7 Quentin Tarantino Movie Plots That Really Happened

2. The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique Exists! Sort Of

The touch of death taught to Beatrix Kiddo by the magnificently mustachioed Pai Mei in Kill Bill Volume 2 is another one of those Tarantino pulls from popular culture. The existence of a martial arts move that can cause a person to die just by doing an intricate series of hand movements on their chest has cropped up in The Simpsons, Hot Rod (although in that case it just made people crap their pants), Bloodsport and the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique specifically appears in the Shaw Brothers films Clan of the White Lotus and Executioners of Shaolin. It's since become a bit of a joke because, really, as if that's a thing. Most times it's been brought up in real life, people have been rightfully skeptical. Bruce Lee's untimely death was, to some, seen as a delayed reaction to a touch of death or Dim Mak (Chinese for "press artery"), which is less of a magical technique and more something rooted in acupuncture. It began life as a plot point in ancient wuxia martial arts myths, where an attack on pressure points and meridians is said to incapacitate or kill an opponent, immediately or after a brief and dramatic pause. The latter of which is what happens to the eponymous Bill when The Bride finally catches up with him. He gets five steps before his heart literally explodes following the attack. The touch of death became a big deal during the kung fu craze of the seventies and eighties, with advertisements promising to teach you the secrets of Dim Mak appearing on the back of comic books and in the windows of less reputable martial arts teachers. There's no scientific evidence to suggest that dancing your fingertips across someone's chest super quickly will make their vital organs rupture and kill them, but mild trauma may cause disproportionately catastrophic consequences when applied to known pressure points under specific circumstances. So you could, potentially, actually kill David Carradine that way. If he hadn't already died in the worst way possible.