Funny / Pulp Fiction

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

• Mia, after almost dying from a heroin overdose, being brought back by an emergency adrenaline shot to the heart and told to say something:
  Mia: ...Something.
• Pretty much every single time Jules opens his mouth, but the Brett scene is the one that became the symbol of the entire movie.
  Jules: What does Marsellus Wallace look like?
  Brett: [stammering] What?
  Jules: [flips the table] What country you from?
  Brett: What....What?
  Jules: "What" ain't no country I ever heard of! They speak English in What?
  Brett: ...What?
  Jules: ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?!
  Brett: Yes!
  Jules: Then y'know what I'm saying!
  Brett: Yes!
  Jules: Describe what Marsellus Wallace...looks like!
  Brett: ...What?! I—
  Jules: [whips out gun] Say "what" again! Say! "What"! Again! I DARE you! I DOUBLE DARE YOU, motherfucker! Say "what" one more goddamn time!
  • After Brett does describe what Marsellus looks like in two two-word sentences (i.e. "He's black." and "He's bald."):
    Jules: Does he look like a bitch?
    Brett: What?! [gets shot in the shoulder]
    Jules: DOES. HE. LOOK. LIKE. A BITCH?
    Brett: NO!
    Jules: Then why you try to fuck him like a bitch, Brett?
  • "This is a tasty burger!"
  • "And Marsellus Wallace don't like to be fucked by anybody except Mrs. Wallace!"
• When Jules is reciting his famous Bible passage, Vincent can be seen prepping his gun in the background. He's been through this so many times he knows what's coming next.
• This bit when Vincent calls Lance as he rushes to his house with a passed out Mia:
  Vincent: She's fuckin' dying on me, man!
  (cut back to Lance's house with the TV on in the background)
  Man on TV: Just dandy.
• Lance panicking when Vincent crashes his car into his house.
  Lance: Have you lost your fucking mind!? You're talking about drug shit on a cellular phone! You crashed your car into my fucking house!! Hey! Hey! HEY! Are you deaf!? You are not bringing this fucked-up bitch into my house!
  Vincent: This fucked-up bitch is Marsellus Wallace's wife. Do you know who Marsellus Wallace is? Listen if she croaks on me I'm a fucking grease bum! Now, I-I will be forced to tell him that you did not help and that you let her die on your fucking lawn! Now help me out. Pick her up.
  Lance: ...shit!
  • Along with that, the sight of Lance lifting the shade on his window and being treated to a bright red convertible suddenly zooming across his lawn and crashing offscreen. And the bit of physical comedy when Vince drops Mia onto the lawn. "This fucked-up bitch is Marsellus' Wallace wife."
  • The build-up to that shot, with Lance arguing with Vincent on the phone.
    "Are you calling from a cell phone?! I don't know you! PRANK CALLER, PRANK CALLER!" (hangs up)
  • Lance and Jody, both scrambling to find his medical book and adrenaline shots, degenerating into a typical couple's fight about how messy the house is.
    • Possibly even funnier in the edited-for-TV version. Normally, the edited version blanks out the swearing. In this scene, they cuss at each other so much that the audio soundtrack is forced to give up entirely, with several solid seconds of dead silence as they rant at one another.
    • The same thing happens with Butch's fit he throws when his girlfriend admits to forgetting to pack his watch, making him somehow jump up and down in anger in absolute silence.
• Vincent, Lance, and Jody "cooperating" to cure Mia Wallace.
  Lance: You stick the needle in! The day I bring an O.D.ing bitch to your house, I'll give her the shot!
• Captain Koons speech to a young Butch about the history of his father's watch is genuinely heartfelt and moving, and then it happens
  Captain Koons: He'd be damned if any slopes gonna put their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it! In one place he knew he could hide it, his ass.
  • Also, even after hearing how his father and Koons hid the watch, for a number of years, with one of the men literally shitting himself to death, Butch doesn't hesitate to reach out for the watch.
