Since the early nineties, Quentin Tarantino has been rewriting the rules of cinema with razor-sharp dialogue, explosive violence, and a deep love for grindhouse, spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation, and kung-fu flicks. He has an incredible ability to craft larger-than-life characters who deliver monologues and personality traits that stick in your brain. He’s given us foot-fetishizing hitmen, vengeful brides, charming Nazi hunters, slave-revolution bounty hunters, and washed-up actors trying to hold onto their Hollywood dreams.
From Reservoir Dogs’ color-coded crooks and all the way through the Hollywood fairy tale of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino has built a universe packed with unforgettable personalities. Some are cool as ice, some are unhinged, and a few are just plain weird, but they all live rent-free in our heads.
So, grab your Big Kahuna Burger, crank up some surf rock, and settle in as we count down the 50 Greatest Quentin Tarantino Characters of All Time.
50. Brandy (Sayuri) | Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
All dogs are good. All dogs in movies, therefore, are good. But few get the character treatment they deserve, and even fewer get the character treatment from a cinematic maestro like Quentin Tarantino. In comes Brandy, featured in QT’s likely final film. Brandy is a good girl, as we quickly see in her introduction. She patiently waits for her master, Cliff, in a ramshackle trailer tucked away behind a Drive-In. At once, their relationship is one of both affection and a clear hierarchy, despite Brandy herself cutting quite an imposing figure.
We later see this dynamic reflected a bit more clearly in Cliff and Hollywood (fading) star Rick Dalton. Cliff is loyal and subservient to Rick, as has always been their dynamic: a dog and its master. And as Cliff dutifully protects Rick from hardship and violence alike, Brandy, too, protects Cliff in a fulfilling and sort of beautiful thematic loop. It’s hard not to root for the girl, even when she offers some sort of protest against her master over a meal plan. And it’s hard to imagine someone out there denying the screen presence of Brandy.
Both violent and obedient, monstrous and adorable, Brandy is a scene-stealer and is so with hardly any screentime in a nearly 3-hour movie. Every Tarantino character is a character, and every one of his characters is memorable, but few are simply good like Brandy.
–Nokoo
49. Ringo / Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Yolanda / Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) | Pulp Fiction (1994)
A lot of people find them annoying, but Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are obviously crucial to Pulp Fiction working as a film. Without their nuisance of a presence, Jules never gets his big moment. Plus, they’re not actually that annoying to hang out with. Their conversation to kick off the proceedings doesn’t quite reach the level of the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, but it is still snappy and quippy and fun. They’re probably the worst stick-up people of all time, but I’d still grab a lazy breakfast with them.
–Raf Stitt
48. Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) | The Hateful Eight (2015)
–Sailor Monsoon
47. Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba) | Kill Bill: Volumes 1 (2003) & 2 (2004)
The most badass steelman in all the land. Who wouldn’t want to go see the man from Okinawa? Even if you’re not looking for a tool to exact revenge on your former boss/lover and his band of assassin misfits, you can still pay Hattori Hanzo a visit and get a great sushi meal. Which might even be better than having a custom samurai sword made for you. To bring the role to life, Tarantino was lucky enough to tap legendary Japanese martial arts actor Sonny Chiba. The character is a great nod to the films that made Chiba famous, as well as samurai culture as a whole. A quick Hattori Hanzo Google search will reveal the character is named after one of the most famous real-life samurai of Japan’s feudal ages.
–Raf Stitt
46. Zoë Bell (as Herself), Abernathy Ross (Rosario Dawson), Kim Mathis (Tracie Thomas), and Lee Montgomery (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) | Death Proof (2007)
I have described Death Proof as a slasher flick where the killer’s preferred weapon is his tricked-out stunt car. Or something like that. It’s more than that, of course, and as a slasher, it falls down in a number of areas, especially in the first half, which is almost like a separate film. There’s no Final Girl, for example, and all the characters fall prey to Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell). They’re not the first, and I’m sure Mike thinks they won’t be the last.
Unfortunately for him, when he next stalks some victims, it turns out to be a group made entirely of Final Girls. Except for Lee (Winstead), although my head canon is that she also has to take on a serial killer and survive. They should never have left her with Jasper.
