# Kill Bill: help me spot the references (maybe spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 12, 2003, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941 "2003-10-12T01:45:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Evil\_Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecccb3/32.png) [@Evil\_Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Death)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2003, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/81 "2003-10-25T16:40:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by karomon \* > \*\*So I have just gone and seen the movie for a second time. I remembered to pay special attention to the swords in the airplane. I’m almost positive now that every seat has its own katana holder on the side. The Bride has hers in it, as do the people behind her and in the seats across the aisle. The seat directly next to Bride, however, is vacant, and there is no sword, but there is definately a holder for it! \*\* Having checked again, I concur. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Quasar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Quasar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Quasar)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/82 "2003-10-27T07:08:46Z")
I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned elsewhere, but Hattori Hanzo is also the name of a character from the video game _Samurai Showdown_. ---
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/83 "2003-11-09T11:51:00Z")
Some neat things I have notice… The beginning scene with the gun hidden in the ceral box. The name of the ceral is KA-BOOM ceral. There are some references back to 1970s kung-fu movies. There are some shots where Uma was send sprawling backward - all we see is a top-down camera view of her flying back. This is the technique used in old Kung-fu show of yore before “wire-fu” has been perfected. “The Blood Splattered Bride” recalls a rather famous Chinese martial art move, “The Bride with White Hair” (Ba Fai Mo Ri Zhuan, pardon my imperfect hanyu piyin), which is something about a bridge and her groom being ambushed on their wedding day by various members of the martial art world because the groom is from the sect of the good guys and the bride is from the sect of the bad guys, and so the ‘good guys’ plan to stop the wedding. The movie is ahem, all about the Bride with White Hair seeking revenge on those good guys, one by one. The novel, from which the book is based on, is written by Gu Long. The mace-thingy which Go-Go uses is known as the “Xie Di Zhe”, or literally “Blood Disc”. At the beginning it was just a morning star, a varitation therefore, but when the spikes are out, it’s what old Kung-fu movies called the Xie Di Zhe (again, imperfect hanyu piyin). [spolier] The showdown at the House of the Blue Leaves is very typical of katana fight-scenes, as anyone who had watched Japanese anime would know. The typical scene of two samurais dashing at each other, passing through and then freeze a distance from each other, and one making a comment of a sort before collasping, is very, very Japanse [/spoiler] Something about Kill Bill vol 2 Having seem a shot of Kill Bill vol 2 of Gordun Liu’s character, he looks like a typical Kung-fu master from a Chinese show and he was teaching the Bride some tricks with the sword. Seriously, white-hair and all, but it’s really from those 1970s or 1980s show, not the stylish Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero. I am looking forward to vol 2, 'cos they sa it will be based on influences from Kung-fu movies, my favourite genre. ---
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/84 "2003-11-09T12:12:33Z")
The Bride with White Hair has a sequel. It is in part 2 where the Bride goes on a killing rampage. One more correction - the wedding was not disrupted by people attacking, but by the so-called good guys maligning the bride of doing some evil deeds. The groom believed the good guys and the bride was so disraught that her hair went white in one night (yes, that’s urban legend, I know). FYI ---
**Author:** ![Kyomara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8edcca/32.png) [@Kyomara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyomara)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/85 "2003-11-09T12:43:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zsofia \* > \*\*Maybe this is a dumb question, but why is it that while everybody speaks pretty good Japanese, nobody seems to be able to pronounce “yakuza”? They rattle off well-prounounced paragraphs and then go “yaKUza”. Is that some reference I don’t get? I assume the audience for a movie that assumes you saw _Battle Royale_ can safely assume you’ll know what they’re talking about. \*\* This really bothered me, especially since I saw the movie in a theater full of Japanese people. There are very few “well-pronounced paragraphs” in this movie. Uma Thurman’s tough-guy Japanese admonishments made most of the people in my theater giggle. She gets props for speaking as well as she does considering that she learned it for a movie and had to study sword-fighting at the same time, but her pronunciation is pretty rotten for a lot of it. Lucy Liu does quite a bit better, which is why it was all the more annoying when she would suddenly lay down a real clunker in the middle of an otherwise solid reading. And Uma Thurman’s pronunciation of “Ishii” that makes it sound like “Easy E.” I was also really thrown off by Sonny Chiba’s “Hey hey! You Amerlican! You supiiku berry berry goooo Japaneeeez!!” ridiculousness when Uma first walks into his sushi shop. On further consideration, though, it occurred to me that Chiba’s over-the-top performance might be based on the silly English in old Kung Fu movies, and that (get ready for a stretch here) _Uma and Lucy’s bad pronunciation is meant to be a reversal of that old Kung-Fu movie convention._ That is, they are Westerners speaking bad Japanese instead of Asians speaking bad English. A possibility. But c’mon, how is O-Ren Ishii gonna become the queen of the Japanese underworld without ever learning to speak properly?? ---
**Author:** ![Kyomara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8edcca/32.png) [@Kyomara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyomara)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/86 "2003-11-09T12:46:31Z")
Oh, and one more thing to Uma’s credit: Her pronunciation was good enough that the Japanese distributor did not feel any