"Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared."
— Title Card
For a Few Dollars More (1965) is considered as one of the greatest films of the Spaghetti Western, and a masterpiece of Sergio Leone. It's the second film in the Dollars Trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars being the first and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly being the third. Even That Other Wiki named this film as an Epic Western. And for bonus, the intro theme
, along with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme, is the most known and memorable in the Sergio Leone's Western films.
The Man with No Name (nicknamed "Manco", Italian and Spanish slang for "missing one hand", because he does nearly everything with his left hand in order to keep his right hand free to draw and fire) (Clint Eastwood) and Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), a skillful Bounty Hunter, are both hunting the famed gang leader El Indio. The Man With No Name is motivated by money; the Colonel, we come to discover, is motivated by revenge. After the two bounty hunters clash, they put aside their differences and team up to capture Indio. As part of their plan, Manco infiltrates Indio's gang by busting one of Indio's friends out of prison. However, the plan does not work out as hoped.
For a Few Dollars More provides examples of the following tropes:
- All Deserts Have Cacti: Averted as the movie was filmed in Spain.
- Animated Credits Opening: The opening has animated words on a live-action background that get shot.
- Anachronism Stew:
- Playing cards of the Old West did not have modern numerals on each corner. The number cards were represented by the number of spades, hearts, clubs, or diamonds in the center, six of diamonds had six diamonds in the center. Also, the cards in the movie were modern machine cut plastic coated paper, period cards would have been larger, and of plain pressed paper or wax coated.
- Mortimer smokes a meerschaum pipe throughout the movie, which is historically accurate; however, the pipe stem is obviously Lucite, a plastic first marketed in 1933. An 1860's pipe stem would be carved of amber, ivory, antler, or bone.
- When searching old newspapers to determine who is competing with him in El Paso, Colonel Mortimer discovers a front page of the El Paso Tribune from June 15, 1872 with a story about Manco that includes a photograph. The first photograph printed in a newspaper would not occur until March, 1880. In addition, the headline above the photo is of a modern brush-style linotype font.
- Several times throughout the film when showing close-ups of Indio's men, modern rimless cartridges can be seen in their bandoleers.
- Artistic License – History: Tucumcari wasn't founded until 1901.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Col. Mortimer's Buntline Special. Its longer barrel gives Mortimer an edge in distance, meaning he can wait out of a pistol's normal range and line up shots, but that same long barrel also prevents him from quickdrawing it, a disadvantage in some of the situations he finds himself in. He carries a derringer up his sleeve for such emergencies. It was somewhat practical for those who preferred a pistol grip as opposed to the lever action.
- "Awkward Silence" Entrance: Downplayed. When Mortimer enters the local inn, there is hardly anyone inside but the piano player sees him and stops playing for a few seconds.
- Baker Street Regular: The kid Manco pays to keep tabs on Mortimer fits the bill.
- Balcony Escape: Early on, Guy Calloway escapes Mortimer this way. He doesn't go far though.
- Bang, Bang, BANG: At the beginning of the film, every single one of their shots also sounds like a ricochet, even though they only shoot into the air and the ground.
- Bank Robbery: El Indio's target is the Bank of El Paso and its disguised safe containing "almost a million dollars".
- Batman Cold Open: The beginning shows Colonel Mortimer and Manco separately tracking and killing wanted criminals and collecting their bounties.
- Batman Gambit: Mortimer tells Manco to suggest Indio take his gang north, as it would be a good spot for an ambush. When Indio tells Manco that he is planning to go north anyway, Manco warns him about the possibility of an ambush, and advises him to south instead. Since going west would take them right back where they came from, Indio splits the difference and heads east. Naturally, Mortimer is waiting for them at their destination.
- Best Served Cold: Col. Mortimer has spent years honing his skills as a bounty hunter, tracking down the bandit who murdered Mortimer's brother-in-law and raped Mortimer's sister until she committed suicide.
