• Actor Allusion:
  • Schultz lies about having a history in the circus. This might be a deliberate reference to Waltz playing a circus owner in the film adaptation of Water For Elephants, or it might be a coincidence.
  • Christoph Waltz has a private conversation in a foreign language to hide his real intentions.
  • Jamie Foxx's Django meets Franco Nero, who played the original Django in the 1960s.
    "The 'D' is silent."
    "I know."
  • Don Johnson's Big Daddy character wears all-white, a reference to his Miami Vice character.
  • When Django and Schultz deliver the bodies of the Wilson-Lowe gang, we can see a dead rabbit hung by the legs on the hut. The sheriff invites them to eat some cake. Leonardo Di Caprio, who plays a villain called Candie, played Amsterdam, the leader of a gang called the Dead Rabbits, in Gangs Of New York.
  • David Steen plays Mr. Stonesipher, Candie's dog handler. Last time Steen worked with Quentin Tarantino, he played a dog-handling cop in Reservoir Dogs.
  • Jamie Foxx assisting a very suave and cold-blooded Caucasian assassin in grey in killing people? Sounds familiar.

There's a sliding scale here from "obvious, dialogue allusion to a former role" through "costume allusion", to "hey, if you twist this thing that way and squint a bit, it almost looks like a different film one of these actors was in!" I've removed a couple of them, but is there any non-subjective way to draw the line between allusion and coincidence?

It seems to me that Candie's masked female goon should fall under some trope but I'm not sure what. Simply by being... well, obviously female but wearing male clothes and a mask makes her noticable and then we get a good long close up of her late in the film. Definitely seems like she is going to do something important but then she gets gunned down with the other mooks with no fanfare.

What (if any) trope would this fall under?

Potential Crowning Moment of Awesome - whilst filming the scene around the dinner table whilst a lecture on the 'science' behind slavery is given, Leo slammed his hand on the table so hard, he cut it open. The next few scenes, his hand is clearly covered in blood. He didn't break character and, naturally, the version that made it into the final film is the one where he cut himself accidently. When he smears his bloody hand across Kerry Washington's face, she doesn't look too thrilled, possibly due to Enforced Method Acting.

What's the deal with those stupid-looking collars made seemingly from gate bars? Most muzzled slaves seemed to wear them, including Django at one point.

Aside from some limited utility in snagging stuff if the slave somehow found a way to run away effectively (which involves getting rid of their fetters) but not to take off the collar...

Seriously, what's with those things?

Just Here For Godzilla: Alright, I'm a Tarantino fan, but mostly I watched this for another award-winning supporting actor performance by Christoph Waltz. Anyone else?

I'm not so sure about Django being a Type IV or V anti-hero.

Considering what the man went through and the setting (overlapping but separate aspects) he's practically a saint. I've been watching a lot of Stargate SG-1 lately and I don't know how any of the SG-1, who are "proper" Good Guys would have fared in Django's place - no amount of SG-1 diplomacy and Mc Gyvering would have gotten them through in the real Deep South, let alone Tarantino's Deep South.

The only properly anti-heroic or even villainous line I remember him saying is "fuck the farmer, and I'm gonna steal that horse," when planning with the good doctor, and he seems to agree when Schultz points out the glaring hole in that approach.

I see Schultz as a type II anti-hero if not a straight up Guile Hero (especially during his highly dangerous sabbatical from bounty hunting that proves to be his undoing) and Django himself as a solid type III - you do not want to piss him off, but you DO want him on your side especially if things go south.

TL, DR: In such a brutal setting you can't be a gentle hero... at least not unless you're basically invincible or as near as makes no difference.

Thoughts?

I see one troper maybe more keeps changing the name of Broomhilda to Brunhilde. I know that the latter is more correct, but the former is actually how the name is spelled in the script, found here. So, it should stay as Broomhilda on the pages here.

I'm guessing the spelling choice is some combination of a) Tarantino misspelling it, b) Tarantino deliberately choosing a more "ridiculous" spelling, or c)Broomhilda being how an American would probably spell/interpret the German name.

I noticed a really subtle visual echo in this film. Early on, Schultz shakes Django's hand, which pretty much consolidates their friendship/partnership. Later, Schultz refuses to shake hands with Candie, which results in both their deaths. Not sure which trope applies here.

What would be a good trope to describe the death of Tarantino's character?

Why is Stephen listed as the Dragon? I think Candie works better as the Dragon, this is even shown when he is first encountered at the Cleopatra Club, as he smokes the pipe he exhales the smoke from his nostrils clearly resembling a dragon. I see Stephen as the Wotan character, Broomhilda disobeyed him when asked to tell the truth so he placed the dragon(Candie), and hellfire(?) around her separating her from her Siegfried(Django) by informing Candie of the batman gambit.

Why do people think Schultz killed Candie? I had edited Honor Before Reason to reflect that Schultz probably killed Candie because Candie discovered his Batman Gambit and lost (making Schultz, as Candi claims, a really bad loser). The Man In Black rather rudely claimed that that was 'just wrong,' and deleted it. And while I don't disagree that Schultz's obvious moral pangs influenced that decision (I should have made that clearer in the first place), there is a very, very definite implication (Candie's assertions notwithstanding) that if everything had gone according to plan Schultz would have been more than willing to shake Candie's hand (as I recall, Schultz did shake Candie's hand while a fight to death between two slaves was going on in the same room). Rather than simply re-insert my edit (with some clarification), I wanted to see if people agreed or disagreed before I risked natter.

Should Stephen fall under The Quisling, Les Collaborateurs or another trope for working for Candie against the interest of his people?

I'd like to ask just why this film has been labeled as "controversial". I haven't seen or heard of any "controversy" surrounding this film. In fact, there hasn't been much talk of it at all in the mainstream media. Based on the research I've done, all the "controversy" seems to stem from blogs or websites that seem, more or less, to be trying to stir up some kind of "controversy" just for the hell of it. Just because a film features slavery does not automatically make it controversial.

If no one can give a valid defense of the term, I'm deleting it.