Film / Bullet Train

Get on board.

Maria: Get off at the next stop.
Ladybug: Sounds so easy when you say it.

Bullet Train is a 2022 Black Comedy action thriller film directed by David Leitch and produced by Antoine Fuqua. It is based on the novel Maria Beetle by Kōtarō Isaka and was released on August 5th 2022.

Ladybug (Brad Pitt), named that way by his handler, is a former contract killer with ridiculously terrible luck. Recently, he's returned to the job to do a simple mission: grab a small silver briefcase on a Japanese bullet train and get off at the next stop. However, Ladybug's bad luck kicks in again and he's forced to stay on. It then becomes apparent that there is a whole gaggle of shadowy and very dangerous people gathered on this train who are also after the briefcase, and that something else is going on...

The film also stars Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Hiroyuki Sanada, Andrew Koji, Bad Bunny^note credited under his real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, Zazie Beetz, Logan Lerman, Masi Oka, Karen Fukuhara, Michael Shannon, and Sandra Bullock. Not to be confused with the 1975 Japanese film The Bullet Train.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer.

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Bullet Train contains examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade:
  • The Elder and the White Death in particular wield katanas which slice through seats, pierce steel, dismember people, and even cut vertically upward through a torso and out through the victim's head- in most cases without even slowing.
  • The Wolf's Bowie knife is sharp enough to pierce into his chest and kill him on a rebound after bouncing off the briefcase.
• Accidental Misnaming: In a Running Gag throughout the movie, Ladybug keeps getting Cartel leader El Saguaro's name wrong. Maria corrects him every time.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Early in the film, Lemon places a Percy sticker on The Son's forehead, whose actor played the titular hero in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
  • During a fight scene, Ladybug hurls a food item into the face of his opponent much like another R-Rated comedy distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. However, it only succeeds at making the opponent angrier.
  • As it was directed by the man who directed Deadpool 2, a couple nods are to the actors in there.
    • Zazie Beetz played Domino, a superheroine whose main power was being Born Lucky, her so-called "good luck" often getting her out of sticky situations, such as getting electrocuted to death by power wires...which is what happened to Brad Pitt's Vanisher. In this film, Brad Pitt plays a character who is Unluckily Lucky, his so-called "bad luck" often saving him from a death courtesy of Zazie Beetz's character. One could say her luck finally ran out.
    • Zazie Beetz is revealed to be disguised as a giant animated animal. She was saved by another giant animal in said film when the vehicle she is in crashes. Said disguise ends up saving Ladybug in the climax in the exact same way.
    • In an inversion Ryan Reynolds has a two second cameo as an up to now unseen character finally being revealed in a Brad Pitt film.
• Adaptation Deviation: The film is broadly faithful to the book up to about the point the Elder gets on the train and confronts the Prince (even if some of the characterizations greatly vary), but the book finale is Kimura's ex-assassin parents giving the Prince his just desserts. Here, it's a full-on action battle with the main cast's survivors battling the White Death and his army of goons.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • In the book Yuichi Kimura's role in the story ends when he's shot by Lemon, with it being his parents — the book equivalent of the Elder — who take vengeance on the Prince in his stead. Here, he manages to get back on his feet despite that and goes on to help his father battle the White Death despite being badly wounded.
  • The book Wolf was regarded by his fellow assassins as a bit of a joke, only good for being Dumb Muscle or for killing girls and who dies totally by accident when the train shifting causes Nanao (the book's Ladybug) to accidentally break his neck. Even his name was derived from his bullshit stories of claiming credit for hits ("the boy that cried wolf") rather than it being any sort of Red Baron. The film Wolf, on the other hand, is a top Cartel assassin and extremely proficient fighter. Even if he doesn't last much longer than his book equivalent.
• Adaptational Diversity: Besides the Prince being female rather than male, many characters are changed to white, black and, in regards to one character, Mexican, when the predominant cast of the original book were Japanese.
• Adaptational Seriousness: Goes both ways with the twins. The book Tangerine is coldly serious at all times, constantly frustrated with Lemon's mistakes, Thomas obsession and inability to be responsible, while film Tangerine is still lethal but now noticeably more eccentric, being a Sir Swears-a-Lot with a touch of Hair-Trigger Temper and a kleptomaniac to boot. Lemon, by contrast, is far more serious than his book counterpart, with his Cloud Cuckoo Lander quirks downplayed.
• Advertising by Association: "From the director of Deadpool 2," boasts the trailer.
• Alas, Poor Villain: For a group of cold-blooded assassins, there are a few who you can't help but feel sorry for.
  • Wolf lost his mother at a young age and is implied to have no other family members. With no one else to go to, he joins a cartel and becomes an elite assassin, killing wherever he's pointed and taking the valuables of his marks. He eventually falls in love and gets married, only to have it all taken away from him when everyone suddenly dies from poison. Once again losing the only family he had, all he had left was to find the ones responsible and make them pay. And he fails at that when Ladybug accidentally kills him.
  • The Prince is a smug, narcissistic, sociopathic merc who pushed a child off a roof to get someone to do the dirty work for her. Her reasons? She wants her father to notice her, even if it means killing him in the process.
  • The White Death is a vicious Yakuza crime lord who betrayed his leader and destroyed the Elder's life to get where he is. For all his cruelty, he loved his wife, and was so heartbroken when she died that he couldn't bring himself to leave his compound. Which is why he arranged for the assassins to gather on the bullet train to have them kill each other as he holds them all responsible.
• All for Nothing: The White Death's main target? Carver, the one who directly killed his wife. When he corners Ladybug, he tells him that he was only filling in for Carver because he got sick. Frustrated, White Death realizes that his chance at revenge slipped away from him and he decides to attempt to kill Ladybug anyway out of principle.
• Always Someone Better: The Prince finds this out near the end when The Elder outmanoeuvres her.
• Ambiguously Related:
  • The "twins" seems to be a nickname as the two have different races. However, they mention that they are brothers and a flashback reveals they definitely grew up together as such. While the twin thing seems to be metaphorical, they are likely actual siblings, either through adoption, Found Family, or (rarely) biologically. Additionally, they could share a birthday, making them technically twin brothers.
  • The Son and Prince are both the White Death's children, but it is never specified if they have the same mother as well.
• And Another Thing...: After meeting the Prince and Kimura, Lemon looks to leave and continue searching for Ladybug — then turns round and does this, revealing he'd noticed the slip in the Prince's excuses, specifically referring to a briefcase instead of just a case, leaving them frantically trying to talk their way out of being shot.
• Anyone Can Die: It's a movie about the world's deadliest assassins trying to kill each other. What do you think? Out of the ten or so assassins on the train, only four survive: Ladybug, Yuichi, The Elder and Lemon.
• Arc Words: "You put peace out in the world, you get peace back" is echoed in both the trailer and the trailer teaser.
• Artistic License – Anatomy: When the Wolf is killed with a knife to the torso, he exclaims "My heart" (in Spanish). Assuming this is meant to be taken literally, the knife is way too far to the left to have hit him in the heart. It strikes him in the pectoral, where it would more likely have hit a lung or an artery in the shoulder.
• Artistic License - Firearms: The White Death sets up his "Russian roulette" executions by running his revolver down his arm, spinning the cylinder. Modern revolvers lock the cylinder in place, so it won't spin freely when closed. (Old West-style revolvers have a half-cock position which does let the cylinder spin, which may have inspired this move.)