- Big Damn Heroes: Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name character saves Mortimer by intervening in Indio's unfair Mexican standoff by providing a gun for him to use against the villain. With his gun trained on Indio, satisfied that the odds have now been evened out in his friend's favor, he says "Now we start", and sits down.
- Big "NO!": Tomaso when Luke guns down his wife and son.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Manco's a ruthless Bounty Hunter, Mortimer a revenge-driven stalker, and El Indio a total headcase. Not much white.
- Bloodless Carnage: Bullet wounds never cause any blood to appear. Prime examples are the deaths of the lover of Mortimer's sister in the flashback and Cuccillo, both gunned down by El Indio.
- Bond One-Liner: After finishing off Groggy, Manco admits to Mortimer as they part ways, "I thought I was having trouble with my adding."
- Boom, Headshot!:
- Col. Mortimer shoots both a wanted criminal and his horse this way in his introduction.
- In his escape from prison, El Indio kills the warden by shooting him in the head at point-blank range, then proceeds to shoot him several more times.
- Breaking Out the Boss: Indio's gang's first scene is them freeing Indio from prison. He leaps right back into action once he is out of his cell.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: When Manco is creeping around the room where El Indio hid the cabinet, this effect is achieved by painting Eastwood's face dark brown, so his eyes glow out.
- Cat Scare: During the climax when Mortimer and Marco run into another and almost shoot each other. Then a cat runs screaming across the screen.
- Censored Child Death: Indio invades an enemy's house, and asks his companions to kill the guy's wife and baby outside (off-screen). He shoots the guy later.
- Chekhov S Gun: El Indio is seen brandishing a Volcanic Repeater rifle early in the film and gives it to Manco. Later in the duel between Mortimer and El Indio, Manco uses it to make sure El Indio doesn't kill him.
- Chinese Laborer: Manco orders one to clear the Colonel's room and to take his stuff out of town. The Colonel intercedes, and a back-and-forth ensues until the laborer freaks out, drops the baggage, and bolts into the hotel.
- Colonel Badass: Colonel Douglas Mortimer, a former Confederate Army colonel who carries a veritable arsenal with him wherever he goes, and has a personal score with El Indio.
- Combat Pragmatist: Manco uses a saloon's mirror to his advantage in a gunfight.
- Comforting Comforter: We see Nino cover sleeping Indio with a jacket, underpinning the Undying Loyalty to his boss.
- Contagious Laughter: El Indio starts laughing when his gang curb-stomps Manco and Mortimer. Then his men join in the laughter.
- Continuity Nod: The Man With No Name's injured hand is the same one he injured when being tortured in A Fistful of Dollars. A close look at his poncho reveals a tight grouping of bullet holes from where Ramon Rojo shot him with the boiler plate concealed.
- Counting to Three: Wild asks his comrades to count to three when dueling himself with Mortimer at the tavern. They do and and he gets shot on three by Mortimer before he could draw his own gun.
- Crapsack World: The title card sets the stage by declaring, "Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared." The film was even called Death Had a Pricenote in Spain.
- Creator Cameo: The whistling bounty hunter is voiced by Sergio Leone.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Manco dishes one out to Red Cavanaugh, with some shades of No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. With one hand.
- When found out, Manco and Mortimer get curb-stomped by Indio's gang.
- Darker and Edgier: Unlike its predecessor, the film manages to be much darker, intense and nihilistic. Also, the main antagonist (El Indio) is a Joker-esque psycho who's far scarier than Angel Eyes. It's telling that many agree this deserved its current R rating more than the other two films in the trilogy.
- Dénouement: The film climaxes with Mortimer shooting El Indio, and the dénouement was Manco figuring out and showing to the audience why Mortimer had wanted Indio dead so badly to begin with. And leaving with the loot.
- Dingy Trainside Apartment: Mortimer visits an old man who lives in a house next to the railroad. Apparently, the railroad agent gave him a choice of selling his land, or he'd buy up the land of the guy next door and then all the trains going back and forth all night long would drive him crazy. He certainly appears to have gone crazy, and when Mortimer is leaving the vibrations from a train are knocking the entire house down around his ears.
