History Film / DeathProof

* ArtisticLicenseMedicine: Averted with Stuntman Mike's gunshot wound. It causes him a great deal of pain that he can't ignore, and renders his entire arm pretty much useless.

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Played straight and averted, depending on which girl you're talking about. Played straight - [[spoiler:Shanna]] is thrown from the car and lands on the road apparently undisfigured while [[spoiler:Lanna Frank]] hits the dashboard amid broken glass that doesn't cut her face. Also [[spoiler:Zoë]] makes it through the first car chase without a single scratch and barely any dirt, despite getting thrown off the car into a field. Averted - [[spoiler:Pam's]] face gets covered with blood as she is killed. [[spoiler:Jungle Julia's]] leg gets [[DeathByDisfigurement sliced off in the crash]] and the [[spoiler:spinning wheel of Mike's car]] rips [[spoiler:Arlene's]] face off.
* BerserkButton: After Mike [[spoiler: attempts to run them off the road to kill Zoe, even though Kim wounded him, the three girls are very quick to decide their only course of action is to personally kill Mike. Kim in particular becomes more and more bloodthirsty for Mike's death the longer the chase goes on.]]

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[spoiler: Pam, Julia and Butterfly suffer these in their respective deaths; the former dies from get thrashed around in a death box with no seat belts while the latter two both die from blood loss due to [[AnArmAndALeg getting her leg violently ripped off]] and [[FacialHorror getting her face simultaneously ripped off and crushed by a speeding tire.]]]]

* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: The entire first half makes you ask when something, ''anything'' is actually going to happen. As per HalfwayPlotSwitch below, this is deliberate -- low budget films had a lot of filler of people talking because action scenes were expensive.

* FanDisservice: Jungle Julia's long luscious legs [[spoiler:getting ripped off in a car crash]].

* FinalGirl: Quentin himself noted during interviews about this film that he is a ''major'' fan of Carol Clover's writings on slasher films. As such, part of the thrill of the first half involves how he consciously [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]] this trope in particular: Arlene/Butterfly is set up from the beginning to be a played-straight Final Girl in a standard slasher--especially how she's portrayed as rather "apart" from her friends, and not as open in her sexuality. [[spoiler: Alas, she ends up ''dying'' with the others--which, as Quentin anticipated, is a ''big'' shock to a smart audience....]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Completely subverted. [[spoiler: The first half of the film features the characters talking about their trip to an isolated cabin with no boys allowed, setting up a seeming slasher-plot with the girls trapped at the cabin and having to fight for their lives. They don't ever get there, and are brutally killed off by Mike at the film's halfway point.]]

* HalfwayPlotSwitch: Halfway through, the movie is filmed with a very different style, [[spoiler:with very different characters]], in a very different place. It was almost like watching a sequel in the middle of the first movie! The film itself foreshadows this plot switch. During the opening, the film briefly shows one of the films was originally called ''Thunder Bolt''. Reading an interview with Tarantino reveals that this is actually exactly what's supposed to be going on. A bit of TruthInTelevision -- the shoestring nature of the B-movie industry meant a lot of half-finished productions. These might be finished by an entirely different crew, or by just editing in footage from another unrelated half-finished production. ''Film/MonsterAGoGo'' is a classic example of this technique [[EpicFail going utterly wrong.]]

* JabbaTableManners - Watching Stuntman Mike [[EstablishingCharacterMoment noisily and messily slurping down his plate of nachos in his introduction]] is enough to tell you that this guy is going to be a creep.

* MuggingTheMonster: A good chunk of the second half of the film is the group of friends establishing they are ActionGirl material, and Mike [[HumiliationConga discovers the hard way]] that trying to kill them was a very stupid idea the moment Kim whips out a handgun and shoots him in the shoulder, followed by a [[CurbStompBattle Curb-Stomp]] CarChase ''and'' [[CurbStompBattle Battle]].

* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: Mike [[spoiler: gets beaten up by the three girls at the end of the movie. Serves him right.]]
* NoSeatbelts: On the drive [[spoiler: to the cabin, Lanna, Shanna, and Jungle Julia aren't wearing their seat belts when Mike crashes his car into them, and Shanna ends up going through the windshield and onto the pavement in the crash because she's not buckled in. Julie and Lanna's injuries are also guaranteed fatal due to this fact. Subverted with Arlene, who is the only one buckled in. Not only does it not save her life, but she arguably gets one of the cruelest deaths with the spinning rear wheel of Mike's Nova ripping her face off as his car flies over theirs...]]
** Also demonstrated [[spoiler: in the second half. The Challenger the three girls are in didn't have them as standard equipment, and Mike has a custom belt installed in his Charger but he's unable to buckle back up due to his arm injury and the girls repeatedly rear-ending him.]]