• Artistic License – Law:
  • Japan is notorious for having some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, so it would be highly unlikely for every assassin in the train (most of which are foreigners) to be casually carrying around handguns. (Though justified in context, given that they are assassins or mobsters, and thus are operating outside of the law.)
  • Zig-Zagged with the White Death's mooks. On one hand, many of them carry baseball bats and swords, which are the most popular weapons amongst Japanese criminals. On the other hand, the finale features about twenty submachine guns, when even the largest Yakuza clans would be lucky to have half as many automatic weapons in their entire arsenal.
• Artistic License – Pharmacology: Parts of the plot hinge on boomslang snake venom, which is portrayed as a poison that congeals one's blood and kills in thirty seconds. In real life, boomslang venom can take 1-2 days to produce serious symptoms. However, The White Death states that the surgeon who was to perform lifesaving surgery on his wife was poisoned two nights before, so it's possible that the poison used on The White Death's son and The Wolf's wedding party and the one she attempted to use on Ladybug was modified.
• Assassins Are Always Betrayed: Every single assassin was lured onto the train through various means so the White Death could trap and kill them for their role, however loose, in his wife's death. The only exception is Ladybug, as he's a last-minute replacement for Carver, the one who crashed into her car in the first place.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • Even though they spend the first half of the movie constantly bickering, Lemon and Tangerine are shown to really care about each other. They both get a scene where they mourn the other's death (Lemon's death being fake, Tangerine's being real), and it's clear that despite the bickering, they truly are loving brothers.
  • Though Ladybug's handler is very calm and professional even as Ladybug is freaking out from the mission going to hell in a handbasket, she shows up at the site of the trainwreck shortly after it occurs, and we see in flashbacks that she spent most of the movie heading towards that location. Ladybug is brought to tears by this and calls her the best handler ever.
  • Subverted all to hell when Lemon forgives Ladybug for killing Tangerine and says, "But I found another brother"- but when Ladybug emotionally asks, "Really?", Lemon answers, "Fuck no!!"
• Badass in a Nice Suit:
  • Tangerine and Lemon are very, very effective assassins and both are kitted out in very dapper tailored suits. Lemon's is slightly scruffier, but Tangerine's image fits this to a t at first, getting progressively more dishevelled from his epic fight with Ladybug and then getting back on board the speeding train the hard way.
  • The Wolf is a high-ranking Cartel member and wears a classy white suit at his wedding and at the train. It gets dirtied in both instances, with the latter being by his own blood.
  • Subverted with the White Death, the boss of one of the world's most powerful crime syndicates, who wears a rumpled and disheveled suit. It was originally going to be classier, but Michael Shannon suggested a more disheveled look. This is probable because he was in mourning for his deceased wife.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Technically, The Prince accomplishes exactly what she set out to do. The White Death, her father, accidentally blows his head off by using a pistol that she rigged a bomb to. More than that, she just wanted him to acknowledge her, something he refused to do up to his death. However, even though she witnesses her father's death, her father was already close to death before her rigged gun killed him, with his current wounds and three nearby enemies making it highly unlikely her plan changed his fate. Not to mention, she doesn't get to live long enough to appreciate it as she is run over by a fruit truck moments later.
• Bantering Baddie Buddies: The Twins, Lemon and Tangerine, a pair of brutal British hitmen who can't help but engage in longwinded banter with each other. It actually dooms them; they're so distracted by their conversation they don't notice that their Briefcase Full of Money has been stolen, and while they're busy arguing over that they don't notice that their charge, the Son, has been assassinated. In their ensuing quest to cover their bases, they still get a number of jokey exchanges in.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just before the unhinged Prince can kill off the surviving heroes, she's run over by a tangerine truck driven by none other than Lemon.
• Big "NO!": The Wolf's flashback shows him doing this as he's holding his dead wife and surrounded by the corpses of his crew. The Elder does this when he finds his own dead wife, the result of The White Death's violent coup of the Minegishi clan.
• Bittersweet Ending: The White Death and a few other deadly assassins have been killed and the Yakuza is in shambles by the end of the movie. But many people are dead, Kyoto is partly destroyed, and the boomslang snake is still on the loose. On a more personal note, Tangerine dies but Lemon is able to avenge his death by running over the Prince and, before doing so, somewhat forgives Ladybug for killing his brother, the Kimura family have repaired their bonds and Wataru will be alright, and Ladybug gets picked up by Maria and has embraced a more optimistic philosophy on life.
• Black Comedy: The movie is full of it, though the biggest example would likely be The Hornet's death. After she is injected with the venom she kills with and Ladybug uses her only antivenom, she slowly and painfully dies while he calmly continually asks her if he can get her anything. It's hard to tell if he's being genuine or just mocking her.
• Black Guy Dies First: Subverted due to a case of Not Quite Dead. Lemon is one of three people who was on the train the entire movie to survive 'til the very end.
• Blood from Every Orifice: Boomslang snake poison congeals one's blood, causing it to leak out of their eyes and mouth. It's an ugly but distinctive way to go, generating a "Eureka!" Moment for Ladybug when he realizes the Son died the same way as the Wolf's wedding guests, meaning the Master Poisoner is on the train.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The film is a lot more graphically violent than the book. Best seen with Tangerine's death. In the book it's a simple Neck Snap; here he's accidentally shot in the neck by Ladybug, and we're treated to some nasty visuals of the blood spraying everywhere.
• Book Ends: At the start of the movie, Ladybug gets his shoes drenched in water which highlight his bad luck. Near the end, his shoes get splattered with the White Death's blood after the Elder swipes it off his sword.
  • Related to the above, Ladybug, considered the personfication of bad luck, only had his shoes drenched to begin with by a tangerine truck. The Stinger reveals Lemon, who had survived, commandeered the truck and used it to kill The Prince, the personification of good luck who had played a part in the death of his brother Tangerine.
• Born Lucky: The Prince boasts she is this, and it doesn't seem without merit, as both Lemon and Tangerine see through her act and would have killed her, if not for Ladybug's meddling (drugging Lemon's bottle, which knocks him out before he can shoot her, and appearing just as Tangerine is about to kill her). However, her lack isn't without limits, and after antagonizing all the assassins on the train it ends up running out.
• Brains and Brawn: Tangerine and Lemon are presented as this, with Tangerine as the more competent fighter and Lemon being very perceptive despite his childish mannerisms. Downplayed though, as Lemon's still a deadly killer in his own right.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When counting kills in their flashback, Lemon and Tangerine look at the camera and number each kill.
• Brick Joke: When we are introduced to a new character we are typically given a title card with their code name and a flashback showing the reasons behind why they are on the train. This includes The Water Bottle, which is just a normal bottle of Fiji water, but has been with us the whole film.
• Briefcase Full of Money: A big chunk of the action revolves around a briefcase containing 10 million dollars. When it is opened it can be seen that in addition to cash, it contains gold bars and, based on the documents in the lid, possibly bearer bonds.
• Bungled Suicide: An anecdote Ladybug tells to describe his extreme bad luck is that a bellboy, trying to commit suicide, jumped off a roof and landed on Ladybug's car. Maria responds that it actually saved the bellboy's life; Ladybug even drove him to the hospital.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • They're certainly extremely eccentric (especially Lemon with his Thomas & Friends obsession), but Lemon and Tangerine are viciously effective killers, as established by the early sequence where the two debate whether it was 16 or 17 people they killed rescuing the White Death's son, shooting, stabbing and running over the hapless Triads in a supremely cheery flashback.
