to go on their “date” (referred to by Vincent as keeping his friend’s wife company), Vincent buys heroin from his drug dealer Lance.
As the deal is going on and the conversation moves to the topic of his car, the 1964 Chevelle Malibu, it’s clear how much he loves the car when he found out somebody keyed it.
Later that day, as he found Mia overdosing on the couch, he seems to forget all about his love for his car as he drives it wildly through red lights and crashes it into Lance’s house.
After all, his life is at stake if the situation isn’t resolved.
13. Foot massage reference
Who can forget how passionately Vincent Vega described the importance of a foot massage? (which is essentially Quinten’s unable to hold his horses when he wrote the script as he is known to have a serious foot fetish).
During this conversation, he clearly states that he didn’t think Marcellus overreacted when he threw Tony Roccamora over the balcony into a greenhouse.
The irony is that later on in the movie, he finds himself in a much worse predicament with Mia than Tony did.
14. Did Vincent give Mia an adrenaline shot?
The most suspenseful moment in the movie is when Mia is overdosing in Lance’s house, while he is looking for an adrenaline shot.
As Lance gives a perfectly logical explanation as to why he doesn’t want to give her the shot (“you brought an OD b*tch inside my house, so you give her the shot”), Vincent leans back and plunges the needle into Mia’s chest.
So it appears.
In reality, Vincent actually pulled the needle out of Mia’s chest, and the footage was reversed to make it appear as if he is plunging with the syringe, while in fact, it was the other way around.
15. Whose gun killed Vincent?
I think that just about anybody who watched the movie for the first time (or even after multiple viewings) thinks that Vincent simply left his gun on the kitchen counter and Butch kills him with his own gun.
Actually, the gun belongs to Marcellus Wallace.
When Butch drives off, we can see that he encounters Marcellus who left his gun at the apartment to buy coffee and doughnuts.
Obviously, you can’t bring a gun that big to the coffee shop, and Vincent simply had his revolver in his pocket.
16. The gun theme in Pulp Fiction
As you would expect from a crime movie, guns play a major role in Pulp Fiction. However, the guns in the movie haven’t been used the way they should.
- In the apartment, the shots fired by the guy storming out of the bathroom miss both targets (Jules and Vincent) completely.
- While driving away from the apartment, Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the face.
- Marcellus’ gun, which he left on the kitchen counter of Butch’s apartment, is used by Butch to kill his partner Vincent instead of Butch himself.
- In the diner, the guns used by the two robbers, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, are ineffective as it’s Jules’ gun that prevents the robbery from succeeding.
17. Quinten Tarantino playing Jimmy
Apart from being a great director, he is also more than a decent actor. In Pulp Fiction, he plays the role of Jimmy, a friend of Jules who is burdened by the situation of the two gangsters arriving at his house in a blood-trenched car.
He actually considered playing the role of Lance as well, the drug dealer selling heroin to Vincent.
The reason he decided to play Jimmy is that he wanted to be behind the camera for Mia’s overdose scene.
Fun fact: The person behind the camera during Jimmy’s scenes was Robert Rodrigues, the director who collaborated with Tarantino on several other projects later on, including “From Dusk Till Dawn.”
18. Uma Thurman wasn’t the first pick
Despite her epic performance as Mia Wallace, Uma Thurman faced a lot of competition when it came to getting the role.
Isabella Rossellini, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Meg Ryan, Alfre Woodard, Halle Berry, Daryl Hannah, Rosanna Arquette, Joan Cusack, and Michelle Pfeiffer all auditioned for the role of Mia, with Michelle Pfeiffer being Quinten’s personal favorite when he wrote the script.
In other words, Uma must have done the audition of a lifetime to beat the competition.
19. Vincent’s car the Malibu
In Pulp Fiction, Vincent owns a 1964 Chevelle Malibu. In real life, the car actually belonged to Quinten Tarantino himself.
After the shooting of the movie, the car was stolen and found back nearly 2 decades later when a couple of kids were found stripping an old car.
After running a check of the vehicle registration number, the car appeared to be the Malibu used in Pulp Fiction, belonging to Quinten Tarantino.
20. Honey Bunny the rabbit
One of the robbers from the first and final scene of the movie is played by Amanda Plummer and is called Honey Bunny.