• Some seconds of silence when Marsellus and Butch stare at each other in the streets, having crossed each other's paths completely by coincidence. During the seconds of astonished silence between Butch & Marsellus, the only sound is the radio playing the Statler Brothers' "Flowers on the Wall", specifically, the lyrics: "It's good to see you, I must go, I know I look a fright". After several seconds:
  Marsellus: [with pure astonishment] ...motherfucker!
  • Also, watching Captain Kang-a-rooooo.
  • The resulting foot chase between Marsellus and Butch. Butch runs Marsellus over with his car, then is T-boned by another motorist, and both stumble half-conscious down the street. In particular is the shot where Butch is hiding behind a corner, and in the distance Marsellus is seen stumbling and falling while randomly firing his gun into the ground.
    • As Marsellus is helped to his feet by a group of female pedestrians (who initially assume that he was merely the victim of a hit-and-run accident), he spots Butch in the car and pulls out his gun. Cue the women all fleeing in terror.
• The I Just Shot Marvin in the Face scene.
  "Well, you gotta have an opinion. I mean, do you think God came down from heaven and stopped..." *BANG!*
  • Vincent afterwards trying to blame the negligent shot on a speed bump, while Jules shouts back saying that the car "didn't hit no muthafuckin' bump!"
  • The bickering immediately after this unfortunate incident, punctuated with shots of the car tootling down a busy LA highway in the middle of the morning with the back windscreen completely covered in gore.
  • Best of all: it was John Travolta's own idea to play the scene for comedy. The original script had it more serious, but Travolta asked Tarantino if he could say it as it is in the film; in his own words, "as if he'd just stepped on his toe or something." The rest is black comedy history.
• "Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead."
• "What now? Let me tell you what now. I'mma call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin' niggas, who'll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. You hear me talkin', hillbilly boy? I ain't through with you by a damn sight. I'mma get medieval on your ass!"
  • This is immediately followed up by Butch clarifying that he meant the what now between him and Marsellus. The latter's response to this is to simply lower his gun and matter-of-factly say "Oh that what now", as though he had literally forgotten that the two of them were trying to kill each other moments before.
• Jules to Vincent as they're cleaning the blood off their hands: "I used the same fuckin' soap you did, and when I got finished, the towel didn't look like no goddamn Maxipad!"
• "So, pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the fucking car."
  • "Don't be lookin' at me like that, all right? I can feel your look."
• "Oak's nice."
• "Oh, you're ready to blow? [..] Well I'm a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker, motherfucker. Every time my fingers touch brain, I'm Superfly TNT! I'm the Guns of the Navarone! In fact, what the fuck am I doin' in back? You're the motherfucker who should be on brain detail! We're fucking switchin'. I'm washin' the windows, and you're pickin' up this nigga's skull."
  • Only Samuel L. Jackson could make that double motherfucker work so well.
• "I can't believe this is the same car." To which the Wolf replies: "Let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet."
• Vincent and Jules are forced to ditch their blood-spattered clothes, so Jimmie gives them each quite unflattering shorts and T-shirts. In his own words, "Dorks. They look like a couple of dorks." The response is also good ("Ha-ha-ha. They're your clothes, motherfucker.").
• "Okay boys, I'm sure you've been in county lockup before, so you know the drill."
• "It's... It's.. Your future... I see... A cab ride!"
• Vincent's reaction to Jules' proposal to end the diner Mexican Standoff without bloodshed:
  Vincent: Jules. You give that nimrod [Pumpkin] $1,500, I'll shoot him on general principle.
  Jules: (Yolanda swings he gun towards Vince) No, Yolanda! Vince ain't gonna do a goddamn, motherfucking thing! VINCE, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
  • Yolanda's little tearful "Shut up!" at Vince after Jules says it is both funny and kind of cute.
• Vince and Mia's dead serious expressions as they do the cheesiest 50s dancing since an animated Archie Comics short.
• Vince, Jules, and their unfortunate attacker all looking utterly perplexed at six revolver rounds apparently passing straight through them. Also funny is that the guy who shoots at them kind of looks like Jerry Seinfeld.
  • Vincent and Jules just stand there, stunned at first and then glancing at themselves wondering where the bullet holes are, then at each other in amazement, before the thought crosses both their minds that some jackass just shot at them. They quickly turn and just unload their clips at the poor schmuck.