- Dirty Cop: The sheriff in White Rocks, who alerts the Cavanaugh gang to their leader's trouble so they can ambush Manco. When Manco realizes this while collecting his bounty, he strips the sheriff of his badge and tells him to hand it to the next man.
- Disappearing Bullets: In both dream scenes, Mortimer's brother-in-law was shot three times at close range. There are no bullet holes in the wall behind him.
- Dragon Their Feet: Manco has a short (and deadly) confrontation with Groggy after the climactic showdown between Mortimer and El Indio.
- Dramatic Necklace Removal: El Indio keeps the key to the money chest on a rope around his neck. When he suspects foul play, Groggy rips it off and demands his boss to open the chest.
- Duel to the Death:
- Unique among the trilogy since the Man with No Name is not an active participant; the duel is between El Indio and Colonel Mortimer.
- Juan Wild also has one set up between him and Colonel Mortimer. He loses.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Despite how dark the film is and all the grueling pain and effort it takes, Colonel Mortimer earns his with the help of Manco, gunning down El Indio in their duel and managing to avenge his long lost sister at last. In the end he parts ways with Manco on good terms, leaving all the money to him, not wanting or needing it, and rides off into the sunset at peace.
- Establishing Character Moment: Mortimer's amazingly badass entrance.note
- Facial Dialogue: Clint Eastwood is the only one with dialogue in the final duel. Hardly anyone changes expression, Indio doesn't speak after the chimes start, and Mortimer doesn't speak at all. The shifting power dynamics of the scene - Mortimer's anguish at realizing he will be unable to avenge his sister before steeling himself to die without flinching and Indio's smug triumph at catching his enemy at a disadvantage, their mutual shock as Manco appears with Mortimer's watch, Mortimer's relief at being rescued and grim satisfaction at getting to fulfill his vendetta, Indio's smug demeanor giving way to mortal terror when he realizes he's not going to win this shootout, and Manco's deep respect for Mortimer mixed with contempt for Indio - are all shown through the soaring music and the magnificent acting of Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonte with nothing but facial expressions alone.
- Facial Composite Failure: The "Wanted!" Poster for Guy Calloway doesn't bear much resemblance to the actual man. The poster depicts a dark-haired man with curly hair and a mustache, the real Guy Calloway has red hair in a bowl cut and is mostly clean-shaven.
- Fake Kill Scare: Indio threatens the last remaining prison guard with an unloaded gun, then tells him that he's being left alive so that he can tell everyone else of how dangerous Indio's gang is.
- Fan Disservice: The flashback scene, as Indio rapes Mortimer's sister and she commits suicide. There's a nice shot of her bare chest... With a bullet hole through one nipple.
- Forced to Watch: El Indio, in one of his first Kick the Dog moments of the movie, forces Tomaso, a former member of his gang who took money to place him behind bars, to watch as the family that he started with that money (his wife and his little boy) are taken outside and shot to death, while also making him listen to the pocket watch that Indio always carries.
- Foreshadowing:
- The scene where El Indio's wanted poster is displayed indicates that there's something more than money on Colonel Mortimer's mind. Instead of focusing on the $10,000 reward, Mortimer draws his attention to the name and the "Dead or Alive" status.
- The duel between Mortimer and El Indio in the film's climax is very similar to the Mexican Standoff in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Both take place in a stonebricked circle in a place filled with corpses.
- For the Evulz: Much of Indio's actions have no solid motivation and he seems to simply enjoy being evil.
- Freudian Trio:
- Ego: Manco — Interested only in the money, but can Pet the Dog on occasion
- Superego: Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Retired) — Calm, focused, and devoted to gaining revenge on Indio
- Id: El Indio — Near psychotic bandito; has rapid mood swings, spends most of the film in a drug-induced haze
- Funny Foreground Event: Chickens start walking around in the streets of El Indio's base as Manco drives off with his bounty.
