Quentin Tarantino’s film career began in 1992 with the neo-noir crime film Reservoir Dogs, which introduced a group of thieves who each had a color-coded nickname. Some of these characters died during the heist, others a few hours later, but the specifics of Mr. Blue’s fate were left unknown – until a 2006 video game shed some light on it.
Reservoir Dogs followed six diamond thieves whose planned heist for a jewelry store went wrong. Each character had a codename in order to protect their identities during the heist: Harvey Keitel was Mr. White, Tim Roth was Mr. Orange, Michael Madsen played Mr. Blonde (who was also the brother of Pulp Fiction’s Vincent Vega), Steve Buscemi played Mr. Pink, Quentin Tarantino was Mr. Brown, and Edward Bunker was Mr. Blue. Bunker only had two lines in the movie, but Mr. Blue’s fate is a topic of discussion among characters throughout Reservoir Dogs.
Mr. Brown is killed while escaping from the heist, Mr. Blonde is shot dead by Mr. Orange (who is later killed by Mr. White, who himself is gunned down by the police). Mr. Pink is apparently the only member of the crew to escape alive. In the movie’s climactic final scene, there is a shootout in which Joe Cabot and his son, Eddie, are killed by Mr. White - but not before Joe finally reveals that Mr. Blue died during the police ambush of the heist. His death isn’t shown on screen in the movie, but a Reservoir Dogs video game released in 2006 revealed that Mr. Blue managed to escape from the jewellery store and hid in a movie theatre until he was found and shot by the police. This explains why he didn’t join the rest at the warehouse and why no one knew if he had successfully avoided the police or not.
The video game followed the same plot as the film, expanding on some events and the planning of the heist, meaning that Mr. Blue’s fate in it might well have been the same in the film. At the end of the game Mr. Pink’s fate is shown, but it changes depending on the player’s rating, with the possible outcomes being that he was killed by a cop, he got arrested, or he escaped successfully. Maybe the real Reservoir Dogs mystery is not what happened to Mr. Blue, but what happened to Mr. Pink at the end of the story.
Not many Tarantino films have expanded to other media in a way that adds to the original work. The Reservoir Dogs video game wasn’t remotely close to the success of the film, but it did manage to expand on some details from the film that were left unsolved. At least fans now know that Mr. Blue managed to escape from the store and stood against the cops one last time – in a movie theater.
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