Film / Unforgiven

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A Western from 1992, written by David Webb Peoples, produced, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood.

In the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming, normal people are trying to lead quiet lives. Cowboys are trying to make a living. Sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) is trying to build a house and keep a heavy-handed order. The girls of the town's brothel are just trying to get by. But when one of a pair of cowboys cuts up one of the brothel's girls, who goes by the name of Delilah Fitzgerald (Anna Levine), the prostitutes are not satisfied with Little Bill's justice and put out a $1,000 bounty^note Adjusted for inflation that would be approximately the equivalent of over $31,000 in 2025 on the heads of both cowboys, Quick Mike and Davey Bunting.

William Munny (Eastwood) is a Retired Gunfighter. Formerly a notorious cold-blooded killer, Munny was seemingly reformed by his late wife Claudia, who convinced him to give up his murderous ways and settle down as an honest farmer, living peacefully with their two children. However, farming is hard and his family are in financial difficulties, so Munny is drawn back into a life of killing when Gunfighter Wannabe the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) offers to split the reward on the bounty. Together with his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), Munny and the Kid set off on One Last Job, and in the process run afoul of Little Bill. In the ensuing hostilities, the ruthless demon that laid dormant within Munny is unleashed with a vengeance.

The film has gone on to be considered one of the greatest westerns ever made. It won four Academy Awards (and was nominated for five others), garnering Best Picture and Best Director for Clint Eastwood, Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman and Best Film Editing for editor Joel Cox.

It was also a huge box office success, spending its first three weeks as the #1 film in the United States, and earning a total of $159.2 million worldwide, against a budget of $14.4 million.

A Japanese remake starring Ken Watanabe was made in 2013.

Not to be confused with the older western film The Unforgiven, which tells another story entirely.

Tropes featured in Unforgiven include:

• Actor Allusion:
  • When Will notes that Ned is still using a Spencer rifle, it would imply that Ned carried it in the Civil War as a member of a U.S. Colored Troops cavalry regiment. Morgan Freeman also starred in Glory as a member of a U.S. Colored regiment.
  • The earlier scene when Clint Eastwood practices firing guns is reminiscent of him firing guns before the credits of The Outlaw Josey Wales.
  • Will, beaten and bloody, crawling out of the saloon and across the boardwalk outside, is highly reminiscent of a scene from A Fistful of Dollars.
  • Will's line of "Deserves got nothing to do with it" sounds very familiar to a similar line from Hang 'Em High, when Clint's character says "God's got nothing to do with it".
• Admiring the Abomination: Beauchamp's face is positively ecstatic when Will enters the bar and admits that he's killed women and children.
• Advertised Extra: English Bob is memorable, but not as big a character as being featured in the poster would imply.
• Age-Gap Romance: Claudia Munny was 29 years old when she died, 3 years before the events of the movie, while Munny himself looks old enough to be the father of a woman that age^note Eastwood was 61 years old when the movie was filmed.
• Agonizing Stomach Wound: Will shoots Davey Bunting in the stomach and he dies slowly and painfully.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Although the prostitutes treat Davey as equally responsible for Mike's mutilation of Delilah's face, when Delilah hears of Davey's fatal shooting at the hands of Munny, she takes a remorseful and sympathetic tone.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: There is no source of clean water in the Old West so everyone drinks whiskey, and often. This is Truth in Television — some estimates put Americans of the mid-1800s as drinking 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per year, three times the amount the average American drinks in the modern day, with historical accounts suggesting they drank whiskey "like water" with every meal (including breakfast) and on most social occasions; normal social drinkers back then would be absolute boozehounds by modern standards. All of the horrible things that Will Munny had done in the past happened because he was dead drunk most of the time. Everyone being intoxicated for most of the day probably is also what contributes to a lot of the rash decisions made by characters through the film.
• All There in the Script: The screenplay reveals what happened to the Schofield Kid by movie's end — he later drowns himself out of guilt.
• The Alleged House: Sheriff Bill Dagget built his own wood-frame house on a lonely parcel away from town. While recounting the exploits of The Wild West to biographer W.W. Beauchamp, both men set out assorted vessels to catch all the rainwater that's leaking through the roof. One of the sheriff's own deputies put it succinctly; "You know, he don't have a straight angle in that whole god-damned porch, or the whole house for that matter. He is the worst damn carpenter."
• Animals Hate Him: When he cannot mount his own horse, William Munny claims that his horse is taking revenge on him because he was mean with all the animals in his past. See Badass Boast to know how much Munny had mistreated and killed animals.
  • Broken-down pig farmer Munny can't even manage his own sickly livestock, who probably resist his attempts to wrangle them out of spite as much as illness.
• Arc Words: "I ain't like that no more."
  • "I guess they got (had) it coming"
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Invoked by Ned Logan when he tries to guess what provoked the placing of a deathmark on the heads of the cowboys:
  "So what did these fellas do? Cheat at cards? Steal some strays? Spit on a rich fella? What?"
• Asshole Victim:
  • Quick Mike, a cowboy who went apeshit and mutilated a girl's face, gets a bounty placed on his head and he eventually gets shot on the John, quite literally caught with his pants down.
  • English Bob parades through Wyoming disrespectfully belittling the locals for their model of government only a few days after the assassination of President Garfield. When he gets to Big Whiskey, Bill Daggett debunks his reputation as a heroic gunslinger, kicks his ass in the street, holds him in jail, reveals his cowardice and taunts him over it, vandalizes his precious custom pistols, and finally rides him out of town as a joke while telling him if he comes back, he'll Make It Look Like an Accident. While Richard Harris plays the unlikeable Englishman well, him being brought down a peg was certainly a satisfying sight to many American viewers.
  • Bill tortures Ned (who didn't hurt anybody) to death and then in a manner most savage props up his body in a coffin outside the town saloon with a sign saying "This is what happens to assassins around here". His previous beatings and bullying behavior can be interpreted as extreme but well-intentioned ways to keep the peace in town, but after this moment, it's clear he has crossed a line and all bets are off when Munny takes revenge on him by gunning him down like a dog.
• Artistic License – History: Zig-zagged. Discussing President Garfield's assassination, English Bob claims that a king or a queen would command more respect than a president and thus it would be harder for a prospective assassin to go through with shooting them. While no European monarchs had been shot before 1880 (when the film is set)^note although Tsar Alexander II would be killed by an assassin's bomb the very next year, "the majesty of royalty" hadn't kept the English or French from executing their own heads of state^note Charles I of England in 1649 and Louis XVI of France in 1793, respectively. Of course, this just goes to show that English Bob is just arrogant bragging about European culture while in America.
• Badass Boast:
  • "Alright, I'm comin' out. Any man I see out there, I'm gonna kill em! Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him, I'm gonna kill his wife, all his friends, (and) burn his damn house down!"
  • "You be William Munny outta Missouri. Killer of women and children!" "That's right. I killed women and children. Killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned." Doubles as Oh, Crap! for the rest of the spectators.
  • Subverted with English Bob, who tells Beauchamp these beautiful badass speeches about his 'exploits'... only to have Little Bill debunk them, noting "The Duck of Death" shot first and In the Back with most of the gunfights Bob himself started.
• Band of Brothels: When one of theirs is maimed by a bad john, the working girls pool their resources and put a bounty on the wrongdoers' heads, kicking off the action.
