Line #67 Headscratchers/KillBill


1	'''As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
2	----
3	!!How does this technique work?
4	* Depending on how literally you take the name of the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, it could be possible to survive by sitting in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. This is rendered moot if the one character hit with it was ready to die -- and that person debatably managed six steps anyway.
5	** [[FridgeBrilliance Perhaps it was just the time it took to exert the energy normally expended in the time it took to take five steps?]]
6	** Reading the script (which offers a deeper relationship between The Bride and Bill), she does it to give Bill a decent and honorable death. He was completely ready to die (as he says to the Bride: "You will defeat. And I want you to defeat me. But I just can't give it to you that easily), and he chose to stand up (in the movie, in the script he dies standing on a beach) and die.
7	** A minor nitpick, but I believe that the name actually refers to the five points on the victim's body an attacker needs to strike, not to the number of steps to be made afterwards. That these two numbers match is probably a coincidence.
8	!!The Classroom scene
9	* What was with the scene in the classroom after they reveal The Bride's name?
10	** ...BigLippedAlligatorMoment?
11	** Another point I think was that once the name was revealed for real, that classroom scene was done to be absolutely sure the viewers understood that yes, that was her name. But that's just my take on it.
12	** I thought it was to indicate that 'Beatrix Kiddo' ''isn't'' the Bride's real name, given that there's also a girl called Mary Whorehouse in there.
13	** I always took the 'Mary Whorehouse' line to be what Beatrix really thought about that kid when she was young.
14	** "Melanie Harhouse."
15	** Agreed with the second answer. It's just a funny way to show that Beatrix Kiddo is indeed The Bride's true name, by showing her in an elementary school class full of "kiddos" and participating in roll call.
16	!! "This... is for breaking my brother's heart"
17	* All this talk about Budd being a douchebag seems true until you remember what he says to The Bride as she's lying in the coffin: "This... is for breaking my brother's heart"; he really does believe that they all deserve to die, but family comes before everything and, as said in the WMG page, he probably did see Elle killing him coming, but couldn't live with the guilt of killing The Bride in such a deceitful way, so allowed it to happen... or maybe this is FridgeBrilliance?
18	** If you ask me there's nothing remotely noble in either Budd's or Bill's point of view, because the whole thing is predicated on the idea that a woman leaving a man who doesn't feel like being left, for the excellent reason that she doesn't want her child to grow up in a murderous international gangsters' underworld, is guilty of a capital offense, not just for her but for a chapelful of other people (but if you can get your baby cut out of her alive and raise it yourself, that's okay, because the bitch had no right to take it in the first place). People hardly ever defend O-Ren, Vernita or Elle for their part in the massacre, but for Bill and Budd, because their motives were personal they're automatically worthy of consideration... even though they were the personal motives of an abusively possessive boyfriend. If you want to have a BattleCouple carrying on a career of amoral professional killing and still have the relationship between them be tender and touching, [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief fine. I'll watch that.]] But you can't successfully blend the two. There is no swallowable code of martial-arts-movie ethics that makes "There are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard" an admirable thing to say.
19	*** No one is asking you to sympathize with anyone in this movie except The Bride. Seriously, being played by David Carradine doesn't make someone who ordered the slaughter of a wedding rehearsal not an irredeemable evil bastard. The Bride isn't much better, being a former assassin, but at least she tried to get out of it, and her quest for vengeance was more or less justified. In the words of the cool-hatted-Linkara "there's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory, and actually ''being'' sympathetic."
20	*** It isn't an admirable thing to say, and it isn't meant to be. Bill isn't saying, "You broke my heart, therefore you deserved this," he's saying, "When you break the heart of a murdering bastard, he's going to react by doing some murdering." He's not saying he's ''right'' for doing it, he's stating the simple fact that a murdering bastard tends to react to things that piss him off by murdering.
21	*** He didn't know it was his until just before he shot her in the head. He didn't even know she was alive until she was engaged to Tommy and assumed Tommy was the father. It's partly personal but there's also a nobody leaves the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and lives to tell the tale mentality to it.
22	** Budd's concern about his brother and his recognition that Kiddo deserved better than she got appear to be the extent of Budd's honorability. He shot Kiddo with rock salt and buried her alive. Are you interpreting this differently than I am? BTW, I was personally disgusted that he went from being an elite assassin to working as a bouncer in a redneck desert bar. To have the opportunity and training that so few can, and to be so ungrateful for that, marks him as the worst scum out of the whole bunch.
23	*** "Ungrateful"? He didn't get a scholarship, he was a ''trained killer''. Maybe he had a good long think after.