The woman typing out the script of Pulp Fiction, Linda Chen, actually had a rabbit named Honey Bunny.
Quinten Tarantino one day refused to take care of the pet, and when the rabbit died shortly after, he decided to give it a permanent place in history by naming a character in his movies after it.
Whether or not the rabbit would be happy with this is doubtful as the character isn’t exactly a real “Honey Bunny.”
21. A stroke of luck for John Travolta
Just as the role of Jules Winfield, was specifically written for Samuel L. Jackson, Quinten Tarantino wrote the role of Vincent specifically for Michael Madsen, who did an excellent job when playing the role of the psychopathic “Mr. Blonde” in Reservoir Dogs.
2 weeks before the script was finished, however, Michael Madsondropped out to play the role of Virgil Earp in the “Wyatt Earp” movie.
Out of necessity, a new actor was needed and that’s how John Travolta had a chance to get the role of Vincent Vega.
22. Vincent Vega is the brother of Mr. Blonde
As Quinten Tarantino loves using characters from previous movies in new movies (as we have seen with the role of Rufus in Kill Bill Volume 2), it appears he made Vincent Vega the brother of Mr. Blonde (Vic Vega) from Reservoir Dogs.
In fact, had Michael Madsen played the role, it would have been his identical twin brother.
23. Jules’ wallet
In the final scene, we see Jules has a wallet with the imprint saying “Bad Mother F*cker.” That wallet actually belonged to Quinten Tarantino.
The imprint is a reference to the theme song of “Shaft”, a role Samuel L. Jackson actually went on to play himself.
Did this wallet reference help him to get the role in the Shaft movie? 🙂
24. The role of Marcellus Wallace
Another actor who had a stroke of luck to play a role in the movie was Ving Rhames, who went on to get the role of Marcellus Wallace.
The role was actually already reserved for Max Julien. Luckily for Ving Max refused to take on the role because he refused to do the anal rape scene.
If he was happy doing the anal rape scene himself is doubtful though.
25. Who keyed Vincent Vega’s car?
We already learned that Vincent Vega was very fond of his 1964 Malibu. What isn’t clear yet is who keyed it.
A lot of speculation has been spread about the person who should be sent straight to execution (according to Lance).
Quinten Tarantino resolved the mystery himself though and admitted it was Butch who did it to get back at Vincent when he insulted him in Marcellus’ club.
26. When Marvin gets shot
As Jules and Vincent drive away from the apartment where they retrieved the mysterious briefcase, they are accompanied by Marvin.
Jules and Vincent are still discussing whether they experienced a miracle or a freak occurrence.
As Vincent leans back to ask Marvin’s opinion, he says the following:
“You got to have an opinion. Do you think God came down from heaven and stopped the…BOOM!”
The moment he wants to say “bullet’ the real bullet comes flying out of his gun, blowing off Marvin’s head.
27. Different words in the first and final scene
In the diner, the moment the robbery begins, Honey Bunny starts screaming at the people eating there.
However, in the first scene, the words are clearly different than the words in the last scene:
- Opening Scene: Any of you f*cking pricks move, I will execute every motherf*cking last one of you!
- Final Scene: Any of you f*cking pricks move, I will execute every one of you motherf*ckers!
Is this a mistake?
Apparently, Tarantino did this on purpose because in the first scene, we are experiencing the situation from the view of the robbers, and in the final scene from the view of Jules.
In other words, it’s to emphasize that the movie is non-linear.
28. Tarantino is a Kool & The Gang Fan
This is made evident by two things:
- When Jules and Jimmy arrive at Jimmy’s place, Jules uses the words “That’s Kool And The Gang” when trying to comfort Jimmy in the situation.
- When the conversation between Jules and Vincent starts and the radio switches channels, the track playing is “Jungle Boogie” which is a song by Kool & The Gang.
29. Mia And Vincent’s Dance
The dance scene in which Mia and Vincent try to win the trophy (which they later on steal) isn’t unique.
It’s actually an imitation of Gloria Morin and Mario Mezzabotta’s dance in the 1963’s film, 8½.
