Film / The Hateful Eight

"Move a little strange, you're gonna get a bullet. Not a warning, not a question, a bullet."

— Major Marquis Warren

The Hateful Eight is a 2015 Western, and the eighth film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Six or eight or twelve years after The American Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the Wyoming winter towards the town of Red Rock. Its passengers are Bounty Hunter John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his captured quarry Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who he is transporting to Red Rock to face justice (and the gallows). Along the way, the stagecoach picks up two strangers who happened to be out on the road: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a black ex-Union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a Southern renegade who claims to be Red Rock's newly-appointed Sheriff.

Losing their way in an oncoming blizzard, the stagecoach is forced to take refuge at Minnie's Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive, they are greeted by four unfamiliar faces: Bob (Demián Bichir), who is taking care of Minnie's while she is away visiting her mother; Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the hangman of Red Rock; cow-puncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen); and Confederate General Sandford Smithers (Bruce Dern).

Yet as the storm overtakes the mountainside cabin, locking them in for the night, tensions and suspicions begin to ignite, and it soon becomes clear that the eight travellers may not all make it to Red Rock after all.

This film notably features the first Western score by Ennio Morricone since 1981 — especially unique as Tarantino is usually not one to "trust" composers to score original music for his films (although he doesn't mind taking music written for other movies). This is also the first film to have been shot in the 2.76:1 aspect ratio Ultra Panavision 70 process since Khartoum in 1966. It was also presented in a "Roadshow" format in about 140 theaters worldwide with 70mm projection, extended runtime, and a special programme.

When the film became available on Netflix in April 2019, an extended version in the form of a 4-episode Mini Series was unveiled on the streaming service alongside the theatrical cut, to the surprise of everyone. Tarantino also plans to adapt the film into a stage play at a later date.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer 1

Due to the nature of the film and the wiki's policy about trope titles, unmarked spoilers follow, and on related pages as well.

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The Hateful Eight only provides examples of these tropes, but examples of these tropes it does provide:

• Actor Allusion:
  • For the second time in a Tarantino film, Tim Roth spends an extended time bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the belly.
  • This time around, Walton Goggins gets to witness his ally Samuel Jackson get shot in the nuts.
  • Michael Madsen is a member of a gang that goes into a secluded location and guns down the people inside in cold blood.
  • Kurt Russell plays a character among many who can't be trusted, huddled in a snowstorm. Unlike MacReady, Ruth doesn't last nearly as long.
• Agonizing Stomach Wound: [[spoiler:English Pete a.k.a. Oswaldo Mobray, who gets shot in the gut and still carries on a civil, if pained, conversation. He gets shot in the chest again later, and is still moving around in pain in the background for the rest of the film.
• Agony of the Feet: Daisy gets shot in the right foot by Warren, and spends the rest of the film hobbling around as she attempts to escape.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Daisy Domergue.
  • Minnie Mink.
  • General Sanford "Sandy" Smithers.
  • His son Chester. Charles. Smithers.
  • Mannix's Marauders, a gang of Confederate rebels who refused to accept the whole unconditional surrender thing, led by Chris' father.
  • In the German dub, the haberdashery is called Minnies Miederwarenladen.
• All There in the Script: According to the written script, Minnie and Sweet Dave became acquainted with one another as slave and owner before the Civil War. Sweet Dave once had Minnie as a slave, but they somehow stayed together after the abolition of slavery, for unknown reasons. It could be speculated that Sweet Dave was secretly in love with Minnie, or that he helped her purchase land to start her own business as a way of paying her reparations for keeping her enslaved in the past. The nature of the connection between Minnie and Sweet Dave has been left as an exercise for the reader.
• Anachronic Order: It wouldn't be a Tarantino film without it. In this case, there are some events previous to the start of the film proper which are explored in flashback form towards the film's climax.
• An Arm and a Leg: Daisy hacks off Ruth's arm with a machete after he died in order to get out of their Chained Heat.
• And Another Thing...: As in several other Tarantino movies. This time, it's used by the narrator early in chapter four to inform the viewers that someone poisoned the coffee.
• And Starring: We get two of them in the opening credits with "And Bruce Dern" followed soon after by "And Channing Tatum".
• Anti-Hero: Deconstructed. Three of the titular Eight qualify, since everyone else is either one of the villains or in league with them, but everyone in this film did terrible things in the past and/or commits them on-camera. Warren once escaped a POW fort by burning it to the ground, killing everyone in it (including his fellow prisoners), to say nothing of how he kills both General Smithers and (maybe) especially his son (not that either of them were good people either), and attacked Indian villages with the rest of his regiment; Mannix is a Southern racist and Lost Cause fighter who is strongly implied to have committed racist atrocities both during and after the war; Ruth is the most honest of the three, but still smacks around his unarmed female prisoner whom he is proudly taking to town to be hung. The rest of the Eight, though, are just murderous thugs and their selfish, war criminal hostage. The only exceptions who aren't one are O.B. and the background characters killed in chapter 5.
• Anyone Can Die: What else would you expect from Tarantino? Although Smithers has already died by that point, John Ruth's gruesome end is what really solidifies this trope. By the end of the film, every single character, major or minor, is dead except for Warren and Mannix, both of whom have sustained heavy wounds and will more than likely eventually die soon.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: Played With. Major Warren blows Bob's head apart with two .45 caliber revolvers, yet when he shoots Daisy in the leg a few times, the damage is noticeably less gruesome.
• Arc Words:
  • "'Old Mary Todd is calling.' That's a nice touch."
  • Also: "You only need to hang mean bastards, but mean bastards, you need to hang."
• Artistic License – Biology: It's up for debate whether or not he was telling the truth, but all the same, Warren claims that he forcefully stripped Smithers' son to his bare ass and forced him to walk in the snow for two hours in sub-zero temperatures before raping and murdering him. In reality, the average person would only last two to twenty minutes naked in such temperatures before freezing to death.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Warren and Smithers could not have met at the Battle of Baton Rouge, because it took place a few months before the Union Army permitted African Americans to enlist in its ranks (unless they were passing as white) in late 1862. This could be justified considering the movie is set in Tarantino's Alternate History Shared Universe along with Django Unchained, Inglorious Basterds, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
  • A combination of this and Artistic License – Geography: Warren did time in a Confederate prison camp in West Virginia. West Virginia, which was founded during the war, was the only state to separate from a Confederate state (Virginia) in order to stay in the Union. Granted, there were plenty of supporters of the Confederacy left in WV after its separation (as was always the case in border states), but it would be a very unlikely and unsafe place for a permanent Confederate POW camp. (There were no such camps located there in real life.)
