10 Mind-Blowing Quentin Tarantino Movie In-Jokes

Movie buffs love the films of Quentin Tarantino not just for the filmmaker’s whip-smart dialogue and stylised ultra-violence, but because they come heavily loaded with pop culture references, homages, and tributes to the golden age of cinema.

He also likes to include lots of self-referential nods and winks, some of which you’ll already know about, and some you may never have noticed before…

Red Apple cigarettes

Quentin Tarantino is said to hate product placement in movies, so instead of promoting real-life brands, his characters always smoke the fictional Red Apple brand.

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They first appeared in ‘Pulp Fiction’ and have resurfaced in various forms throughout his movies including ‘The Hateful Eight’, when Minnie talks about only smoking “Red Apple tobacco”.

Big Kahuna Burger

Another fictional brand that regularly surfaces in Tarantino movies include the fictional Big Kahuna Burger which appears in ‘Reservoir Dogs’, ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, and ‘Death Proof’. More recently the fake burger chain cropped up in the ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ TV series and you can watch a fake commercial for the restaurant here.

The trunk shot

This stylistic flourish that sees the camera shooting from inside the trunk (or boot, to us Brits) has become a trademark of QT. In more recent years, he’s phased it out in favour of the “corpse shot” which sees the camera giving us the POV of a dead (or soon to be) person laying on the floor.

Character relations

The filmmaker has gone to great lengths to connect all of his movies in a kind of “Tarantinoverse” and there’s probably a huge essay needed to join up all of the dots. Some of the more notable family links include Vic Vega (‘Reservoir Dogs’) being the brother of Vincent Vega (‘Pulp Fiction’), while Donnie ‘The Bear Jew’ Donowitz (‘Inglourious Basterds’) is the grandfather of Lee Donowitz (‘True Romance’).

Bare feet

We’re not suggesting Tarantino has a foot fetish (although he probably does - see ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’) but he loves shooting the bare feet of his leading women, particularly Uma Thurman whose characters in ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Kill Bill’ spend a huge amount of screen time sans shoes and socks. Keep an eye out for gratuitous toe action in ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ (where QT himself sucks the toes of Salma Hayak), ‘Jackie Brown’, and ‘Death Proof’.

Director cameos

Like other great directors before him Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino loves to make cameos in his own movies. From extended roles as the short-lived Mr. Brown in ‘Reservoir Dogs’ to the gourmet coffee-living Jimmie in ‘Pulp Fiction’, right up to his off-screen bit parts in ‘The Hateful Eight’, ‘Jackie Brown’ and ‘Inglourious Basterds’, he’s appeared in every single movie he’s ever directed in some capacity with mixed results.

Fox Force Five

In ‘Pulp Fiction’, Mia Wallace tells Vincent Vega a story about the ‘Fox Force Five’, a TV pilot she made about a team of five female bad asses. She’s unwittingly outlying the plot for ‘Kill Bill’ which also features a team of female assassins with virtually identical character traits to the ones outlined in ‘Pulp Fiction’.

Sheriff Earl McGraw

Adding credence to the theory that all Tarantino movies happen in the same universe is the appearance of this recurring law enforcer played by Michael Parks. The laconic sheriff pops up in ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, ‘Kill Bill’, and in ‘Death Proof’.

Ray Nicolette

Michael Keaton plays another recurring lawman in the shape of ATF agent Ray Nicolette. Nicolette appears in Tarantino’s 1997 adaptation of ‘Rum Punch’ (renamed ‘Jackie Brown’) and he also appears, again played by Keaton, in Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 Elmore Leonard adaptation ‘Out of Sight’.

The Boy Blue

So this piece of trivia has yet to be confirmed by QT himself, but if it’s true, it’s a masterful reference. The bright blue outfit chosen by Django in ‘Django Unchained’ seems to be a reference to a famous 1770 Thomas Gainsborough painting ‘The Blue Boy’. The paining also inspired early film pioneer FW Murnau to make his debut film ‘Knabe in Blau’, a now-lost silent movie. Murnau is now most famous for pioneering a new film-making method that finally freed cameras from being static objects. That method? It’s called the “unchained camera technique”.

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Whatever happened to the cast of ‘Pulp Fiction’? Find out below…

Image credits: Miramx/The Weinstein Company