30. Connection between Pulp Fiction and Die Hard
After shooting Vincent Vega and driving away from his old apartment, he’s listening to “Flowers on the Wall” by The Statler Brothers.
As he is singing along to the lyrics he is saying “Smoking cigarettes and watching captain kangaroo.”
In one of the scenes of the “Die Hard With A Vengeance” movie, Samuel L. Jackson asks Bruce Willis’ character John McClane what he’s been doing.
His answer: “Oh just smoking cigarettes, watching captain kangaroo.”
Another fun fact: The gold watch he just retrieved was left on a small kangaroo tchotchke, probably the main reason he appears so happy singing along to the song.
31. Shot Bystander at car crash scene
After Butch runs over Marcellus Wallace, Marcellus starts shooting his gun, even though he’s clearly still messed up.
That’s the reason why he shoots an innocent bystander who’s helping out Butch after his car crash.
That bystander is the same woman pulled from her car by Mr. Pink in “Reservoir Dogs.”
32. The irony of Marcellus Wallace getting raped
There are two elements as to why it’s ironic that Marcellus gets raped in the movie, one being his own sayings and one reference Jules makes during the apartment scene.
Marcellus says the following:
- “In the fifth, your ass goes down.”
- “Set the dogs on his ass”
- “If he goes to Indo-China I want a nigger in a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his ass.”
Jules says the following:
“Marcellus Wallace doesn’t like to get f¨*cked by anybody except Misses Wallace”, when he’s referring to Brett screwing over Marcellus over the case.
33. What was in the coffer in Pulp Fiction?
The mysterious briefcase has been debated for many years. Some argued it must contain the soul of Marcellus because, in one scene when he’s seen from the back, he has a bandaid on his neck.
Others speculated it must have been Elvis’ gold suit from “True Romance” because when the case is opened there appears a golden glow.
In the original script, however, the case simply contained diamonds, but because Tarantino thought this was too similar to the content of the briefcase in Reservoir Dogs, he never revealed it to spur the speculation.
This tactic clearly worked out just fine.
34. Butch’s Honda Civic…
…is, in fact, his girlfriend Fabienne’s car as she clearly asks “where is my car” when Butch arrives in Zed’s chopper.
The interesting fact though is that this is the same car used in both “Jackie Brown” and “Kill Bill Volume 2.”
35. Marcellus Shot
Quinten Tarantino got a lot of inspiration from other movies and isn’t afraid to use the things he likes on his own.
The shot in which Butch stops before the red light and sees Marcellus Wallace is taken directly from the “Psycho” movie.
36. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny’s plan
When Pumpkin and Honey Bunny discuss robbing the restaurant, they remembered a good idea one of them had: Not just stealing from the cash register but lining up the people and stealing their wallets.
This is another reference to a short movie made nearly a century before Pulp Fiction, namely “The Great Train Robbery” from 1903.
37. Line from True Romance
The line used by Fabienne, “Any time of the day is a good time for pie” is the exact line used by the main character of the movie “True Romance” “Alabama” which was written by Quinten Tarantino.
38. Mia Wallace’s Fox Force Five character…
…called Raven McCoy is actually a reference to 3 characters from X-Men:
- The name Raven is a reference to Raven Darkholme.
- McCoy is the last name of Beast Hank McCoy.
- Mia describes that character was raised by circus performers, just like Kurt Wagner, the Nightcrawler.
39. The Gimp
The Gimp is a mysterious character that seems to be trapped in the pawn shop’s basement.
This character actually inspired the mysterious Stig from Top Gear and not just that, it was its original name.
Unfortunately, they had to change it as no race driver wanted to use the name. I wonder why? 🙂
40. Butch was much younger in the original script
Matt Dillon was the first choice for the role of Butch as in the original script, the boxer was much younger. Sylvester Stallone and Mickey Rourke were also considered for the role.
When Matt hesitated too long to accept the part, the character was tweaked so it would fit Bruce Willis.
Fun fact: Bruce Willis originally wanted to play Vincent Vega and was a bit disappointed he had to play Butch.
41. Kill Zed
Zed was killed because of a subliminal message picked up by Butch in the pawnshop. In the shop, he sees a neon light saying ‘Killian’s Red’ with some letters missing so it reads as ‘Kill ed.’