  • Ladybug definitely has quirks of his own, such as his penchant for saying things he learned from therapy or his complete fascination with Japanese toilets, but he's also a trained professional killer and very good at it.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • The Wolf attacks Ladybug, angrily saying that he will never stop coming for him and that he ruined his life. Ladybug's response is to protest that he doesn't even know the guy. It turns out that Ladybug actually was present when The Wolf's wife was killed, but he didn't have anything to do with it.
  • In the past, Lemon shot Ladybug twice during opposing operations. Lemon apparently has no recollection of it, considering he's killed a lot of people. The event was apparently what led to Ladybug reassessing his life.
• Call-Back: At the beginning of the film, Tangerine mentions a story to Lemon about a woman who failed to pay The White Death on time, resulting in the loss of one of her arms. Before the climax, two of The White Death's henchmen bicker over who should open the briefcase containing The Son's ransom; one angrily proclaims he would like to keep his fucking arms.
• The Cameo:
  • Channing Tatum as the passenger that Ladybug gives his hat and glasses to to avoid eyes on him.
  • Ryan Reynolds shows up for two seconds as Carver.
  • Sandra Bullock as Ladybug's handler Maria, who is only heard over the phone until she makes an appearance at the very end.
  • Masi Oka appears as the hardass train conductor who keeps demanding to see Ladybug's ticket.
  • Karen Fukuhara is the concessions girl.
• Captain Obvious: Ladybug's pleas as to the killer's identity while Tangerine is trying to strangle him don't exactly help his case;
  Ladybug: I know... who killed... the kid!
  Tangerine: Yeah? Where the fuck is he, then?
  Ladybug: He's on this train!
  Tangerine: WELL THAT NARROWS IT DOWN THEN, DUNNIT?!
• Car Cushion: Near the start of the film, Ladybug recounts how he once had a suicidal bellboy land on top of his parked car, which he takes as proof that he was Born Unlucky. Maria, however, claims that it was actually a good thing because the bellboy survived, allowing Ladybug to drive him to the hospital.
• Carrying the Antidote: The Hornet has boomslang antivenom on her in case she gets poisoned. After Ladybug gets partially injected with the venom, he quickly injects the rest of it into her to force her to dig out her antivenom. To his shock, she only carries one dose.
• Central Theme: The mysterious forces of destiny.
• Chekhov's Armoury: There are a lot of seemingly innocuous or one-off objects that end up coming back later to serve another purpose.
  • The mascot suit. Being unveiled as another assassin in hiding isn't the end of its relevance — it cushions Ladybug when the train literally goes off the rails and crashes into a village.
  • Lemon mentions a bulletproof vest that Tangerine mocks. It and the water drugged with sleeping powder set up his Not Quite Dead scene.
  • The truck that nearly runs over Ladybug and causes his shoes to get drenched in water? A tangerine truck. It comes back in The Stinger, where Lemon (having survived his Heroic Sacrifice before the train crash) commandeers the vehicle to travel to Kyoto and ultimately kill The Prince.
  • Subverted by The Boomslang. First appearing in the opening scene, the snake is shown slithering around the train countless times during the film. When the train crashes, it's seen sliding from the wreckage, so when The White Death appears, the viewer will naturally assume that The Boomslang will be what does him in. Instead, he falls victim to the trapped gun that his daughter made for him. Later, when that daughter shows up, the viewer now thinks that the snake will kill her, as it's the only Chekhov's Gun of the film that hasn't been fired yet. Instead, she's hit by a truck.
  • Double-subverted with The Prince's rigged backfire gun. At first, she fails in tempting The White Death to try to use it against her, but he winds up killing himself with it when trying to shoot Ladybug with it.
  • The crowning example of this is The Water Bottle, which reappears so many times that it gets its own character segment and backstory.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The anime mascot that keeps getting in the way early on, even getting punched in the face by Ladybug? It's actually The Hornet in disguise.
  • The nurse who always passes by Wataru's hospital room? A Yakuza assassin who prevents Prince's henchman from finishing the job.
  • Carver. Although he appears briefly and doesn't take part in the main story, it is revealed that he was the one who killed The White Death's wife, albeit by accident.
• Chekhov's News: A news report at the start reports the theft of a highly venomous snake from a Japanese zoo. Sure enough, The Hornet was the one who stole it to create her venom. Even better? It's on the train too.
• Combat Pragmatist: Just about everyone, which is fitting for a cast of characters consisting entirely of professional assassins and criminal killers. Groin attacks, improvised weapons, throwing opponents out the train while it's moving, even drugged water and poisoned syringes — anything goes in the film.
• Comedic Work, Serious Scene:
  • Yuichi's storyline is just about the only one taken completely seriously, as it's pretty hard to play a father forced to do the bidding of the person who pushed his son off a roof (and who constantly threatens to kill said son) for laughs.
  • Tangerine coming across Lemon's seemingly dead body, and Lemon doing the same when Tangerine actually dies is heartbreaking and treated with the seriousness that such a scene would require.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • While almost all of the apparent coincidences in the story are eventually explained as having been orchestrated by one party or another, the fact that Ladybug infiltrated The Wolf's wedding (the one where everyone he cared about was painfully poisoned), is specifically noticed by him and then runs straight into the Wolf on the train, despite the fact that he wasn't even supposed to be in it is a genuine coincidence, one so unlikely as to make one suspect The Elder is right about destiny.
  • While it can be seen as another example of fate (and it is set up by other phone calls checking on his progress earlier in the film), it seems pretty unlikely The White Death's minions would choose the exact moment Tangerine is about to kill Ladybug to call demanding to see him and his brother at the next station.
• Conveniently Empty Roads: While the titular train crashes through a wall and tumbles through a neighborhood, nobody is seen on the streets.
• Cool Mask: The White Death and his elite killers wear menacing samurai masks. This is also mocked by one of his henchmen, who tells another that theirs won't do them any good if a rigged bomb was present in the briefcase containing the ransom for The Son. He's proven right.
• Cool Sword: Japanese swords are, unsurprisingly given the setting, used a lot in the movie. Both The Elder's and The White Death's are sharp enough to cut through a train seat and a TV attached, respectively.
• Cool Train: Most of the action is set on a high speed bullet train.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • The Prince prepares Kimura's gun with a bomb, as The White Death's Signature Move is offing his would-be killers with their own weapons — just in case the other bomb she put in the silver briefcase doesn't do the trick.
  • The Elder hired an assassin to pretend to be a nurse to keep watch of his grandson in the hospital in case someone made another attempt on his life.
  • Subverted with The Hornet, who only carries one antidote vial for her own poison, much to Ladybug's disbelief.
• Creator Cameo/Death by Cameo: Director David Leitch is the luckless civilian killed by the twins' exploding car in their killing spree flashback.
• Connected All Along: The sheer coincidence of so many assassins being on a train turns out to not be coincidental: The White Death had schemed to kill a select group for their perceived role in the death of his wife.
  • The Son, whose fruitless, party-boy lifestyle often got him into trouble and required his mother (The White Death's wife) to bail him out.
  • The Twins, whose massacre of a group of his underlings in Bolivia required him to travel there and deal with it.
  • The Hornet, whose poisoning of a cardiovascular surgeon prevented his wife from receiving the life-saving surgery she needed.
