The Beautiful and Deadly O-Ren Ishii Quiz

Answer: Lucy Liu

O-Ren is Japanese but Lucy Liu, who plays her, is Chinese-American. Both she and Uma Thurman (the Bride) have lines in Japanese during the film.

Lucy Liu's other movie roles include Alex Munday in the 'Charlie's Angels' films, Master Viper in the 'Kung Fu Panda' films and Kitty Baxter in 'Chicago'. She also played Joan Watson in 'Elementary', an American retelling of the 'Sherlock Holmes' stories. Outside acting, she is also an artist, specialising in photography and collage, and her work has appeared in various exhibitions, sometimes under her Chinese name of Liu Yu-Ling.

Answer: Lady Snowblood

'Kill Bill' is heavily influenced by Japanese pop culture and O-Ren shares multiple similarities with Oyuki, the heroine of 'Lady Snowblood'. Both women are assassins who wear white kimonos when they fight, and they both have a backstory involving revenge; O-Ren witnessed the murder of her parents when she was a child, while Oyuki was born in prison, and her mother raised her to get revenge on the men who raped her and killed her family.

They also both know their way around a sword, and have their hair cut short when they work as assassins (in the Bride's flashback, O-Ren has her hair in a bob, though she grows it back later).

Answer: Cottonmouth

Vernita Green is Copperhead, Budd is Sidewinder and Elle Driver is California Mountain Snake. Bill, as the Squad's leader, is the Snake Charmer. The Bride was given the code name of Black Mamba due to being the deadliest assassin in the group and Bill's favourite (and Elle uses an actual black mamba to kill Budd in 'Kill Bill Vol. 2'), and Vernita is jealous because she thinks she should have been Black Mamba. When we see the Bride's kill list with the Squad's code names, 'Cottonmouth' is crossed out, showing that O-Ren is already dead, and her encounter with the Bride is shown as a flashback.

The cottonmouth, also known as the water or swamp moccasin, is a poisonous pit viper that is native to the US. Ironically, the California mountain snake is a non-venomous snake and is relatively harmless, but Elle Driver is easily the nastiest and most unhinged member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.

Answer: Under their bed

Boss Matsumoto and his goons invade O-Ren's house and hold her mum at knifepoint. Her dad fights off a couple of goons and successfully defeats two of them, but a third kills him. Boss Matsumoto then grabs O-Ren's mum and throws her onto the bed, before killing her too as she screams in terror. O-Ren, still hiding under the bed, cries for her parents.

After Boss Matsumoto leaves, the goon who killed O-Ren's dad smashes a bottle of alcohol with a bullet and kicks Boss Matsumoto's smouldering cigar into the puddle, setting the house on fire.

Answer: His own katana

As the Bride says in the narration, "She swore revenge. Luckily for her, Boss Matsumoto was a paedophile. At eleven, she got her revenge." O-Ren kills Boss Matsumoto with the same sword he used to kill her mum, and she tells him to take a good look at her face, asking if she reminds him of someone he murdered. A pair of goons run into the room, see the little girl covered in blood and shoot at her, but she uses Boss Matsumoto's corpse as a shield and hides under the bed, and shoots them both.

Nine years later, at the age of twenty, she becomes one of the world's greatest female assassins, demonstrating her sniping skills by shooting her target from a great distance while standing on a rooftop, while he is in a car with a couple of beauty queens.

Answer: Her mixed-race heritage

O-Ren's mum was Japanese and her dad was a Chinese-American soldier. At a meeting, one yakuza boss, Boss Tanaka, insults O-Ren about her heritage, calling her a 'half-breed' and accusing her of 'perverting' the council. O-Ren responds by hopping up onto the table and decapitating him. To emphasise that she is serious, she speaks in English, and tells the assembled yakuza that they are welcome to tell her if they disagree with a course of action, and that no subject is off the table, save for her heritage. If they bring it up as a negative, she will take their heads.

She holds up Boss Tanaka's head and screams that if they have anything else to say to her, now is the time. Of course, the yakuza keep quiet.

Answer: Gogo Yubari

Seventeen-year-old Gogo Yubari wears a Catholic school uniform and is one of O-Ren's accomplices, along with Sofie Fatale, her lawyer and interpreter. The Bride says, "What she lacks in age, she makes up for in madness." We get an idea of how messed-up Gogo is when a man flirts with her and she responds by asking him if he wants to have sex with her, and killing him when he says yes. When she and the Bride fight, the Bride begs her to walk away, but Gogo laughs and attacks her, strangling her with her chain. The Bride eventually kills her with a nail attached to a board.

(Mitsuko Sohma is the main female antagonist of 'Battle Royale', a film which also featured Chiaki Kuriyama, who plays Gogo. Yuno Gasai is a character from 'Future Diary', while Makima is a character from 'Chainsaw Man').

Answer: House of Blue Leaves

The House of Blue Leaves is owned by a man who resembles Charlie Brown (his kimono even looks like Charlie's Brown's yellow and black shirt) and his wife, and is frequented by O-Ren and her minions (there aren't actually 88 of them, they just thought it sounded cool). The 5678s, a Japanese rock trio, have a cameo where they play the bar, including the annoyingly catchy 'Woo Hoo' when the Bride enters and sneaks up on Sofie Fatale while she is on the phone.

The Bride announces her arrival by holding Sofie hostage and cutting off her arm. Sofie falls to the floor, screaming in agony, and the terrified customers run out of the bar. O-Ren orders 'Charlie Brown' to leave, and sics a group of Crazy 88s on the Bride, telling them to tear her apart. The Bride kills all of them, and when she asks O-Ren if she has any more subordinates for the Bride to kill, Gogo makes her entrance and they fight.

Answer: "Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids."

The Bride's real name is Beatrix Kiddo, and the 'Trix' exchange is an in-joke between O-Ren and the Bride. Bill repeatedly calls her 'kiddo' as well, which sounds like a term of affection, but is actually foreshadowing.) O-Ren says, "Silly rabbit," and the Bride replies, "Trix are for kids."

Johnny Mo, the leader of the Crazy 88s, arrives and is followed by the rest of them, who swarm the Bride. The Bride kills several of them and wounds many more, although she spares a frightened teenage boy, spanking him with the flat of her sword and telling him to go home to his mother. She orders the surviving Crazy 88s to leave, but to leave their severed limbs behind as they now belong to her, and tells Sofie to stay where she is. She then goes to fight O-Ren.

Answer: The top of her head

After the Bride massacres the Crazy 88s, she and O-Ren fight outside in the snow. O-Ren asks the Bride about her sword and refuses to believe her when she says it is a Hanzo Hattori katana, and the two fight. The Bride collapses in pain when O-Ren slashes her back. O-Ren mocks her, saying that she is a silly Caucasian girl who likes to play with swords, and if she cannot fight like a samurai, she can at least die like one. However, the Bride picks herself up and slashes O-Ren's leg.

O-Ren apologises for doubting the Bride and the two fight with their swords, and the Bride slices off the top of O-Ren's head. O-Ren lives long enough to say, "That really was a Hattori Hanzo sword," before collapsing in the snow and dying. The Bride leaves, but not before dumping Sofie outside a hospital, after interrogating her and chopping off her other arm as a warning to Bill.