  • The first African American commissioned officer was Henry Ossian Flipper in 1877 with a rank of second lieutenant. Warren's rank of major is therefore an anachronism, and he certainly would not have held that rank during the Civil War. It is possible he held the rank of sergeant major though.
• Ask a Stupid Question...:
  • Why is her name Six-Horse Judy? Because she can control six horses at once, a feat uncommon for men and unheard-of for women.
  • Also:
    Oswaldo: What did she mean when she said, "bounty hunter's nigger friend in the stable"?
    Mannix: He's got a nigger bounty hunter friend in the stable.
• Asshole Victim: Pretty much everyone except Minnie and her employees, plus the three stagecoach drivers and O.B., are genuinely terrible people, and by the end of the movie, they have all poisoned or shot each other, with everyone either dead or dying from their wounds. John Ruth is probably the "least terrible" of the Hateful Eight, though, since unlike the others, we never see or hear of him lying about his past or killing an innocent person (or being complicit in such), but he still is a brutal bastard who has no problem beating up an unarmed (if admittedly dangerous) woman.
• Audible Sharpness: When Joe Gage is deflecting John Ruth's questions, Major Marquis Warren presses a pen knife against Joe's neck with an audible "tzing!"
• Auteur License: Quentin Tarantino was able to convince The Weinstein Company to allow him to shoot the film in 70mm Ultra Panavision, a format that had not been used in nearly 50 years, and then forgo any digital post-processing or editing. Quentin then persuaded the producers to spend an additional $10 million to equip ~140 theaters around the world with the 70mm projection equipment and optics needed to exhibit the film in a 1950s style "Roadshow" format. Remember, this was several years after even "basic" 35mm film projection had been replaced by digital, and most of the 70mm projectors obtained for the roadshow had to be rebuilt from discarded equipment.
• Author Appeal: Although the film has a pretty strong subversion of Tarantino's famous Foot Focus, he does manage to fit in a romantic couple with one black and one white member.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Warren is all about this. He knows Bob is lying from the beginning and that something is up from spotting various threads, and basically has the entire situation under control after things go south, killing Bob, who he knows is rotten (he's correct); holding up Joe and Oswaldo because they could be (they are); and giving a gun to Chris, who Warren concludes is likely the only non-deceased person at Minnie's who is genuinely on his side because of the coffee (right again). He only gets blindsided by Jody being under the floorboards.
• Backup Bluff: During the climax, Daisy tries to convince Mannix to kill Warren and let her by warning that her brother's gang has 15 hired killers waiting to kill her captors and wipe out Red Rock if she's not freed. Mannix calls her bluff, figuring that following the shootout in the haberdashery, the gang has been wiped out, and that Daisy is making up the 15 backup members to try and scare him.
• Badass Longcoat: As befits the time period, Marquis Warren, John Ruth, Chris Mannix, Bob, Joe Gage, and General Smithers all wear them.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted with Daisy Domergue. She enters the film already looking beat up, and only becomes more so. By the end of the film, she's been shot in multiple places, had blood from multiple people splattered all over her, gotten bits of brain in her hair, gruesomely hanged, and splashed with stew.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Jennifer Jason Leigh has described the dynamic between John Ruth and Daisy Domergue as "the most dysfunctional couple since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".
• "Be Quiet!" Nudge: It's a Be Quiet Elbow-to-the-Face that really establishes John Ruth's character.
• Bittersweet Ending: Jody's gang is killed to a man and Daisy is hanged, sparing future travelers from the fate of Minnie and her employees, but everyone else is either dead or (in the case of Warren and Mannix) close to dying, and what's worse is that the movie ends before we find out for sure what happens to the latter.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Verges on Evil Versus Evil. Tarantino calls the movie's characters "a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true". The closest thing to a "Good Guy", by Tarantino's standards, is O.B., as he's the only one among the group who lacks any racist or ruthless tendencies. He's just the unlucky individual in the room. Ultimately, it ends up as two war criminals who are at least willing to put the past behind them to enforce the law versus a gang of psychopathic murderers.
• Black Comedy Rape: While "a story about a man torturing, revenge-raping and then killing a man's son out of revenge for war crimes committed" wouldn't be funny, the way Major Warren delivers it is: an over-the-top and overblown speech filled with very weird euphemisms that feels more like a spooky campfire story for kids (complete with poor Smithers grabbing at his chair like a small child than a cruel gambit to trick a war criminal into getting killed.
• Black Dude Dies First: Zig-zagged thanks to Tarantino's circular storytelling. The first character death shown is that of a white man, but it's later revealed that Minnie's crew (three of whom were black) had already been killed beforehand, with Minnie being the first killed with a Boom, Headshot! at point-blank range.
• Blatant Lies: "Christmas with Mother... it's a wonderful thing."
• Blood from the Mouth: John Ruth and O.B. begin vomiting blood all over the place after drinking poisoned coffee. This being a Tarantino film, it's High-Pressure Blood, as well.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: Not quite innocent but Daisy's face is covered in Ruth's blood after he vomits all over her.
• Bluff the Impostor: Warren asks Bob if Minnie still smokes her stinky pipe. Bob counters that Minnie smokes her own rolled cigarettes, not a pipe, and acknowledges Warren's attempt to pull this trope. Bob really is an impostor, but his brief interaction with Minnie luckily involved her rolling cigarettes.
• Bottle Episode: Pretty much the entire film takes place inside and around Minnie's Haberdashery, a large, single-room lodge. The total number of characters is limited to the titular Hateful Eight as well as a handful of minor supporting characters.
• Bounty Hunter: Ruth and Warren both make their living taking down outlaws with bounties on their heads. Interestingly, Tarantino indirectly indicates each gang member's threat level by their bounty. Towards the end of the film, it's revealed that Daisy's is $10,000, Grouch Douglas is also $10,000, Marco the Mexican is $12,000, English Pete Hicox is $15,000, and Jody is $50,000.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • John Ruth is pissed when he finds out Warren's supposed letter from President Abraham Lincoln is a fake.