  • And finally, Carver (whom Ladybug is filling in for), who was directly responsible for the death of The White Death's wife after crashing into her car; he mistook her for The White Death himself.
    • Not invited to the party but got on the train for their own reasons anyway were:
  • The Prince, who planned to use The Father to kill The White Death, her father.
  • The Father/Yuichi Kimura, who finds himself working for The Prince after attempting to find and confront his son's attacker.
  • The Elder, who only boarded the train to find his son (The Father) and decides to remain onboard to confront The White Death, who killed his wife and destroyed his clan in the past.
  • The Wolf, who is independently seeking revenge on The Hornet.
  • Ladybug, who was only filling in for Carver for a simple snatch-and-grab. He isn't none too pleased when he finds out, even before The Reveal.
• Dark Reprise: Lemon and Tangerine's massacre of the triads is set to a jaunty Engelbert Humperdinck tune, "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles". When Tangerine finds Lemon's body a slow, somber version plays in the background.
• Dead Star Walking: Bad Bunny's Wolf is as central to the film's trailers and advertising as Ladybug, Lemon or Tangerine, so one might expect a major role. He has five minutes of screentime, most of which is a flashback, and dies in the first ten minutes of the film.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Minegishi, the book's equivalent of The White Death, here takes the role of Terahara, another book gangster killed off early on to show the main villain's ruthlessness.
  • Kimura's mother is here killed by the White Death in his youth, where in the book she comes to rescue him and kill The Prince alongside her husband — the book's version of The Elder.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: Invoked verbatim by The Elder when The Prince smirks at the belief that her man killed his grandson in the hospital only to be informed her assassin is the one who's dead.
  The Elder: My grandson was pushed off a roof. Did you really think I would leave him unguarded?
• Disney Death: Lemon and Yuichi are both fatally shot and left for dead in a bathroom stall. It's later revealed that Lemon had on a bullet proof vest and only passed out after drinking water laced with sleeping powder and Yuichi's wounds only knocked him out but were treatable.
• Disposable Woman: You'd be surprised how many women were killed off to emotionally impact their male love interests.
  • The White Death is mentioned to be in mourning over the recent death of his wife. Played With, as the third-act reveal shows her to be closer to The Lost Lenore: she was killed because of a botched assassination attempt which led him organizing his convoluted revenge scheme, meaning her death drove the entire plot.
  • The Wolf's wife-to-be was another casualty from a mass poisoning, and on their wedding day no less, which drives his fuel for revenge.
  • The Elder explains that his wife was murdered when The White Death rose to power and began to wipe out the yakuza clan and its associates.
• Disproportionate Retribution: A woman was five minutes late in paying the White Death money she owed him and he cut off her hand.
  • To a degree, the whole plot of the movie is this. The White Death arranged for all of the assassins who he believes to be responsible, no matter how circumstantial the connection, for his wife's death to be on the titular train. When he finds out that the man MOST responsible was swapped out due to an ailment, he decides to kill his stand-in just for the hell of it.
• Doesn't Like Guns: In the beginning of the movie, Ladybug decides to not take a gun with him to avoid violence. Violence still ensues and Ladybug kills several people, all without using a gun. The one time he uses one he kills Tangerine when it accidentally goes off as they struggle over it. That said, it's less about guns specifically and more about killing in general. And even though he never deliberately kills anyone with a gun, he does kill a man with a knife near the end of the movie.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title refers to both a type of train as well as the fact that bullets are flying around in it.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Zigzagged. The White Death's Yakuza consists of professional killers from every nation and race. However, there are no noticeable women assassins among his workforce and the Prince's monologue suggests that he doesn't think highly of women.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • In this case, had. The White Death is a ruthless gang lord even hardened criminals are terrified of, but he loved his late wife enough to arrange most of the film's events to take revenge on anyone even tangentially involved in her death. It's also played with, as he considers his own son to be one of those responsible and has him killed without remorse and has ignored his daughter.
  • Lemon and Tangerine are both ruthless murderers-for-hire, but they care deeply about each other and each one is distraught when they think the other has died.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: In Tangerine and Lemon's flashback of their seventeen-victim rampage, almost every car, and even a few motorcycles, erupt into fireballs when struck.
• Evil Versus Evil: Any character in the movie has some connection to assassination and/or organized crime. Everyone is fighting everyone. That said, some characters are definitely worse than others, with Ladybug at the nicer end of the scale and The White Death and The Prince at the opposite end.
• Excellent Judge of Character:
  • Lemon is able to figure out pretty quickly that The Prince's whole innocent girl schtick is just an act, while both Tangerine and Ladybug mostly fall for it.
  • The Elder was the only member of Minegishi's clan that distrusted the White Death, and warned against letting him rise through their ranks. He was eventually proven right.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire movie, various flashbacks aside, spans from one evening to the following morning over the course of a single train ride.
• Fall Guy: Once he realises he and Lemon have both lost the case and failed to prevent the White Death's son getting killed, Tangerine lights on the idea of making Ladybug this for the whole mess, rationalizing that if they present someone to the White Death as the culprit he might not kill them. An odd example in that he never gets the chance to do it due to Ladybug kicking him off the train, but also due to the White Death himself being the one to have his son killed. Seeing as they're among the ones he was gunning for over his wife's death, it would have been pointless even if Tangerine had pulled it off.
• Familiar Soundtrack, Foreign Lyrics:
  • The trailer is set to a Japanese cover of "Stayin' Alive" by The Bee Gees, and the same song plays over the main title sequence.
  • A Japanese cover of "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler plays during the finale battle.
• Fancy Toilet Awe: Ladybug is enamored by the Japanese toilets on the bullet train, playing with certain functions including the dryer and the retracting seat. He starts to find trouble however with the bidet and the automated messages, but finds the toilet useful in dealing with a venomous Boomslang, trapping it in the bowl.
• Fixing the Game: White Death's Signature Move when facing a defeated, high-level opponent is to take his revolver, insert a single bullet into the cylinder, spin the cylinder by sliding the gun down his arm, then point the gun at his own head and pull the trigger, then do the same to his opponent. The gun always goes off when pointed at the enemy, but it looks like he's doing a fair contest to see who dies. The problem is, it's his revolver. He knows it very well, and probably practices enough so that he knows if he loads a single bullet in the cylinder, then runs it down his arm by starting the movement at a very specific point on his arm and then stopping at another very specific point, then he can be very certain of exactly where the bullet is in the cylinder. He can also count the clicks of the cylinder as he rolls it for added insurance. Note he never shoots at his opponent first, he always points the gun at himself, then at his opponent. If he fired at his enemy first, then the next chamber in the cylinder would be the one with the bullet in it. It's all an act to make it look like he's brave and giving them a fair chance.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The protagonist's codename is "Ladybug." There's another assassin named "Tangerine," whose "twin" is named "Lemon."
• Foil:
  • The Elder to The White Death. Both are or were high-ranked Yakuza members, superlatively skilled with Japanese swords, and both suffer the loss of their wives to gangland assassination. However, The Elder's relationship with his son Yuichi is strained but not broken, while The White Death kills one of his children and treats the other like she barely exists. In addition, The Elder firmly believes in fate dictating everything that happens, where The White Death tries his best to control fate, freaking out massively when he realizes fate, in the form of a stomach bug, has robbed him of Carver, his primary target. Furthermore, The Elder manages to keep his lineage alive while The White Death and his entire family end up dying by the end of the movie.