24	*** Bill cast Budd out of his world for some not-explained-in-story reason. It's alluded to in dialogue but never really explained.
25	** Budd's alcoholism, maybe?
26	** It seemed Budd felt somewhat disgusted by the assassin life after the El Paso massacre and probably had his falling out with Bill at least partially due to that event.
27	** The fact that Bill lets the Bride kill him with hardly a fight and then go on to a happy ending with their daughter shows that Bill agrees he is the bad guy of the film and that Beatrix was right to not want [=BeeBee=] to grow up to be an international assassin. The only question is whether he had the HeelRealization before or after he pulled the trigger and nearly killed her at the wedding rehearsal. It would seem to be after.
28	!!The Bride's Hair
29	* The Bride's hair in Volume 2. is a conundrum for me. Up through the big fight with Elle, her hair is quite long. Afterwards, during her visit with Esteban and the final confrontation with Bill, her hair has shortened to a bob. OK, one could argue she got an offscreen haircut. But then when we see her with BB at the motel, her hair is back to being as long as it was at the start of the movie. I find it hard to believe that much time had passed between scenes. Obviously very small, but it just bugs me.
30	** There's no indication how much time passes. Her hair is long and blonde "four years and six months" ago when she's shot, then she's in the hospital where presumably it grows a bit. The timeline jumps around a bit. We only know that her visit to Esteban is after the Pussy Wagon dies and (presumably) after she kills the first four people on her list. It appears that enough time has passed, maybe a couple of months, between her visit to Esteban and her visit to Bill for the bob to grow out a bit, but it's not as long as it is in the earlier scenes, nor as short as it is when she visits Esteban. She gets the hell beat out of her in each fight, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that she takes some time to heal in between and get ready for the next one.
31	!!Sending Elle
32	* Why did Bill send Elle on the mission to the hospital to poison the Bride? Didn't he know ahead of time that he would order her to abort?
33	** No, he didn't. He sent her there to do it, then got second thoughts when it was about to happen.
34	** Or, Elle set out to poison the Bride on her own initiative without asking Bill. Makes sense, since she clearly likes Bill and is obscenely jealous of the Bride for being the one woman he loves. Lucky for the Bride, Bill found out what Elle was planning to do and stopped her at the last moment.
35	** Except that Bill clearly says, "Elle, you're gonna have to abort the mission.", implying that he was the one who sent her there to begin with.
36	*** That's obviously a valid interpretation, but I still beg to differ. Because the explanation he gives for aborting implies that he feels pretty strongly about what Elle was going to do; it looks like some of his - undoubtedly rather peculiar but no less real for that reason - core moral principles were touched, which makes it unlikely he would have given such an order in the first place. As for the "abort the mission" - well, that might just be their ordinary way of talking; the "mission" word needn't necessarily imply that it was him rather than Elle herself who initiated it. As in, "I understand why you've decided to initiate and undertake that mission, but you'll have to abort it."
37	** Maybe Bill wasn't sure if the Bride was really in a coma or not until Elle was actually standing over her and she didn't react. If she's shown any sign whatsoever that she was starting to recover, Elle would've killed her then and there.
38	!!They call her "The Bride"
39	* More of a meta JBM, but why does everyone refer to Uma Thurman's character as "The Bride?" She has a name, just like everyone else, and its Beatrix Kiddo. I get that she was credited as "The Bride" in vol. 1 but she has a name.
40	** Because her name is a bit of a spoiler, since the movie goes out of its way to conceal it until most of the way through the second film.
41	*** OP here, now its been a while since i saw the movie, but i don't think it was that big of a plot point, yeah they do avoid using her name, but was it a big earth shattering revelation? I think not.
42	*** It's not a huge one, no, but it's something that the movie deliberately hides for effect (there's a bit on the FridgeBrilliance page, I believe, that says it helps illustrate her relationship with Bill), ergo it's a spoiler. Plus, "The Bride" could be seen as [[RuleOfCool a cooler way to refer to her]] than just by her name.
43	*** I can't remember exactly where I read it, but apparently Tarantino said her name was deliberately omitted in Vol.1. so the audience wouldn't sympathize/identify with her just yet (cause Vol.1. was more focused on action and violence; the story didn't really fully materialize until Vol.2).
44	** All of the advertisements, wallpapers, merchandise, and credits related to the first movie referred to her as "The Bride". She spent more time in our minds under that name than as Beatrix, so of course that's what people might refer to her as. Especially during the period before the second movie was released.
45	** The newspaper headlines refer to her as a "blood-spattered bride," as well.
46	** It's a shout-out to Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name".