  • Mannix possibly undergoes this in regard to General Smithers after the latter is killed. Instead of shooting Warren then and there, he debates offscreen with the others whether or not it counted as self-defense.
• The Cameo:
  • Channing Tatum as Jody, who (save for a flashback where he and his gang take over Minnie's lodge) only appears long enough to shoot Warren before greeting Daisy and getting the back of his head blown out by Warren in turn.
  • Quentin Tarantino narrates two different sections, but, unusually for him, never appears in person.
• Cardboard Prison: Part of Warren's backstory involves him having been captured by the Confederates and put into prison camp. How did he escape? He just burned down the entire camp.
• Cassandra Truth: Chris Mannix twice warns General Smithers that Warren is just trying to rile him up enough to go for a gun so Warren can kill him. Smithers doesn’t listen, he grabs the gun, and Warren kills him.
• Central Theme: Property and possession, particularly the film addressing what it means to own something and the legitimacy of that, whether that concept is arbitrary and what control — or lack of control — a person has over something they claim ownership of.
• Chained Heat: John Ruth and Daisy, bounty hunter and bounty.
• Closest Thing We Got: Warren and Mannix want to honor John Ruth by delivering justice to Daisy his way, but since the possibility of getting her to Red Rock is out of the picture, they instead opt to hang her themselves at Minnie's.
• Combat Pragmatist: Warren, who has no problem wielding multiple hidden guns, shooting targets in the back, or killing someone who moves strangely at him.
• Conversation Casualty: In the flashback, when the gang has a casual conversation going with Minnie and her crew and then, out of leftfield, starts shooting them.
• Creator Thumbprint: Red Apple cigarettes — or in this case, tobacco, since machine-rolled cigarettes hadn't been invented yet. The narrator refers to them as "Manzana Roja" when Bob smokes them.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Not exactly unusual, but it sure as hell is cruel. During The Reveal, Grouch Douglas/Joe Gage and Pete Hicox/Oswaldo Mobray join Jody Domingre in murdering the lodge's inhabitants. They gun down two women, Judy and Gemma respectively, but one bullet each only wounds them. They then spend about another minute on the floor, bleeding and in pain, with tearful expressions that are evidently begging for mercy. They don't get any, and are finished off by the two outlaws in cold blood.
  • The final fate of Daisy. She ends up hanged, just as promised. The problem is, normally a death by hanging happens when there is no more support under the person to be executed, so the rope tightens up under their weight, snapping the neck and causing instantaneous death. Instead, Daisy is slowly dragged up by a wounded Chris and Warren and suffocates to her death while thrashing around from asphyxiation, as they are in no condition to give her a "proper" hanging.
• Darkest Hour: At the end, Warren is bedridden and out of bullets, Daisy is chained to a heavy corpse without a gun, and Mannix has sided with Warren to destroy the Domergue gang once and for all. But then Mannix faints from his adrenaline and wounds, and Daisy starts to make her way to a pistol.
• Death by Irony:
  • Warren, who boasts about raping a man in front of that man's father (whether or not he actually did it), gets his dick blown off, and is implied to eventually die from the blood loss.
  • Jody Domingre has one, to a lesser extent. During Chapter Five, Jody blows Minnie's head open when he shoots her from point-blank range. After he's forced to surrender at gunpoint, he has his own head blown open by Major Warren, and his corpse tumbles back down into the basement he just climbed out of.
• Death Is Dramatic:
  • The extended and detailed sequence of Daisy's violent lynching is the climax to which the film's narrative is leading. This Cruel and Unusual Death is supposedly justified by Daisy's criminal nature and/or the act of racial reconciliation involved in her execution — equally as she is a racist Southerner, so in this way it can be interpreted as Laser-Guided Karma.
  • Chester Charles Smithers' Cruel and Unusual Death — being raped and tortured by Warren — is also a major plot device, although Chester is a minor character. The fact that Warren was almost certainly lying, as he makes a habit of, to provoke General Smithers notwithstanding.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Much like Tarantino's earlier films (and given that the film is set in the post-Civil War West), characters routinely drop N-bombs and make assorted racist and misogynist statements.
• Developing Doomed Characters: For at least half of the characters. The other half die too, but they're not telling the truth about who they are.
• Did I Mention It's Christmas?: Joe Gage wants to pass the holidays with his mother, and Señor Bob plays (badly) "Silent Night" on the piano. That's it.
• Didn't Think This Through: It was quite the mistake for Jody to have Bob/Marco play The Caretaker of Minnie's Haberdashery, since Minnie doesn't like Mexicans. This is one of the first clues that something's not right.
• Dragon Ascendant: Daisy states that she is in command of the gang once her brother is killed, and the surviving gang members acknowledge this without question.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: In the climax, Warren tries to shoot Daisy but there is no bullet left in his revolver.
• Driving Question: Who in the stagecoach lodge is trying to free Daisy?
• Dysfunction Junction: Pretty much all of the characters are screwed up in some way, and they're all trapped in the same building.
• Enemy Mine: Several characters team up at several points out of distrust of the others.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Daisy is almost immediately racist and rude to Warren, and John Ruth brutally elbows her in the nose and spews a stream of invective at her. Hey, he's bringing her in alive, not in perfect condition.
  • Warren himself is introduced waiting patiently in the snow for a passing stagecoach, and politely requesting a ride when one appears. Notably, he is waiting in the middle of the road, seated on a small pile of corpses he is in the process of transporting so as to claim their bounties.
  • Mannix is a former Confederate war criminal who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock. While Ruth dislikes him and wants to leave him behind, Mannix manages to weasel his way onto the stagecoach by detailing the legal consequences Ruth would face for willfully leaving someone to freeze to death in a blizzard, showing that he's smarter than he looks.