  • Ladybug and The Prince. Ladybug is an assassin who just got out of retirement for what he thinks is an easy snatch-and-grab and is plagued with bad luck. By contrast, The Prince is a mercenary young enough to pull off an innocent schoolgirl appearance to fool people and believes that luck is on her side. Ladybug is easy-going and friendly despite his career choice while The Prince looks harmless but treats everyone as pawns. Moreover, The White Death tries to kill Ladybug under the belief that he was the one who killed his wife, whereas he feels that The Prince is Not Worth Killing.
• Foreshadowing:
  • While expositing about the origin of her alias, The Prince lapses into Russian, an early hint that she is related to the White Death, who is explicitly said to be originally Russian.
  • Lemon and Tangerine bickering about the latter wearing a bulletproof vest is a dual bit of this. Not only does the mention of it explain how he survives being repeatedly shot in the chest by the Prince, but one of his stated reasons for not wearing it is it doesn't help if he gets shot in the neck — which is exactly how Tangerine dies.
  • There are so many hints that multiple world-class killers being on a train at once is not a coincidence that there's even a montage of them when The White Death's connection to and desire for revenge on them all is revealed. Similarly, as the movie goes on, the train gets noticeably emptier, to the point of the climax having just the protagonists on-board, as The White Death brought every train ticket for the last stretch of the journey.
  • The Elder having a connection to The White Death comes up subtly when he converses with Yuichi about leaving his grandson alone in hospital. When we see him at his home during the talk, he's studying images of the cool masks we see The White Death and his goons wearing in both the flashbacks and present sequences.
  • Ladybug accidentally bumps into the person wearing a Momomon outfit when trying to flee his pursuers, and said person briefly tries to snatch the briefcase away from him, to no avail. It's later revealed that this is The Hornet in disguise, who is also on White Death's payroll.
  • At the beginning of the film, Ladybug is nearly run over by a truck on the way to the station. The truck was carrying tangerines, and it comes back in The Stinger, where a surviving Lemon uses it to kill The Prince and avenge his brother Tangerine.
• Forgiveness: During the final battle, Lemon apologizes for having shot Ladybug twice, while Ladybug apologizes for killing Tangerine, with Ladybug noting that forgiveness is a sign of personal growth. Even though it's mostly Played for Laughs, it is a genuinely heartwarming moment, even if Lemon ruins it a few moments later.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • During the wedding, Ladybug accidentally spills wine on Wolf's suit and he goes to clean up while everyone else is eating the wedding cake which was later revealed to have been laced with poison by The Hornet. When he returns, The Wolf is greeted with the sight of everyone dying from the poison. Ladybug unknowingly saved The Wolf that day.
  • Carver was supposed to kill The White Death that night. He instead mistakenly killed his wife, who was out to bail her son out of jail as The White Death was responding to an attack on his holdings in Bolivia.
  • Also, related to the above, Carver was supposed to be the one on the train, not Ladybug. But Carver bowed out due to a "stomach ache", putting Ladybug into an absolutely over-the-top situation he was not remotely prepared for, culminating with nearly getting his brains blown out for the aforementioned assassination Carver carried out.
• Funny Background Event: When The Prince has The Father find the combination to the briefcase (by trying every possible combination in turn) she tells him to "Start with the lower numbers. Call it a hunch." The eventual solution? 807.
• Gambit Pileup: There is actually more than one needlessly complicated plan being implemented on the train. To wit, The Prince's plan to kill her father relies on hijacking his revenge plan on the people he holds responsible for this wife's death.
• Gun Struggle: Ladybug walks in on Tangerine aiming his gun at The Prince and assumes he's about to pull the trigger on a helpless young woman, resulting in one of these. Inevitably, the gun goes off at point blank range and gives Tangerine a gaping neck wound; he bleeds out in a few seconds.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The White Death has a policy of executing every would-be assassin that comes after him with their own weapon. The Prince plans to exploit this by setting up Yuichi as such an assassin and planting a booby-trapped gun on him. It actually works as intended, albeit in very different circumstances to what she'd planned.
  • The Wolf is fatally wounded by his own knife after it ricochets off the briefcase into his heart.
  • The Hornet gets injected with her own special snake poison, and dies as slowly and painfully as her many victims.
• Hollywood Density: The briefcase is said to contain $10 million. Leaving aside the fact that you could not fit that amount of cash into an attaché case that small, the briefcase should be way too heavy to carry around as shown, let alone be used as an improvised weapon. It gets even more ridiculous later in the film when the briefcase is opened so The Prince can put a bomb inside and it is revealed that the contents are evenly split between cash and gold bars. At the time of the movie's release, the spot price of a troy ounce of gold was hovering around US$ 1,800, meaning that just one million dollars worth of it would weight over 17 kilos (around 38 lbs.)^note Given any US bill weighs one gram, five million dollars in $100 bills would weigh fifty kilos, bringing the total weight of the ransom to 135 kilos or just under 300lbs.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Lemon realizes Prince isn't that innocent as she is pretending to be when he describes a "case" with a train sticker on the hand. She refers to it as a "briefcase" when denying having seen it, when a normal passenger would have assumed he meant "suitcase".
• Ice-Cream Koan: Lampshaded: The Elder's metaphor about a tree and plums confuses pretty much everyone, even his own son. In fact, it's enough for Ladybug, Lemon, and Yuichi, who were earlier arguing pretty intensely with each other, to take a break from it and instead debate over what it means.
• Instant Sedation: Subverted. It takes a while for the sleeping powder that Ladybug put in Lemon's water bottle to actually kick in, and Lemon is perfectly lucid for a few minutes before starting to feel lightheaded and collapsing.
• Ironic Echo:
  • The Wolf says "My heart" twice in Spanish. Once to his wife at their wedding, and second after his knife ricochets into his chest when he tries to kill Ladybug.
  • "A father protects his family." The first time we hear it it's from The Elder berating a dispirited Yuichi in the hospital for not being there to protect his grandson Wataru. The second is just after Yuichi's well-thrown water bottle throws The White Death off long enough for The Elder to badly injure him, protecting his father the way he failed his son.
• Just Train Wrong:
  • The ride from Tokyo to Kyoto lasts only two and a half hours by bullet train in real life, not twelve as in the movie. Ironically, this is also the actual length of the movie.
  • Bullet trains do not even run overnight, as nighttime is used for maintenance. When the novel was published (2010) this service was offered instead by the slower, better accommodated blue trains but these were progressively eliminated from the 1980s until removed completely in 2016. The only overnight train between Tokyo and Kyoto currently is the luxury Sunrise Izumo (which incidentally lasts twelve hours from Chiyoda near Tokyo to its final destination in Izumo, but stops in Kyoto halfway).
• Karma Houdini: Despite being the one who arguably put the entire plot in motion after murdering the White Death's wife in an attempted hit on him along with apparently being a jerk (according to Ladybug), Carver never receives any comeuppance for any of his contributions to the story.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: The White Death, after taking over the Yakuza in a bloody coup and killing The Elder's wife years ago, is killed by a gun rigged by The Prince.
  • Similarly, The Prince survives quite a few close encounters with death on sheer luck, only to be mowed down by a truck driven by a man she thought she'd killed.
• Katanas Are Just Better: While several people employ other melee weapons effectively, katanas are shown tearing through the environment and people with ease.
• Lame Last Words: The White Death's final words before he dies? "DO NOT CALL ME BRO!!"
