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Quentin Tarantino has created a wide variety of cunning and crafty Anti Heroes and villains. However, the following characters are especially noteworthy within the vast Tarantinoverse.
The realer than real universe
- Reservoir Dogs: Detective Holdaway is the man responsible for giving Officer Freddy Newandyke a cover story to gain acceptance into mobster Joe Cabot's heist gang. His trickery allowing Freddy to join Joe's gang as Mr. Orange, Holdaway's flair for the dramatic and masterful planning are key in the eradication of Joe's criminal outfit, even letting the gangsters operate and kill within their safehouse to lure out Joe.
- Pulp Fiction: Jules Winnfield is one half of a bad pair with his partner Vincent Vega, and easily the smarter compared to his slack-jawed partner. Jules is an audacious, foul-mouthed, Bible-quoting hitman who demonstrates his tendency to take control over any situation he's in by tormenting and blowing away a group of wannabe criminals who attempted to rip his boss Marsellus Wallace off. After a near-death encounter, Jules has a Heel Realization and tries to back out of the mob business for good, only to be held up by a robber couple in a restaurant. Utterly retaining his cool when faced with two guns in his face, Jules effortlessly flips the advantage back to himself by tricking and disarming one of the robbers, and uses his masterful control of the situation to give the two robbers a second chance, much the same way Jules is finally affording himself an escape from the criminal underworld.
- Inglourious Basterds:
- Aldo "The Apache" Raine is the head of the Basterds. A ruthless, charismatic soldier who intends on tearing down the Nazis, Aldo leads his men behind enemy lines, performing daring raids to kill German soldiers while spreading fear throughout the Nazi ranks, including Adolf Hitler himself. Aldo formulates Operation Kino to eliminate the entire Nazi high command, and when he bargains with Hans Landa to let the operation continue, Aldo promptly denies Landa the satisfaction of victory by carving a swastika into his forehead, reasoning he's "been chewed out before" while retaining his sense of charm and composure to the end.
- Shosanna Dreyfuss is a Jewish girl who loses her family to the Nazis. When approached on using her theater in Paris as the site of a premiere for Joseph Goebbels' major new film, Shosanna and her lover Marcel opt to lock the Nazis inside the theater and burn it down. Shosanna proceeds to enact her plan near-flawlessly, recording a message to all the Nazi leaders to see on screen that their fates are her vengeance and the vengeance of the Jewish people, ending up with the complete elimination of the Nazi leaders assured even before the Basterds get involved.
- Django Unchained:
- Django Freeman is a former-slave-turned-bounty-hunter on a mission to recover his wife Broomhilda "Hildi" von Shaft from the infamously hellish Candieland slave plantation. Playing the part of a black slaver and never breaking character, no matter how brutal things get, after Schultz's death, Django shows off his own ingenuity and how much he flourished under the doctor's tutelage when he is sold to the brutal LeQuint-Dickey Mining Company. Using a spare bounty handbill and his own natural charm, Django convinces the slavers that there is a fortune waiting for them in Candieland, even tricking them into unchaining him so he can get a gun and kill them all. Returning to Candieland, Django massacres all of the Candies' soldiers and traps the returning leaders in a house full of dynamite, gunning most down and leaving the evil power behind the throne, Stephen, kneecapped for the explosion to finish off before riding off with his wife for freedom.
- Dr. King Schultz is a cheerful German dentist and Bounty Hunter who quickly showcases his wit and skill within the first few minutes of the film by gunning down a slaver and then shooting his partner's horse to have it collapse on him and keep him immobile. Talking himself out of deadly situations with his silver tongue after publicly gunning down bounties, Schultz trains Django Freeman in bounty hunting to help recover Django's wife, even having him kill a bounty in front of his son. Schultz lures a group of racist vigilantes into a trap with explosives to eliminate most all of them at once, and later forms a complex scheme to fool the greedy Mississippi plantation owner Calvin Candie with a scheme to buy a fighting slave, while in truth paying a pittance for Hildi and fleeing before paying more. Even when the scheme fails, Schultz finds himself so revolted by Candie's cruel racism that he finally pulls a gun and shoots him dead on the spot.
- From Dusk Till Dawn: Seth Gecko, a genius bankrobber who masterminds the escape of himself and his brother Richie from the authorities no matter whom he has to kill, manages to elude the entirety of the state and federal forces arrayed against him. Kidnapping the Fuller family and using them to evade his pursuers in order to cross the border into Mexico, Seth intends to free them when they've fulfilled their use and even develops a slight bond of respect with father Jacob and his daughter Kate. Upon entering the Titty Twister and learning it is infested with vampires, Seth proves a capable and crafty fighter, spearheading tactics to see them all destroyed in vengeance for Richie's death.
- Kill Bill: The Bride fights many devious opponents, and is a devious opponent herself, but the following stand out with charm matching their skill:
- The Bride, aka "Black Mamba" and Beatrix Kiddo, was once the deadliest and most favored assassin of Bill, as well as his lover, and she became pregnant with his child. Not wanting the baby raised in Bill's murderous world, she fled to live a quiet life until Bill led a massacre of her wedding reception. Waking up from a coma four years later, she begins a revenge-fueled rampage against Bill and the Vipers, using extensive information gathering, brutal pragmatism in combat, and her skills with a katana to kill them all one by one. Even when caught in a trap by Budd, Bill's brother, the Bride claws her way out of a buried coffin and walks barefoot through the desert back to his trailer to pluck the remaining eye from her hated rival Elle Driver. In the emotional climax, she discovers Bill had been raising her child these four years, and regretfully kills him to attain her vengeance and raise their daughter in peace.
- Bill himself, AKA "Snakecharmer", is the retired leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. After his lover leaves him and becomes engaged to another man while pregnant with his child, Bill massacres the wedding party and leaves the Bride in a coma. Deciding to leave her alive in the hospital, he took their child, who she gave birth to while unconscious, and raised her for four years as a loving father. When she finally comes to confront him, the three share a family night together of a life that could have been, while Bill also leads the Bride into a false sense of security, shooting her with truth serum to have her admit to him and herself why she left him. Accepting defeat with grace, Bill reassures her that she's his favourite person, never stopping loving her and regretting what he did, telling her "I... overreacted."
- Vol. 1: O-Ren Ishii, AKA "Cottonmouth" of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, is the most ambitious of Bill's former underlings. Starting her career at age eleven by avenging her parents' death at the hands of yakuza, O-Ren went on to be one of the world's most dangerous women. After leaving Bill's employ following the wedding massacre, O-Ren travelled to Japan, conquering the criminal underworld and rising to the top of the yakuza, feared and respected by the bosses of the families. Confronted by the Bride, O-Ren sends her underlings to fight her before engaging her in single combat, admitting respect for her opponent as the fight closes. The most successful of Bill's former associates, O-Ren is one of the Bride's toughest fights.
- Vol. 2: Karen Kim is an intimidating assassin who tries to kill the Bride just after she discovered she was pregnant. Karen disguises herself as a hospitality manager at the Bride's hotel to get her guard down, and nearly kills her with a surprise blast of her shotgun. Blocking a thrown dagger with the butt of her weapon, Karen reaches a standoff with her target, and learns that she is pregnant. Proving to have some humanity, Karen calls off the hit and leaves with a final congratulations.