- G-Rated Drug: El Indio smokes what is presumably marijuana, but it's never mentioned exactly what it is. There's a few points where we see him so stoned he falls asleep with his eyes open or ends up giggling uncontrollably, but other than that the film deliberately makes it unclear whether Indio's psychotic behavior is caused by the drugs, or whether he's actually medicating a mental illness with them and without them he'd be even worse. (The fact that he twitchily requests joints from his underlings after killing people for trivial reasons supports this interpretation). Presumably, the intention was to placate Moral Guardians in America, without ending up in the Reefer Madness hysteria school by claiming weed will turn you into a bipolar rapist.
- Give Me a Sword: In the climactic duel, Indio has shot the long-barreled revolver out of Colonel Mortimer's hand, and wants an unfair duel: Indio clearing leather versus Mortimer bending over to get his weapon off the ground. Manco intervenes, providing Mortimer with a fast-draw revolver, belt, and holster for a much fairer fight.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Col. Mortimer's pipe (incidentally, a gorgeous example) makes him a Distinguished Gentleman Badass. Manco smokes cigarillos, while El Indio smokes marijuana.
- Green-Eyed Monster: The flashback wherein Indio watches the girl with her lover from afar.
- Hand Cannon: Col. Mortimer wields a Buntline Special that may be cumbersome on the draw, but can pack one hell of a punch with deadly accuracy. He unfolds a pack on his horse to reveal that among his many weapons, he carries an even longer-barreled pistol as well.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: A prostitute uses a hand bra after Col. Mortimer interrupts her bath with a fugitive.
- He Knows Too Much: Indio kills his cellmate, the man who built the safe cabinet. He could have brought the man with him instead, but Indio has no intention of sharing the money.
- Hell Is That Noise: Indio's watch chime. Every time it plays, you know someone is going to die horribly.
- Hey, You!: The protagonists settle into a friendly rivalry of sorts, addressing one another as "boy" and "old man", respectively.
- Honor Before Reason: Manco allows three resting bandits to get to their feet so that they have a fair chance to go for their guns before he dispatches them with his Improbable Aiming Skills. The odd thing is that these men only try to attack him because he just declared his intention to shoot them all, and they otherwise would have continued to regard him as an ally. He planned to kill three non-hostile men in cold blood no matter what happened so why even give them the chance?
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Mortimer was a war hero, but now he's just a bounty hunter.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: In the hat-shooting contest between Manco and Mortimer. Manco eventually proves he is unable to hit Mortimer's hat after shooting it too far away, but makes up for it by hitting the same spot in the ground at that range two times in a row. Mortimer then one ups him by shooting Manco's hat off his head from even father away, and suspending it in the air with every shot. Done a second time later when Mortimer grazes Manco's neck with a bullet, so he'll have a convincing injury to back up his story when he meets up with Indio again.
- Instant Death Bullet: All characters die instantly after hitting a bullet or getting stabbed. Exceptions are Chico who needs a second bullet from Manco, and El Indio when getting shot by Mortimer at the end.
- In the Back: Cuccillo gets it by Indio when racing for the escape horse.
- Invisible Backup Band: The musical pocket watch is accompanied with what sounds like an orchestra and a mariachi band, and in one scene even an Ominous Pipe Organ.
- Invulnerable Horses: Averted. Colonel Mortimer's Establishing Character Moment has him shooting the horse of a wanted man who's fleeing him. When the man picks himself up and tries to shoot Moritmer, the latter calmly kills him with another well-aimed shot.
- Invulnerable Knuckles: Averted with Groggy shaking his hand/wrist in pain after punching Mortimer during the gang's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. He has to settle for kicking Mortimer in the head.
- It's Personal: Unlike Manco, Mortimer's motivation throughout the movie is not the bounty over El Indio and his gang, but vengeance for the death of Mortimer's sister many years before, who killed herself while being raped by Indio.
- Just Take the Poster: During Colonel Mortimer's Establishing Character Moment, he takes a wanted poster for the bounty he's after and slides it under the door of his target's hotel room, so the man will flee enabling Mortimer to snipe him down from a distance.
