Quentin Tarantino’s movies are not only made for the kind of know-it-alls prone to opine, for example, on how Kill Bill, Vol. 1 directly lifts several shots from the 1973 Japanese revenge epic Lady Snowblood. They also offer many fruitful opportunities to blather on and on, oblivious to the disinterested body language of your audience, about how his movies are connected to each other.
This video from Huffpost Live uses Red Apple cigarettes, the fictional brand Tarantino uses in all of his movies, as an entry point into explaining how not only is Kill Bill the film version of the TV show Uma Thurman says she’s working on in Pulp Fiction, but how Vic Vega from Reservoir Dogs and Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction are related, as are Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz from Inglourious Basterds and Lee Donowitz from True Romance. That’s just the beginning of what turns out to be a thorough and well-thought out internal logic to Tarantino’s movie universe— or universes, as the case may be. (Jackie Brown, being an adaptation, is part of another reality altogether.)
One thing that the video doesn’t touch on, however, is the relation of Tarantino’s universe to other films, for example how Hattori Hanzo in Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is the direct descendant of Sonny Chiba’s character in Kage No Gundan or how Django and Broomhilda Von Shaft are the great-great-great-grandparents of blaxploitation hero John Shaft. Feel free to visit the video page and shame them appropriately.