• Being Evil Sucks: Since it's not necessarily obvious: The Schofield Kid has this one pretty bad right before the final showdown Where It All Began.
• Being Good Sucks: Kind of. It's noticeable that during his period of trying to be good, Munny is an unsuccessful pig farmer eking out a wretched existence, is wracked by guilt, and comes across as kind of pathetic (note how often he falls off his horse, and his beating by Little Bill). After returning to his old ways, he becomes a scarily effective gunfighter and the epilogue indicates he became financially successful. Not to mention that things don't turn out well for Ned after he admits he's lost his stomach for killing and tries to return home.
• Bigger Stick: In the final fight at the saloon, Will Munny uses the Schofield revolver that used to belong to the Schofield kid. Now, this is certainly not the only reason of his victory; but the fact remains that, as per the trope, Munny had better equipment than any of his foes and Munny handily defeated everybody in the large posse of about sixteen people, either killing them or scaring them into running away.
• Bittersweet Ending: Munny goes back to his old ways and Ned is murdered, but Munny avenges him. And with the money he earns from the bounty on the two cowboys, he's able to move on and make a better life for himself and his kids — rumored to be San Francisco, where he prospered in dry goods.
  Closing narration: ... And there was nothing on the marker to explain to Mrs. Feathers why her only daughter had married a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.
• Black Dude Dies First: Ned is beaten to death by Little Bill, even though he wasn't the one who fired the fatal shot at cowboy Davey.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: The Schofield Kid provides a rare male example after killing Quick Mike.
• Blunt "Yes": During the final shootout.
  Little Bill: I'll See You in Hell, William Munny.
  Munny: Yeah. (shoots him)
• Bond One-Liner: William Munny blows a guy away and then utters one of the best of these in a Western ever:
  "Little Bill" Daggett: Well, sir, you are a cowardly son of a bitch! You just shot an unarmed man!
  William Munny: Well he should've armed himself, if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.
• Bookends: The movie starts and ends with silhouette shots at sunset showing Munny working at his homestead, with a written narration on screen.
• Boom, Headshot!:How William Munny kills Little Bill. Shotgun blast to the face. Point blank.
• Boring, but Practical: Will's gunfighting style is revealed to merely make himself a smaller target and carefully take his time with his shots while everyone else is moving and firing off as fast they can, with being drunk helping him stay calm. Accuracy wins gunfights, not fancy tricks like quickdraws and fanning the hammer. This even gets mentioned earlier by Little Bill as the best way to gunfight.
• Bounty Hunter: Will Munny, Ned Logan, and The Schofield Kid.
• Break the Haughty:
  • English Bob has his gun dismantled, is beaten savagely, and is abandoned by his trusted scribe Beauchamp. It's supposed to illustrate the near-boundless cruelty of Sheriff Little Bill, but considering many of the stories Bob told Beauchamp were heavily exaggerated, if not outright fabricated, and considering Bob did little to ingratiate himself to his American hosts beforehand (mocking Americans for having a president for a leader instead of a monarch, for example), his mistreatment landed him much closer to this trope for many viewers.
  • The Schofield Kid, who starts out eager to Badass Boast about his prowess and five-man kill count to anyone willing to hear. Which is all a lie because Quick Mike is his first ever kill and he ends up ashamed and emotionally broken by it. He's last seen skipping town, tearfully vowing to never pick up a gun ever again. In earlier drafts of the script, the shame was enough to drive the poor boy to suicide.
• Call to Agriculture: As with everything else, Deconstructed. William Munny, the legendary outlaw gave up his violent ways to become a peaceful pig farmer… and by the time the movie starts he is failing miserably, his stock is severely depleted and he is forced to take up the Schofield Kid on his offer so he doesn't lose everything. The film emphasizes this at the end when it tells the audience that it was agriculture in particular and not honest work in general that he was ill-suited for, since Munny eventually became successful as a shopkeeper in San Francisco.
• Campfire Character Exploration: Multiple times the heroes share intimate stories by a campfire.
• The Can Kicked Him: The Schofield Kid kills one of the marked men while he's sitting in an outhouse.
• Chekhov's Lecture: Little Bill explains to Beauchamp, at length, about how proper aim trumps speed in a real gunfight. Illustrated bloodily during the movie's climactic gunfight: Munny systematically guns down the men surrounding him while standing still with no cover except merely crouching a little in a cramped bar. The deputies are so freaked out by his ruthless execution of the owner and Bill that they all miss him. Though Munny says that it has as much to do with pure luck as anything else.
• Chinese Laborer: Apparently, English Bob earned a living killing them for the railroads.
• Combat Pragmatist: Shown to be a requirement if you want to survive a gunfight. Best demonstrated by Munny in the end, when he crouches down to present a smaller target in an otherwise open saloon and, recognizing Bill as the most experienced gunfighter in the room, tosses his misfired shotgun at Bill to give himself a few precious seconds to draw a revolver. After the gunsmokes cleared, Munny admits basically it was just luck and quick-thinking rather than any strategy he had in mind.
• Crapsack World: The Wild West is shown to be a world where cruelty, misogyny, violence, and racism are all accepted as normal, and kindness, honour, and the law mean hardly anything; the only reliable protection you can garner is having such a dreadful reputation that nobody in their right mind would want to cross you.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Little Bill delivers a brutal one-sided beating to both English Bob and William Munny at two different points in the movie
  • Despite being outnumbered, William Munny is able to easily outgun and kill Little Bill and his men; if only because of his experience and knowing better than anyone in the bar the business of gunfighting.
• Darker and Edgier: Of the Western. Even compared to the Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western films.
• Dead Guy on Display: Done with Ned. Munny is angry and ready to kill by this point, but seeing Ned's body out in the open like that visibly enrages him further. Truth in Television — towns often put the unidentified dead out on display as well, in hopes that someone would identify them/claim the bodies.
• Death Is Such an Odd Thing: The Schofield Kid feels that way after his first kill.
  It don't seem real... how he ain't gonna never breathe again, ever... how he's dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Of Westerns. A wide variety of tropes, archetypes, and the general formula are all decontructed.
  • Munny himself is a Deconstructed Character Archetype of the Man With No Name and his expies, both of which are the kinds of characters Clint Eastwood played in the 60s and 70s. The Man With No Name was a cool, unstoppable Anti-Hero whose lethal skills let him gun down dozens of bad guys. William Munny is a Retired Monster who was a cruel, unhinged, and cold-blooded killer who killed whoever was in his way regardless of who they were with his lethal skills.
  • One aspect of this is how the movie shows Munny dealing with his re-submersion into the violent, dangerous environment he left behind before he became a family man. He doesn't become a more heroic figure, rising to the occasion. Instead, he degrades, with his layers of civility being stripped away until at the end, he's the cold-blooded killer that he once was.
  • Eastwood's trademark squint was subject to this too: the Schofield Kid is almost constantly squinting, but it's just because of his poor eyesight and doesn't look badass in the least.
  • The final showdown deconstructs Conservation of Ninjutsu. Will kills almost all Little Bill's deputies because they are not experienced in actual gunfighting like Will is and none of them have a killer instinct despite their numbers. He mostly prevails because he quickly, accurately, and unhesitatingly shoots while his foes are indecisive and panicking. He also outright admits that luck is a factor in every gunfight he's ever been in.
