No, That Captain Marvel Milkshake Isn't A Pulp Fiction Easter Egg

The ostensible villains in Anna Boden's and Ryan Fleck's 2019 superhero film "Captain Marvel" were a species of shape-shifting aliens called Skrulls. Because they could change their appearance, Skrulls could easily infiltrate human society and take over positions of power with relative ease. Sadly, even though "Captain Marvel" and its follow-up TV series "Secret Invasion" feature the Skrulls, the widespread ramifications of a Skrull invasion are never quite fully explored. 

In a "Captain Marvel" twist, however, it is revealed that a major Skrull character, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), was not up to any major villainy, preferring instead to protect his family. The true villain was ... well, I'll leave that information obscure for the benefit of "Captain Marvel" neophytes. 

The filmmakers had a cute visual indicator to humanize Talos and assure audiences that he wasn't a villain after all. In one scene, he drinks an Earth milkshake out of a red-and-white striped paper cup using a plastic straw. The image is relatable and human, almost absurdly so. Talos is not some eerie, otherworldly threat, but a dude who likes his milkshake.

Because of the angle of the shot, some "Captain Marvel" fans assumed that Talos' milkshake scene was a reference to a shot in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film "Pulp Fiction." This assumption was compounded by the fact that Samuel L. Jackson appeared in both films. In "Pulp Fiction," the Jackson character breaks into the apartment of some thieves and intimidates them by eating their hamburger breakfast and drinking their beverages while they are held at gunpoint. 

According to the directors' commentary track for "Captain Marvel," Talos' milkshake was not a "Pulp Fiction" reference, but a "Reservoir Dogs" reference. 

On the commentary track, Fleck said, "Some people think that's from 'Pulp Fiction,' and it does look like Sam Jackson sipping a milkshake in 'Pulp Fiction.' But the actual reference for us was 'Reservoir Dogs.'" Boden pointed out that it was also a film directed by Quentin Tarantino.

In 1992's "Reservoir Dogs," several jewel thieves meet in an abandoned warehouse after a heist gone awry. Michael Madsen plays a coolly violent character nicknamed Mr. Blonde, and when he arrives at the warehouse to reconnoiter with his fellow heisters, he is seen casually drinking out of the same red-and-white-striped cup that Talos uses in "Captain Marvel." It's worth noting that "Captain Marvel" is set in 1995, so that kind of cup would have been in common use at the time in both movies. 

That kind of cup was also in widespread use during the events of "Pulp Fiction" as well. Dialogue from both "Pulp" and "Dogs" makes explicit that the cup comes from a local (fictional) burger joint called Big Kahuna Burger, a restaurant that's referenced throughout the films of Tarantino and of his filmmaking friend Robert Rodriguez (and, curiously, David Mirkin's 1997 comedy "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion"). The Big Kahuna cup in "Pulp" is actually purple. One might posit that Talos swung by a Big Kahuna Burger during his shape-shifting shenanigans.

The Big Kahuna cup, if one wants to be so bold, could be used as a canonical means to rope Tarantino's movies into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Given the director's stated opinions about the MCU, this may be considered a grand, dark irony.