• The Imagine Spot of what would happen if Bonnie came home and found "a bunch of gangsters in her kitchen doin' a bunch of gangster shit." In it, the hardened criminals carry Marvin's body through the house for whatever reason, and stop dead in their tracks like deer in the headlights and stare at Bonnie as if to say, "Well this is awkward..."
  • Plus Jimmie holding up his hand to his wife as if to say, "Wait, this isn't as bad as it looks. I can explain!"
• "If my answers frighten you, Vincent, then you should cease asking scary questions." Both Awesome and Hilarious because this is the first thing that ever shuts Vincent up.
• Vincent spending several minutes in the bathroom trying to convince himself not to let things go further with Mia. It's even funnier when the latter ODs but is in an entirely different position when Vincent finds her, implying he kept on talking to himself for a good while.
• The reveal of the Gimp is kind of hilarious with how it's filmed—almost as a Funny Background Event—and with how it takes a minute to open the various boxes and gates he's kept in.
• Marsellus calling up the Wolf to help dispose of Marvin's body. "It's 30 minutes away, I'll be there in ten". Cut to the Wolf arriving in Jimmy's neighborhood exactly nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, according to the caption. This is the only moment a time-stamp is used in the movie, by the way.
  • Also, when Marsellus gets a hold of the Wolf on the phone, he's apparently at a fancy cocktail party (hence the tux). That itself isn't weird...until you remember it's not even nine o'clock in the morning yet per the movie's setting.
• On the climb up to Brett's apartment, Vincent and Jules argue about the intimacy of foot massages and whether giving one warranted tossing poor Tony Rocky Horror out a fourth-story window into a glass landing. They start to quiet down as they approach Brett's door, but realize they're about a minute early. So they turn the corner into the next corridor and continue their debate until it's time to "get into character." There's also this exchange when Vincent is trying to remember who Tony Rocky Horror is:
  Jules: You remember Antwan Rockamora? Half black, half Samoan, used to call him Tony Rocky Horror?
  Vincent: Yeah, maybe. Fat, right?
  Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call the brother fat. I mean, he got a weight problem. What's the nigga gonna do? He's Samoan.
  • And the way the camera stays at the door but turns to look at Vincent and Jules argue from a distance, as though impatiently waiting for them to get back and do the job.
  • Finishing the debate over whether or not foot massages are too intimate, when Vincent asks Jules if he gives a lot of foot massages, Jules counters that he considers himself a master of giving foot massages. Vince then flat-out asks Jules if he's ever given foot massages to another man. Jules, realizing he'd walked into a trap, can only answer "Fuck you."
    • Vincent rubbing in the victory afterward.
      Vincent: You give them a lot?
      Jules: Fuck. You.
      Vincent: You know, I'm pretty tired. I could use a foot massage myself.
      Jules: Yo, yo, yo, you best step off, man. I'm getting a little pissed here.
  • "I'm the foot fuckin' master."
  • "Now, look, maybe your method of massage differs from mine, but, you know, touching his wife's feet and sticking your tongue in the holiest of holies ain't the same fucking ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport."
  • When Vincent tells Jules he was asked to take care of Mia, Jules mimics a gun to his head with his fingers and asks "Take care...?" Vincent has to correct him.
• Zed pulls the "Eenie Meenie Miney Mo" routine to decide who to take to the back room first as a gagged Marsellus and Butch look on in horror. When Zed lands on Marsellus, there's a few seconds of breathless tension...before Zed continues with the "And my mother said..." variant. Marsellus ends up getting picked anyway.
• Butch finding increasingly awesome weapons in the pawn shop as he wonders which will be the best to use to go back and save Marsellus: hammer, baseball bat, chainsaw...and settles on a katana. The energetic music mixed with the thumps, grunts, and screams from downstairs make for more twisted laughs.
• "SAY 'BITCH, BE COOL!' SAY 'BITCH, BE COOL!'"
• "Which [wallet] is it?" "The one that says 'Bad Mother Fucker'."