47	!!Rent in Tokyo
48	* What about the whole scene in "House of Blue Leaves" isn't rent in Tokyo outrageous, there is no way that a restaurant can make enough profit to sustain that giant building which undoubtedly has equally giant rent.
49	** It's clearly more than a restaurant, given it's got a big dance hall, stage for live events, and private rooms. Plus, O-Ren who, remember, runs the whole Yakuza, probably owns substantial stock in it.
50	** It's implied that the Yakuza do a lot of "deals" out of the place, which might include prostitution and drugs. It could be a money-laundering front, as well.
51	!!Elle's motives for murdering Bud
52	* If Elle killed Budd because she felt that the Bride deserved a better death than being buried alive, then why was her condition for meeting with Budd, "She must suffer to her last breath"?
53	** More importantly, if she was so eager to kill The Bride herself, why did she let Budd do it (or well, try to off her)? Elle could've just told Budd to keep her alive until she could get there to finish the job.
54	** Budd told Elle that The Bride was sufficiently subdued so that he could easily finish her off if he or Elle wanted. So Elle either figured a) The Bride would probably die of whatever injuries Budd had to inflict on someone so inherently dangerous to put her in that condition before she got there, or b) killing a Bride who was already on the verge of death would be so anticlimactic, it would be utterly unsatisfying and a huge letdown, so Elle basically said to Budd "fuck it, kill the bitch, but make it painful". At that point, Elle, royally pissed at Budd for robbing her of her grand showdown with The Bride, decides to off him, so that she gets at least ''some'' satisfaction in killing a hated enemy, even if it's one she doesn't respect.
55	** Elle was secretly afraid of taking on the Bride in a fair fight, her trying to kill the Bride while she was comatose and poisoning Pai Mei's food makes her seem someone afraid of confronting someone equal or stronger than her despite her bravado, and only fought when she had no choice. And she killed Budd because she doesn't care for him and wanted to keep the money, with the snake an excuse to blame it on the Bride.
56	!!How many people in the Crazy 88?
57	* How many people were in the Crazy 88?
58	** 87.
59	** From Website/ThatOtherWiki: "There are only 40 actors accredited to the Crazy 88, however a frame-by-frame count performed by Jonathan R. from Bouncing Ferret Films shows 82: 67 killed, 12 maimed, 1 killed by an axe thrown by somebody else, one possibly killed, one spanked." I guess we should assume that there are only forty in-universe and the rest are stunt people or extras.
60	*** I think you've got it backward there. If we see 82 of them, then there's at least that many in-universe. They probably just reused the actors or filled the ranks with stunt people.
61	*** Didn't Bill say exactly how many of them there were?
62	*** No, just that there isn't really 88 of them.
63	*** Maybe there were originally 88, but a few of them died during O-Ren's takeover war.
64
65	!!Busting out of the coffin
66	* How exactly did The Bride get out of the coffin? I mean, no way that tiny hole was big enough to escape through.
67	** Of course not. If you actually, you know, ''watch the scene'', you'll see she doesn't make a "tiny hole," the board breaks down the length, which she would have, you know, made bigger as she got out?
68	** The real question is not how The Bride got out of the coffin itself (after destroying the lid), but how she dug her way out of all that dirt that collapsed atop her when the lid shattered...
69	*** Willpower, bruh, willpower.
70	!!Nikki's Age
71	* It really bothers me that Vernita Green's daughter at the beginning of Vol. 1 is supposed to be four years old, and yet she's very articulate, carries around a big backpack, and has her own dog. She doesn't even look 4 years old, or 5 for that matter. It's just a really small detail that bugs me a lot, since Vernita's family life is supposed to be realistic in comparison to the Bride's fight scenes.
72	** The young actress was born in 1995, making her seven at the time of filming and eight upon the film's release in 2003. DawsonCasting.
73	** Not sure what you mean by "realistic" when it comes to family life. There really wasn't a lot of time devoted to Vernita's chapter. I think what is "realistic" about this film are the character reactions and interactions, certainly not the dialogue (it's Tarantino of course!). I mean, I think it makes sense that a "4-year old" would react the way Nikki did, quietly confused about what she saw.
74	*** Assuming she's not a prodigy or something, why would a 4-year-old even be attending school yet? Most likely Nikki was born ''before'' the Vipers' attack on the Bride. Indeed, hearing Bill speculate about recruiting Vernita's child into the Vipers once she was old enough might be why Beatrice was convinced she ''had'' to disappear.
75	** Nikki is in pre-school or Junior Kindergarten.