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Tangerine pilfers some snacks from the concession girl's cart during his introduction. Later on, when his tussle with Ladybug is interrupted by the same concession girl, he's forced to pay for Ladybug's sparkling water and is then beaned in the head with the same bottle for good measure when the fight resumes.
  • The Hornet, who poisoned The Wolf's entire wedding and The White Death's son, ends up being injected with her own poison by Ladybug seconds after she injects him, who also takes away her one dose of antidote for himself.
  • The Prince shoots Lemon in the chest to kill him (the shot is stopped by his bulletproof vest) and manipulates Ladybug and Tangerine against each other, leading to Tangerine's death. She's killed when she's run down by a fruit truck driven by Lemon — one filled with tangerines, no less.
  • The White Death killed The Elder's wife during his massacre of Minegishi's clan. Later, his own wife gets killed, though accidentally. There's also the matter of his death: since he is known for murdering his victims with their own weapon and had just arranged his son to die, he ends up killed by a rigged pistol from his daughter.
• Leitmotif: "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" for Lemon and Tangerine, as performed by different artists in different contexts: Fast-paced in their rescue of The Son, slower in Tangerine's flashback to his childhood with Lemon watching a West Ham soccer game.
• A Lighter Shade of Black:
  • Ladybug ends up looking a lot better than basically every other character in the movie considering he is trying to avoid killing anyone. However, there is the implication he has killed people in the past and even if he's trying to do non-lethal work now, he's still involved in shady business ^note He does protest he mostly does snatch and grabs as The White Death is about to shoot him, indicating he works thievery jobs.
  • With the exception of The Prince and possibly The Hornet, all criminals are this compared to The White Death, as they have more standards and avoid being as brutal as him.
• MacGuffin: Everyone seems to be interested in the contents of a silver suitcase. It contains the $10m ransom for The White Death's son, and is later used to blow up some of his goons after The Prince outfits it with a bomb.
• Made of Iron: Many of the main characters take A LOT of punishment fighting each other without much injuries. Some of them still get taken out though, such as Tangerine dying from getting shot in the neck.
• Malevolent Masked Men: The White Death and his goons wear intimidating Japanese masks, and are the least sympathetic assassins featured in the movie.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • Most of the plot belongs to the plan of The White Death. He arranged for most of the involved people to be on the train to get Revenge for his wife's death.
  • It runs in the family: another big part of the plot was set in motion by The Prince, The White Death's daughter.
• Meaningful Background Event:
  • When Tangerine finds Lemon seemingly dead, you can notice him faintly breathing.
  • Every time there's a cut to The Prince's standby assassin waiting to kill Yuichi's son, a nurse passes behind him. She's also an assassin, ready to take the guy out if he tries anything.
• Meaningful Echo: "Be honest." The Elder overhears Prince saying this during a phone call to his son, and recognizes her on the train when she says it again to Ladybug.
• Misplaced Retribution: The bulk of the film's plot results from this. Most of the people targeted by The White Death's plan were only tangentially related to his wife's death, but The White Death treats them as if they were directly responsible. In addition, the ultimate target of his revenge (Carver) is sick with a stomach bug and Ladybug takes his place on the train.
• Mugged for Disguise: The Hornet knocks out a concession girl and steals her uniform in order to attack Ladybug.
• Mundane Made Awesome: A Fiji water bottle gets an expository flashback of how it got to the train, along with a recap of all the previous scenes in which it has been present from first person. It even gets named on-screen with "Sukiyaki" playing throughout.
• Nameless Narrative: There are exactly three people named in the narrative: The Father (Yuichi Kimura), his son (Wataru Kimura), and Ladybug's handler (Maria). Everyone else uses nicknames and codenames.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The White Death is only ever referred to by this nickname. Even professional assassins like Tangerine and his own men are very justifiably scared of him.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: When Tangerine first comes across The Prince, he lets her go without asking any questions, being unaware of her true nature. When Ladybug meets her moments later, he agrees to protect her and get her off the train, also assuming that she's just an innocent girl.
• Nobody Poops: Discussed and later averted. Ladybug becomes fascinated with a bidet inside the train but notes that he is in no need to use it. However, he complains at the very end of the movie that he needs to go to the bathroom.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Played for Laughs when an unlucky civilian comes across Tangerine and Lemon's totaled car after they've rescued the White Death's son and asks if they're okay. His reward for his concern is getting incinerated when the car blows up.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The often mentioned Bolivian job that Lemon and Tangerine did in the past, which involved a massacre perpetrated by the pair against a group of The White Death's underlings. The exact circumstances or why it necessitated such a high body count is never elaborated upon.
  • The incident in Johannesburg, during which Lemon met Ladybug in the past and ended up shooting him. Even though we see snippets of it onscreen, the audience remains in the dark about what was going on.
  • It's never explained what Ladybug was doing infiltrating The Wolf's wedding, only telling Maria a reminder of clarifying his role on Monday.
• Not Worth Killing: The Prince tries to goad The White Death into killing her, but he simply says "Bang!" and pockets the gun without doing anything. Because the gun is rigged with an explosive, this comes back to bite him in the ass later.
• Of Corpse He's Alive:
  • Ladybug didn't intend to kill The Wolf and later The Hornet, and to avoid arousing suspicion he positions their corpses in the alcohol car in increasingly ridiculous poses to make it look like they're passed out drunk instead of dead.
  • When the yakuza demand proof that The Son is alive and well, Tangerine gets off the train to meet with them while Lemon puppets the Son's corpse from inside the train window to wave hello. They refer to this tactic as "the old Punch and Judy."
• Ominous Fog: The Kyoto Station where The White Death is first seen in person is cloaked in thick fog.
• One Degree of Separation: All the assassins on the train seem to be connected to each other, particularly through Ladybug. This largely isn't a coincidence. The White Death orchestrated things to put everyone he believes is connected to the assassination attempt that killed his wife on the same train to have them all killed, and everyone else relevant to the plot is on that train due to his daughter. However, everyone's connection to Ladybug is a coincidence. He wasn't even supposed to be on that train, his associate Carver was (who was ultimately the main target of The White Death's wrath, as the man who killed his wife), and it's mere happenstance that he's personally familiar with Lemon.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Aside from Yuichi, virtually everyone is only referred to by their assassin codenames. Particularly pronounced with Ladybug, who was generally referred to by his real name, Nanao, in his POV segments in the book.
• Person as Verb: Lemon's obsession with Thomas & Friends leads to him comparing other people to the engines, and the comparison that is most plot-important is calling anybody he considers devious a "Diesel" (after the franchise's Card-Carrying Jerkass). He's not wrong to be suspicious, either.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • When Lemon asks Ladybug if he's killed anyone on the train, Ladybug cops to it, thinking he meant the Wolf. Unfortunately, Lemon was talking about the Son (actually killed by The Hornet), leading to him and Tangerine going after Ladybug for the rest of the movie.
  • Had The Father known that The Elder had posted a guard to keep his son safe in the hospital, he could have just killed The Prince right away and avoided half the plot. To his credit, he does admit to his mistake once the situation is fully explained.
• Product Placement:
  • Lemon talks about Thomas & Friends frequently throughout the film, to the point of flashing his sticker sheet of the characters.
  • Corona Light is featured prominently in the Wolf's flashback, including a scene where the entire cartel is seen drinking them, with the boss blatantly holding up the beer like he's in a commercial.
