Quentin Tarantino had created his own cinematic universe two decades before Kevin Feige had the idea, with all of the filmmaker’s work being connected in some fashion whether it be through indirect references to previous events, fictional product placement or characters that turn out to be distant relatives to people we’ve met before.
Everyone is aware of the various threads of the Tarantinoverse, but a new theory is going one step further and claiming that Pulp Fiction is a direct prequel to Reservoir Dogs, which certainly suits the Jackie Brown director’s love of a nonlinear narrative.
It all starts with Steve Buscemi’s cameo as a waiter in Pulp Fiction, which is apparently the reason why Mr. Pink is so against the idea of tipping, because the actor is playing the same character both times. Later on, when The Wolf shows up to help Jules and Marsellus deal with a body, he makes a call to a man named Joe, who the theory speculates is criminal Joe Cabot from Reservoir Dogs, which does play into another theory that Winston Wolfe and Mr. White are also the same person, but it isn’t like numerous actors haven’t shown up in multiple Tarantino movies as different characters before.
Not only that, but it’s also put forward that Mr. Orange and Pumpkin see Tim Roth play a recurring role, and his experience in the diner convinced him to turn his back on a life of crime and become a cop. As ScreenRant explains:
Another character who could hint at Pulp Fiction taking place before Reservoir Dogs is Tim Roth’s Pumpkin. In Pulp Fiction, Pumpkin (whose real name was Ringo) is a burglar who along with his girlfriend and partner-in-crime Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) plan to rob the dinner they’re at. Their plan doesn’t go as expected, as they come across with Jules, who ends up changing Pumpkin and Honey Bunny’s minds about the robbery and their lives of crime. After this, Pumpkin decided to take his life on a different path (some suggest Honey Bunny died in their following robbery, which also pushed Pumpkin to make a change and become a better man, or she simply didn’t want to have a “normal life”), and ended up working as an undercover cop, which suits him as he has some experience in the criminal underworld.
Of course, there are a lot of holes in this theory, but the fact that these dots can even be connected between Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs just goes to show the density of the mythology that Quentin Tarantino has wrapped around all of his movies.