76	** For that matter, the Bride is 9 months pregnant or damn near when she gets shot. Vernita may have been pregnant during the beatdown, but its not likely considering she's, you know, delivering beatdowns willy-nilly. Assuming she's not pregnant at the time, Vernita would have had to quit the DIVAS the next DAY, meet a dude, get married/pregnant in order to have a kid in the same year as the Bride.
77	*** She could have just had Nikki before the attack on the Bridge.
78	** I'm thinking that The Bride had to be between 5 and 9 months, far enough to be showing but not so far that she couldn't participate in a wedding. Also, Vernita had to be pregnant at the time, The girls are too close in age. My guess is that she was about 2-3 months. If Vernita was 3 months and The Bride was about 7 months (and more than likely gave birth prematurely due to the beating) that would put the age difference between B.B and Nikki at about 6 months.
79	!!How'd she miss?
80	* How did Vernita miss shooting the Bride? Apparently firearms aren't one of her specialties.
81	** TruthInTelevision. [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy In a high adrenaline situation, accuracy tends to go to hell fast.]] That and, yeah, firearms ''weren't'' her specialty. She an expert in hand-to-hand combat, not marksmanship.
82	** Also, she was shooting through a cereal box. There's no way she could have lined up the sights, so her aiming was going to suffer.
83	!!The Script
84	* So, the end credits say the movie is "Based on the character the Bride created by Q&U" (Quentin and Uma, according to Wikipedia.) But near as I can tell, these films are the first time the Bride has actually been used--it's not like Tarantino wrote a book or a comic with the Bride in it before ''Kill Bill'' got made. So why's it there?
85	** This was covered in an interview or commentary somewhere. Uma and Quentin invented the character on the set of ''Pulp Fiction'' and worked on it for years before he wrote the script for ''Kill Bill''.
86	*** More specifically the idea for "Fox Force Five", the show that Mia Wallace was supposedly an actress for, eventually became the [=DIVAS=] of Kill Bill.
87	!!Hattori's mind change?
88	* The Bride asks Hattori Hanzo to make a sword for her. He initially refuses until she tells him that she's going to use it to Kill Bill. What prompted Hanzo to change his mind and actually make the sword was The Bride saying that he had an "obligation", because Bill was (I think) one of Hanzo's students at some point. But why? Why would Hanzo have an obligation to help Bill's murderer? Do teachers in this world have some sort of ongoing obligation to make sure their students don't go evil? Is this a martial arts thing or a case of ValuesDissonance?
89	** Hattori Hanzo stopped making things that kill people, which on the surface means swords, but in a sense, he also "created" Bill by teaching him. He can put his remaining swords on a rack where nobody will ever wield them again, but Bill is probably most murderous of his former students. By helping The Bride to eliminate Bill, he is un-making one of the "things that kill people" that he'd made. He kept only the swords that have sentimental or aesthetic value, presumably the rest, the ones that had no value other than their utility in killing people, were destroyed.
90	** It seems to be a far from unusual plot element in Asian works, at least Chinese and Japanese ones. A teacher bears some responsibility on what their student does with their teaching (it could be considered as a trope, in fact). If said student goes evil, it's a duty for the teacher to stop the student if possible. At the very least, the sin of the student bears on the teacher's shoulders. We can see an example of this in ''Anime/SamuraiChamploo'', in the ''Lethal Lunacy'' episode. That is, if said student doesn't have a family able to handle the issue, because the family's duty precedes the teacher's (we see it for example in ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'': when Asuka finds out that Jin is her cousin, she makes it a personal duty to fight him and his evil plans). This isn't even a specifically Asian trope, but it turns up more frequently in Asian works than European ones. (Disclaimer: I am neither Asian nor an erudite in comparative philosophy. Anyone who knows better feel free to butcher this puny post.)
91	** Totally agree on this. Many martial art movie plots have a master's student#1 did very awesome but turned evil, and then the master is now honor-bound to train or aid another person to stop student#1. Also can be found in ostensibly non-Asian works like ''Franchise/StarWars''.
92	!!Prolly should have used stealth
93	* One thing always made me wonder, why did The Bride rush into Budd's trailer from the most obvious entrance like that? Sure she could have assumed that he was asleep, but that was very naive, both in terms of the secret agent industry and common sense. Logically, wouldn't it have made more sense to make it a one-on-one fight, like with the others? Or to catch him at a more appropriate time, while he was going to work, while he was at work or while he was otherwise occupied? Just seems out of character to me (but suits the story well I must admit).
