r/pulpfiction

I just had a thought that might be Head Canon. In Kill Bill, Michael Madison's character says that he pawned his sword. Now, in Pulp Fiction Butch and Marcellas' fight ends in a pawn shop where he grabs the samurai sword to end Maynard and Zed.

What if it's the same sword?

I caught an A-Team rerun with a very familiar storyline -- eight years before Pulp Fiction came out. There's even a Die Hard alum in the key role, though this is before the Nakatomi tragedy.

Here it is -- Paul Gleason plays an old boxer who was told to take a dive by a bald, black gangster. Instead, he decides to fight for real and ends up killing his opponent. Then he goes on the run, only to be found decades later (there was no Zed/Maynard episode for him to patch things up with the gangster).

And much like Jack Rabbit Slim's is a "wax museum with a pulse," this episode is a 1980s time capsule with appearances by Hulk Hogan and NFL oddity William "Refrigerator" Perry.

Anyway, the plot caught my attention.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0504224/

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I recently re-watched 1993 box-office hit Les Visiteurs and soon felt extremely glad at this viewing choice because I had forgotten about the scene where a wizard sends the hero, a medieval knight, back in time so he can undo accidentally shooting his prospective dad-in-law in the head. This is remarkably similar to the scene in Pulp Fiction where - under the briefcase-contains-a-time-machine theory (as outlined in my post 'Six reasons why the Pulp Fiction briefcase contains a time machine') - Marsellus erases time to just before Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the head (upon which Vincent promptly accidentally again shoots Marvin in the head). That the knight only just manages to divert the crossbow bolt strengthens the sense that the scene is being quoted from. Or there's how the collapse of the knight's marriage plans is echoed by the way the only specified consequence of Marvin eating a bullet is Jimmie, the character played by Quentin Tarantino, getting divorced. Keep in mind the dates for the films. Les Visiteurs was released on 27 January 1993. Principal photography for Pulp Fiction began on 20 September 1993.

Of course it could be just a coincidence. But the coincidences are piling up. For me there are so many that they have to be seen as clues pointing to how Tarantino wants viewers to, at the least, keep in mind as a shadowy sub-reality the briefcase containing a time machine.

On another point - previous posts have led to comments claiming Tarantino has endorsed the MacGuffin theory. I have come across videos where Tarantino makes comments along the lines of the briefcase being whatever people want it to be, but I have never come across one in which he states that he himself did not see it as having specific contents.

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