- Just Train Wrong: All the passenger cars on the train have only four wheels. Four-wheeled passenger cars had fallen out of favor in the United States by the 1840s.
- Kick the Dog: Indio gets a lot of them during the film:
- When orders his minions to sacrifice the family of a man, and to add a properly sadistic touch, he forces the man to watch this.
- Gets another when he kills Cuchillo (one of his own minions).
- Then there's the flashback scene.
- Leitmotif: Manco is represented by a recorder riff, and Mortimer is accompanied by a single twang on a Jew's harp. El Indio is typically accompanied by some sort of bell, be it vibraphone (as his gang sneaks into the prison to free him), tubular chimes (as his eye opens after they enter his cell), or the higher chimes with his pocket watch.
- Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Averted with Indio, who does everything he can to make certain the odds are always stacked in his favor. Make sure your opponent is outgunned? Check. Put his weapon out of reach? Check. Better yet, just disarm him? Check. This gets turned on its head in the final duel, when he shoots the gun out of Colonel Mortimer's hand. He then starts the chimes on his pocket watch, smirking at the Colonel, whose gun is on the ground several feet away. There's no way Mortimer can get to his gun before getting shot. Indio holds up the watch, saying "When the chimes end, pick up your gun. Go ahead and shoot me, Colonel. Just try." A very tense scene ensues, and Indio is reaching for his gun as the chimes wind down. Cue both of them hearing new chimes, and Manco enters, holding Mortimer's watch in one hand and a rifle in the other. Covering Indio, he goes to Mortimer and gives him his pistol, negating all of Indio's advantages. Once his friend is re-armed and satisfied that the odds are now even, Manco looks at Indio and says "Now we start." Indio doesn't say a word throughout all this but the Oh, Crap! expression on his face speaks volumes. He knows he's a dead man.
- Make It Look Like a Struggle: Mortimer gives Manco a graze wound on his neck to make it look like he really was under fire when losing his three comrades.
- Mundane Utility: A deputy is shown using the butt of his pistol to nail down a "Wanted" poster.
- My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Played straight when Mortimer called out Indio with "Colonel Douglas Mortimer, Indio - does that name mean anything to you!"
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: As is typical of the trilogy. Of course, Manco and Mortimer attempt to fight back, to little avail.
- Nostalgic Music Box: Two pocket watches, one belonging to Mortimer and the other carried by Indio, that play the same tune. The two watches originally belonged to Mortimer's sister and her husband. Indio stole one after killing him and raping her and uses the music to remind himself of the good time he had doing so, or perhaps the woman he was clearly a Stalker with a Crush for...
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Although it is explicitly stated in the movie that Colonel Mortimer is originally from the Carolinas, Lee Van Cleef opted to perform his dialogue using his native New Jersey accent rather than a Southern accent.
- Nothing Up My Sleeve: Colonel Mortimer carries a Derringer in his right sleeve, which he uses against Wild in the bar at Agua Calinte.
- Nuclear Candle: When Manco bumps into Mortimer in the room with the chest full of stolen money, the latter lights up a candle which brightly illuminates the entire room.
- Offhand Backhand: Manco does this in his opening shootout, after gunning down three men who tried to prevent him from taking in their friend, who had a large bounty on his head. While still looking at the three men he'd just shot down to make certain none of them were getting up, he shot the man behind him and to his left without even turning his head. Said man, the same man he'd come to collect the bounty on, was crawling towards a pistol laying on the floor. Manco heard him moving and simply shot at the same place where he knew the gun was.
- Oh, Crap!: Manco gets one when, after climbing over a wall from a meeting with Mortimer, he steps on, and wakes up, one of El Indio's thugs. Mortimer follows, and gets one when he realizes Manco's not the one holding him up.
- The pair also get one after Indio successfully robs the El Paso Bank. Manco and Col. Mortimer were lying in wait to pick them off in the gun battle when they tried the bank heist, and had no idea the plans were to steal the other case where the money was truly hidden. They both give each other an "Oh crap" look in the aftermath of the bank heist, before riding off in different directions to meet in the desert.