  • Everyone in the lodge when O.B.'s Stage arrives is given one pretty quickly: Bob is introduced as a stereotypical Mexican mixing English with Spanish, Oswaldo Mobray is portrayed as being a peppy little Englishman with a jovial nature, Joe Gage appears to be a quiet loner who sits in the corner and rarely speaks, and Sanford Smithers is a crooked old (racist) man who rebuffs people and makes harsh comments. In truth, Sanford is the only one who is legit: the other three are given their REAL establishing moments in Chapter Five, where it's revealed that earlier that morning, they turned up at the lodge and murdered everyone there in cold blood, except for Smithers. They also make some rather cruel remarks about the innocent people that they just killed, calling them fat and dropping numerous N-Bombs.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The main plot is motivated by Daisy's brother, Jody, who rounds up a group of four men and takes over the lodge before John, Chris, and Warren arrive so he can rescue her. The first thing he does upon revealing himself to the group is say how much he missed her. In addition, Jody's group appears to be True Companions, as Joe and Oswaldo hug Bob and wish him "good luck" before he goes out to meet John Ruth, Daisy, Warren, and Mannix.
• Everybody Did It: Everyone who got to the haberdashery before Mannix, Ruth, and Warren was either directly involved with the effort to free Daisy or an accomplice of theirs. Additionally, the main conspirators also turn out to have slaughtered Minnie and all her employees and family.
• "Everyone Dies" Ending: Implied. The closing of the movie sees Warren and Mannix slowly and resignedly succumbing to their injuries with every other character including the minor ones from the flashback sequences being dead.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: For a given value of "good" — when Chris Mannix explains to Daisy why her utter lack of empathy or compassion is the reason why he can't trust her at all, she's clearly and visibly confused. It has apparently never occurred to her that all her actions discredit any kind of promise she might make.
• Evil Is Hammy: The film is a World of Ham populated by dark anti-heroes at best and vicious, deeply bigoted villains at worst, so this trope is a given, but Daisy Domergue is quite possibly the hammiest of them all.
• Evil Laugh: Well, not evil, since the characters are anti-heroes, but the laughs are pretty evil.
  • Warren while he relates the story of what he did to Smithers' son.
  • Warren and Chris when they decide what to do with Daisy: hang her.
• Evil vs. Evil: Well, we are warned that the characters are hateful. The only major player who hasn't committed any outright atrocities that we know of is O.B., and he's just there to be The Driver.
• Execution by Exposure: Major Warren allegedly murdered General Smithers's son by stripping him naked in the icy wasteland wilderness and forcing him at gunpoint to march till he collapsed.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Barring the Flashback with General Smithers' son, the film takes place over the course of a single day. Even the other Flashback where Jody, Oswaldo, Joe, and Bob murder everyone at the haberdashery takes place a few hours before the coach with Warren, John Ruth, Daisy, Mannix, and O.B. arrives.
• Face–Heel Turn: At the end of the film, Mannix insists on letting Daisy try to make a deal for her life, claiming he just wants to hear what she has to say. But he starts getting more and more interested as she ups the ante, and shooting his partner seems like a small price to pay... Subverted when he denies her in the end. He knew her threat (fifteen more gang members waiting to sack Red Rock) was bullshit, so he really did just want to see what she'd say to try and get out of the mess she was in.
• Facial Horror: Daisy's face is subject to many blows from John Ruth, and also biohazards in the shape of stew, vomit, blood, and brains. This is possibly intended to show her character, but it is also Disproportionate Retribution.
• Fan Disservice: Daisy tries winking and licking her lips at Warren. Unfortunately, the effect is ruined by her blood-covered face due to her nose having just gotten elbowed hard.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Warren and Mannix end up on the same side about halfway through the film, when they realize everyone else left alive is against them. They make an effective team, and at the very end, Mannix reads Warren's fake Lincoln letter and compliments him on the cleverness of it.
• Foreshadowing:
  • John Ruth's first reaction upon drinking the coffee at Minnie's is to spit it out. Later, after drinking the poisoned coffee, he spits out more than just coffee...
  • Mobray explains to John Ruth and Daisy the difference between "justice" (which is systematic and orderly) and "frontier justice" (which, although satisfying, can be wrong as often as right). At film's end, a dying Warren and Mannix opt for frontier justice to hang Daisy for her crimes.
  • When John Ruth shows Warren's Lincoln letter to Daisy, she spits on it, causing Warren to punch her right out of the stage. Since she's chained to John Ruth, he goes with her. In the snow, he complains that his arm was nearly torn off. After he dies around the end of the second act, Daisy (still tethered to his corpse) chops the same arm off trying to get free during the climax.
  • John Ruth threatens to knock out Daisy's front teeth in Chapter One when she objects to Warren travelling in the stagecoach with them. He actually does just that later in the film before he dies.
  • The chessboard between the two chairs at the fireplace. The conspicuous lack of a second player even though the game itself is clearly still in-progress is an early hint of someone having disappeared before Ruth's carriage arrives.
  • When Warren asks Bob who the "idiot" is who broke the door latch, Bob grows defensive. It turns out that he accidentally shot it off while trying to take out one of Minnie's employees in the flashback.
  • Warren carefully reloads his gun at one point, showing he is fully aware that he does not have Bottomless Magazines, but also foreshadowing his running dry later on.
  • While Warren and John Ruth are discussing their different philosophies when it comes to bounty hunting, Warren comments, "Bringing in a desperate man alive's a good way to get yourself killed." Although Daisy doesn't kill John Ruth, he still dies because her gang is trying to free her, something that would be impossible if she was dead.
• Fur and Loathing: John Ruth and Bob wear long, furry coats, and are some of the most untrustworthy characters: Ruth is a violent thug who makes it a point to see every one of his bounties get executed slowly, and Bob gives half-assed reasons for why he's doing something when it's clear it just makes him more suspicious.
• Genre Throwback: To the epic period films which defined the later years of The Golden Age of Hollywood, such as Ben-Hur and Khartoum. With this territory comes the three-hour running time, the ensemble cast, a magnificent orchestral score, the highly-publicized use of 70mm film, and the Roadshow Theatrical Release with an overture and intermission, preceding the wide release.
• Give Me a Reason: Major Warren very deliberately places a loaded gun next to General Smithers, before proceeding to tell an elaborate and boastful story about raping Smithers' son and leaving him to die in the snow. It's obvious to one and all that he's trying to goad Smithers into grabbing the gun, so he'll have an excuse to shoot him. Smithers gets so enraged he falls for it anyway.
• Good All Along: Mannix wasn't lying. He really is the new sheriff of Red Rock.
• Gory Discretion Shot: During Chapter Five, Joe Gage has a man named Charly cornered in a tool shed outside the lodge. While Charly begs for his life, Joe cocks the shotgun and aims it at Charly's head. We only see the very next scene from the waist down as Joe fires the shotgun and most likely blows Charly's head to pieces.