94	** The Bride underestimated Budd. Budd was playing a pretty good game of ObfuscatingStupidity mixed with IKnowYouKnowIKnow. She figured that Budd was just a washed-up drunk and she could charge in and finish him off in one stroke. Meanwhile Budd knew The Bride was watching him and probably knew that she would try to get him at his home. Or maybe she thought that he would try some more sophisticated way of trapping her instead of the simple, yet effective, measure of waiting by the front door with a shotgun.
95	!!That sounds like overkill
96	* How is shooting up someone's wedding when they are pregnant than finishing them off with poison while they are in a coma a more worthy death than shooting them with rock salt and burying them alive?
97	** It's not the how that's important, but the who. Elle didn't really care how the Bride died, as long as she (or Bill) was the one who killed her. While she absolutely hated the Bride she had the utmost respect for her abilities (as shown in her monologue to Budd) and felt that Budd was nowhere near worthy enough to kill her. On top of that, Elle mentions when about to poison the Bride that she felt that dying in your sleep is a rare luxury. To an assassin, to allow one to die in their sleep with very little pain definitely seems like a worthy alternative to being buried alive and Elle did likely believe that statement. She had the Bride dead to rights in that hospital and could've done whatever she wanted to her (before Bill calls it off at least) but she chose to simply poison her and let her die in her sleep. Then again, she seems to have a preference to poison in the first place so that might be mere coincidence. But one thing is for certain. She did not feel that the Bride should've died to someone as "unworthy" as Budd.
98	*** Additionally, it's very possible that Elle changed her mind during the ensuing 4 (5?) years.
99	!!Who's the father?
100	* Something that's been bugging me for a while: did Bea tell Tommy she was pregnant with another man's kid or she just lied that the kid was his?
101	** You'll have to lose your imagination on that one. It would depend on how long they knew each other before getting married. Since she was already pregnant when they met, it would have to be a very fast courtship, and she'd have to lie when the baby was born [[ThreeMonthOldNewborn "premature."]]
102	** It's also possible Tommy knew and simply didn't mind. There are indeed stepparents out there who lovingly help raise their stepchildren, and Tommy did seem like a nice guy, if a bit dim.
103	!!She evades the police
104	* How was the bride not caught? She killed two people at the hospital, one in a very bloody manner and another a staff member, then she spent 13 hours on one of the victim's car on said place's parking lot. She then drives around on the impossible to miss truck.
105	** Upon finding a stranger and one of your staff messily killed in a coma wing, and one of the patients missing, which would you assume was more likely? That the patient miraculously woke up and kicked the crap out of her caregiver and somebody who'd just wandered into the clinic without authorization, or that a group of people had ''kidnapped'' the patient for reasons unknown, and the staff member chanced upon the abduction in progress and managed to kill one as the criminals were beating him to death? The ''last'' place you're going to search for the presumed kidnappers is the parked truck of the dead would-be rescuer.
106	** No, it's a valid point. She took Buck's keys. A security person with half a brain would have looked for his truck down in the parking lot to see if it was stolen. But if she broke out at night, then closed the door to the coma ward, it's possible that nobody noticed until well after the next shift began.
107	*** I mean, like with ''John Wick'', with the criminal underground being such a stronger force than in our universe, maybe the police would just not care?
108	!!Swords on a plane
109	* How can the bride bring her sword on a plane? Was airport security so lax?
110	** Look around at the other passengers on the plane. They have katanas. Look around at the people in the airport after the Bride arrives in Tokyo. Every other person appears to have a katana. Hell, the airplane appears to have katana holsters built in to the seats. ''Kill Bill'' clearly takes place in a RuleOfCool Universe where katanas are standard issue.
111	** Also, there's a theory that all of Tarantino's films are all under one shared universe that is branched off somewhere from our own (much like how the ''Star Trek'' TV series has a regular universe and a Mirror Universe), that somewhere in our past, the reality of Tarantino's universe branched off from ours, and that what sets it apart is that it's more violent than our reality (which would explain how in ''Inglourious Basterds'' Adolf Hilter dies in a movie theater at the hands of two U.S. soldiers and a Jewish woman seeking revenge instead of committing suicide in a bunker after he realized that he was about to go down). So, since this universe is populated with violent people throughout its history, it would make sense that a Japanese air flight service would allow for the carrying on of samurai swords (and even include sword holders on their seats for those carrying them).
112	!!Shouldn't she exsanguinate?
113	* How, exactly, did the Bride avoid bleeding to death after she killed O-Ren? She had a sizable slashing wound on her ''back'', where she couldn't have reached it to bandage it or sew it up, and she couldn't exactly go to a hospital for treatment under the circumstances. The only sort-of-an-ally she's got is still in Okinawa, and it's a safe bet that nobody but Sofie would be left in the building by the time she returned from the garden.