  • Honor Before Reason is also deconstructed. Consider the title. The prostitutes can't forgive Quick Mike for cutting Delilah. Little Bill can't forgive the prostitutes for putting a hit on the cowboys. The Schofield Kid can't forgive himself for actually killing a man, and finally Will Munny can't forgive Little Bill for killing Ned. As a result, most of these characters are either dead, dying, or emotionally broken at the end of the movie.
  • The roles of the good guys and bad guys in the classic Westerns are deliberately reversed. Will Munny is a violent (former) criminal who rides into town and stirs up trouble, while Little Bill is the Sheriff trying to maintain order by throwing out the criminals, and rounds up a posse to go after them. Note that Will Munny's entrance just before the final shootout is almost a perfect Western villain entrance, complete with Munny standing eerily in the shadows and being dressed in all dark clothing. During the final shootout, William guns down an unarmed man, while Little Bill shows extraordinary bravery in his final moments. Ultimately and deliberately, neither of them comes out looking all that great.
  • More than perhaps any deconstruction in this film in contrast to most Clint Eastwood westerns (or any western) where the lead will casually gun down a group of people like it is nothing, this movie makes a point about how there is nothing glamorous about killing a person even if you think it is for heroic reasons. Will Munny is plagued by the guilt over all the people he has killed and the Schofield Kid has a breakdown after he finally kills one of the bounty targets.
  • When Munny finally goes after Little Bill, they don't have a Showdown at High Noon; instead, Munny fights Bill on a rainy night. This allows Munny to leave Big Whiskey without much trouble since the water and darkness obscure sightlines and discourage the townspeople from chasing and attacking Munny in retaliation.
  • Little Bill himself calmly deconstructs the idea of The Gunslinger while talking with Beauchamp. Yes, there really were dangerous men who made a living killing people. But there was nothing heroic or brave about any of them, and many of the stories Beauchamp has heard are often exaggerated by the very people they are about in order to hide that they won gunfights through less admirable methods. He also explains how being quick to draw your gun means nothing unless you can keep a cool head, which is shown in the ending where many characters end up missing Munny simply because they panicked and didn't bother to aim.
    • Little Bill himself can be seen as a deconstruction of the town sheriff in your typical Western movie. Like most sheriffs in this type of film, he is just trying to keep the peace. The problem is that when Delilah gets her face slashed up, Bill does not punish the men after Delilah is attacked (granted one of them had nothing to do with it and even tried to stop the other) and lets them go scot-free. He is also later shown to be a vicious tyrant and bully who delivers violent beatdowns to others - who are already at gunpoint or restrained - and is no better than the criminals he claims to protect the town from.
  • The Fastest Gun in the West as a trope is repeatedly deconstructed; Little Bill speaks at length about how trying to draw that fast is likely to throw off your aim, and in the climax Little Bill does manage to draw faster than Munny, but misses the only shot he can get off before Munny shoots him. Meanwhile Bill's deputies all panic, drawing and firing as quickly as they can, and hit absolutely nothing. Munny's aim is comparatively slow but his cool head under fire and precise aiming means he takes them all out single-handedly.
  • The Instant Death Bullet is averted on multiple occasions, and characters are depicted as suffering in terrible pain as a result of being shot. Instant death bullets and (often) Bloodless Carnage do a lot of work to keep the tone of Westerns relatively light, without them things quickly become much darker and more horrific.
  • Even the setting's drinking culture is scrutinized. In a time and place where clean water is unavailable, whiskey is what everyone drinks. Will Munny's exploits are attributed to him just being stupidly drunk. It probably also contributes to a lot of the rash decisions several characters make throughout the film.
• Defiant to the End:
  • Non-fatal example with English Bob. For all his cowardice and exaggeration of his deeds, he gives a spectacular, furious speech against the people of Big Whiskey as they're running him out of town. Given what we've seen of Big Whiskey, even though Bob is little better, it kind of comes off as Jerkass Has a Point.
    English Bob: A plague on you! A plague on the whole stinking lot of ya, without morals or laws. And all you whores got no laws. You got no honor. It's no wonder you all emigrated to America, because they wouldn't have you in England! You're a lot of savages, that's what you all are. A bunch of bloody savages! A plague on you!
  • The Schofield Kid invokes this by claiming Quick Mike reached for his gun before his death, but Mike's gunbelt was hanging on the inside of the outhouse door when the Kid opened it, and was therefore well out of his reach when the Kid shot him. In fact, Quick Mike died holding up empty hands and begging for his life.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: A major part of the film's goal of de-romanticizing the West: racism (whether against Englishmen, "Chinamen" or "injuns") is rampant, prostitutes are seen as the scum of the earth (Skinny refers to the cut-up prostitute as "damaged property"), and an exchange of goods is seen as acceptable punishment for slicing them up. Unfortunately, all of this period-appropriate realism makes the fact that Ned's skin color is not even remarked upon, never mind serving as a plot point, extremely jarring. This was heavily criticized by the film's detractors (Ned was presumably not written with Morgan Freeman in mind).
• Developing Doomed Characters: Little Bill's deputies have some scenes of they just talking and revealing their personalities.
• Dime Novel: W.W. Beauchamp writes these. One example is "The Duke of Death", about English Bob. Little Bill insists on calling it "The Duck of Death".
• Disaster Dominoes: A naïve young prostitute giggling at a cowboy's pecker sparks an escalating cycle of frontier violence and Disproportionate Retribution which ends with eight people dead (and at least two of them did nothing to deserve to die) and many other people emotionally broken and traumatized.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Just about everyone is guilty of this:
  • The entire movie is a result of Quick Mike cutting up Delilah's face for laughing at his small penis.
  • In retaliation for this (and Little Bill's feeble punishment), Strawberry Alice and the other whores put a $1,000 bounty not only on Mike but his pal Davey, who didn't do anything to Delilah and even tried to give her a pony as an apology. Davey ends up being killed by the protagonists with a slow gutshot. After they break his leg by shooting his horse out from under him.
  • Little Bill beats the crap out of a defenseless English Bob, then does the same to Munny. He says in each case that he's making an example of them to deter other would-be assassins, but he seems to enjoy beating unarmed old men just a little too much. When he's alone with Beauchamp and English Bob he forces a confrontation in which he almost certainly would have killed Bob and possibly Beauchamp too, while allowing him to claim self-defense during an escape attempt. English Bob prudently does not take the offered gun. He also whips Ned to death while trying to get information about his partners out of him.
  • Ned comes along primarily because he's Munny's friend, but when it comes to it he finds that he can't actually shoot anyone anymore and he decides to go home instead. Little Bill's men catch him and Bill whips him to death.
  • According to Little Bill, English Bob killed Two-Gun Corcoran purely for sleeping with a woman he also had his eye on.
  • Munny murders Skinny the unarmed saloon owner for displaying Ned's corpse. As he leaves the saloon having killed five men, he warns:
    Munny: Any man I see out there, I'm gonna kill him. Any sumbitch takes a shot at me, I'm not only gonna kill him, but I'm gonna kill his wife and all his friends, and burn his damn house down!
  • Will seemed to do this a lot in his outlaw days, what stories we do hear painting him as being rather murderously psychotic. He recounts to Ned a memory of murdering a drover via a shot to the face, reflecting later after he'd sobered up that the victim had done noting to deserve that. He further recalls that most of the men he had rode with at the time both hated and feared him, worrying that Will would kill them out of "pure meanness".
