25 things you didn’t know about your favorite action movies

Kill Bill Vol. 1 – Last-minute changes and smart decisions by Tarantino

Uma Thurman as a badass assassin traveling around the world to get her revenge on the team that she was once part of? Sounds great to us.

“The Bride” (Thurman) was an assassin for the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, but when she decided to leave the business to get married and start a new life, her team turned their attention to her. O-Ren Ishii, Vernita Green, Budd, Elle Driver, and her boss, Bill, crash her wedding and assassinate the entire ceremony. Unfortunately for all of them, the bullet to the head didn’t kill The Bride, and after she wakes up from her coma, she’s ready to get her revenge.

One of the film’s pivotal plot points takes place in Japan when The Bride travels there to take down O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). When she gets there, she wants to find Hattori Hanzo, the best sword maker in Japan, who has since retired and runs a sushi restaurant in Okinawa.

It turns out, director Quentin Tarantino may have mentioned that specific detail for a reason. Apparently, the island of Okinawa is known for being the worst place in Japan to get sushi, so it would make sense that Hanzo would run a sushi restaurant in Okinawa if he wanted to be left alone. When The Bride gets to his restaurant, it’s empty.

While in Japan, as we mentioned, The Bride takes on O-Ren and her team of assassins. Originally, O-Ren was supposed to be decapitated at the end of the battle between the two women. But during filming, that detail was changed to the more gruesome scene where the Bride effortlessly slices off the top of O-Ren’s head instead. They opted for this change for a good reason: if the Bride chopped off O-Ren’s head, she would’ve died instantly, and she never would have had the realization that her sword was a true Hanzo sword, which was an important detail.