- From a solo standpoint, Manco has one after he shoots Mortimer's hat out of range, thus putting Mortimer himself out of range of his bullets. He quickly reloads, but when he fires again, the bullets fall short of Mortimer, and Manco knows he's now defenseless. For a brief moment, you can see some light concern on Manco's face as Mortimer levels off his Buntline Special on him...And then Mortimer simply gets his revenge by blasting six holes through Manco's hat.
- El Indio gets one when Manco arrives and forces a fair duel between him and Mortimer, with all three present clearly knowing Mortimer is the superior duelist, and that even if El Indio wins Manco will almost certainly gun him down anyways.
- Ominous Music Box Tune: El Indio is addicted to a musical pocket watch, which plays Morricone music, and he uses it every time he has a duel, or just kills someone. For the duels, he and his opponent draw when the music ends.
- As the flashback sequence in throughout the movie keeps extending, showing us more and more of what happened on that rainy night, you realize just how creepy this is, since El Indio got it from a woman whose husband he killed and whom he then raped, driving her to shoot herself. Colonel Mortimer has a matching version because it turns out the woman was his sister.
- Ominous Pipe Organ: During Indio's showdown with Tomaso, the man who turned Indio in 18 months before. The showdown takes place inside an abandoned chapel.
- One Last Job: Manco mentions that with the $10,000 reward on El Indio's head he will possibly retire.
- One-Steve Limit: Chico (Mario Brega) in A Fistful of Dollars, one of Ramon's henchmen, and Chico (Jose Canalejas), one of El Indio's henchmen in For a Few Dollars More.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The villain is simply known as "El Indio".
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Discussed In-Universe: Colonel Mortimer provokes the Hunchback by striking a match on his hump; the Hunchback's driven to twitchy irritation but leaves the bar without retaliating. The bartender comments that "if the Hunchback didn't kill you, he must have a pretty good reason." This is because Niño prevents the Hunchback from shooting so as not to draw attention while they scout out the bank.
- "Open!" Says Me: Mortimer kicks the door open behind which Guy Calloway is enjoying himself with a prostitute.
- Outfit Decoy: The climatic shootout has two of El Indio's henchmen barge into a house and encounters what he thinks is Manco, his hat poking out behind some furniture. After the henchmen shoots the hat, Manco quickly turns around in a swivel chair and kills the henchmen.
- Price on Their Head: El Indio and his gang are worth $27,000 in total. Plus another $40,000 for returning the stolen money.
- Quick Draw: Indio likes to challenge people he's captured to these; playing the Ominous Music Box Tune with its end as the cue to fire. He also likes to place whoever he's facing at a disadvantage, such as surrounding them with goons or removing their guns from easy access. It's only when Manco steps in at the end that he actually has to fight fairly. Also, Indio's heard the song a thousand times while his opponents have no clue when the music might end. This of course puts him on equal terms with Col. Mortimer.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Young, bounty hunting, suave Manco, who improvises his solutions and out shoots men in a quick drawing blaze, contrasted with Mortimer, older, revenge seeking, and who carefully plans ahead of time and prefers to snipe his quarry.
- Refuge in Audacity: When introducing himself to El Indio's gang, Manco says that because of their huge bounties he wants to join them so he could turn them all in later. Indio brushes it off as a joke and accepts him anyway, calling it "the one answer that would prove [Manco's] all right". Except not, he instantly recognizes Manco for who he is, but decides to play along and use him later.
- Reminiscing About Your Victims: El Indio sometimes listens to the chime from his pocket watch and reflects on its previous owner, Mortimer's sister, who shot herself with Indio's gun after he killed her husband and raped her. He wistfully dwells on her as if she were "the one that got away," a touch of humanity that ironically makes him seem even more loathsome than if he were recalling his evil deed with the sadistic glee of a Card-Carrying Villain.