• Do You Want to Copulate?: After Delilah nurses Munny back to health, she asks him outright if he wants a "free one". He turns her down on account of his late wife.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Unforgiven" can conceivably refer to a few characters in the story. It can refer to Munny, who is a Retired Monster who can never feasibly be forgiven for his past crimes. Or Little Bill, who brutally kills Ned and invokes the wrath of Will, who is willing to revert back to his old ways to settle the score, even if it means dishonoring his late wife's memory. Or maybe the Schofield Kid, who can't forgive himself when he kills Mike and leaves the story emotionally broken and vowing to never pick up a gun again. And it most certainly applies to the cowboys, Quick Mike and Davey, who the whores refuse to forgive for cutting up one of their own. It bites especially hard in Davey's case, whose only fault was being Quick Mike's friend and being with him the night of his rampage. Davey even tries to make amends to Delilah, but her friends drive him away.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Drawn guns are only cocked when the tension is at its highest.
• Dramatic Thunder: On Will's appearance in the bar, and after his ultimatum to the entire town of Big Whiskey.
• The Dreaded: Unlike many westerns, where the gunslinger protagonist is feared for their sheer skill, Munny is feared because he's the meanest son of a bitch alive. In his heyday he would murder people on a whim, because he was drunk or because they bothered him, and even the men who rode with were anxious he would suddenly turn his gun on them for some perceived slight. A young prostitute who has heard of who he is explains (with a quavering voice) that he once dynamited a train full of women and children — and this isn't even the worst thing he's done. Munny ultimately weaponizes this trope in the final shootout and afterwards; even though he's alone and Bill is backed up by fourteen deputies who are all armed and would ordinarily back him up in most cases, they are all without exception shit-scared of Munny. Half of them leave out the back because they'd rather not even be in the same room as him. The rest panic when he starts shooting and he emerges unscathed against six men.
• Dying Truce: William Munny shoots and mortally wounds the cowboy Davey Bunting. Davey becomes thirsty and begs one of his friends to bring him water. His friends are reluctant to do so due to fear of being shot themselves. Munny calls out to them to give Davey some water and promises not to shoot them. One of them believes him and goes to Davey with a canteen.
• Enemy Chatter: Little Bill's deputies get screen time talking about random stuff, showing they are a bunch of regular guys just doing their jobs.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • (In this case, Even Anti-Heroes Have Standards). After killing the men at the saloon, when writer W.W. Beauchamp asks him who he chose first (in an effort to romanticize the brutal events that Munny committed), Munny replies only by threatening him with death. All the players in the movie were eager to justify their Disproportionate Retribution, except for Munny: he knows that he did evil things once and he's doing evil things now, and for that he will go to hell. He will not try to hide that from himself or anyone else.
  • Even when he cold-bloodedly murdered an unarmed Skinny for displaying Ned's corpse outside his saloon and when he was about to shoot Little Bill, both times Munny warned the people standing near his target to move away for their own safety because he's using a shotgun, showing a remarkable concern for the welfare of people he doesn't have any specific intention of killing (and a surprising effort to avert Reckless Gun Usage).
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Even though English Bob seemed to go out of his way to annoy if not outright offend everyone he came into contact in this film, all the onlookers who witnessed the horrendous beatdown he gets from Sheriff Daggett are at least visibly disturbed.
  • Little Bill gives Munny a chance to disarm and stay in town peacefully, even giving him the excuse that maybe he didn't see the sign at the edge of town in the dark and the rain. But when Munny lies to him by saying he's not carrying a gun...
  • Little Bill's deputies are visibly uneased to see how severely Little Bill is beating William Munny in the bar, despite the fact Munny is now unarmed and is clearly so ill that he can't be much of a danger to anyone.
  • The prostitutes may be on the lowest moral berth when it comes to their occupation, but when the main attribute that allows them to exercise their trade, their beauty and seductive wiles, is marred on one of them for petty reasons, they rightfully retaliate. The struggle of the prostitutes teeters between being considered merchandise (as their pimp/employer and the town's authorities sees them), and human beings who think and feel who should be treated with a modicum of decency regardless of their salacious occupation (by Munny).
• Face Death with Dignity: Little Bill, staring down Will Munny's gun. Subverted all to hell with every other death. Nobody else in the film dies as cleanly or quickly.
• Failed a Spot Check: A huge amount of grief and suffering could have been avoided in this flick, had several of the main characters seen the "No Firearms" sign outside the entrance to the town of Big Whiskey. English Bob doesn't notice it when he and companion W.W. Beauchamp ride into town, because he's too busy extolling the virtues of royal succession over the election process. This bites him in the bum big time, as he's brutalized, thrown into jail, and later exiled, with his precious pistols destroyed and his biographer abandoning him for Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett. Will Munny, Ned Logan and The Schofield Kid are too concerned about the ailing Will (who's so sick he nearly falls off his horse several times) to notice it, so of course Bill beats the shit out of Will, sparking the series of events that lead to Ned, Skinny and Daggett's deaths, along with all but one of Daggett's deputies.
• Fastest Gun in the West: This film deconstructs the hell out of this. Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett recounts no less than two instances where merely being able to unholster and draw your pistol in a gunfight faster than the other guy doesn't guarantee you'll win; on the contrary, you're more likely to either miss your opponent, or worse, shoot yourself in the leg or foot, and that's if the gun doesn't jam or blow up in your hand.
  • Played With in Little Bill's admission that there's always a chance that a man who draws and fires too fast might not miss, which means "he'll kill you."
  • Fulfilled in the final gunfight: When Little Bill and all the deputies yank out their guns and blaze away at Will without hitting anything, he calmly aims and fires, and each shot is a hit.
    • In particular, "Fatty"'s gun handling in the final shootout strays into Black Comedy: he is so rattled that he desperately "fans" his pistol's hammer with his free hand, trying to fire faster, but only manages to ratchet his hammer 2-3 times for each actual trigger pull (which probably results in dropping his hammer on an empty chamber), and finally fires his last shot into the ceiling as he turns to flee.
• Floating Head Syndrome: The movie poster shows the heads of the major characters stacked up in a column.
• Forced to Watch: Bill makes two of the prostitutes witness him torture Ned to death, just to scare them over their decision to put a hit out on the cowboys.
• Gag Penis: As Little Bill tells Beauchamp, English Bob once killed a man who was nicknamed "Two-Gun Corcoran." Although Beauchamp was under the impression it was because Corcoran carried two guns, Little Bill explains in detail how he got the name, even though he in fact carried only one gun.
  Little Bill: While it's true that some people called Corky Corcoran "Two-Gun" Corcoran, it wasn't because he carried two guns. It was because he had a dick that was as long as the barrel on that Walker Colt.
• Genre Deconstruction: This whole movie is a more realistic portrayal of what life is like in the Old West. From how quick drawing in a fight would actually be a disadvantage to how stories are altered and/or exaggerated to make someone look more heroic. Most importantly, it depicts the lawless Old West as a pretty awful place to live rather than a place of high adventure.
• Gossip Evolution: When the Schofield Kid tells Munny about the attack, he says that the cowboys had cut out Delilah's eyes and cut off her ears, neither of which was true. When Munny tells Ned about it, he adds that they cut off her fingers and her breasts. The Schofield Kid also inaccurately describes how he killed Quick Mike (by making it sound like Mike was about to get his gun and die Defiant to the End, but in reality his gun was hanging on the door out of reach and Mike died with his hands up trying in vain to talk the Kid down), as part of later rationalizing killing an unarmed man. It is implied that these town-to-town Chinese whispers and morphed retellings of events are how these old Western legends form.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: None of the main characters are truly heroic or villainous. The closest you get to morally white in the story is the late Claudia Munny, whose memory acts as William's Morality Chain throughout the story and this chain slips in the end with the Big Whiskey saloon massacre.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Subverted. Munny attempts it, fails, and he gets his ass kicked for trying.