  • Ladybug knocks Lemon out with a laptop and opens the lid to pretend to type on it and reveal that it's an Asus ROG Zephyrus.
  • The Fiji water bottle was not only seen throughout the film, but it was also given a backstory where it was taken out of a vending machine by Lemon, taken inside the bullet train where it would later be drugged and drank by Lemon, and is travelled through the train cars until it is used by Kimura to fight against The White Death and help his father The Elder in the climax.
  • Joey King's character The Prince reads a modern-day paperback copy of Shibumi by Trevanian (a pen name of author Rodney William Whitaker); this was actually a real book that Trevanian wrote, which came out for the first time in 1979.
• Professional Killer: Most of the cast, Ladybug included, are professional assassins.
• Properly Paranoid: Two of The White Death's henchmen argue over opening the briefcase and question why their boss doesn't just open it himself, with one of them saying that a bomb could have been rigged in there and they're just the fall guys. Given that we saw the bomb being put there earlier in the movie, it's completely justified.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!/Punctuated Pounding: While tussling with Lemon, Ladybug repeatedly slams Lemon's pistol into his crotch while lecturing him on personal issues at the same time: "Have! The courage! To! Learn!!"
• Race Lift: A majority of the characters from the source novel are Asian. In the movie, the actors are either white, black, or Puerto Rican in The Wolf's case.
• Rasputinian Death: Several assassins wind up being involved with the deaths of both The White Death and his wife.
• Red Herring: The snake is treated very ominously, especially once it is revealed to have a very dangerous venom, and it escapes its cage rather early in the film. The only person it bites is Ladybug who conveniently had already taken the antivenom earlier for reasons unrelated to the snake, so he is perfectly fine.
• Refuge in Audacity: When the concession girl interrupts Ladybug's fight with Tangerine, he asks for a bottle of water. Realizing only then he lost his wallet at the beginning of the movie, he actually asks Tangerine to pay for it...and the assassin actually obliges.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the book, Tangerine and Lemon look very much alike, but are not related (and Tangerine is annoyed by everybody assuming they are twins). Here, they look nothing alike, and, while they might not be twins (although they could be, unlikely as it is), they certainly grew up together and consider themselves brothers.
• Reluctant Warrior: Ladybug is shown as really not wanting to fight and kill the other assassins who are attacking him for personal reasons, giving them opportunities to back out, particularly when he doesn't seem to know any of them. He even rejects taking a gun with him for the job.
• Retired Badass:
  • Ladybug was retired until recently, just back for an easy job.
  • The Elder is also hinted to be this until the chance to avenge himself on The White Death comes up.
• Revenge: Three examples. The main motivation for the Wolf, The White Death and the Elder.
  • The Wolf tries to kill Ladybug on sight, believing him to be an accomplice of The Hornet, who poisoned his wife and crew on their wedding day. While Ladybug's infiltration of the wedding was for a completely unrelated job, and the Wolf never gets to confront the Hornet, Ladybug does indirectly avenge them when he manages to poison her with her own venom the same way she poisoned them along with the rest of her victims.
  • The White Death arranged for all of the assassins to board the train in the first place to kill each other and his own son, as he blamed them for the death of his wife. As mentioned in Misplaced Retribution above, each of the assassins had a minor role to play in his wife's death, but he treats them as if they were equally responsible. In the end, it turns out a single assassin (Carver) was solely responsible because he was supposed to kill The White Death himself, but because he called in sick, Ladybug took his place on the train. Furious, he decides to kill Ladybug himself out of principle or spite.
  • The Elder also wants some towards the White Death because he was responsible for the murder of his wife and clan during the latter's rise to power. He is the only one of the three who confronts the right target, and the only one to get his revenge.
• Runaway Train: Lemon starts the train so survivors can escape Kyoto station, only to realize once they're gone that he doesn't know how to stop. Sure enough, the train is inevitably derailed.
• Running Gag:
  • Lemon and Tangerine introducing themselves by their codenames, which always prompts that character to respond "Like the fruit?" and them exasperatedly replying yes.
  • Thomas & Friends characters as archetypes.
  • Ladybug conversing with his fellow assassins on therapy techniques and his spiritual journey, and their reacting with total incomprehension.
  • On this note, members of the White Devil's organisation have a tendency to say seemingly profound but rather circular Ice-Cream Koan-style statements ("He doesn't need a reason to kill you, he needs a reason not to kill you." "If you do not control your fate, it will control you.") which only serve to confuse and / or irritate the person they're talking to.
  • The increasingly ridiculous attempts by Ladybug to make it look like The Wolf is sleeping in the alcohol car and not dead. He's later stuck doing the same thing with The Hornet's corpse.
  • Every phone Ladybug uses ends up getting destroyed, requiring him to find another one to call Maria.
  • As mentioned in Accidental Misnaming (see above), Ladybug keep mispronouncing the name of crime boss El Saguaro, with Maria exasperatedly correcting him every time.
• Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: The White Death is a Russian gangster who took over the business and territory of a Yakuza family through unprecedented brutality.
• Russian Roulette: One of The White Death's eccentricities is doing this with both himself and the person he intends to kill, to demonstrate his lack of fear for fate. Subverted, as he always makes sure to end on an empty chamber for himself and a loaded one for his intended victim.
• Sanity Slippage: Towards the end of the movie, The Prince loses her veneer of calm smugness and becomes noticeably more unhinged as her plans gradually fall apart.
• Shout-Out:
  • Lemon bases much of his philosophy on Thomas the Tank Engine.
  • The book The Prince is reading is a copy of Shibumi by Trevanian (a pen name of author Rodney William Whitaker), which also centers on a highly skilled assassin of Russian descent in a Japanese setting. It also serves as Production Foreshadowing, due to David Leitch's collaborator Chad Stahelski scheduled to direct a film adaptation for Warner Bros. and 87Eleven Entertainment.
  • The code for the briefcase? 807, likely in reference to director David Leitch's production company, 87North^note also referred to as 87Eleven Productions.
  • After rigging a barricade from luggage and a golf club, Ladybug calls himself MacGyver
• Show Within a Show: Momonga, a cutesy anime series aimed at young children, shows up as a recurring element, with there being an entire car on the train modeled after it that mostly seems to contain families. The anime's mascot also serves as an important plot point as it serves as the Hornet's disguise and allows her to poison her targets without being spotted. In addition, it cushions Ladybug when he is sent flying after the train is derailed in the climax.
• Soft Water: Lemon, already beat up from the events of the train, not only survives falling from a tall bridge into a river, but has enough motor control to kill a couple of people afterwards.
• A Simple Plan: Ladybug's first mission back after the hiatus he was on was supposed to be very easy. Get on the train, grab a briefcase filled with money, get off at the next stop. It very quickly turns into a much bigger ordeal.
  • One of the TV spots lampshades this: "His simple plan goes off the rails."
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: The promotional material generally hides the fact that Michael Shannon is the Big Bad. The movie itself also generally hides this until his proper appearance at the end. Also, though she does appear in the trailer, the promotional material doesn't particularly highlight that Zazie Beetz is in it as well.
• Skyward Scream: Both The Wolf and The Elder scream a Big "NO!" upwards while cradling their dead wives in their arms during their respective flashbacks.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: After Lemon and Tangerine bicker about whether they killed 16 or 17 people saving The White Death's Son, a caption appears saying: "Lemon and Tangerine's kills, featuring Engelbert Humperdinck." Cue a montage of the twins brutally murdering various mooks while an incredibly upbeat song by the crooner plays over it.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • It's likely that The White Death's entire plan to get all these killers together to eliminate them would have worked...except for Carver getting sick and Ladybug taking his place and his presence causing a domino effect that shakes things up.