- Revenge by Proxy: Indio does this early on in the movie to a guy who took money to put him behind bars. The guy had used the money to start a family, and so Indio feels that the family is "partly his." He forces him to watch as his men take the guy's wife and baby boy outside and shoot them both to death, just before sadistically setting up a duel between them using the pocketwatch that he'd made him listen to during the whole thing.
- Reverse Psychology:
- Colonel Mortimer tells Manco to advise the gang to flee north since there's a good place for an ambush, and the two can catch the gang in a cross-fire. However, Manco wants all the money for himself and advises the gang to go south, pointing out that north would be a good place for an ambush. But Indio doesn't know Manco very well and suspects it may be a trap. So he splits the difference and heads east. When they get there, Manco finds Mortimer waiting for him, explaining that he knew Manco would do the exact opposite of what he said and also knew that Indio is suspicious of betrayal. Since they couldn't go west, as that's where they pulled off their heist, east was the only place they could run.
- Mortimer employs it earlier when he offers to let Manco take the bounty for Indio while he would collect the larger bounty for the rest of the band, knowing that Manco would instead insist on the opposite and allow Mortimer a better chance to personally have his revenge.
- Riding into the Sunset: How Mortimer makes his exit after getting his revenge.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Lee Van Cleef played the avenger role in the movie. Here, his target is El Indio, a notorious outlaw who gunned down his sister's lover and then raped her, leading to the sister taking her own life.
- Safecracking: Mortimer opens the safe by drilling a hole into the door and pouring acid into the tumblers to destroy them.
- Sarcastic Confession: Manco's answer to the question why he wants to join El Indio's gang: "Well, with such a big reward being offered on all of you gentlemen, I thought I'll might just tag along on your next robbery, might just turn you in to the law".
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: In the main poster, Clint Eastwood's imitating his pose in the poster from the first film. Meanwhile, Lee Van Cleef is holding his gun sideways and preparing to shoot the guy to your right.◊
- Sequel Escalation: Compared with A Fistful of Dollars, this one had had much more action and featured several locations, as well as a larger cast.
- The Seven Western Plots: Colonel Mortimer's character arc is a revenge story, as he's hunting down El Indio for killing his brother-in-law and raping his sister who killed herself in remorse. In their climactic duel, Indio taunts him by playing his sister's musical pocketwatch and daring him to draw his weapon by the time the music ends, and Manco plays Mortimer's own musical pocketwatch and throws him his gunbelt, allowing Mortimer to finish Indio off.
- Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: Manco and Mortimer. Manco prefers to outdraw his enemies and fire off as many rounds as possible at close range by fanning the hammer of his revolver, Mortimer snipes his targets. That isn't to say Mortimer can't do close range; he carries a derringer in his sleeve and has a Quick Draw to rival Manco's.
- Shout-Out: The musical pocket watches are an homage to The Bravados with Gregory Peck. Probably not coincidentally, Lee Van Cleef appeared in that film as a villain.
- Showdown at High Noon: The film climaxes in a showdown between Col. Mortimer and El Indio.
- Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: The film has one credited woman who only appears in two brief scenes, and one girl who only appears in a flashback and has no lines.
- Smoking Is Cool: And totally badass.
- Smug Snake: Guy Calloway, Mortimer's target in Tucumcari. The stationmaster explains that Calloway felt he was worth much more than the $1000 price on his head and added a pair of zeroes onto the wanted poster.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Indio's stolen pocket-watch plays a soft and mysterious melody that is quite pleasant. He almost always starts the music up when he's performing a horrible act of violence.
- Spare a Messenger: After El Indio gets freed from prison, he has all guards killed except one who he tells to go out and tell everyone what happened.
- Starter Villain: Guy Calloway for Colonel Mortimer and the Cavanaugh gang for Manco. Both criminals show each Bounty Hunter's modus operandi and skill; Mortimer lures Calloway out with his "Wanted!" Poster then takes him out at long-range, Manco walks up to Cavanaugh, challenges him to a card game, then takes out the gang with a Quick Draw before finishing Cavanaugh off.
