FILM · 1992 · USA

Reservoir Dogs

Directed by

Quentin Tarantino

Runtime

99 min

Studio

Live Entertainment, Dog Eat Dog Productions

23 archived facts · 5 topics · 1 source · Last reviewed Oct 2026

A botched robbery indicates a police informant, and the pressure mounts in the aftermath at a warehouse. Crime begets violence as the survivors -- veteran Mr. White, newcomer Mr. Orange, psychopathic parolee Mr. Blonde, bickering weasel Mr. Pink and Nice Guy Eddie -- unravel.

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All facts (23)

1. #001

   The film's budget was so low that most of the actors were asked to bring their own clothes as wardrobe, most notably Chris Penn's tracksuit. The signature black suits were provided free of charge by the designer out of his love for the American crime film genre. Steve Buscemi wore his own black jeans instead of the suit trousers, and Michael Madsen wore a jacket and trousers taken from two different suits.

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2. #002

   Quentin Tarantino was originally going to play Mr. Pink, but he let every other actor audition for the role. When Steve Buscemi came in to read, Tarantino told him he really wanted the part for himself and that the only way Buscemi could take it from him was to give a phenomenal audition. Buscemi duly obliged.

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3. #003

   During shooting, a paramedic was hired on set to ensure that the amount of blood Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) loses was consistent and realistic compared with that of an actual gunshot victim.

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4. #004

   Mr. Blonde's Cadillac Coupe de Ville belonged to Michael Madsen because the budget was not large enough to rent a car for the character. The same car was also used as Rick Dalton's in Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (2019).

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5. #005

   In a 2009 interview with the BBC, Quentin Tarantino said he was proud that the film is often ranked among the ten best heist films even though you never see the heist.

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6. #006

   According to an interview about the DVD, Michael Madsen says Kirk Baltz wanted to get in the trunk to experience what it was really like. Madsen agreed, but as things went on he decided it was time for his own character development. So he drove the car down a long alley full of potholes and then took Baltz through a Taco Bell drive-through before pulling into a parking lot and letting him out.

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7. #007

   At several points, Tim Roth had lain in the pool of fake blood so long that the blood had dried and had to be peeled off the floor, which took several minutes.

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8. #008

   Armed with $30,000 and a 16 mm camera, Quentin Tarantino was ready to shoot the film with a group of friends, among them his producing partner Lawrence Bender, who would play Nice Guy Eddie. That was when Tarantino received an answering machine message from Harvey Keitel asking whether he could not only appear in the film but also help with its production. Keitel had been brought in through the wife of Bender's acting class teacher, who managed to get a copy of the script to him. Keitel's involvement helped raise the budget to $1.5 million.

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9. #009

   Mr. Blonde's (Michael Madsen's) real name is Vic Vega. This is the same surname as Vince (John Travolta) in Pulp Fiction (1994). Tarantino explained that Vic and Vince are brothers. He also planned a prequel for both films called "Double V Vega," starring the Vega Brothers, but in the end Madsen and Travolta grew too old to reprise their roles and Tarantino has since abandoned the project. With Madsen's death in 2025, all possibilities for the film came to an end.

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10. #010

    Mr. Orange's apartment was on the floor above the warehouse where most of the film takes place. To save the cost of finding a real apartment, the producers redecorated it to look like a residential apartment.

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11. #011

    Michael Madsen had difficulty shooting the torture scenes because of his strong hatred of violence of any kind, and he was especially reluctant when he had to hit Kirk Baltz. When Baltz improvised a line about his character having a child at home, Madsen, himself a new father, was so disturbed by the idea of leaving a child fatherless that he could barely finish the scene. The remark was kept in the film, and in some versions of the film you can clearly hear someone, probably Quentin Tarantino himself, saying "Oh, no no!" off-screen.

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12. #012

    The film was released in America with almost no promotion, so it was not very successful at the box office. In the UK, however, it was such a big hit that Quentin Tarantino would be mobbed while walking down the street in London. British producers have been influenced by it ever since.

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13. #013

    The actress playing the woman Mr. Orange shoots was Tim Roth's dialect coach, Suzanne Celeste. Roth insisted she take the role because he had treated her so harshly.

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14. #014

    Producer Lawrence Bender had the more decent scenes shot first so as not to alienate the film's backers, so that the daily papers had strengthened the backers' confidence before moving on to the disgusting, violent scenes.

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15. #015

    At the film's first screening at the Sundance Film Festival, Quentin Tarantino stood up in the middle of the film and told them to stop the projection, because the whole film had been shot in widescreen and the projector had only a normal-sized lens (not designed for widescreen), so half of what was shot was not on the screen.

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16. #016

    Robert Kurtzman did the special makeup effects for free on the condition that Quentin Tarantino write the screenplay for From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), which was based on a story by Kurtzman.

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17. #017

    Reservoir Dogs was shot in thirty-five days.

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18. #018

    Career criminal Edward Bunker (Mr. Blue) said in an interview with Empire Magazine that the film was not realistic. He would never consider committing a robbery with five people he did not know (and therefore could not trust). He also noted that the gang, dressed differently, having breakfast together in public beforehand would be sheer madness. Once news of the robbery got out, witnesses would certainly remember them.

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19. #019

    The opening scene in the coffee shop contains subtle foreshadowing about the identity of the "rat." When Joe wants to know which of the crooks did not contribute to the tip, the one who informs on Mr. Pink is Mr. Orange.

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20. #020

    According to Quentin Tarantino, Mr. Pink survives. You can confirm this by raising the volume of the background audio: when Mr. Pink exits the building with the diamonds, police officers can be heard shouting at him to put his hands on the ground. Gunshots are heard, then Mr. Pink shouts that he has been shot. Later, as he is being arrested, you can hear the officers talking to each other.

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21. #021

    According to Steve Buscemi in a recent podcast interview, everyone had a hard time with Lawrence Tierney because he was easily distracted and kept forgetting his lines. Quentin Tarantino and everyone else felt so bad for Tierney that Quentin fired him on the third day of shooting. After things calmed down, he later rehired him.

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22. #022

    During the screening at the Sitges Film Festival, fifteen people left the theater, among them Wes Craven and special makeup effects artist Rick Baker. Baker later told Quentin Tarantino that walking out was a "compliment," explaining that he found the violence disturbing because of its heightened sense of realism. At the time, Tarantino commented on this: "It happens at every screening. For some people, the violence or the coarseness of the language is a mountain they can't climb. That's fine. It's not their cup of tea. But I'm affecting them. I wanted that scene to be disturbing."

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23. #023

    Many people have asked Quentin Tarantino why Mr. Orange confesses to Mr. White at the end of the film that he is a cop, claiming he only had to stay quiet for sixty more seconds and he would have been cleared. He discusses this in the film's DVD commentary. His answer to these people is that if they are asking that question, they truly did not understand the film. Tarantino says that in every Asian country where the film was released, this question was not asked even once. In Japan, he says, there is a word for it: "jingi." With no English equivalent, it basically means that this was something Mr. Orange had to do as a man, something he owed Mr. White. Moreover, he could only do it in those sixty seconds, when Mr. White had the opportunity to do everything he deemed necessary.

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