Pulp Fiction/Characters

Pulp Fiction

Played By: John Travolta

Affably Evil
Badass Long Hair
Badass in a Nice Suit
Decoy Protagonist
Elite Mook
Jerkass: On his bad day in the movie.
Pet the Dog: How he treats Mia offsets some of his assholish tendencies.
Salt and Pepper: With Jules .
The Stoic: When he’s ‘in character’.
Those Two Bad Guys:With Jules .
Too Dumb to Live: Due to being a strung out heroin addict. He almost accidentally gets his boss' wife killed over it too.
Villain Protagonist

Played By: Samuel L. Jackson

—"If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions."

Played By: Uma Thurman

—"Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable?"

Brutal Honesty
Deadpan Snarker
Does Not Like Shoes
Femme Fatale
Incredibly Lame Pun: She was part of a failed TV pilot called Fox Force Five, where at the end of every episode, she would tell one of these. We only get to hear the first one.
Noodle Incident: When Vincent asks Mia about the story where Tony Rocky Horror was thrown out of a building for giving Mia a foot massage, Mia points out how stupid and disproportionate this is.
Where Da White Women At?: Married to Marsellus.

Played By: Bruce Willis

—"That's how you're gonna beat 'em, Butch. They keep underestimating you."

Anti-Hero: Type III.
Badass
Bald of Awesome
Honor Before Reason
Jobber: Subverting this is what got him in trouble with Marsellus.
Meaningful Name: I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit.
Token Good Teammate: The only unambiguously good character working for Marsellus, or in the movie's cast (with the possible exception of Jules post character development). His only crime was ripping off a mob boss who he later saves even though it would be in his best interest not to.
- He also beat a presumably innocent man to death in a boxing match, though that was an accident. Still, he never showed any remorse for it, dismissing it with a shrug and a quip.

Played By: Harvey Keitel

—"I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this."

Played By: Tim Roth

—"Yeah, well the days of me forgetting are over, and the days of me remembering have just begun."

Played By: Amanda Plummer

Ax Crazy: Compared to Ringo. She's ready to blow people's heads off.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: Since she and Pumpkin agree at the beginning they don't want to kill anyone, it's her act during the robbery to scare people into compliance. Note how, when Jules gets the drop on Ringo, she's panicky, crying, terrified and clearly out of her depth -- but despite apparently being utterly unstable and psychotic moments before, never pulls the trigger.
Beware the Nice Ones: When she's not waving a gun around psychotically screaming at people during a robbery, she seems quite bubbly, friendly and almost sweet.
Lady Swears A Lot
Nice to the Waiter: She's very pleasant to the waitress who serves her and 'Pumpkin' coffee in the diner. Then they hold the place up.
Outlaw Couple
Sickeningly Sweethearts: With Ringo.

Played By: Maria de Madeiros

Played By: Ving Rhames

—"Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps."

Badass
Bald Black Leader Guy
The Big Bad: A rare cross between this and Villain Protagonist as he's behind all of Vincent and Jules's dirty dealings. Played straight in Butch's story.
Cold-Blooded Torture: What he plans to do to the people who raped him.
Disproportionate Retribution: Subverted. Everybody thinks that Marsellus threw somebody out of a five story window for giving his wife a foot massage, but Mia denies it ever happened.
The Don
Even Evil Has Standards: Lets Butch go for saving him from the rapists.
Pragmatic Villainy: He seems to run a pretty efficient criminal organization. Case in point: apparently when Vincent was acting up due to his drug habit, Marsellus shipped him off to Amsterdam for a few years.
Reasonable Authority Figure: See Even Evil Has Standards.
Scary Black Man
Where Da White Women At?: Married to Mia who is white .