• Gun Porn: Most westerns depict everyone carrying a Winchester rifle, a Colt Peacemaker, or a double-barreled shotgun (largely due to the use of the five-in-one blank round in movie production). Unforgiven features a very wide selection of old-west firearms, and several are identified by name.
• The Gunslinger: If they're not a whore, they're a gunslinger. Or a writer ("What, letters and such?").
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Delilah seems to emphasize the "heart of gold" aspect, being portrayed as the sweetest and most innocent of the working girls. Deconstructed with Strawberry Alice, the caring big sister of the group. While she does look after Delilah when she's hurt, she's also eager for revenge, she angrily refuses Davey's attempt at an apology, and she shows no remorse when she finally gets her revenge.
• Hourglass Plot: The Schofield Kid starts off as a novice bounty hunter looking for his first kill whereas Munny is a Retired Gunfighter who has developed an aversion to taking lives. By the time Ned is dead, the Schofield Kid is the one regretting his only kill whereas Munny has fully returned to his old habits and is out for blood.
• How Did You Know? I Didn't: One scene is a subversion of Eastwood's film The Outlaw Josey Wales, where Wales survives a shootout with an armed posse and then explains how he did a Sherlock Scan of his enemies to figure out which one he had to shoot first. After Munny survives a similar encounter and is asked how he did it, he just shrugs and says he's always been lucky when it comes to killin' folks.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Once a feared gunslinger, William Munny is now a rheumatic old pig farmer who can barely get on his horse and can't even shoot straight anymore...
• Hypocrite:
  • Bill Daggett is appalled at Munny for shooting down the saloon owner Skinny while he was unarmed, and calls him a cowardly son of a bitch. A bit rich coming from a man who gets his kicks from beating up unarmed old guys while surrounded by a posse of armed deputies who will back him up if his victims try to fight back against his Police Brutality.
  • Before he's driven out of Big Whiskey, English Bob gives the townsfolk a scathing anti-American rant about how their ancestors were "bloody savages" who were exiled from England centuries ago for their lawless and dishonourable ways. A bit rich coming from a bona-fide Evil Brit who shot a love rival In the Back over a woman and made a living killing Chinese labourers for the railroad. It's likely he's in America because polite society back in Ol' Blighty wouldn't have him either.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: As Will insists to Ned, "I'm just a fella now. I ain't any different from anyone else no more."
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
  • Discussed, and ultimately Deconstructed. The deputies in the final showdown panic, blaze away at Munny, and hit exactly zip. Munny, on the other hand, keeps a cool head and rations out a bullet for each one.
  • At the start of the film, Munny is a horrible shot, missing a tin can with all six shots at close range. This leads him to bringing a shotgun along just in case. It's only after he discovers that Ned is dead that he gets his old focus back.
  • Munny also apparently works best while drunk. He drinks a bottle of whisky (his first in the movie) before entering Skinny's for the showdown.
  • The Schofield Kid is revealed to have poor eyesight, struggling to see anything at a distance. When he mistakenly takes shots at Will and Ned with his rifle when they ride up to his position, Ned is confused about how wide the shots are, remarking that the shooter seems to be trying to hit the entire horizon.
  • This is Truth in Television: Revolvers of the time were notoriously inaccurate, even at close range. So as Little Bill says, accuracy trumps speed, and in fact shooting faster would likely make it less accurate, not more. Plus, Munny admits he's "always been lucky in killin' folks."
• Inciting Incident: Delilah laughing at Quick Mike's Teeny Weenie set the entire movie in action.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Little Bill's insistence on referring to English Bob as the Duck (of Death) rather than the Duke. Even after being corrected, he replies "duck, I says," suggesting it's an expression of contempt for Bob himself, who's hardly fearsome in his estimation.
  • Little Bill and his deputies repeatedly refer to bounty hunters as "assassins." The tone they use makes it sound like they're using the word as kind of an insult, but in fact it is an entirely valid distinction: offering money for straight-up killing two men is contract killing and the men seeking to collect are hired assassins.
• Insult Accuracy Acceptance: Little Bill tries to call out Will Munny for his crimes. Instead, Munny chillingly turns it into a Badass Boast, making it clear that the sheriff has crossed a line in murdering Ned, and pushed Munny back into his monstrous old persona.
  Little Bill Daggett: You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children.
  Will Munny: That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.
• Irony: Little Bill's Deputy Clyde carries three pistols despite having only one arm, explaining that if he gets into a gunfight he doesn't want to be killed "for lack of shooting back." During the final gunfight with Munny he fires his first pistol, misses, and gets shot down. He is lying wounded on the floor, trying lamely to draw his second gun, when Will finishes him with a casual Coup de Grâce.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: All the events seen in the film only happen because a volatile cowboy didn't take well to one young prostitute giggling at his Teeny Weenie.
• It's Personal: Will pretty much drags his feet throughout the whole contract killing, but when he is given a personal reason to kill someone, like when Little Bill kills Ned, he goes back to his old ways, with increased focus and gusto.
• Karma Houdini: Somewhat downplayed. While Will doesn't get any retribution at the end for his crimes, they were all either implied or justified in some way since he's given a Sympathetic P.O.V. throughout the film. And he knows he's going to pay for it in Hell anyway.
  "We all got it coming, kid."
• Lame Comeback: Sort of. Instead of a witty one-liner, Munny responds in rather bland fashion, but the effect is, if anything, more intimidating because it's clear Munny no longer cares about anything like regular human communication.
  Little Bill: I'll See You in Hell, William Munny!
  Munny: Yeah. (shoots him in the face)
• Love Redeems: Well, almost. Munny does change his ways for his wife, but eventually reverts to his old ways after she dies.
• Make an Example of Them: Bill's beating of English Bob is meant to serve as a warning, but we later find out that the beating has far more to do with personal reasons, and the public warning is just an excuse.
  • After Sheriff Daggett's interrogation of Ned Logan results in Ned's demise, Daggett posts Ned's corpse outside of Skinny's saloon, as a warning to any other would-be bounty hunters.
• Mama Bear: When Delilah gets her face cut up by a cowboy, Strawberry Alice, the unofficial mother hen of the Big Whiskey saloon girls, vows revenge and puts a bounty on the two men responsible. This has disastrous consequences for the town.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone in Skinny's bar when they see Will Munny walk in. And again when he makes his chilling Badass Boast to Bill.
• Mirroring Factions: Part of the point of the movie is that the forces of law and order and the forces of criminality and villainy in the Old West often weren't as different as later mythologizing have made them out to be. It's heavily implied by Bill's Motive Rants that he used to be an outlaw back in the day, and being a sheriff is a way to vent his vicious tendencies while claiming to be for the good of the town.
• Mood Whiplash: There is a humorous scene depicting Quick Mike among his bodyguards, where one jokes about handing Mike over for five cents, eliciting uproarious laughter. Mike himself comments that he's not worried, as he has "protection", and the camera switches to an overweight deputy snoring away. Then the scene immediately changes to a posse with a captive and bound Ned on horseback...
