Deadly Viper Assassination Squad
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The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAs) are a fictional band of highly trained assassins in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1 and Volume 2.
The members of the "DiVAS" consist of the following:
- Beatrix Kiddo/The Bride (Black Mamba) played by Uma Thurman.
- Vernita Green (Copperhead) played by Vivica A. Fox (#2).
- O-Ren Ishii (Cottonmouth) played by Lucy Liu (#1).
- Elle Driver (California Mountain Snake) played by Daryl Hannah (#4).
- Budd (Sidewinder) played by Michael Madsen (#3).
- Bill (Snake Charmer) played by David Carradine (#5).
(number between brackets is the chronologic killing order by The Bride, not the movie order)
Bill and Budd are brothers who grew up without a father (although Esteban Vihaio, a pimp, acted as a father figure for a time). O-Ren Ishii was left an orphan after her parents were killed by Japanese crime boss Matsumoto for unknown reasons. David Carradine has confirmed that Bill killed O-Ren's parents [1]. The origins of the other three assassins are not known.
They are, as their name suggests, an assassination squad, run and managed by Bill. He is known to have had romances, or at the least sexual relations, with Kiddo (who was his girlfriend and protégée at the time and whom he impregnated), and Elle Driver. It is implied (though not stated) that they were one of the most deadly teams on the planet, which would fit in both with the style of film, and the training regime and skills demonstrated.
At the time of Kiddo's revenge, the group had largely disbanded. Vernita lives as a housewife with a daughter, O-Ren was running crime in Tokyo, Budd was a bar bouncer, Bill is shown mostly as a retired killer, to whom Elle remains fanatically devoted (though probably as portrayed, self-interest comes first for her). The Bride has just recovered from a 4 year coma, which started when the others gate crashed her wedding rehearsal and killed the wedding party, but mistakenly left her alive. Bill delivered the coup de grâce, in return for walking out on him. Their daughter is delivered whilst she is in coma, and is being looked after by Bill without her knowledge.
Although never explicitly said, it was widely held that Black Mamba was the most lethal and skilled of the DiVAS after Bill himself, making her probably the deadliest woman on the planet. Many of them wielded katanas, and in the case of Bill and Budd, forged by Hattori Hanzō, an Okinawan sword maker of legendary standing, who came out of retirement to make his final masterpiece, The Bride's sword. At least Bill, The Bride, and Elle Driver were trained by Pai Mei, a Chinese martial arts master later claimed to have been poisoned out of spite and revenge by Elle Driver. It is not stated whether the others received training from him as well. Besides their training in the martial arts, they were also fluent in several languages, well-versed in the use of firearms, and skilled in various assassination, espionage, surveillance, and weapon combat techniques.
Green, Ishii, and Bill were killed by Kiddo in her quest for revenge. Budd was killed ironically by a black mamba which Driver put in his money. It is unknown whether Driver survived; she was left blinded and locked up with the black mamba that killed Budd, ranting and screaming in an isolated desert trailer. At the end of the film, all the characters who have been killed have their names crossed out, but Elle's name instead has a question mark over top of it, suggesting that she could still be alive.
[edit] Easter Egg References
The five assassins of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad reference the Five Deadly Venoms, a group of five Hong Kong action actors employed by Run Run Shaw in many old Shaw Brothers martial arts films that were part of the inspiration for Kill Bill. The actors first worked together in a movie called The Five Deadly Venoms, and were referred to as such when seen in later movies together. In another Tarantino movie, Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace (also played by Uma Thurman) states that she worked on a pilot episode of the Fox Force Five, which included five very different women with special talents that are similar to the talents of the DiVAs. It was also mentioned in Pulp Fiction that her character was "the deadliest woman in the world with a knife," whereas in Kill Bill, Vernita Green is described by the Bride as such. On the other Hand, the names of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad might have been inspired by the Serpent Society, a fictional organization of snake-themed supervillains in the Marvel Comics universe, given that Tarantino makes a comic metaphor at the end of Volume 2. It is also of note that, the list of names that Thurman's character makes in Kill Bill, is titled "Death List Five."
[edit] Other
While Sofie Fatale was not an official member of the DiVAS squad, she was at least involved in their operations and was in personal contact with Bill.