114	** Because she's a badass? [[{{Determinator}} She managed to get up minutes after she awoke from a four-year coma.]] Pretty sure a giant wound on her back wouldn't slow her down, considering the beating she endured in the two films.
115	** It's cold enough to be snowing, cold slows circulation and blood loss. She falls on her back in the snow, allowing it to pack the wound. That would really slow things down.
116	!!Discarded Chopsticks
117	* How does someone who already knows Japanese and is an expert in two different Asian martial arts not know how to use chopsticks? Then again, that could be from fatigue.
118	** It's from fatigue and from the fact she's been punching her hand into a block of wood for hours and hours on end. See how well ''you'' can work chopsticks with bruised and bloodied hands.
119
120	!!Shouldn't she use a katana, too?
121	* Why, in-universe, is Vernita the only target who the Bride does not bring her katana to kill with? Out of universe QT probably wanted to give the Hatori Hanzo sword a proper build-up and explosive debut in the Tokyo battle.
122	** Vernita was a knife-fighter, not a swordsman like the rest of the squad was. Beatrix challenged (or attempted to, in the case of Budd) each member with her "unfinished business" catchphrase and defeated them (except for, again, Budd) in their own element. It makes more than enough sense that Beatrix wanted to give Vernita a fighting chance (as she did everyone else) to defend themselves. And what better way to get your revenge on the knife-fighter of the group than to beat her at her own game?
123
124	!!What if Baby asks?
125	* What is Beatrix gonna tell her daughter about what happened to her father when she gets older?
126	** Nobody knows. Possibly that he had a heart attack (technically true).
127	*** A better question is how she'll explain it when Nikki comes knocking.
128
129	!!That dude in the white shirt?
130	* I see some people saying that in the animated sequence of O Ren's backstory, the guy in a white suit who killed her dad was Bill. Has this been stated by WordOfGod somewhere? Why on earth would O Ren work for and apparently even have a ''relationship'' with the guy who killed her dad? Especially when she was hellbent on revenge towards Matsumoto, the guy who gave the order and then killed her mom.
131	** It's been a long time since I've watched that sequence, but I believe the evidence is that the animated character has a ring very similar to the one Bill wears. As for why; well, I'm about to go into some wild mass guessing speculating on her thoughts, motivations, and rational, but consider the following. As you said, she was hellbent on revenge towards Matsumoto. He ordered it, he's responsible. Bill was just the weapon used. It's also possible, maybe even probable, that seeing Bill's skill is what inspired her towards violent means in the first place. And, assuming for a moment that Matsumoto was Bill's primary employer at the time, Bill was likely the first person to find O Ren after she was done killing him and his goons. He's now out of a job and she's demonstrated a considerable talent for violence at a young age, and she knows how good at killing he is. Imagine her reaction to him offering to train her, to give her the same kind of skills he has, the same power he has, power over life and death. Power she's seen for herself. For a little girl who knows what it's like to feel helpless, and who likely never wants to feel helpless again, that's a tempting offer. I'm also not sure I agree with the apparent fan theory that Bill had relationships with all the women in the [=DiVAS=] - he's technically only confirmed to have had a relationship with the Bride; a relationship with Elle is only strongly hinted at in the film. I don't see any evidence that he slept with O Ren or Vernita, but like I said, it's been a while since I've seen vol. 1.
132	*** I think relationship meant just working for the man and not being in a romantic relationship.
133	** One argument I would like to make against the theory that the guy in the white suit was Bill is the fact that Bill is not Japanese. (At least not full Japanese, we don't know who his biological father might have been.) Admittedly I don't know much about Yakuza hiring standards, but considering [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Boss Tanaka's disgust at O-Ren's takeover,]] it's not unreasonable to think there is some xenophobia in the organization. And even if Bill did work with the Yakuza, would he have been brought along on a job seemingly important enought that the boss was present? Without the right racial background, he might have been left to smaller jobs. For a real-life example of this kind of thing, look at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski Richard Kuklinski AKA 'The Iceman']] who worked as a hitman for the Italian mob. (Yes, I know there are big differences between the Yakuza and the Mafia, but it was the only organized crime comparison I could think of off the top of my head.) Kuklinski was terrifyingly good at his job and received a measure of fear and respect from his employers because of it. However, because he was Polish instead of full-blooded Italian, he was never officially a member of any of the crime families and served more as an 'independent contractor' for all of them. Would Bill have been left to a similar role, assuming he was permitted to do any work with the Yakuza in the first place? If someone with more knowledge on the subject wants to chime in and correct me on any of this, feel free. I freely admit I'm no expert on the subject.