• Mook Horror Show: Will Munny's entry into the bar, shotgun raised is played out practically like the introduction of an archvillain in a horror movie, complete with Dramatic Thunder.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: According to Little Bill, English Bob took this approach when he found himself in a Love Triangle with Two Guns Corky and a French lady.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Munny shoots Davey Bunting through the stomach and dooms him to a slow death from blood loss, the regret is enough to make the hardened killer promise to Davey's partners that he won't shoot at them so they can tend to their friend and get him some water. When news of his death reaches the saloon girls, one of them has a similar reaction, lamenting that he was only a boy.
• My Parents Are Dead: When the Schofield Kid pitches his bounty hunt to Munny, he suggests Munny could use the money to buy his wife nice things. The latter cuts the conversation short by mentioning that his wife is dead.
• Never Trust a Trailer: One trailer has "Little Bill" yell at Munny that he just shot an unarmed man, and Munny replying matter-of-factly, "well, he should have armed himself." That's actually just half the line he speaks in the movie - what he actually says is, "well, he should have armed himself, if he's going to decorate his saloon with my friend."
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Little Bill beats English Bob while he lies in the street like a dog, and then later beats William Munny in the same way.
• Noodle Incident: Will and Ned often talk about their past exploits and their former gang. Subverted a bit in that Munny was drunk most of the time and doesn't remember all the details either.
• Not His Blood: After the climactic gunbattle in which William Munny kills Little Bill and most of his deputies, Munny hears moaning coming from a pile of bodies. Mr. Beauchamp (Little Bill's biographer) moves a dead body off of himself, sees a patch of blood on his chest and says "I'm shot! I'm shot!" Munny tells him "You ain't shot", and he's right. The blood came from the dead man lying on top of him.
• Not Quite Dead: Little Bill Daggett doesn't die immediately when William Munny initially shoots him, and this enables him to nearly get the drop on Munny. But at the last second, Munny notices Bill stirring and stops him from reaching his pistol, then finishes him off for good with a blast to the face.
  • One of the deputies Munny previously shot is still alive, with his groans of pain giving him away. Munny polishes him off, as well.
• Oblivious Mockery: Beauchamp tells Little Bill jokingly to hang his carpenter for the crappy work he did on the cottage, only for Bill to very subtly reveal that it was him who built the place.
• Of Corsets Sexy: As befits a brothel, we get quite a few shots of the ladies of Greeley's sitting around wearing corsets and even skimpier wear.
• Off the Wagon: Munny has quit drinking, but he drinks a bottle of whisky before the final showdown.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • English Bob upon seeing Little Bill: "Shit and fried eggs!"
  • Everyone in the saloon has a moment when Little Bill is talking about how they're going to catch the "assassins"... and then they hear a gun click behind them, and standing in the doorway is a soaking wet and very pissed looking Munny, holding a shotgun.
  • Munny, very briefly, when he goes to shoot Bill and his shotgun misfires.
  • The Schofield Kid gets one when he finds out via Delilah who his "friend" really is, and that he's the only friend Will has.
• One Last Job: It's the story of an arrhythmic old pig farmer who used to be an outlaw, being roped into going after one last bounty on two wanted cowboys by a wannabe gunslinger so he can leave the farm and his past behind and start a new life elsewhere. It goes horribly, horribly wrong.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: An in-universe version; English Bob, who normally speaks with a plummy upper-crust accent, slips into Cockney when suddenly confronted by Little Bill and his posse. Apparently he's pretending to be an upper-class gent when he's really from the gutter (he says "I thought you was dead" before correcting himself to the more "correct" "you were".) To some, Bob's accent sounds American (Southern or Midwestern) at this point, indicating that his entire identity as "English" Bob is a fabrication. His first words upon seeing Little Bill, "Shit and fried eggs," may be more evidence for this. They are almost inaudible but show up in closed captions. The very loud rant he gives the people of Big Whiskey (see under Defiant to the End) as they run him out of town is spoken in what sounds like very coarse Cockney, but by that point he's totally humiliated and blinded with rage and has no reason to pretend anymore.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot:
  • When W.W. Beauchamp complains about the rain dripping on his notes, Little Bill apologizes, citing the leaks in the ceiling, prompting Beauchamp to jokingly suggest Bill "shoot the carpenter". Beauchamp's laughter is met with a Death Glare from Daggett (making W.W. realize he's talking to the carpenter), which curtails any further attempt at frivolity.
  • While settling in for an uncomfortable sleep on the ground near a campfire, Ned complains that he misses his wife Sally. Realizing that he's grousing about a temporary (and voluntary) absence from his spouse to his friend who is a widower, Ned immediately apologizes.
• Parental Neglect: Munny leaves his two young children to fend for themselves while he risks his life to collect the bounty.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The last 20 minutes of this are William Munny falling deeply into this trope after Little Bill kills Ned Logan.
• Persona Non Grata: After beating and jailing English Bob, Little Bill sends him off on a wagon going out of town with a warning never to return.
  Little Bill: I suppose you know, Bob, if I ever see you again I'm just going to start shooting and figure it was self-defense.
• Platonic Prostitution: Just for Munny, though. His partners readily take "advances".
• Police Brutality: Little Bill enjoys doling out beatings whenever he has someone from out of town at his mercy. When English Bob claims he's unarmed Bill's posse takes his weapons at gunpoint, and then Bill proceeds to make an example of him by kicking the crap out of Bill while loudly declaring he won't tolerate assassins in his town coming to collect on the bounty. That night he sets up English Bob to get shot while trying to escape, but Bob wisely doesn't take the bait. A few days later he beats the hell out of Munny (and doesn't bother to arrest him) for lying about having a gun. Even later, he accidentally whips Ned to death for his involvement in killing Davey. Bill certainly doesn't seem too upset about having accidentally whipped a man to death while rounding up the posse to go catch his partners.
• Power Equals Rarity: The Schofield Kid uses a Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver; more specifically, one of the modified and improved 1875 "Schofield" models. This is a state-of-the-art revolver that shoots straight, won't jam and won't blow up in your hand. His is the only Schofield in the movie; it even gives him his nickname. This revolver grants his owner a definite advantage compared to other weapons like shotguns that misfire or the prone-to-explode Colt Walker. Predictably, the Schofield ends up in Will Munny's hands who uses it in the final gunfight.
• Punctuated Pounding: As Bill kicks the shit out of English Bob (and later William Munny), he extols the reasons for the beating and derides the quality of his victim.
• Quick Draw: Downplayed; As Little Bill notes when he's talking to the writer, being fast on the draw is perfectly fine... but those who draw and start blazing away without taking the time to properly aim tend to end up dead, while a slower, but more accurate gunfighter will, as a rule, end up the victor.
  Little Bill: Look here. *draws quickly but not overly fast* That's about as fast as I can draw, aim, and hit anything more than ten feet away. 'Less it's a barn...
  • Demonstrated to brutal effect in the final shootout where, even though Munny throws his misfiring shotgun at him to buy time, Little Bill draws his gun and shoots faster than Munny can- and misses. Munny then guns him down, and steadily blows away the deputies one by one as they all blaze away at him in a panic.
• Quick Nip: When told that Ned has been killed by Little Bill, Munny takes a couple of swigs from a Whiskey bottle, having avoided doing so for the entire film up to this point. This signifies that he has reverted to his old persona of a vicious killer.
• A Real Man is a Killer: The whole point of the film is to point out that you'd have to be pretty cold-blooded or crazy to work as a gunfighter. An alternate point (which the Schofield Kid seems to get) is that killing someone costs the killer almost as much as the victim.