• Groin Attack: Done to Warren by Jody with a bullet to the balls.
  Jody: Say adios to your huevos...
• Gun Twirling: Warren briefly twirls his gun after shooting General Smithers, then holsters it.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • John Ruth could have saved himself a lot of trouble by just killing Daisy. But he always brings his targets in alive.
    Ruth: No one said this job was supposed to be easy.
    Warren: Nobody said it's supposed to be that hard either!
  • This applies to Mannix as well when he stops short of killing Joe Gage because the latter is unarmed, despite Mannix himself having just been wounded by Gage's accomplices and it being likely that Gage will try to finish the job once the wounded Mannix lets his guard down. Gage even knows this and tauntingly reminds him of it when Mannix turns the gun his way. To a lesser extent, he tolerates Warren, as Warren works for the law by bringing in bounties. As much as Mannix's racist ass would love to kill him, they're both lawmen.
• Hurrying Home for the Holidays: Discussed. Gage pretends to be traveling home to visit his mother for Christmas. Ruth doesn't buy it.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Warren passes off his fake letter from Lincoln as this.
  Warren: The only time black folks are safe is when white folks are disarmed. And this letter had the desired effect of disarming white folks.
• Instant Death Bullet: Played straight with Smithers dying instantly from a bullet to his torso.
• Insult to Rocks: It turns out Warren had a good reason to believe that Bob's story wasn't true. Minnie used to proudly display a sign saying "no dogs or Mexicans" over the bar. She took it down two years ago to accommodate dogs.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: Warren and Mannix end up becoming the heroes who defeat Jody's gang, protect Red Rock, and bring Daisy Domergue to justice basically because they hitched a ride with John Ruth during a nasty blizzard.
• Just Eat Gilligan: It's repeatedly pointed out that John Ruth would get just as much money for bringing in Daisy dead as alive, and it would certainly make his life much easier. But he insists on bringing her in alive, and his only defense is a flippant claim that he wants to give the hangman business. Oswaldo makes a small speech about the nature of justice which seems to resonate with John. In the end, Warren and Mannix do their best to bring Daisy to justice by hanging her themselves instead of just shooting her.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: As Warren tells Smithers about how he (supposedly) made his son strip naked and perform fellatio on him in the freezing cold, the film flashes back to the event in all its disturbing "glory". Smash Cut back to Warren:
  Warren: [chuckles] Starting to see pictures, aren'tcha?
• Letters 2 Numbers: Some promotional materials call it The H8ful Eight.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Warren, Ruth, and Mannix aren't the easiest guys to root for, but everyone else at Minnie's sans O.B. and Smithers is a cold-blooded psychopath, and even the latter is an asshole who's helping them.
• Locked Room Mystery: The movie becomes this once Ruth deduces one of the guests is Daisy's accomplice, and even more so after someone poisons the coffee. While the door isn't actually locked, it's impossible to enter or leave without everyone in the room knowing it, as explained under Running Gag.
• Machete Mayhem: Daisy grabs one off the wall to chop John Ruth's arm off to free herself. She turns to an immobilized Warren... and gets shot by Mannix.
• Male Frontal Nudity: In Warren's flashback, we see General Smithers' son walking around nude with Warren holding a gun on him.
• Manly Tears: The Lincoln letter seems to inspire this in people.
• The Mole: One of the other characters is secretly an accomplice of Daisy's, or so Warren believes. It's eventually revealed that Oswald, Joe, and Bob are all masquerading as innocent travelers to rescue Daisy, with Smithers assisting them.
• Murder by Inaction: Discussed by Mannix when he warns Ruth that not giving him a ride and letting him die in the cold would be considered murder. And murdering a sheriff doesn't look good on oneself.
• Nasal Trauma: When Ruth elbows Daisy in the nose as a sign to keep her trap shut.
• Never Trust a Title: There are actually nine people in Minnie's Haberdashery; the titular Hateful Eight, and the Butt-Monkey stagecoach driver O.B. And even if O.B. isn't hateful enough to qualify, there's one more under the floorboards who is...
• Never Trust a Trailer: The ads put an emphasis on action and humor, painting the film as another over-the-top western adventure like Django Unchained. In reality, the movie is much darker than its predecessor, and is really more of a horror movie set in the Old West than an actual Western. There's comic relief to break up the tension and misery, but it's definitely not the real selling point.
  • The film also shares a number of similarities with And Then There Were None, with a group of people, trapped in an isolated location, being killed and not knowing who to trust, which again is far different than what the trailers indicate the film will be.
• The Notable Numeral: The Hateful Eight.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: During the climax, Mannix faints from blood loss once he finishes his speech. With Warren lying unable to move in bed, Daisy makes for a machete to cut off John Ruth's arm so she can get at them. But then she gets shot by Mannix who regained consciousness.
• Onscreen Chapter Titles: A recurring Creator Thumbprint. There are six numbered and titled chapters, appearing in white font on a black screen, such as "Chapter Four: Domergue's Got a Secret."
• Pass the Popcorn: Daisy gleefully chows down on some jerky whilst watching Warren and Mannix argue in the stagecoach.
• Pistol-Whipping: When Daisy taunts John Ruth after he's poisoned, Ruth lets out a yell of rage and hits Daisy with his rifle, knocking them both onto the floor and sending the gun flying.
• Post-Rape Taunt: Warren uses this trope to get Smithers to grab a gun so he can kill him in self-defense, angering him by claiming to have captured and raped the man's soldier son. The validity of this story is open for debate.
• Post-Victory Collapse: Mannix faints from blood loss after triumphantly deciding to kill Daisy, who is handcuffed to a corpse much heavier than her, and spare Warren. Unfortunately, this is before he has actually killed Daisy, and she still has some tricks left. Thankfully, he regains consciousness Just in Time.
• Production Throw Back. This film was originally intended to be a sequel to Django Unchained titled Django in White Hell. The title of the last chapter ("Black Man, White Hell") references the original title of the film. Marquis also uses the same saddle as Django.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • John Ruth keeps Daisy manacled to his arm, only letting her free when they're trapped in the cabin, and even then he always keeps a rifle at hand. Unfortunately, he hadn't planned for poison...
