7 Quentin Tarantino Movie Plots That Really Happened

6. Hattori Hanz Was A Real Guy

One of our all time favourite cameos in a Quentin Tarantino film was that of Sonny Chiba, badass martial artist and star of the classic Street Fighter films (nothing to do with the video games, and everything to do with ripping off a dude's testicles). Chiba turned up for a spell in Kill Bill volume 1 as Hattori Hanz, a master swordmaker whom The Bride tracks down to make a katana for her to use against the Deadly Vipers and, ultimately, Bill. This was a nice little nod to Chiba's role as another Hattori Hanz in the eighties Japanese TV show Kage no Gundan (Shadow Warriors) - the implication was the Hanz in Kill Bill was a descendant of the old one. Hattori Hanz isn't just some pop culture icon that Tarantino imported from the East for his goofy revenge epic, however. He was a real guy. He was a whole dynasty of real guys, in fact, since the character Chiba played in Kage no Gunda was himself a descendant of the original Hanz. The star of Shadow Warriors was in fact Hattori Masashige, an Edo period ninja who fought his first battle at 20 years old and was instrumental in the Siege of Osaka after his brother's death. Technically, he was Hattori Hanz III.

The first Hattori Hanz was a famous samurai and ninja of the Sengoku era, who entered folklore due to his saving the life of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and then helping the shogun to become the ruler of a united Japan. Hanz-related characters have since appeared in everything from the Samurai Shodown video games to an episode of Thundercats; the Sonny Chiba character in Kill Bill, however, is still meant to be a direct descendant of the real life guy, putting him at Hattori Hanz the XIV in the modern day.