• Reconstruction:
  • While the movie is primarily a Deconstruction, the final fight scene is more or less played straight and Munny isn't portrayed as in the wrong. Word of God says that the movie wasn't so much "violence is bad" as it is "violence is complex and only applicable in certain situations".
  • Something of a Broken Aesop in that case: While Little Bill went too far in killing Ned and is repeatedly portrayed as a sadist who takes pleasure in doling out his version of justice, he believed the man he killed had murdered the babyfaced and relatively innocent — but still guilt-ridden — Davey in cold blood just for a quick pay-off. Munny convinced Ned to come along and help him commit a couple of contract killings despite the latter's misgivings; who's really responsible for getting him killed?
• Red-Light District: Not a whole district of them, but there's at least one brothel. It does turn up a lot in the film, though.
• Redemption Failure:
  • Munny is a former bad man, who tried to make a go at being a farmer for the sake of his wife. When she dies and his farm fails to earn him anything beyond a wretched subsistence, in desperation he decides to take on One Last Job for enough money to start over. When Ned dies he fully slides back to his old ways for one evening. Afterwards, it was rumored that he eventually returned to a mundane life once more.
  • Little Bill, too. By his own admission, he is a bad man, but he's trying to make a go of it by being a sheriff. He just happens to be a little too brutal at his job and pisses off the wrong assassin.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Ned's wife Sally doesn't trust Will.
• Rejected Apology: Davey trying to give his prize horse to Delilah as an apology for her newly scarred face. (Remember, it was Davey's partner who had cut up Delilah, and Davey tried to stop him.) Before Delilah could accept or reject it, the other prostitutes drive off Davey in rage, declaring that a simple horse isn't going to fix what was done to her.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns:
  • Misfiring guns feature prominently in both the backstory and the climax, which is appropriate for the time period, in which lower-quality guns and ammo were more common. The rainy night of the climax might also have played a factor in one rather important misfire.
  • For the final shootout, Munny uses the Schofield Kid's powerful and cutting-edge (for its day) Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver, which plays a big part in Munny's victory over Bill and his deputies.
  • Little Bill, when telling W.W. Beauchamp the real story about how English Bob killed Two-Gun Corcoran, explains that Corcoran's Walker Colt exploded on him, allowing Bob to get the drop on him. This was a problem that Walker Colts really had.
• Retired Badass: Deconstructed with Will and Ned. They have latent skills, but have been out of the game so long they don't have the same instincts and reflexes they once had. Ned starts off confident but loses his nerve trying to kill the first cowboy. Will starts off almost catatonic, but slowly descends into the cold killer he once was.
  • Subverted with English Bob, an old man who admittedly demonstrates some proficiency with a pistol, but it turns out that he is literally only a badass on paper.
• Retired Gunfighter: Both Will Munny and Ned Logan were retired and had families until the Kid convinced them to come along for a bounty.
• Retired Monster:
  • There's a reason why Will Munny is unforgiven. He doesn't seem to really regret his previous life all that much, except when it comes to his deceased wife. But then Munny got pissed at what they did to Ned.
  • Little Bill describes both English Bob and himself as bad men, implying he thinks they both are this.
  • It's never exactly stated but given he's an old friend/colleague of Munny's, it can be presumed Ned has a pretty bad past too.
• Riddle for the Ages: We never learn why Claudia and William married, only the effect it had on the latter.
  Closing Title Card: Some years later, Mrs. Ansonia Feathers made the arduous journey to Hodgeman County to visit the last resting place of her only daughter. William Munny had long since disappeared with the children... some said to San Francisco where it was rumored he prospered in dry goods. And there was nothing on the marker to explain to Mrs. Feathers why her only daughter had married a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Subverted after Little Bill kills Ned; while Munny stalks into town to take his cold-blooded revenge on the man who killed his best friend and the owner of the saloon who put his corpse on display, he's remarkably controlled. Despite being described throughout the film as a psychotic butcher, once he guns down all the men who are actively shooting at him, he tells everyone else to just Get Out!, even those who are still clutching loaded weapons. Even before that, he warns bystanders to move away to avoid collateral damage before he shoots Skinny and Bill.
• Rule of Symbolism: Little Bill's leaky house is an allusion to his efforts to justify the brutal methods to enforce the law he imparts in his town.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Ned decides he can't shoot people for money anymore, and he leaves town to go home. Munny insists he will still get his share of the reward regardless.
  • When Munny goes to the saloon to get Bill, there are fourteen men in the posse Bill has assembled. On seeing a very pissed-off looking Munny in the doorway and being warned they'll die if they stay, about half of them take his advice and make themselves scarce.
  • Beauchamp quickly leaves the saloon and the town of Big Whiskey after the saloon massacre. And he probably had nightmares about Munny for the rest of his life.
• See You in Hell: Little Bill, to William Munny. And Munny accepts the truth of it.
  "I'll see you in Hell, William Munny."
  "Yeah."
• Sex for Services: The whores allow Munny's companions to take 'advances' on their payment as they don't actually have the full amount they're promising.
• Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!: W.W. Beauchamp is detained along with English Bob. When asked to provide credentials, Beauchamp reaches into his bag to produce a sample of his writing... and immediately realizes that every gun in sight is now cocked and pointed at him. He promptly wets himself.
• Shout-Out:
  • "The Duke" was a reference to John Wayne.
  • Speaking of Wayne, Munny talking to his wife's grave was inspired by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
• Shrouded in Myth:
  • William Munny. Funnily enough, it seems that the real facts about Will Munny's exploits are more fantastical than the urban legends. He claims he was drunk during most of them, so even he isn't clear on the details.
  • English Bob is a subversion. While he does seem to have some genuine skills (shooting a bird in flight from a moving train with a pistol is pretty damn impressive), it seems likely that most of his exploits are padded.
  • Subverted also when The Schofield Kid is babbling about his kill. "He reached for his gun and I shot him." In truth, when the Kid shot him the man had his hands up and his gun was well out of reach. This is probably how most of the myths come about. What the kid said was basically true, but he didn't tell the middle part (the man did reach for his gun, but his gunbelt was hanging on a peg on the inside of the outhouse door and moved completely out of his reach when the Kid opened the door. He tried raising his hands and talking instead, and the Kid shot him with his empty hands raised). There's also probably a bit of selective rewriting of history going on in the process, since given the mood the Kid is in, he would probably rather remember (and have others remember) that he shot a man who was preparing to shoot him rather than that he shot an unarmed and entirely defenseless man pleading for his life with his empty hands raised.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • During the final shootout Beauchamp is more concerned about mining material for his dime novels than he is about the fact that he is in the middle of a shootout surrounded by dead bodies.
  • As he's dying from being shot, Bill whines that he only wanted to build a house.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Probably one of the most cynical Westerns of all time. It goes out of its way to deconstruct a good number of classic Western tropes and character archetypes, and presents the Old West as a violent and unjust Crapsack World.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: When Little Bill first meets Beauchamp, who insists he's just a writer, Bill asks, "Writer? Letters?" After the climactic shootout, Beauchamp tells Will Munny he's just an unarmed writer. Will's reply? "Writer? Letters and such?"