  • John Ruth tosses Oswaldo and Gage's guns down the well, leaving him, Mannix, and Warren the only ones with guns. Shame the gang had planted firearms under nearly every item of furniture for just such an eventuality, not to mention the guy under the floorboards.
  • After the shootout, Warren tells Jody to toss his guns up while threatening to shoot Daisy. Jody throws one, and when he claims to have none left, Warren tells him to shit one out in the next three seconds before they shoot her. After a moment, he does.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Mixed with Say My Name. Marquis' gloating to General Smithers about raping and killing Smithers' son: "AND CHESTER. CHARLES. SMITHERS. SUCKED!!!!! ON THAT WARM... BLACK... DINGUS... FOR AS LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG AS HE COULD!"
  Warren: [after letting out an Evil Laugh] Starting to see pictures, ain't you?
• Rape as Drama: A male-on-male rape scene that ends with the victim being killed by the rapist, Warren, is a major plot driver. The scene is narrated and also seen in flashback — although it may be fictional — and prompts General Smithers to try and kill Warren, who then kills Smithers in self-defense.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Chris ends up giving one to Daisy in the end after she tries to convince him to kill Warren and let her go, collecting the bounties on her gang and protecting Red Rock from the supposed threat the "rest" of her gang poses. Chris pretends to consider it... and then tells her he knows for a fact she's full of shit, has always been full of shit, that she would have let him die a horrific death by letting him drink the poisoned coffee that John Ruth saved him from, and calls her out on what a truly loathsome piece of trash excuse for a human being she really is.
• Recycled Soundtrack: As Ennio Morricone had limited availability to work on the film's score (one of the only times a Tarantino film has featured an original score), the film also makes use of several unused tracks from Morricone's score for The Thing (1982) and "Regan's Theme" from Exorcist II: The Heretic.
• The Reveal: Most of the characters get one, although the biggest is when we find out that Daisy's brother, Jody, is hiding underneath the floorboards of the lodge, and reveals himself by shooting Warren through the floor. Also, the reason why her bounty is so high is because Daisy is a member of her brother's notorious gang.
• Riddle for the Ages: Is Chris Mannix really the sheriff of Red Rock, or was that just a lie to pressure John Ruth into save him? Apparently, Walton Goggins asked Tarantino about this, and he said that he was up to Goggins to figure it out. Goggins probably decided that Mannix was telling the truth, given how much his character acts like a sheriff throughout the movie.
• Running Gag: With the latch to the door broken, it must be continually kicked open and then nailed shut whenever somebody has to leave and enter the lodge. After each new party is forced through the process, they join the others in shouting at the next group to go through the door.
• Running Gag Stumbles: Eventually, John just stands against the door while someone's outside, though it still has to be nailed up.
• Sarcastic Confession: Early on, when questioned by John, Daisy mockingly admits that someone in the cabin is in cahoots with her, but does it in a way that's somewhere between trolling and I Know You Know I Know. However, this trope is exaggerated because, as it turns out, she's not in league with one of the lodgers. She's in league with three of the four, and the fourth has agreed to not interfere.
• Scare Chord: There is a really aggressive violin-like piece on the soundtrack that plays when things are about to get serious.
• Scenery Porn: The first few minutes and some other parts throughout show extensive shots of the snow-covered landscape in which the film takes place, filmed in "glorious 70mm".
• Self-Plagiarism:
  • Joe Gage says at one point, "A bastard's work is never done" — a common tagline on posters for Inglourious Basterds.
  • A chair is covered with blankets and fur to hide the bloodstain of the man killed in it. Jules and Vincent use the same technique to disguise the back seat of the bloodstained car in Pulp Fiction.
  • Like in Pulp Fiction again, there's another man with a gun who's hiding out of sight and who has been listening to the whole scene since the beginning. And who gets shot moments after showing himself.
  • The two actors from Reservoir Dogs die the same way they do in that movie. Groucho AKA Joe Gage gets shot to death quickly via multiple bullets from someone not standing, and English Pete AKA Oswaldo Mobray gets shot in the stomach but stays coherent and conversational for some time. A second bullet to the chest leaves him all-but-dead, twitching on the floor but still alive to die slowly.
  • "Say adios to your huevos" certainly echoes "Say auf Wiedersehen to your Nazi balls".
  • Sam Jackson got shot in the balls with Walton Goggins nearby. In a previous movie, it's the other way around.
  • The speech of Mobray (portrayed by Tim Roth) on how executions should be performed by an impartial man with no prior knowledge of anyone involved in the case is basically a twist on a similar speech in Quentin Tarantino's segment of Four Rooms. Fittingly enough, the receiving side of the speech in Four Rooms was Ted, portrayed by Tim Roth, and the speaker was played by...Tarantino himself.
  • O.B. (James Parks) uses the line, "Well, smoke..." (smoke being a jocular term for an African-American). In Django Unchained, a member of the LeQuint Dickey mining company (played by Michael Parks) uses this same line when addressing Django. In both instances, they address a black bounty hunter, and are said by son and father, respectively.
• Shout-Out:
  • The song that plays as Joe Gage follows Minnie's hired man and kills him is a reference to the same song playing over a similar scene in The Last House on the Left.
  • Mannix and Warren's final moments before the end credits seem to mirror a similar scene in Planet Terror when Sheriff Hague and JT, feuding throughout the movie, albeit on a friendlier note, spend their last moments together.
  • The name of Samuel L. Jackson's character is one to the TV-Western producer/director Charles Marquis Warren.
  • Daisy Domergue's blood-drenched face is a nod to Carrie (1976).
  • Pete Hicox/Oswaldo Mobray shares a surname with Lt. Hicox, a character in Tarantino's previous film, Inglourious Basterds. Word of God is that at least one character in this movie is actually related to a character in one of his other movies, so this might be both intentional and continuity.
  • Warren making Col. Smithers' son walk through the snow is a nod to the torture walk in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly... only even more sadistically homoerotic.
  • The title is an allusion to Federico Fellini's 8½. The credits call it "The Eighth Film by Quentin Tarantino" and 8 is an Arc Number of the film, similar to Fellini who titled his film thus because he had made 7 1/2 films before his masterpiece.
  • Six-Horse Judy is bouncy and hyperactive in the manner of Doris Day in Calamity Jane. Both women dress alike, Jane rides shotgun on a stagecoach whilst Judy drives, and when entering their chosen drinking establishments Jane sits on the bar while Judy perches on a table.