• This:
  Jules: Nobody's gonna hurt anybody. We're all gonna be like three little Fonzies here. And what's Fonzie like? (no response) Come on, Yolanda, what's Fonzie like?!
  Yolanda: ...Cool?
  Jules: What?!
  Yolanda: He's cool!
  Jules: Correctamundo!
• There's something darkly humorous about Yolanda threatening to kill everyone in the restaurant while armed with a dinky, 5 shot snubnosed Smith & Wesson.
• The way the Buddy Holly waiter describes the milk shakes: Martin & Lewis (vanilla) or Amos & Andy (chocolate).
• Mia's bad joke from the failed TV pilot she was in.
  Mia: Three tomatoes are walking down the street, a poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a little baby tomato. The baby tomato is lagging behind the poppa and momma tomato. The poppa tomato gets mad, goes over to the baby tomato and stomps on him and says: "Ketchup."
  • Even better, Mia decides to tell the joke as "thanks" to Vincent for saving her life. He's so stressed out he's not sure he has the strength to laugh, but she quickly tells him "Don't worry, you won't laugh because it's not funny."
• Jules defending that he doesn't eat pork to Vincent, arguing that pigs are filthy animals. Vincent counters that dogs are filthy animals too. Jules says he doesn't eat dogs either, but Vincent says that people love dogs regardless of being filthy, and Jules replies that a dog has a personality, and that goes a long way.
  Vincent: So by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he'd cease to be a filthy animal?
  Jules: Well, we'd have to be talkin' about one charming motherfuckin' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?.
• The entire "Dead Nigger Storage" rant with Jimmie and Jules. Jimmie is such a small, meek looking white guy, and for him to go off on Jules like that and Jules just taking it (really needing his help) makes the entire scene funnier than it should have been.
  Jimmie: I want to ask you a question. When you came pulling in here, did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said "Dead Nigger Storage"?
  Jules: Jimmie, you know I ain't seen no...
  Jimmie: Did you notice a sign out in front of my house that said "Dead Nigger Storage"?!
  Jules: ...No. I didn't.
  Jimmie: You know WHY you didn't see that sign?
  Jules: (sighs) Why?
  Jimmie: 'CAUSE IT AIN'T THERE, 'CAUSE STORING DEAD NIGGERS AIN'T MY FUCKING BUSINESS, THAT'S WHY!
  • Jimmie's Tranquil Fury at the whole situation is hilarious in general. Jules is trying to make awkward small talk about how good Jimmie's coffee is, but the dude's having none of it.
    "I don't need you to tell me how fucking good my coffee is, okay? I'm the one who buys it. I know how good it is. When Bonnie goes shopping, she buys shit. I buy the gourmet expensive stuff because when I drink it, I want to taste it. But you know what's on my mind right now? It ain't the coffee in my kitchen. It's the dead nigger in my garage."
  • Even better, there's the Wolf's silent approval of the coffee when Jimmie offers him a cup.
  • "I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced. No marriage counselling, no trial separation, I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced. And I don't wanna get fuckin divorced!"
• When Pumpkin calls out, "Garçon, coffee!" moments before he and Honey Bunny enact their spur-of-the-moment robbery, the waitress tries to correct him by saying, "Garçon means boy". Pumpkin just gives her a You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! look.
• Marsellus puts out the hit on Butch thus: "I'm prepared to scour the the Earth for that motherfucker. If Butch goes to Indochina, I want a nigga hiding in a bowl of rice ready to pop a cap in his ass." It's a sharp contrast to the order he gives immediately before this to turn his dogs loose on Butch's trainer in order to find out whether he knows anything.
• A kind of hindsight-moment, but seeing the film now, especially if for the first time, Quentin Tarantino showing up so late into the film is kind of funny. Especially since the scene is edited in a way that makes the first shot of him come off as a reveal.
• A small moment that becomes a tension-breaker following the horrific rape scene is Marsellus' hilariously stoic reaction to Butch asking if he's okay.
  Marsellus: "Naw, man. I'm pretty fuckin' far from okay."
• The fact that Butch's reaction to Marsellus blowing off Zed's junk with a shotgun is to instinctively cover his crotch.

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