need to give her subtitles. That’s probably saying something. And I guess her line about “leave all your arms and legs here. They belong to me now” was pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Griffin)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/87 "2003-11-09T14:30:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SolGrundy \* > \*\* > The only reference that bugged me was the one to Trix cereal commercials. In the trailer, O-ren asks The Bride if she thought it was going to be that easy, The Bride basically says “yes,” O-ren replies “Silly rabbit” and they cut it right there. I wish the movie had stopped there; dragging it out was kind of clumsy. That’s a nit-pick, I know, but it still bugged me. \*\* There was a reason for dragging it out. If you look at the name on the airplane ticket she purchases, it says “Beatrix Kiddo”. [http://elitemrp.net/killbill/hername.jpg](http://elitemrp.net/killbill/hername.jpg) Of coarse she had many passports to chose from… ---
**Author:** ![dantheman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dantheman/32/9421_2.png) [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/88 "2003-11-09T14:59:06Z")
When I saw the scene in which The Bride is coming from Tokyo and noticed her sword by her side, I immediately wondered how she got it past Customs. Then I figured that since she was coming from Tokyo, it might not be out of the ordinary for passengers to have them. Not knowing a darn thing about Japan, I figured that the culture was such that when a person is carrying such a sword, he or she would use it with honor and not go slaying all the other passengers or the pilots. Or something like that. I can convince myself of a lot of things while watching a movie! ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecccb3/32.png) [@Evil\_Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Death)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/89 "2003-11-09T23:11:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Griffin \* > \*\*There was a reason for dragging it out. If you look at the name on the airplane ticket she purchases, it says “Beatrix Kiddo”. > > [http://elitemrp.net/killbill/hername.jpg](http://elitemrp.net/killbill/hername.jpg) > > Of coarse she had many passports to chose from… \*\* The Bride also calls herself Beatrix, as does Vivica Fox’s character. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Griffin)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2003, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/90 "2003-11-09T23:16:15Z")
Possible reference to Beatrix Potter? (Silly rabbit) ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/91 "2003-11-10T01:17:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Griffin \* > \*\*Possible reference to Beatrix Potter? (Silly rabbit) \*\* Uh, no, that’s mighty far off the mark! But I don’t expect non-Americans to get the joke. In the U.S., Trix is the name of a fruit-flavored breakfast cereal for children. Commercials for that cereal feature a cartoon rabbit who’s always coming up with some ridiculous scheme for getting some Trix. His schemes always fail, and the commercials always end with children saying “Silly rabbit- Trix are for kids!” ---
**Author:** ![dantheman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dantheman/32/9421_2.png) [@dantheman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dantheman)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/92 "2003-11-10T01:19:44Z")
I thought the same as you, **The Griffin**. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/93 "2003-11-10T03:35:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kyomara \* > \*\*Oh, and one more thing to Uma’s credit: Her pronunciation was good enough that the Japanese distributor did not feel any need to give her subtitles. That’s probably saying something. > \*\* No matter how bad she did it, she can always take comfort in knowing she did a better job than Sean Connery in _Rising Sun_. ---
**Author:** ![Alias](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@Alias](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alias)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/94 "2003-11-11T02:38:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by look!ninjas \* > \*\*I swear I posted a follow-up on Hattori Hanzo last night. What happened, I couldn’t say. But if you want more info on him, I’d try [this](http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/6753/HanzoHattori.html) site. > > \*\* I don’t think Hattori Hanzo was a real person. I can’t find the link I want to use right now to back that claim up, but if you look at Sonny Chiba’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002002/) listing, you’ll see that he’s played characters with that name a few times. I think it’s more of an homage to his earlier work than to a person who actually existed. ---
**Author:** ![red\_dragon60](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@red\_dragon60](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/red_dragon60)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/95 "2003-11-11T03:34:10Z")
Anyone catch the out-of-the-trunk shot with Sophia? It’s Tarantino’s trick shot, and he works it into every movie. See the beginning of Reservoir Dogs for an example. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/96 "2003-11-11T05:23:17Z")
I saw Tarantino a few days ago on some talk show. He said that he actually is in the movie for a couple of seconds. It’s in the shot in the House of Blue Leaves when the camera pans over all the writhing, twising bodies and severed limbs. He’s in there someplace, he says, all covered in blood with a Kato mask on. ---
**Author:** ![Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941/97 "2003-11-11T05:26:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Alias \* > \*\*I don’t think Hattori Hanzo was a real person. I can’t find the link I want to use right now to back that claim up, but if you look at Sonny Chiba’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002002/) listing, you’ll see that he’s played characters with that name a few times. I think it’s more of an homage to his earlier work than to a person who actually existed. \*\* The name actually comes up a lot in Japanese legends and folk tales. Whether Hattori Hanzo was real or not, the name goes back a lot further than classic Sonny Chiba movies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kill-bill-help-me-spot-the-references-maybe-spoilers/206941.md?page=4)