How ordinary restroom scenes foreshadow extraordinary moments of death and chaos
Cinema symbolism may reveal much about a movie, including its underlying messages and themes. Even if the symbolism that results is unintentional, Quentin Tarantino, a passionate student of cinema, knows how to use visual narrative to do just that. In order to examine the director’s tendency to contrast the ordinary with the extraordinary, as reported here, we need to focus on a few of the metaphors he used in Pulp Fiction, especially those involving restrooms and toilets.
More than three significant scenes in Pulp Fiction take place in restrooms, proving that a thing is not a symbol until it appears three times. The man with the gun is hiding in the restroom. Mia is snorting coke in the restroom. Fabienne and Butch are having showers. And the entire film features Vincent Vega essentially taking shits.
The video in this article, however, claims that all of these restroom scenes occur before significant deaths in the movie. The guy jumps out of the bathroom guns blazing, fails to hit either Vince or Jules, and instead gets pumped full of lead himself. Jules naturally develops a conscience regarding his work after Marvin is later shot in the face.
After coming out of the restroom, Mia spends an enjoyable evening with Vince. Later, she discovers heroin while searching through his pockets and has an overdose—all while Vince is having a self-reflective moment in front of his bathroom mirror. Throughout the film, whenever Vince takes shits in the bathroom, something bad happens shortly thereafter, including Pumpkin and Honey Bunny robbing the diner and his very own death.
Therefore, it appears that all of these toilet scenes follow a pattern: toilet, death, toilet, death, toilet, death, etc. Given their proximity in the story, it appears that Tarantino is attempting to make a point about extremism (death) and mundanity (bathroom), but what exactly is he trying to convey?
The restrooms in Pulp Fiction seem to symbolize the “ultimate isolation” because they are among the few locations where characters (and ourselves) really are alone, and death is a metaphor for the “ultimate loneliness.” However, even though Butch was alone in the locker room, remember that locker rooms are essentially large restrooms with lockers.
Whether or not this symbolism was part of Tarantino’s original plan, it still makes you consider how much more powerful your own story may be when you add a little bit of your own.
This bathroom-death pattern also speaks to a larger theme in Tarantino’s work: the sudden intrusion of violence into mundane moments. The bathroom, perhaps the most ordinary and private space in modern life, becomes a recurring harbinger of extraordinary events. This juxtaposition serves to heighten the impact of the violence that follows—we’re caught off guard precisely because we’re in such a commonplace setting.
Moreover, the bathroom scenes often serve as moments of vulnerability for the characters. Vincent Vega, despite being a skilled hitman, repeatedly lets his guard down in these moments, ultimately leading to his death. Mia’s cocaine use in the bathroom at Jack Rabbit Slim’s foreshadows her later overdose. Even the anonymous gunman hiding in the bathroom of Brett’s apartment demonstrates how these private spaces can transform into sites of ambush and violence.
The bathroom motif also connects to the film’s broader exploration of control and its loss. Characters enter bathrooms in control of their situations but often emerge to find their circumstances dramatically altered. This pattern mirrors the film’s larger narrative structure, where characters’ carefully laid plans frequently unravel in unexpected ways.
There’s also an interesting parallel between these bathroom scenes and the film’s non-linear narrative structure. Just as a bathroom break interrupts the flow of daily life, these scenes often mark points where the film’s timeline jumps or shifts, contributing to the movie’s distinctive chronological complexity. This suggests that these moments aren’t just symbolic on a thematic level but also serve a crucial structural purpose in the film’s storytelling.
However, there are other movies in which the bathroom is used as a symbol; here are some:
The Shining (1980): The bathroom serves as a space of supernatural revelation and danger. The famous scene in Room 237’s bathroom where a beautiful young woman transforms into a decomposing elderly corpse represents decay beneath beauty. Later, the bathroom becomes the space where Jack Torrance communicates with Delbert Grady’s ghost.
Fight Club (1999): The bathroom of Lou’s Tavern becomes the birthplace of Fight Club itself, symbolizing the dirty, hidden aspect of civilization where primal urges can emerge. The sterile corporate bathrooms also serve as spaces where the narrator questions his existence.
Trainspotting (1996): The infamous “Worst Toilet in Scotland” scene uses the bathroom as both literal and metaphorical rock bottom, but also as a space of surreal escape when the main character dives into the toilet bowl to retrieve his drugs.
The Shape of Water (2017): The bathroom is used as a space of transformation and sanctuary. The protagonist floods her bathroom nightly to create an aquatic environment where she can be with the amphibian creature, making it a space where the ordinary becomes magical.
Parasite (2019): The basement bathroom in the Kim family’s semi-basement apartment serves as a powerful symbol of their social status. The flood scene becomes a literal representation of how sewage (symbolizing their social position) backs up into their lives.
Full Metal Jacket (1987): The bathroom becomes the site of Private Pyle’s mental breakdown and eventual suicide, representing the breaking point between military discipline and human fragility.
The Godfather (1972): The restaurant bathroom scene where Michael Corleone retrieves the hidden gun represents a point of no return in his transformation from legitimate citizen to mafia don. The bathroom serves as a liminal space between his old life and his new identity.