- Steal the Surroundings: El Indio and his gang bomb the cabinet with the safe inside out of the El Paso bank and move it to their hideout where they can crack the safe without being disturbed.
- Supporting Protagonist: Manco gets a ton of screen time, and Eastwood gets top billing, but the story is really about Col. Douglas Mortimer, who gets equal screen time to Manco, and his quest for revenge against El Indio. Manco is only involved for the money, whereas Mortimer has a personal stake against El Indio. This is never more apparent than in the end: It's not Manco that has the final showdown with El Indio, it's Col. Mortimer. Manco certainly assists the colonel in making it a proper and fair fight, but Manco takes a back seat and allows Col. Mortimer to have the satisfaction of ending El Indio, and finally accomplishing his quest for revenge against him for what he did to Col Mortimer's sister.
- Take That!: The title is one of these to Jolly Films, the producers of A Fistful of Dollars whose poor treatment of that movie remained a sore spot for Leone. Leone hadn't intended this movie to be a direct sequel, but when Jolly tried to bully him into making the film for them, he not only refused but changed the title purely out of spite. (Leone had the last laugh, as For a Few outgrossed Fistful and became, for several years, the highest-grossing Italian film ever.)
- Throwing the Distraction: When Breaking Out the Boss, Indio's mooks distract a guard on the rooftop by throwing pebbles.
- Toccata and Fugue in D minor: The soundtrack quotes a bit of this during one scene in the abandoned church.
- Tragic Keepsake: Colonel Mortimer has a pocketwatch given to him by his sister. There's another pocketwatch that once belonged to the sister in question, but was taken by Indio following her suicide as he was raping her.
- Tranquil Fury: Mortimer calmly eats his dinner while sitting across the table from the man who raped his sister and drove her to suicide.
- Triumphant Reprise: The Ominous Music Box Tune that played when Indio executed Tomaso gets one during the climactic showdown when Manco levels the playing field and gives Colonel Mortimer his Heroic Second Wind.
- Troubled Backstory Flashback: We often cut to a flashback involving a young woman being raped by Indio. It turns out she was Colonel Mortimer's sister, who had killed herself to keep El Indio from getting the satisfaction of raping her, and Mortimer is after revenge.
- Unorthodox Holstering: While having a cross-draw isn't all that unorthodox, it's how the old man identifies Mortimer and is able to tell Manco who he really is.
- Villainous Breakdown: Invoked by El Indio to get his men to follow Manco and Mortimer.
- Wall of Weapons: Mortimer has a rolled up blanket on his horse, which is unrolled early in the movie to reveal a large number of rifles and pistols.
- "Wanted!" Poster:
- The first villain we see adds two zeros on his own wanted poster, claiming it isn't anywhere near enough.
- Colonel Mortimer also has a bit of a staring contest with El Indio's wanted poster as he shoots it with his mind.
- Weapon Specialization: Each main character has a unique gun.
- Manco uses a Colt Single Action Army with a 5.5 inch barrel, a.k.a. "Artillery" model with silver rattlesnake grips.
- Mortimer uses a Buntline Special with an 10 inch barrel as his main weapon. He often attaches a stock to the grip for long distance shots.
- Indio uses a Buntline Special with an eight inch barrel.
- Wham Shot: Mortimer's pocket watch has the same woman as in El Indio's pocket watch.
- Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?:
- Subverted, since Indio thought he would have profited from the bounty hunters killing off most of his gang (as he wouldn't have had to split the loot). Of course, it doesn't work out as well as he had planned.
- Used as a plot point earlier in the movie, when Mortimer intentionally insults the hunchbacked bandit when he's in town. The hunchback is obviously beside himself with rage, and clearly wants to shoot Mortimer in the face, except his compatriots hold him back. "Why would a man have a gun and not use it?" Because they're trying to not catch attention while planning a bank robbery.
- Will Talk for a Price: Fernando, the street urchin, demands increasing amounts of change from Manco to reveal information.