  • Likewise, The Prince's plot is also affected by Ladybug, not to mention losing her leverage by The Elder ensuring her assassin never gets to Kimura's son and the fact that her father has been one step ahead of her this entire time and openly dismissive of her attempts to take control.
• The Stinger: There's a mid-credits scene where Lemon survives falling into the river, finds a truck carrying tangerines, and drives away. He turns out to have been the one driving the truck that killed The Prince, serving as a nice way of hammering the Central Theme once more.
• Stupid Crooks: Lemon and Tangerine are deadly hitmen, but they're questionably competent at anything that doesn't involve murder.
  • Rather than keep the briefcase full of The White Death's cash on their person, The Twins toss it with the rest of the passengers' unguarded luggage, and if not for The Wolf, Ladybug would've easily stolen it and escaped them in the first few minutes of the movie.
  • They fail to protect The Son, they have difficulty determining if someone is dead or just very unconscious, and even Mister Exposition Tangerine was completely ignorant of how the pair had run afoul of their employer after they'd killed the Bolivian cell of his gang.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The White Death's revenge scheme turns out to be undone by something as simple as a stomach bug. He organises a hugely complicated plan to 'control fate' by bringing together everyone involved in the death of his wife, no matter how tangentially, in order to wipe them all out — but even top-level assassins can get become ill, and no amount of planning could take into account something as random as the man who actually did the deed randomly calling in sick on the night it was all going down and requiring someone to stand in for him.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music: The song in The Wolf's flashback, "La Despedida (The Goodbye)" is about a man powerless to do anything but watch the woman of his life die slowly and painful on the streets. It is an odd choice for watching an assassin rise up the ranks in a cartel organization, until his wedding at least.
• Sword Fight: The Elder and The White Death engage in a katana fight during the film's climactic battle.
• Symbol Swearing:
  • At one point in the film, the person in the Momomon costume swears at Tangerine in Japanese. The Japanese is translated into symbols in the subtitles. Based on who the costumed person is revealed to be later, she probably said 'bitch'.
  • A little girl shouts "Kuso!" (which literally means "shit" but changes meaning and severity depending on the context) upon failing to get the Fiji water bottle from the vending machine. The subtitles translate her cursing to symbols.
  • A woman waiting to use the bathroom occupied by Ladybug also curses in Japanese when the latter tells her off. This is also subtitled with symbols.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Ladybug slips some sleeping powder in Lemon's water bottle.
• Tattooed Crook: The White Death sports a large back piece that seems like a combination of Russian prison tattoos and Yakuza irezumi, and his son sports face tattoos of an Orthodox cross and "Trust No Bitch". The Wolf is heavily tattooed with Mexican black and Grey work, and Ladybug has an assortment of minimalist tattoos.
• Thriller on the Express: As the title suggests, a bullet train is the major setting with only part of the finale being set in a train station.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Played for laughs; after Ladybug kills The Hornet, his anxiety gets the better of him and he begins to freak out. He calls Maria, who asks him if he's lying on the ground in a fetal position. Ladybug looks down, realizes that he has curled up into a fetal position, and replies that he's at least not on the ground.
• Unluckily Lucky: Ladybug views himself as extremely unlucky; however, while his luck is terrible at various points (such as being a last-minute fill-in for Carver, the assassin the White Death really wants to kill, leading to the ever-escalating nightmare of the train journey), at other points it actually works out in his favour whenever he's in circumstances that would have lethal outcomes, such as The Wolf randomly dying from his own knife, or being bitten by an extremely venomous snake only after he'd earlier taken The Hornet's antivenom in an unrelated attempt to poison him. Similarly, Ladybug's presence results in him being in dangerous or stressful situations, but he often accidentally ends up saving others from death directly or indirectly, such as driving a suicidal bellhop that jumped off a building onto his car to the hospital, accidentally saving the Wolf from the Hornet's mass poisoning by spilling wine on him, or taking Carver's place on the train, the White Death's main target. The Elder brings up how Ladybugs are seen to be harbingers of good luck in Japan, because they take all the bad luck onto themselves to highlight this fact to him.
  The Wolf:[after Ladybug's phone stops his first knife strike] You are one lucky son of a bitch!
• Vengeful Vending Machine: A girl tries to buy a bottle of water from a vending machine, but the water gets stuck. Later, Lemon tries to buys some bubble milk tea from the same machine, and that unsticks the water.
• Villainous Breakdown: The White Death acts stoic and calm for most of his screentime, but goes into a childish tantrum when he learns that Carver, the assassin who killed his wife and the primary target of his entire revenge plot, was never in the train because he called in sick.
  • And it runs in the family. When The Prince's plan starts falling apart at the seams, she goes from cold and condescending to ranting with a machine gun in hand before getting run over by a tangerine truck.
• We ARE Struggling Together: At the end of the movie it's just Ladybug, Lemon, Yuichi and The Elder left to take on The White Death — and seeing as they've spent most of the movie shooting and variously trying to kill each other, the first three start trying to fight again very quickly until The Elder straightens them out.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The Wolf gets a musical montage to set up his backstory while The Hornet gets talked up by other characters and they both receive the same flashy title cards as everyone else. They also both die after their first and only scene...and in the same train cabin.
• Wham Shot: The Wolf getting accidentally stabbed in the heart with his own knife during his first scene immediately establishes that Anyone Can Die for the rest of the movie. And many of them do.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Subverted. Lemon is last seen in the movie proper flying off the train and into a river, while the mid-credits scene shows that he survived and was driving the truck that ran down The Prince.
  • Played straight with the snake who disappears after the grand battle in the end.
• Widowed at the Wedding: The Wolf's wife and all the guests at their wedding were poisoned to death.
• Woodchipper Of Doom: Flashbacks show Lemon and Tangerine completing a brutal hit in Bolivia that involved putting guerilla fighters through a woodchipper.
• Worst Wedding Ever: The guests and the bride at The Wolf's wedding all died from deadly poisoning courtesy of The Hornet.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • Lemon sees through The Prince's act and almost shoots her. At the end, he kills her by running her over with a truck.
  • The person in the Momomon outfit that Ladybug punches in the face turns out to be a woman - specifically, The Hornet, another assassin looking for the briefcase.
  • The Hornet herself has no qualms on either knocking out or killing an innocent stewardess, plus whoever happened to be at the wedding event she decided to mass poison.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Prince pushed Kimura's son off a roof to force him to help her in her plans. She even has a henchman on standby to finish off the boy should he refuse.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Prince relies on this frequently, counting on youth and an innocent appearance to take enemies off guard. It's frequently successful, too- most notably when she dupes Ladybug into trying to "rescue" her from Tangerine, resulting in the latter's death.
  Lemon: You are really good. You sure you didn't study? You're not even afraid and your lip's quivering. That's a tear. That is really authentic, mate.
• Your Head A-Splode: This happens to The White Death near the end when the bomb The Prince planted in his gun went off when he tried to shoot Ladybug, blowing off a chunk of his head.

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♫ That's why I'm telling you
I just want to celebrate, yeah, yeah
Another day of living, yeah
I just want to celebrate another day of livin'
I just want to celebrate another day of life! ♫