  • Some of the lighting during the exterior shots of Minnie's Haberdashery during the blizzard is reminiscent of The Thing. O.B. and Mannix setting up a guide rope to the outhouse establishes another prop that was important in The Thing, and the overall story ends with the last two surviving members of the cast (two men, one black and one white) victorious... but nonetheless in conditions that all but guarantee that they won't be surviving for that much longer.
  • John and O.B. vomit blood after drinking the poisoned coffee, just like how Yuka vomits blood after eating poisoned food in Battle Royale. The movie can be reminiscent of an extended version of BR's lighthouse massacre, where someone getting poisoned instigates the eventual shoot-out.
• Shown Their Work: General Smithers is accused of murdering African-American Union soldiers and other war crimes, several of which were really committed by Confederates during the American Civil War, along with selling soldiers back into slavery. It got so bad that Lincoln and Ulysses Grant refused to exchange prisoners of war until the South treated African-American soldiers fairly.
• Slasher Smile: Daisy gives a chilling one as she sings her final verse to "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" shortly after John Ruth has drunk the poisoned coffee.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The film lands moderately on the cynical side of the scale, but not as far as you'd think going by the premise. Everybody Dies, including the innocent bystanders. Six of the ten (non-posthumous) characters were murderers in on the conspiracy to free the bounty. The remaining four consisted of one Token Good Teammate and three fairly dark anti-heroes (the closest thing the movie has to a "hero" in the end is an unapologetic white supremacist and former Confederate bushwhacker). Basically every character was a violent, selfish criminal. But, in the end, it is two of those same selfish criminals who change for the better, putting aside their differences to avenge the innocents killed by the villains and honor the man who saved their lives. In the process, they bring Jody's gang to justice and save future travelers from the fate of Minnie and her workers. Even the final shot of the movie, featuring the two "heroes" painfully bleeding to death alone in a cabin full of corpses, manages to have a tinge of optimism at the end via the (fake) Lincoln letter.
• The Smurfette Principle: Daisy Domergue is the only woman in the film's cast of eight, despite mentions of female lodge owner Minnie. The flashback also includes Minnie, her female assistant, and Six-Horse Judy, who were all killed by Jody and his gang prior to Daisy's arrival.
• Snowed-In: Except for the two first chapters in the mountains with the carriage and the occasional trip to the outhouse and the barn and a quick reveal of a basement, a flashback to the mountains, and a man being executed out back, the majority of the movie plays out inside Minnie's Haberdashery lodge during a blizzard.
• Snow Means Death: The cast gets Snowed-In and it's implied all of them die eventually.
• The Sociopath: Each and every member of the Domergue gang: Daisy, Jody, "Bob", "Oswaldo", and "Joe Gage".
• Sounding It Out: When Mannix reads Warren's letter in the final scene, he reads out the words aloud so the audience can hear it as well.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • By sheer luck, Warren and Mannix join Ruth on the trip to Minnie's. This unexpected "reinforcement" (plus the blizzard) ruins the plan of Breaking Out the Boss.
  • Daisy gives the game away with her final made-up verse to "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" shortly after she sees him drink the poisoned coffee. As a result, John Ruth smashes her guitar and chains them back together. Sure enough, this means she has to waste valuable time hauling a corpse much bigger than her far enough to reach a machete, cut his arm free, and then go for a fallen gun, which gives Mannix enough time to wake up and shoot her.
• Speech-Centric Work: The movie consists almost entirely of the "Hateful Eight" being suspicious of each other in a claustrophobic cabin in a snowstorm, and brief moments of brutal violence.
• Spotting the Thread: There are multiple threads everywhere for Warren to spot, on account of him being familiar with the Haberdashery. He knows something's up before he sets foot inside the lodges, and keeps accumulating inconsistencies.
  • Warren spots a lone jellybean on the ground, the rest are kept up high in glass jars that do not contain that color jellybean. It's eventually revealed that it was dropped by Minnie's helper when Jody and his gang took over the lodge.
  • Bob claims that Minnie has been gone for days, but Warren notices that the soup has been made fresh, and is exactly the way she makes it
  • Sweet Dave loves his armchair so much he won't allow anyone else to sit in it, and even takes it when he travels. But the chair is left there, no one's prohibited from using it, and it's covered with blankets and furs (revealed to be concealing a bloodstain).
  • Bob the Mexican claims to have been hired by Minnie, despite the fact that Minnie hated Mexicans.
  • Mannix spots a thread of his own: why would Warren be stripped of his commission following a controversial war record if he was pen pals with President Lincoln?
  • Mannix knows Daisy is lying to him when she tries to get him onto her side, pointing out to her she's been lying through her teeth the whole time and never seemed to give a crap about his life before she needed his help.
• A Storm Is Coming: The characters are being chased by and then prepare to ride out a blizzard.
• The Summation: After John Ruth dies from the poisoned coffee, Warren has all the suspects held at gunpoint while he delivers one of these, explaining all the threads he has spotted and correctly deducing who poisoned the coffee.
• Take That!: Both Mannix and Smithers are mocked by John Ruth and Warren for supporting the Lost Cause. Ruth reminds them that they revolted because they lost the election and they fought to enforce and extend slavery. Warren feels the same way, though with him it seems that he hates the Confederates on general principle.
• Talking Is a Free Action:
  • Subverted. Jody takes a few moments while surrendering to Warren and Chris to share a warm moment with his sister. Warren brutally blows his head apart.
    Daisy: What are you doing?! He was giving up!
    Warren: Well, it took him too long, so I done it for him!
  • Also subverted for Mannix, who stands up to finish his dismissal of Daisy's offer, only to fall briefly unconscious from blood loss.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: [[spoiler:Gage poisoned the coffee, causing the death of O.B. and Ruth. And almost Mannix's.
• Teeth Flying: During his final No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Daisy, Ruth manages to destroy the bottom two-thirds of Daisy's front two teeth. Very disturbing. She even spits one of them at his face.
• Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: Smithers, being the Racist Grandpa he is, refuses to talk directly to Warren and communicates with him via Mannix.
• Tempting Fate: O.B. curses at John Ruth that he will not go back out into the blizzard... only to be forced to do it later when disposing of General Smithers' body because he drew the short straw.