• Taking a Third Option: Little Bill, to prove how difficult it actually is to shoot a man, hands a pistol to biographer W.W. Beauchamp. He sets the keys to English Bob's cell on the table and tells Beauchamp all he has to do is shoot him and then Beauchamp and English Bob can escape. Beauchamp questions whether the gun is loaded at first and is indeed extremely nervous to even hold it (failing to put his finger on the trigger), and Little Bill moves to take the gun back. Then Beauchamp gets the bright idea of giving the pistol to Bob, reasoning that the far more experienced gunslinger (and killer) won't hesitate to shoot his tormentor. Bill, seemingly unfazed, dares him to do so. English Bob stands up and comes to the bars of his cell within reach of the gun and Little Bill moves his hand near his own pistol, staring him down. After a moment's hesitation English Bob declines to take the gun. He shakes his head, possibly at his own cowardice, as Little Bill demonstrates that the gun was indeed loaded by emptying it in front of him.
• A Taste of the Lash: Little Bill captures Ned and wants information, immediately breaking out the whip. Ned does not survive.
• Teeny Weenie: Quick Mike cuts up Delilah because she laughs at his small penis.
• Throw-Away Guns:
  • Clyde, one of Little Bill's deputies, carries three guns for this reason. He has only one arm and would be unable to reload in a fight. Also, contrary to the myth of the Colt Peacemaker, most of the guns available in the West during the time period were older cap-and-ball revolvers such as the Colt Navy, Dragoon, and 1860 Army. Reloading one of these weapons is a very slow process^note The fastest way to do so would be to swap out the cylinder. Otherwise, each chamber would have to be hand-charged with powder, a round seated, and a cap placed on the nipple. Paper cartridges helped speed the process, but it's still not something that can be done quickly. Any of those methods would be completely impractical in the heat of a fight. so it was quite common for a gunfighter to carry multiple pistols and to just draw a backup weapon rather than stop and reload.
  • Subverted in English Bob's real backstory regarding "Two Gun" Corcoran. In Bob's embellished version, Corcoran had the Meaningful Name of "Two Gun" because he always went Guns Akimbo. In actuality, he was so nicknamed thanks to being well-endowed. Little Bill tells W.W. Beauchamp that had Corcoran actually carried a second gun, Bob would not have killed him even after Corcoran's gun blew up in his hand, because Bob was too drunk to shoot straight.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Really, Skinny? You don't even carry a gun but you thought it would be a good idea to put Will Munny's best friend on display outside your saloon? And then just stand there when he tells everyone else to clear out?
  • Bill is warned by Ned that "William Munny will come for you!" Bill then beats Ned to death and props up his dead body outside the saloon as a warning to others. Much later, a mortally wounded Bill lies on the floor looking down the muzzle of Munny's rifle and whines "I don't deserve to die like this!" Bub, you were warned.
  • In no way did Delilah deserve to have her face cut up for a cheeky giggle at a man's penis — she was only a young girl and couldn't help it, but still a young girl working in her profession should have known what kind of dangerous and volatile men prostitutes sometimes take on as clients...
• Undignified Death: Quick Mike is killed squatting on the john in his underwear holding up his empty hands. His last words before he was shot were begging the boy who had him under a gun not to kill him.
• Unreliable Narrator: In keeping with the overall Deconstruction of the Western, a running theme throughout the movie is that many of the characters are either actively trying to rewrite their pasts in order to make them seem better than they were, or have hazy recollections of them to begin with. These fraudulent and flawed recollections then go on to become myths of the West. This starts off early on, as Will only considers the offer from the Schofield Kid because he said the target graphically maimed a prostitute, cutting up her face, carving her body, and chopping off her fingers, when in realty she just had some cuts to her face that left some scars but didn't even really diminish her beauty that much.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Billiards."
• The Villain Knows Where You Live: In the climax, Sheriff Little Bill is organizing a posse at the saloon to track down Will Munny as they expect that he has fled to another state. They are horrified when he shows up himself.
• Villainous Friendship: Will and Ned, two former killers, share a genuine friendship, which is especially notable as back during his prime Will was once so feared that any other outlaws who rode with him were wary he would turn on them, and even decades out of the game his mere reputation is enough to scare people shitless, yet Ned never shows any trace of fear of the man.
• Villain Protagonist: The main characters are Professional Killers looking for a pay-out on an illegal bounty. They are opposed by The Sheriff who is actively trying to keep law and order and stop the hit. The Killers happen to be reluctant and fighting their own demons, while the Sheriff has a sadistic streak and the reason for the bounty itself was considered Disproportionate Retribution. The film in general features Grey-and-Gray Morality.
• Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy: The working girls put out a $1,000 bounty on the heads of two cowboys, Quick Mike and Davey Bunting. While this is understandable in Mike's case (he cut up one of the prostitutes pretty badly), Davey's only crime is his poor choice of friends.
• Villainy Discretion Shot: Judging from the details given on their backstories, English Bob, Munny, and Ned did some pretty horrific things in the past. Part of the reason Munny and Ned can remain sympathetic is that those things are only described, not shown (although William Munny's crimes, at least, are described in enough detail to remind the audience that while he's not without sympathetic qualities, he's also capable of pure, remorseless evil).
• Violence Is Disturbing: Best shown by Davey's death. There is nothing noble or glorious about a teenage boy bleeding to death in agony from a stomach wound. Nor is there anything cool about Mike's death, the poor bastard dies being riddled with bullets in the outhouse. There's Little Bill's beating of Munny, which we get to see in full, also disturbing. Judging from their expressions even Bill's deputies seem to agree. And also his savage beating of a visiting pompous Englishman, which is interspersed with Reaction Shots of all the assembled townsfolk who look uncomfortable and afraid of the kind of man who is supposed to be their local peacekeeper.
  • To say nothing of Daggett's whipping torture of Ned Logan which culminates in Ned's death.
• What Does She See in Him?: Will Munny and his wife. As the opening narration says: "She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
• "What Now?" Ending: The fate of the town of Big Whiskey is left up in the air after Will massacres Little Bill and his deputies.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Subverted when Little Bill calls out Will for shooting an unarmed man, Will has none of that since the man is desecrating Ned's body by putting it in front of his saloon as a warning, you don't get to play innocent.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Will took the kids and left for San Francisco, where he prospered in selling dry goods. And Claudia's mother visited her grave, finding no explanation why her only daughter had married "a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition."
• Who Will Bell the Cat?: At the end of the film, after the climactic shoot-out, Munny shouts out a threatening warning that anyone who takes a shot at him as he leaves will pay dearly for it. Two men, one a deputy holding a rifle, are hiding behind a wagon as Munny emerges and have him dead to rights... but the deputy is too terrified to take the shot, in case he misses. He offers the rifle to the other man, but he won't touch it either, and Munny rides away unmolested.

The Japanese version provides examples of:

• Adapted Out: In this version, Ichizo's men do not receive names or any character development.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Downplayed; a fire starts at the saloon right at the beginning of the final showdown, but it doesn't really get that big until the fight is mostly over.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Ichizo cuts Jubei's face with a broken bottle.
• Illegal Religion: Christianity was illegal in Japan until very recently, and Jubei is believed to have executed women and children for practicing it.
• Race Lift: The characters are all Japanese, obviously, but notably Goro is Ainu. This adds tension to his characterization, as many "Wa" (ethnically Japanese) look down on the Ainu as little more than animals, and an Ainu who kills a Wa will be hunted for the rest of his life.
• Scenery Porn: The beautiful Hokkaido landscape gets a lot of attention from the camera.