52 Fun Facts About The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

During their bounty scam, how does Eastwood's character save Tuco from being hanged?

He shoots through the rope, then the pair split the reward money and pull the same con again in another town.

Where is Tuco when he shoots a talkative gunman, then says 'When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk'?

In a bathtub, and Tuco fires a gun hidden under the soap bubbles before the one-armed bounty hunter can finish his speech.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ends with what famous kind of gunfight?

A Mexican standoff, which Leone cuts ever closer to the three men's eyes, hands and guns.

What is the nickname of Van Cleef's ruthless mercenary?

Angel Eyes always sees a paid job through, so after killing the man who tries to buy him off, he goes back and kills the man who hired him too.

What does Tuco call Eastwood's character?

Blondie is what Tuco calls him, and the famous 'Man with No Name' billing was invented afterwards by the American advertising campaign.

In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, what does Eastwood's character share with a dying soldier?

His cigar: he lets the dying man smoke it and covers him with his own coat.

What interrupts Tuco just before he shoots Eastwood's character?

A runaway wagon carrying a dying man, who names the cemetery to Tuco but the grave to Eastwood's character, so neither can kill the other.

What is the name of the cemetery where the gold is hidden?

Sad Hill was built for the film by Spanish soldiers, because Leone wanted a cemetery that looked like an ancient Roman circus and no real one did.

What alias does the dying soldier use, the man who knows where the gold is?

Bill Carson is the name Tuco later answers to at a prison camp roll call, and answering to it gets him brutally beaten for the secret.

What name does Eastwood's character falsely give Tuco as the name on the grave?

Arch Stanton is the name he offers when Tuco proposes swapping secrets in case either of them is killed, and Tuco gives up the cemetery in return.

In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's finale, what is written on the grave that really holds the gold?

Unknown: Eastwood's character sets a stone he says bears the real name in the middle of the cemetery, and the three men fight over it.

How does Eastwood's character escape Tuco's noose in the hotel room?

An artillery shell hits the building, and Eastwood's character slips away, so Tuco has to track him down all over again.

What is Tuco's brother's occupation?

Priest is what his brother became, and Tuco retorts that where they came from, a poor boy became either a priest or a bandit.

What is the Ugly's full name, as read out at his hangings?

Eastwood's character prefers 'The Rat'.

What do Tuco and Eastwood's character blow up to clear their way to the cemetery?

A bridge that both armies want intact, so blowing it up makes the troops scatter, and the dying captain lives just long enough to hear it go.

A weary army captain in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly says battles are won by whoever has the most what?

Liquor, he says, to get the soldiers drunk before sending them to be slaughtered.

Which role in Once Upon a Time in the West did Eastwood turn down?

Harmonica, which Leone pitched to him in person in Los Angeles, but Eastwood decided the film wasn't for him.

How does Van Cleef's character disguise himself inside the prison camp?

As a Union sergeant he has Tuco tortured for the cemetery's name, then deserts to go after the gold himself.

Which TV Western had made Eastwood famous before Leone cast him?

Rawhide, whose episode 'Incident of the Black Sheep' Leone watched as, in effect, Eastwood's screen test.

When Tuco recaptures Eastwood's character, how does he take his revenge?

He marches him across the desert until he collapses from thirst, paying him back for having stranded Tuco out there first.

Morricone's two-note theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly imitates which animal's howl?

A coyote, and Morricone made the howl not with an instrument but with two male voices shouting 'A' and 'E' over each other.

Which word completes Eastwood's line 'I've never seen so many men ___ so badly'?

Wasted: he mutters it while watching the two armies suicidally charge each other under heavy cannon fire.

Which piece plays as Tuco runs frantically through the cemetery looking for the grave?

The Ecstasy of Gold was already in Leone's head when he shot the scene, so Tuco's run among the graves plays like choreography cut to music.

Which band has opened its concerts for decades with music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Metallica, who also recorded their own version of the piece for a Morricone tribute album.

Which song do prisoners perform while Tuco is tortured in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

The Story of a Soldier is played by the camp's prisoner band so that its music drowns out Tuco's screams during the beating.

Chained to a dead guard, how does Tuco break free in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

A train cuts it when Tuco lays the chain across the rails, and the boxcars' jutting steps nearly decapitated Wallach during the shot.

