After years of speculation, it's finally happened — Quentin Tarantino has confirmed that his movies are connected. Phew, finally. I wasn't sure how much longer I could go on being completely convinced but having no solid proof. It was making my brain tired. But Tarantino has finally decided to give us a break, by acknowledging what we've all suspected; there's a method to his madness. According to an interview he gave to The Project , Tarantino's films inhabit one of two worlds:
There’s the realer than real universe, alright, and all the characters inhabit that one. But then there’s this movie universe. And so From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, they all take place in this special movie universe. So basically when the characters of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, when they go to the movies, Kill Bill is what they go to see. From Dusk Till Dawn is what they see.
So basically, everyone thinks they're real at all times, but there's a story-within-a-story aspect happening, where some characters are further away from us than others. There are the characters in the movie we're watching, and then there are the characters that are being watched by the characters in the movie we're watching. Get it? It's OK if not, because in the words of Hateful Eight star Kurt Russell, "It’s even deeper than you think." But in the interest of making things a little clearer, here are some of the connections that I think I've puzzled out so far.
Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill
Uma Thurman's character Mia Wallace describes a pilot that she starred in as a knife specialist, that just so happens to correspond to the plot of Kill Bill, which Thurman also starred in in real real life. So we know Pulp Fiction is real, Kill Bill is not.
Reservoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers
First, we learn that Vic Vega of Reservoir Dogs and Vince Vega of Pulp Fiction are brothers, which means both those movies are in the realer than real universe. Then we find out that Vic's parole officer is Seymour Scagnetti, who has a brother of his own, Jack Scagnetti, who's in Natural Born Killers. So then all three of those movies are in the realer than real universe. Not that you can tell that from the parody trailer above.
Kill Bill and Django Unchained
And then another time in Kill Bill, when Budd buries The Bride alive in a grave, that grave belongs to Paula Shultz, who's the wife of a former dentist named King Schultz who now — you guessed it — makes his money bounty-hunting. Specifically in Django Unchained, which suggests to me that Django is not then part of the realer than real universe.
Big Kahuna Burger
Nope, that's not the name of a Tarantino movie, you're right. But it is the name of a burger joint within the Tarantino universe. We just don't know which one. Big Kahuna Burger gets name-dropped in Pulp Fiction, From Dusk til Dawn, Death Proof, Reservoir Dogs and Four Rooms, which would normally make me suspect that those films were all in the same world, but since we know Pulp Fiction is real and From Dusk til Dawn is not, I can't make that claim. So what I'm wondering instead — is Big Kahuna Burger maybe so popular in the realer than real Tarantino universe that it gets referenced in the special movie universe as well? That's the only explanation I can think of that makes any sense, and it already makes my brain hurt.
So at least we gave you a couple steps in the right direction here. I have a feeling that by the time Tarantino is at the end of his career, we'll be able to connect every movie he's ever made to every other one, but in the meantime, happy hunting for connections, y'all.