* OffOnATechnicality: Discussed. Sheriff [=MacGraw=] theorises that if the first murder went to court, this would likely happen to Stuntman Mike; he was completely sober, while the four girls were extremely drunk, and even their designated driver was smoking a joint as the car hit them. The murder of [[spoiler: Pam]] likely couldn't even get a reckless endangerment charge, since she was stood up by a date and asked him for the lift. Mike turning on the headlights before impact just makes it look like an unlucky accident.

* PlotTwist: [[spoiler: Basically, the entire first half of the film. While the audience certainly knows Stuntman Mike is creepy, Jungle Julia, Shanna, and Arlene repeatedly talk about their planned trip to an isolated cabin with "no boys allowed," and the fact that Lanna is their designated driver to get them all there, leading the audience to expect that they're going to be stalked at the cabin, likely by Mike, in a familiar slasher film plot. This is only advanced further then the girls get in Lanna's car to leave. This entire set-up is almost gleefully subverted by Creator/QuentinTarantino when the film reveals that all the discussion was for nothing, and all four of the first half female protagonists are intentionally, and horrifically slaughtered by Mike long before they reach that isolated cabin.]]
* PoliceAreUseless: Double subverted. Sheriff Earl Macgraw quickly figures out that Stuntman Mike's first murder was premeditated and he was probably getting off on it. But he can't prosecute him for the following reasons: he wasn't drunk driving, Pam was stood up by her date and asked him for a lift, the other girls were all drunk or high, and Mike turned his headlights on right before the car crashed.

* ReallyGetsAround: Jungle Julia, who is said to sleep with boys she used to pick on in school, apparently getting her billboards via the CastingCouch. Not that she minds this reputation...

* SexSignalsDeath: Inverted. The first girls, in spite of acting all wild, are actually pretty uptight about sex (especially Arlene/Butterfly), and they die. The second group, on the other hand, are very open about their sex lives, and they not only survive, they [[spoiler:kill the bad guy]]!

* ShockingMoments: [[spoiler: Jungle Julia, Shanna, and Arlene, who we've been following as the protagonists from the start of the film, are suddenly all viciously killed off at the film's halfway mark, introducing us to four completely new protagonists.]]

** Downplayed with Stuntman Mike who claims his car is "death-proof". [[spoiler: In the end of the film, he gets chased by Kim, Zoe and Abernathy, who wreck his car and later drag him out and beat him to death.]]

* TomboyWithAGirlyStreak: Kim states that she does love John Hughes movies in spite of being TheLadette.

** [[Creator/KurtRussell Jack Burton]]'s tank top (white tank top with a Japanese Rising Sun and a Samurai) from ''Film/BigTroubleInLittleChina'' can be seen hung up on the wall of the bar where the first segment of the film takes place. It is right above Jungle Julie,slightly to the right of the AMi Jukebox.

* LightFeminineAndDarkFeminine: Shanna as the light to Julia and Arlene's dark.

* BadassDriver: Stuntman Mike and Kim.

* EthicalSlut: Kim is a sympathetic protagonist who has a history of being 'the other woman'.

* CompensatingForSomething: Lee and Abernathy watch Stuntman Mike burn rubber out of the service station in his Dodge Charger R/T 500 and conclude, "Little dick." Given that he gets his kicks by [[PhallicWeapon killing women with his car]], and is later shown sitting with the hood ornament between his legs, they may be right.
* ContinuityNod: The reappearance of Earl [=McGraw=]. See above. Also, Jasper the redneck seems to be the same person that pays Buck and attempts to rape the Bride from ''Film/KillBill''.
** Dr. Block makes a quick appearance in the hospital, showing that this takes place before the events of PlanetTerror. Additionally, in Planet Terror there's a shout-out to Jungle Julia in loving memory.

** Narrowly averted in the climactic scene. The car crashes through a sign for a drive-in where ''Film/WolfCreek'' is one of the films. John Jarratt, who played Mick in ''Wolf Creek'', was considered for Stuntman Mike.

* SpitTake: Stuntman Mike has one during his INeedAFreakingDrink moment when [[spoiler:he sees the girls' Dodge Charger in his rear-view mirror, fully intent on ramming him at full speed!]]