To get a genuinely startled Wallach in the cemetery scene, what did Leone let loose on set?

A dog, released without warning Wallach as the cameras rolled, because Leone feared the solemn scene was sliding into melodrama.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's Italian title uses which order?

The Good, the Ugly, the Bad is the Italian order, and Leone said the labels were loose anyway, since we all have some good, some bad and some ugliness in us.

Which American studio financed and distributed the film after the success of For a Few Dollars More?

They advanced $500,000 up front and took half the box office outside Italy.

What happened when Leone hung a gun from his neck?

It hit his groin, so Leone dropped the idea and had Wallach carry it in his pocket.

Whom did Leone first consider for Tuco before choosing Wallach?

Gian Maria Volonté had played the villain in both earlier Leone Westerns, but Leone decided Tuco needed an actor with natural comic talent.

Which star was Leone's early choice for 'the Bad' but was busy making The Dirty Dozen?

Bronson later did play Harmonica for Leone in Once Upon a Time in the West.

In which language did Leone and Wallach communicate on set?

Wallach spoke it badly and Leone well; the two became close friends.

What nickname did Eastwood give the hot-tempered Leone during filming?

By the end he'd had enough of Leone's endless angles and never worked with him again.

What did Wallach accidentally drink on set, nearly poisoning himself?

He wrote that Leone was brilliant but lax about safety; a bolting horse and a train step also nearly killed him.

Why does The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's dialogue never quite match the actors' lips?

Every line was recorded in post-production, and Leone went on reworking parts of the story's dialogue right through the dubbing.

In Leone's deleted cave scene, what does Tuco do?

Recruits his gang, gathering old bandit friends to hunt down Eastwood's character.

Which director calls it 'the best-directed film of all time' and votes for it in Sight & Sound polls?

He paid homage to the three-way standoff in Reservoir Dogs.

Which novelist said Eastwood's character inspired Roland Deschain of The Dark Tower?

He said so in the introduction to the 2003 revised edition of The Gunslinger.

Where does Kim Jee-woon's 2008 homage The Good, the Bad, the Weird set its treasure hunt?

Manchuria, where a bandit, a thief and a bounty hunter race each other for a treasure map.

How does Tuco make his first appearance in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Crashing through a window, gun in hand, just after shooting the three bounty hunters who came in after him.

What did a mix-up in the US trailer label Van Cleef's character?

The Ugly, and the slip stuck, because publicity for Van Cleef's later Westerns went on billing him as 'Mr. Ugly'.

Eastwood joked that in Leone's films he'd been alone, then two, now three, and that next would come what?

The cavalry, he joked, yet he signed on once his fee rose to $250,000 plus a share of the profits.

Which trademark item does Eastwood's character only pick up in the final minutes of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

His poncho: only then does he look like the Man with No Name of the two earlier films, a sign that the trilogy's last film is set before them.

Which Leone Western is an unofficial remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo?

A Fistful of Dollars was shot before anyone secured Yojimbo's remake rights, so Kurosawa's side sued and was compensated with a share of the takings.

What was Eastwood's character called in the first Dollars film?

Joe rides into the border town of San Miguel on a mule and plays its two rival smuggling gangs against each other.

Which Star Wars bounty hunter was based on the Man with No Name, down to the poncho colours?

Jeremy Bulloch, who wore the armour, said the mannerisms and green-on-white scheme were borrowed.

Van Cleef made his film debut as a non-speaking outlaw in which 1952 Western?

Producer Stanley Kramer spotted him on stage in Mister Roberts.

Which honour did Eli Wallach receive in 2010, at the age of 94?

An Academy Honorary Award: in 1953 he had given up the From Here to Eternity role that went on to win Frank Sinatra an Oscar.

Leone's father was a pioneer of which trade?

Cinema: Leone signed his first international hit as 'Bob Robertson', a nod to his father's screen name, Roberto Roberti.

Restorers of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's cemetery set sold fans what for €15?

Their name on a cross: digging out the overgrown site, volunteers uncovered the original stone circle buried under the earth.

In which arid Spanish region near Almería were many exteriors of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly shot?

Tabernas: Leone reused the western town built there for his previous film, a set that still survives as a theme park.