The women of the second half of Death Proof have no time for the level of chat we’re treated to in the first half of the film. No, they’ve got to take a test drive of a classic 1970 Dodge Challenger, so Zoë (stuntwoman Zoë Bell, playing herself) can live out a lifelong dream of doing a stunt on the hood. When Stuntman Mike appears, things initially appear to go his way, but Kim (and her pistol) aren’t having it. These women then turn the tables, becoming the hunters, and Mike becomes the prey. It’s a satisfying (and action-packed) conclusion to the film, and the actors (particularly Bell and Rosario Dawson) have a blast as action heroes. Would I have watched a series of films with these women getting into bad scrapes that they then have to fight their way out of? You’re damn right!
–Bob Cram
45. Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) | Jackie Brown (1997)
This is one of the best pieces of casting in a Tarantino film. Casting De Niro against type as a total schlub is absolutely genius. The character is somewhat sheepish, but in hilarious ways. Watching De Niro’s Gara take bong rips and have no idea how to interact with a beautiful woman (Bridget Fonda’s Melanie Ralston character). Apparently, De Niro and Tarantino didn’t get along too hot on set, which probably explains why the two never worked together again, but at least we got this one great character from their single collab.
–Raf Stitt
44. Budd (Michael Madsen) | Kill Bill: Volumes 1 (2003) & 2 (2004)
Budd is the most aware member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad regarding the justified ire felt towards them by Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo. Despite that, he still fights for his life when confronted by The Bride – to the point of sedating her and burying her alive (sick stuff!). Madsen plays Budd with a slight melancholic shame for the life of crime and violence that he’s led. It brings an emotional depth to the Kill Bill saga that is otherwise defined by high adrenaline action with no time for sappy emotions. Budd makes the whole thing a bit more fascinating and that much better.
–Raf Stitt
43. Maynard (Duane Whitaker), Zed (Peter Greene), and the gimp (Stephen Hibbert) | Pulp Fiction (1994)
Probably the darkest figures, in a movie full of dark figures, Maynard, Zed, and the gimp appear in one of the most bizarre and disturbing scenes I’ve ever seen. When Butch unexpectedly enters Maynard’s pawnshop, things go from zero to one hundred pretty quickly. Maynard is quiet and sinister. Zed is a crude slime ball. And when Butch wakes up in a compromising position with Maynard and Zed in close proximity, you think things have gotten as bad as they possibly could. And then they bring out the gimp. Although minor characters in the grand scheme of things, they all play their part to perfection, resulting in one of Tarantino’s most memorable scenes. Culminating in one of the movie’s high points, when they get their much-deserved comeuppance, which also leads to a surprisingly satisfying truce between Butch and Marsellus.
–Lee McCutcheon
42. Pai Mei (Gordon Liu) | Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)
Without a doubt, Pai Mei is one of the most unforgettable characters in Kill Bill: Volume 2. He’s an old man, yet still larger than life. He likes to humiliate his students as much as he trains them, but as he is considered the ultimate martial arts master, that’s something you have to deal with if you enter into his tutelage. You never know what to expect when he’s in a scene. It could be comedy or menace. He can equally deliver wisdom or insult. And that’s what makes him so entertaining to watch.
–Lee McCutcheon
41. Sergeant Donny Donowitz / The Bear Jew (Eli Roth) | Inglourious Basterds (2009)
As great as Tarantino is at creating wonderful characters, he might be even better at creating memorable character introductions. It’s hard to say if the introduction of Sergeant Donny Donowitz is even the most memorable in his own movie (Hans Landa, Aldo Raines, and Hugo Stiglitz are all contenders for that title). However, Donny AKA the “Bear Jew” has one of the most electric intros I can remember. The highest form of satisfaction from seeing Nazis get their comeuppance is watching Donny take out his frustrations with vicious swings of a baseball bat to the skull of an SS scum. In that moment, the violence becomes more than aesthetic and reaches a full catharsis. Plus, Donny is a great Italian speaker.
–Raf Stitt
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Who are some of your favorite Quentin Tarantino characters? Maybe they will show up later in the list!