13 Movie Moments That Surprised The Hell Out Of The Audience
3. Never Leave Your Weapon Unattended - Pulp Fiction
In Pulp Fiction when Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) returns to his apartment to retrieve his fathers precious watch (at great personal risk), he finds it seemingly empty so makes himself some PopTarts before glancing around the kitchen to discover a silenced MAC-10 machine gun lying on the counter. Picking it up, he inspects it curiously, as if wondering on its presence, when the toilet flushes and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) steps out of the bathroom. The two stare warily at each other; Butch holding the machine gun pointed at Vincent, and when the toaster pops, Butch instinctively hits the trigger, riddling Vincent in a hail of silenced bullets. The whoa moment is, of course, that director Quentin Tarantino killed off one of his primary characters when we as an audience had already invested a lot in him as a character - possibly more than any other in the film. In Army Basic Training, all of the troops are instructed about weapon security. The mantra was, Never leave your weapon alone. Your weapon should be within three feet of you at all times, preferably on your shoulder if not in use, and at night, you were to keep it inside your sleeping bag, and woe betide the private who had a mental lapse and walked away from his weapon. The wrath of the drill sergeants would come down like a fury from Hell. Vincents little mental lapse cost him his life, just like the drill sergeants said it would. There had already been a lot of whoa moments in the film already, but that was especially ballsy.