134	*** I assumed she killed the assassin, possibly with Bill's assistance and she gave him the ring, or its a ring common to swordsmen assassins.
135	** Rewatching the animated sequence recently and looking out for this specific theory, I don't think O-Ren would have seen his face. The potential Bill performed the coup de grace on O-Ren's father and handed Boss Matsumoto his sword while standing right next to the bed, and as such she would have had to recognize him by his shoes if anything, even if he wasn't Bill. We get the benefit of camera angles to see everything happening, but O-Ren is stuck with a few degrees of vision from her hiding spot under the bed.
136
137	!!Using a literal black mamba
138	* Why of all the possible ways to kill Budd did Elle use a Black Mamba? Bill, as far as we have seen, is not a moron. He knows that Kiddo would stick Budd with her sword, or some other "face your' enemy" type attack, Ellie should know this, and if it wasn't for Kiddo busting in, she would have gone back to Bill and he would have promptly killed her in the most torturous way possible, she had Kiddos' sword, she could have easily killed him with that brought it back saying kiddo had killed Budd and said Kiddo did it, or something else, like she had just got the sword off of Budd and Kiddo must have gotten out of the grave and killed Budd with his own sword (which would be found in the trailer)
139	** Elle herself felt that Buck gave Beatrix an unworthy death, so she was invoking KarmicDeath upon him, as Beatrix's old codename was, you guessed it, Black Mamba.
140	** Elle was being a jerk to damage Kiddo's reputation (even in death) in Bill's eyes, by making it looked like Kiddo used an unfair method to bump off Budd.
141	*** This is the most likely explanation. Elle may had a begrudging respect (as a warrior) towards Beatrix, and her contempt towards Budd's method of execution may be genuine, but she already had the Black Mamba in the suitcase before Budd told her about the "Texas Funeral".
142
143	!!ImprobablyQuickComaRecovery?
144	* How did the Bride wake up from her coma so quickly, and be able to recover so quickly? She didn't suffer any type of brain damage or anything? I know that she was able to regain use of her legs during the span of only 13 hours in the back of the Pussy Wagon, but even that seems impossible. And how did nobody know that she was out of her coma? Was there no type of alarm or something in the coma ward for if/when patients wake up? And so basically, she was just able to wake up from a coma, and (possibly) the next day just be able to hop on a plane halfway around the world, without suffering from any health problems (physical and mental) whatsoever?
145	** ArtisticLicense. She's an almost super-human ActionGirl, so little things like sword gashes and brain damage don't stop her.
146	** At the moment of her awakening, The Bride was being raped, for which the nurse took out the catheter or alarm or whatever, and also how possibly nobody tried to peek in.
147	** As in the span of time between the awakening and the plane, I highly doubt it was only a day (since her got herself money to dress herself and buy a plane ticket.
148
149	!!Warning Vernita
150	* Why didn't anybody bother warning Vernita Green that Beatrix was awake and hunting down the DVAS? Even if after leaving Sofie at the hospital she immediately took a direct flight to California and then drove straight to Vernita's house, that's an 11 hour flight, enough time for Bill to make a call.
151	** Vernita seems to have retired from killing. Bill might not be able to get ahold of her right away, or she might be trusting in her cover as a soccer mom to protect her. After all, Vernita isn't living the high life of a crime boss the way O-Ren was.
152	** Bill DID warn Vernita. She explicitly makes reference to Bill telling her Beatrix was incapable of reason.
153
154	!!Clean Katanas
155	* Not sure where to put this one, but there's one thing about the Blue Leaves showdown that bugs me to no end: before The Bride fights Gogo, she kills six or so members of Crazy 88, yet her katana stays completely pristine and stainless, there's not a single drop of blood on the blade. Guess this one can be chalked up as a goof.
156	** Perhaps Hattori quality sword doesn't get stained easily, depending on how you cut.
157	** There were plenty of dead bodies lying around that she could wipe the sword clean on.
158	** After killing the sixth member, she swipes the sword downwards, and we hear the blood flicking off. It makes sense in a film where blood is just red-coloured water.
159
160	!!Using a literal black mamba II
161	* Is there even a way to handle an extremely aggressive snake like Black Mamba the way Elle did? Even if she somehow managed to put it asleep before placing it in the suitcase, she couldn't have known that after biting Budd the snake wouldn't attack ''herself''. Oh, and the snake lying still without any sound in a dark suitcase also doesn't look convincing...
162	** Snakes aren't hyper aggressive creatures, they'll lash out at something close by if agitated or threatened by will otherwise avoid things that are too large for them to eat. Budd got bit because he was right there when the case was opened.