The moment he picks up Zed’s keys, which contain a hanger with a big Z, he decides he has to go back and Kill Zed in the basement.
Butch however never got to actually kill Zed, as he was still alive when Butch escaped the pawnshop and was surely killed by Marcellus.
42. Original posters are worth money
On the original posters created for Pulp Fiction, Mia is seen smoking a cigarette from a box of Lucky Strikes.
Unfortunately, as the first batch of posters was printed and sent out, Miramax realized they didn’t have legal rights to use Lucky Strikes in their advertisements, and the company tried to sue.
Did you get your hands on some of those original posters? They are selling for $100’s on places like eBay right now.
43. Ezekiel 25:17
Jules’ speech before executing Brett is one of the most memorable moments in movie history.
He claims that the passage is from Ezekiel 25:17 in the Bible, but in fact, only the last two lines are from the actual passage.
The passage used in Pulp Fiction actually comes from Karate Kiba, a martial arts film starring, Sonny Chiba released in 1973. The American version of this movie starts with this passage:
The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the iniquity of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper, and the father of lost children. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious anger, who poison and destroy my brothers; and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard when I shall lay my vengeance upon them!
44. Why did Marcellus Wallace have a bandaid on his neck?
When Marcellus Wallace is explaining to Butch how he can become rich and kick it in the Caribbean (a plan he already has but not by agreeing to Marcellus) by going down in the fifth, he has a big bandaid on the back of his neck.
Some speculate that this is where his soul left as it moved into the mysterious briefcase.
The answer is much simpler as he cut himself shaving, and Quinten Tarantino thought it was a good idea to take the shot from Marcellus in this scene from the back, clearly depicting the place where he cut himself.
45. Marvin was supposed to be shot twice
In the original script, the unfortunate associate of Jules and Vincent, Marvin, was actually supposed to be shot twice.
The first shot would have hit him accidentally in the neck, after which Vincent would have had to shoot him in the head as a mercy kill to end his suffering.
Obviously, the goal of this scene is to keep the situation funny, and they simply decided that the one accidental shot should blow Marvin’s head straight off.
We believe that this worked.
46. Bullet holes in the wall
If you take a close look at the scene in the apartment, the moment before the guy comes storming out of the bathroom, there are already bullet holes in the wall.
Whether or not this is a continuity error or a deliberate act of the director is up for debate as it remains unclear.
47. Vincent walks into the diner
We all know that during the robbery in the diner, Vincent was in the bathroom.
What you probably didn’t notice during the first scene, is that you can actually see him walking to the bathroom, which is moments before the actual robbery begins.
Just pay attention, you’ll see him walking by wearing his volleyball t-shirt.
48. Captain Koon’s speech
It appears that Christopher Walken didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for his monologue to the young Butch as he was doing another movie at the time.
He did however come fully prepared and did something unusual during takes.
What was that?
Drinking Tabasco!
Because the monologue is so long, it helped him to stop his mouth from drying out during the long speech.
49. Jules’ Hair
Originally, Jule’s character was supposed to have a giant afro. Unfortunately, the person sent to the wig store was a white guy who didn’t know the difference between an afro and a Jheri curl, so he came back with the latter.
Luckily enough for him, Samuel liked it and pointed out to Quinten that this was the type of hairstyle of gangsta rappers like Ice Cube and Easy-E, meaning it would certainly do well in a crime movie.
In other words, a trip back to the wig store wasn’t needed as they went for the Jheri curl look for Jules Winfield.
50. Tarantino crediting his old friends
Outside the boxing arena, we can see two fights being announced on the billboards. One is Coolidge Vs Wilson, which is a reference to the American presidents and the second, and the second one is Vossler vs Martinez.
The second fight is actually a reference to two of Tarantino’s friends who worked at the same movie store with him called Russell Vossler and Jerry Martinez.
51. Why is Pulp Fiction called Pulp Fiction?
Finally, if you still don’t know why the movie is called the way it is, let’s illuminate you with this final fact about Pulp Fiction.
From Wikipedia:
The film’s title refers to the pulp magazines and hardboiled crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence and punchy dialogue.
That’s it for now, hope you fund some new goodies in the list and if you know any other, please let us know!
