Kill Bill: The Bride’s 10 Most Vicious Kills, Ranked

Long before Arya Stark ever wrote her hit list on Game of Thrones, there was only one main source for blade-loving heroins out for bloody list-based revenge. A former member of an elite group called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, The Bride (real name Beatrix Kiddo) was left for dead at the rehearsal for her own wedding by her former teammates.

On her quest for vengeance, Uma Thurman’s Bride delivers some of cinema’s most satisfyingly gore-splattered kills. From partial decapitations to fully exploded hearts, here’s our ranking of The Bride’s ten most vicious kills from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies.

10 The First Crazy 88

The Bride’s first target is no walk in the park. Since The Bride’s betrayal and ensuing coma, her former coworker O-Ren Ishii worked her way up from globetrotting assassin to the head of the underworld in Tokyo. In her new position, she’s protected by a ruthless gang of sword-wielding maniacs called the Crazy 88.

Confronting O-Ren at a club, The Bride kicks things off by skewering the first of her many, many Crazy 88 kills onto her katana blade. Using the sword still in his stomach, she then lifts him up and – after letting the pain soak in for a moment – tosses him into a nearby pool.

9 Johnny Mo

The leader of the Crazy 88, Johnny Mo is a formidable fighter who wields two swords instead of the usual one. His attacks are ferocious and a constant challenge to The Bride as she picks off the various members of the Crazy 88 one by one.

After a lot of bloodshed, the two engage in a ferocious flurry of sword swings as they balance themselves on the bannister of the top balcony. Ending the fight with one simple strike, The Bride tires of blocking Johnny Mo’s high attacks and slices off both of his legs. He falls into the same pool that the first Crazy 88 kill went into. Only now it is opaque with blood.

8 Bad Guy Split

If you’re wondering how The Bride could ever take down eighty-eight goons by herself, armed only with a sword, the answer is a) there aren’t actually eighty-eight of them and b) she gets very creative.

On the club’s dance floor, which becomes the main battleground of the fight between The Bride and the gang, The Bride leaps onto the shoulders of one of the 88s to get a better vantage point to hack and slash. After riding him for a few moments, she dismounts and brings down an extra powerful swing with her. The force of it slices an 88 clean in half from the top of their head right down through their body.

7 Gogo

Gogo Yubari is O-Ren Ishii’s personal bodyguard. She appears fairly disarming as a sweet young girl in the traditional Japanese schoolgirl outfit but her sadistic bloodlust is a force to be reckoned with. She squares off against The Bride in the club with a deadly custom mace. The devastatingly powerful metal ball comes with a hidden circular blade and a long chain that’s perfect for choking.

Sure enough, Gogo gets the chain around The Bride’s neck and the bladed ball lodged into a beam behind her. With her target caught in between the two points, Gogo simply has to tighten the chain enough to snap The Bride’s neck. But The Bride waits for Gogo to move close enough to her so she can use an unassuming nearby table leg as her finishing weapon, lodging the exposed nails into Gogo’s head.

6 O-Ren Ishii

After killing or maiming every member of her entourage, the blood-soaked Bride finally gets O-Ren alone in a tranquil garden behind the club. A world-class killer with a katana blade herself, O-Ren is no pushover. Their fight together is the slowest and most well thought out of the movies, with neither one being able to afford a misstep.

O-Ren lands a solid strike against The Bride’s back but she’s able to pull it back and ultimately gain the respect of the condescending O-Ren. The Bride’s final strike scalps O-Ren, taking the top few inches of her skull and brain with it.

5 Vernita Green

The second name on The Bride’s list but the first kill that the audience sees in the movies. Vernita Green was once known as Copperhead when she was in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad but, when The Bride finds her, she’s just ‘mommy’.

Living a peaceful life as a homemaker and mother, Vernita is forced to react quickly when The Bride shows up on her doorstep. The fight between the two is animalistic and brutal but it has to stop dead in its tracks when Vernita’s daughter gets home from school. After a tense conversation in the kitchen, Vernita tries to shoot The Bride with a concealed handgun but The Bride throws a knife directly into her heart.

4 Bill

The main man, the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and the father of The Bride’s child. Bill is a feared and respected killer that The Bride, even in the final moments of their confrontation, still has a lot of conflicted feelings for.

The Bride finally tracks down Bill last of all and, after a brief sword fight, strikes him with the legendary Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique. The series of painful blows incapacitates Bill but, more importantly, causes his heart to literally explode in his chest after he takes five steps. Accepting defeat, Bill stands up and walks to his death.

3 Buck’s Trucker

After awaking from a four-year coma brought on by Bill’s bullet to her head in the inciting wedding rehearsal massacre, The Bride finds herself in a hospital and quickly learns that her unconscious body had been repeatedly sold for sex during her coma.

She pretends to still be unconscious as a new patron climbs on top of her. When he kisses her on the lips, she bites down and rips his lower lip right off. When her orderly, and pimp, returns to the room, he finds that she ripped out his jugular with her teeth too. Then it’s his turn.

2 Buck

The orderly in charge of watching The Bride and the other comatose patients during the night shift, Buck is shown to have created a disgusting side business which sells the patients for sex. After killing his latest patron, The Bride attempts to stand but finds that she can’t due to the length of the coma and the inactivity of her legs. So The Bride hides and waits for Buck to return so she can slash his Achilles tendon and bring him down to her level.

On the floor, she positions his head in between the open door and the frame. She begins to smash the door closed onto his head to interrogate him but, after finding out that he has no useful information, she slams it shut one final time and crushes his skull.

1 Elle Driver

The fourth name on The Bride’s Death List Five, Elle Driver is actually her toughest opponent. Elle is so deadly that she even takes out number three on The Bride’s list, Bill’s brother Budd, before she gets a chance to.

After a vicious fight in Budd’s trailer, where Elle is thrown through a wall and nearly drowned in a toilet, The Bride rips out Elle’s only remaining eye with her bare hand, leaving her screaming and writhing in the trailer.

Elle’s name gets a big question mark placed over it at the end, instead of a line through it like the other deceased members of the Death List Five. So there’s some room for interpretation. But our interpretation is that being alone in the desert with no eyes and only a deadly Black Mamba snake for company is basically dead.

About The Author