163	*** ''Ordinary'' snakes aren't, but Black Mambas are notorious for precisely this reason, which brings us back to the original questions...
164
165	!!Pulling the Trigger
166	* Was it only me to whom it seemed that Bill pulled the trigger to shoot Beatrix earlier than he himself wanted? [[{{Pun}} The trigger]] was the news about Bill being kid's father.
167	** You're not the only one.
168
169	!!Sophie obeys
170	* The Bride tells Sofie to stay put while she fights O-Ren. Why does Sofie obey? I mean, sure, the Bride tracks down each of the D-VAS plus Bill, but only with the information she gets from Sofie. Sofie's chances of hiding and saving her life and remaining limbs seem pretty good.
171	** Sophie is missing an arm so she's not getting far if she runs. She needs medical treatment and that will make her easy for the Bride to find again. Running would just piss the Bride off and result in her being punished. Her best bet was to stay where she was, either O-Ren wins and she gets the help she needs or the Bride wins and she hasn't done anything to further enrage her.
172
173	!!Them hospital bills, tho
174	* Who paid for the Bride's hospital bed while she was comatose?
175	** Possibly Bill? He had to obtain B.B. somehow after all so it wouldn't be too far out of character for him to pay for her hospital bed after getting Elle to back off from her assassination attempt.
176
177	!!Shouldn't e'eryone else be punished, too?
178	* Why was the Bride (very brutally) punished for getting married and having a kid when we knew Vernita was allowed to do this with presumably no consequences at all? Heck, she had to have been pregnant at the time of the murder. Was the Bride attacked because she was close to Bill and it hurt him more and he didn't care what Vernita did, her just being his mook and not a lover?
179	** Any evidence to the contrary, Bill is not a good person. He admits this in his final conversation with Beatrix. As far as he was concerned, he was the one betrayed by Beatrix when she decided to run off with his unborn child and that has consequences. As they say, you live the sword, you die by the sword. And the circumstances of Vernita's pregnancies are unknown, but it obviously wasn't Bill's child and he likely would allowed her to retire, at least for a time, so long as she was up front about it. Beatrix, however, ran because she wanted Bill to have nothing to do with Bebe.
180	*** If we assume Bill runs his syndicate like a gang, then he has similar rules that a gang might and you can't leave a gang unless they let you leave, in which case, Bill will let you go when ''HE wants'' to let you go and Bill wasn't set on letting the Bride go. At least, that's way I read into it.
181
182	!!Bringing a gun to a swordfight
183	* Why is it, that when Beatrix goes to confront Bill at his condo, she walks in a with a gun drawn? In all her other encounters, she sticks with her sword or her fists. In fact, that is the only scene in both movies where Beatrix ''ever'' uses a gun. What even happens to the gun after she sees Bebe is alive?
184	** Perhaps she wanted answers. With her fights against the other members of the DVAS she does not ask for a single explanation for their involvement in the Massacre, not even O-Ren whom she seemed quite close to. But with Bill she might've wanted more gratifying closure, and thus brought a gun in the hopes to forcefully get answers out of Bill at gunpoint that she would not be able to in a straight up swordfight. Or, she just might be that fearful of Bill's overall abilities since in the original script she planned to snipe him from afar rather than engage and only relents when seeing B.B. in the window.
185	!!Nonchalant secretaries.
186	* When Beatrix gets to Bill's condo, there are three people in the background shown for a short moment sitting behind a reception desk, presumably men of Bill. None of them react to her, even though she has a katana strapped to her back. Why?
187
188	!!These people are really nonchalant
189	* Okay so a white American woman enters the House of Blue Leaves, injures a woman (to which everyone is witness) and then kills dozens of people (to which the propreitor is witness) and...no one investigates??? There were clearly civilians there, would the Japanese police really just chalk it up as Yakuza infighting? Also, when Vernita's husband returns home, Nikki will very obviously tell him what she saw: a woman came to the house and killed mom. The two next deaths happened in the middle of the desert, but it seems insane to me that simply no one would investigate the Bride for the massacre at the House of the Blue Leaves and Vernita's murder in the middle of the suburbs.
190	** 1) Plenty of people know that involving yourself as a witness to the business of any organized crime syndicate is bad news. Given that it is clearly a gangster bar, and that O-Ren is well known as the head of the Yakuza, they know better than to stick around, call the cops, or say anything to the police. 2) As far as the police or anyone know, there is no connection at all between the Bride and any of the DVAS. Vernita and Budd have been out of the game for years by this point. Likely, they have obtained new identities and the Bride was under an assumed name as well.

Context Headscratchers / KillBill