What Was REALLY In The Briefcase?

What's really in the Pulp Fiction briefcase? Fans have speculated for years, but over three decades after Pulp Fiction's release it's still a mystery.

Summary

• The Pulp Fiction briefcase is intentionally left a mystery, functioning as a plot device known as a "MacGuffin" to propel the story.
• There are various theories about what could be in the briefcase, such as Marsellus Wallace's soul or the diamonds from Reservoir Dogs, but no concrete evidence supports any theory.
• Quentin Tarantino enjoys keeping certain aspects of his films secret to engage viewers, so the contents of the Pulp Fiction briefcase will likely never be revealed. The focus is on the significance the characters place on obtaining it rather than its actual contents.

Pulp Fiction is full of intentional loose ends and mysteries, with the biggest talking point being what was in the Pulp Fiction briefcase, but director Quentin Tarantino has suggested that there’s no concrete answer. The briefcase functions as a "MacGuffin," a plot device used to push the story forward. But for those who know their movie history, it's clear that Tarantino references a film noir classic with the briefcase. When Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) first recover the Pulp Fiction briefcase, a glowing light can be seen, with everyone who looks inside the briefcase becoming mesmerized, though the camera never shows the contents.

Vincent appears to have a spiritual experience at the sight of the briefcase's contents, and the MacGuffin has the same effect on Pumpkin (Tim Roth), who describes the glowing contents as “beautiful.” The story in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction famously jumps back and forth in time to create a cinematic puzzle, and the briefcase represents one of the most oddly shaped pieces in that puzzle. While Tarantino left the briefcase a mystery — whenever it's opened, the scene is always shot as to hide whatever is inside — that hasn't stopped decades of speculating about what was in the Pulp Fiction briefcase, and some theories have far more evidence than others.

Related

The 50 Best Movies Of All Time

Screen Rant breaks down the 50 best movies of all time, which are based on original scores weighted by rankings from IMDb and Metacritic.

What's In The Pulp Fiction Briefcase – Best Theories

Online, among the most popular Pulp Fiction theories about what was in the Pulp Fiction briefcaseis that it contains Marsellus Wallace’s soul. This would mean the gangster sold said soul to the devil and decided that he wanted it back. But (according to the theory) it comes with a price —evidenced by the bloodbath that is Pulp Fiction. Many people have noted that the briefcase’s lock code is 666, a number associated with the Devil.

The theory is further supported by the bandage on the back of Wallace’s head, which correlates with a biblical text that reveals how the Devil takes one’s soul. Considering Jules’ monologue about “divine intervention” after miraculously surviving a shoot-out, the “soul” theory is indeed intriguing. Even without adding an explicitly supernatural element to the world of Pulp Fiction, the Pulp Fiction briefcase could still symbolically represent the possibility of Marsellus's redemption.

Others have suggested that the Pulp Fiction briefcase holds the diamonds from Reservoir Dogs. There’s not much evidence to support this argument, aside from the gangster aspects and character connections. In Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Blonde a.k.a. Vic Vega (Michael Madsen) goes on a killing rampage after a carefully planned diamond heist, thus upsetting Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), who later escapes with the loot (Reservoir Dogs’ final audio implies that Mr. Pink was captured by police). However, Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, who once revealed that the Pulp Fiction briefcase originally contained diamonds, but that the concept was ultimately deemed “too boring and predictable.”

A less theatrical theory about what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction is drugs. A number of characters in the movie can be seen taking drugs, most notably Vincent. Mia also snorts heroin thinking it's cocaine, which leads to her overdose. Wallace is clearly a gangster who's involved in a lot of different criminal activity outside of fixing boxing matches, and it's more than likely that he operates some sort of drug trafficking. Drugs might not explain the glow inside the Pulp Fiction briefcase, but it could be a play on the phrase "sunshine in a bag," which refers to drugs, most often heroin.

The Pulp Fiction Briefcase Scene Was Possibly Inspired By A 1955 Film Noir

The beauty of the Pulp Fiction briefcase is that it allows for endless interpretations. Most likely, the glowing light is simply an homage to the 1955 film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly, which includes a sequence featuring a cryptic box — one that’s connected to “the gates of hell” and glows upon being opened. This plausible explanations, as it feeds into Quentin Tarantino's well-known love of movies, and also lends the filman air of mystery that has kept its fans guessing for decades about what was in the Pulp Fiction briefcase. The homage has led to the wild theory that the Pulp Fiction briefcase contains God.

Perhaps the real purpose of the Pulp Fiction briefcase is simply to fuel speculation among Pulp Fiction fans. Tarantino has not made a secret of his own theories and subtle ideologies behind his own films (he even admitted that he considers some of his films movies-within-movies as part of a broader Quentin Tarantino shared universe), so perhaps it was just Tarantino's way of giving fans the scope to fill in the blanks on their own. Either way, the question of what was in the case in thebriefcase in Pulp Fiction remains one of the most interesting movie mysteries of all time.

Quentin Tarantino Still Hasn't Revealed What's In The Pulp Fiction Briefcase

It's been almost three decades since Pulp Fiction was released, and the Pulp Fiction briefcase mystery still lives on. For whatever reason, Quentin Tarantino has kept the contents of the briefcase hush-hush, and it doesn't look like he'll be spilling the beans anytime soon. In the past, Tarantino has discussed the film, and the only light he's shed on the mystery is that he enjoys keeping certain things a secret to make his movies more engaging.

Ultimately, what's important about the briefcase is not its contents but that the criminals in the story will do anything to get it. At this point, revealing a concrete answer to what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction would risk the sense of anticlimax or over-literalism. Knowing the notoriously stubborn Tarantino, it's likely that there'll never be an answer for what's in the Pulp Fiction briefcase, and its contents will have to remain up to the imagination.