• Ten Little Murder Victims: A group of people, trapped in an isolated location, being killed off one by one and not knowing who to trust.
• This Is My Chair: Sweet Dave's chair. The fact that Sweet Dave would apparently bring his chair with him to the other side of the damned mountain rather than leave it behind is one of the many inconsistencies that Warren notes.
• This Is My Side: Oswaldo suggests splitting the lodge so the Southerners and Northerners don't have to sit next to each other, with the dinner table as a neutral zone.
• Token Good Teammate: John Ruth and O.B. Jackson are the only inhabitants of Minnie's Haberdashery who aren't terrible people. Though Chris Mannix has gotten a bit better by the film's end.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth:
  • Minnie and her employees are some of the genuinely nicest characters in the film... and they are brutally murdered by Jody and his gang.
  • While not an entirely good person, John Ruth is pretty much the only member of the titular Hateful Eight who can be considered a decent human being... and he's also one of the first to bite the bullet.
• Trail of Blood: During the massacre at Minnie's, Sweet Dave gets injured and escapes the cabin. However, he leaves a trail of blood in the snow which Gage follows to finish the job.
• Uncertain Doom: By the end of the film, both Mannix and Warren are likely too wounded to survive long enough to be found after the blizzard, but their deaths are never confirmed on screen, nor is it ever revealed if there actually were fifteen extra gang members waiting in Red Rock or if they were one last desperate ploy by Daisy to dodge the noose.
• Undignified Death: According to Warren, General Smithers' son didn't beg for his life or to go free, but, knowing he was going to die, instead begged for a blanket to die with some comfort, to the point of performing fellatio on Warren after he falsely promised to give it to him. This undignified act does not save his life though.
• Undying Loyalty: After Jody is killed, Mobray and Gage are willing to give themselves up so that Mannix can collect their bounties in exchange for letting Daisy go.
• Vigilante Injustice: Discussed:
  Oswaldo Mobray: (lecturing Daisy) John Ruth wants to take you back to Red Rock to stand trial for murder. And, if... you're found guilty, the people of Red Rock will hang you in the town square. And as the hangman, I will perform the execution. And if all those things end up taking place, that's what civilized society calls "justice". However, if the relatives and the loved ones of the person you murdered were outside that door right now, and after busting down that door they drug you out in the snow and hung you up by the neck...that would be frontier justice. Now the good part about frontier justice, is it's very thirst-quenching. The bad part is it's apt to be wrong as right!
• Villainous BSoD: Daisy suffers one, very briefly, after her brother is killed right in front of her. Joe Gage tries to console her.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: When John and O.B. die from the poisoned coffee, they vomit up large amounts of projectile blood.
• War Is Hell: How both Warren and Smithers justify their behavior at wartime (the former burning prisoners of war alive and the latter slaughtering surrendering troops). Mannix doesn't buy the excuse in Warren's case.
• Weather Saves the Day: It's brought up that the unexpected blizzard played a part in derailing the baddies' plan.
• Weird West: Downplayed. It's not at all fantastical or sci-fi, but The Hateful Eight is still a batshit crazy horror Western. It is the Wild West meets The Thing, after all.
• The Western: The film is set in post-Civil War Wyoming, with the cast of characters including bounty hunters, ex-soldiers, and outlaws. The only element of the genre it's missing is the familiar desert scenery of the Southwest, it having been swapped out for the harsh winter of Wyoming.
• Wham Line: After listening to a deal offer from Daisy, Chris seems to have been swayed to her side and letting her go, along with considering killing Warren... and then Mannix throws the deal right into her face, explaining he was just toying with her for his own amusement and wasn't fooled for a second.
  Chris Mannix: No deal, tramp.
• Wham Shot: As Warren deduces the true motives of Bob, Oswaldo, and Joe, the camera moves down behind Joe, making it seem like he's got something behind his back... and it keeps going, under the floorboards, until we see Jody, who up until that point had not been seen or referred to.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Or rather, "What Happened to the Cat?" In the flashback to before Jody's gang massacred the tenants of Minnie's Haberdashery, we see a housecat in the cabin. The cat has mysteriously vanished by the time the movie proper starts.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • Daisy tries to make a deal with Mannix, offering to let him collect the bounties of her slain gang members and sparing him from the wrath of the rest of her gang in return for killing Warren and allowing her to go free, since Warren would be the only witness. However, Mannix declines, suspecting that Daisy is bluffing and remembering that Daisy would have let him die by drinking the poisoned coffee.
  • A self-induced version happens a bit earlier. After Jody makes his entrance and Oswaldo and Mannix shoot and wound each other, Mannix could and would very well have shot Gage too, and is indeed going to do so, as Gage has just confessed to being the one who poisoned the coffee, and Mannix himself asked Warren for permission to execute him in cold blood (just as Warren did to Bob) a minute earlier. However, just as Mannix is about to pull the trigger, Gage desperately reminds him that he is unarmed, and he arguably hit some spot, because Mannix ends up holding his fire for the moment. Mannix finally does shoot Gage only after he retrieves a gun and is going to fire at him and Warren.
• World of Ham: Hoo boy. While the characters aren't happy about their circumstances, the principal actors sure seem to be enjoying themselves.
• World of Jerkass: The title is no lie, as everyone is bitter, prejudiced, and prone to violence, and most are criminals to boot.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: Warren tells Smithers a horrific story including a Post-Rape Taunt about how he killed his son so that Smithers will try and shoot Warren, and thus Warren can kill him in self-defense.
• Write What You Know: In-Universe. Joe Gage is writing, in his own words, "the only thing I'm qualified to write about: my life story."
• Wrong Genre Savvy: John Ruth thinks he's the gruff Crazy-Prepared man of the law who Always Gets His Man. While this is mostly true, and he would be The Hero in a more traditional, lighthearted Western, he doesn't expect to be poisoned in an exceedingly dark ensemble Western Locked Room Mystery when he and his prisoner get locked in up in Minnie's with a bunch of other sketchy dudes with absolutely no way out. Chris takes over for him as the only somewhat heroic character in the film, since Warren is a clear Nominal Hero whose objective is simply just to stay alive.
• Your Head Asplode:
  • Jody comes up from underneath the floor just long enough to greet Daisy before having the back of his head blown out by Warren.
  • Bob's fate as well, also by Warren's hand.

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