Paula Schultz is the name on the grave used to bury Beatrix alive. The film turns that other identity into the title of a chapter, but it does not present a biography of the woman buried there.
A grave with its own name for a death that is meant to be hidden
The name Paula Schultz serves a very specific narrative function first and foremost: it identifies a place. Budd can refer to that grave, and other characters can locate it by means of the headstone. Beatrix is locked inside a burial plot whose public identity belongs to someone else. The inscription remains visible while the living body hidden beneath it cannot be seen.
That split between name and occupant heightens the idea of disappearance. A grave usually makes the dead person recognisable; here it allows someone to be concealed without acknowledging their presence. The protagonist does not even have a place of her own in the death her enemies prepare for her. The borrowed name contributes to the covert nature of the punishment and to the distance between what the surface says and what is happening underneath.
The chapter title gives Paula an importance her physical presence does not have. She does not become a new protagonist, nor does she receive a developed backstory. Her name frames Beatrix's experience. That choice creates a useful strangeness: the narration pauses over a secondary identity just as the heroine's life seems to be coming to an end.
The film reference and its limits
There is a 1968 film titled The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz, directed by George Marshall. The shared name has been noted in Kill Bill reference guides. It is a cinephile association, not a family link between characters. Recognising a name taken from or evoked by another work does not mean that work must be incorporated as a literal antecedent to the plot.
Replacing a reference to dreams with a lonely grave also changes the tone. The name can function as a found piece from cinematic memory, reused in a much darker context. This reading explains the nod without inventing a life for Paula. The article on Beatrix's burial develops the physical and dramatic situation of the sequence, which here matters only in relation to the inscription.
The object therefore has two readable levels: it is a headstone within the story and a name capable of prompting an association outside it. Confusing the two would lead to a biographical explanation where the film mainly offers a location and a play on references.
Why it cannot be said that she was King Schultz's wife
The shared surname with King Schultz, the character from Django Unchained, has led to a popular connection. However, Kill Bill does not identify Paula as his wife, and the name coincidence is not enough to prove it. That relationship should not be written as though it were a fact confirmed by both films.
Establishing that sort of relationship would require further evidence: a verifiable attributable statement, an explicit reference within the story, or production documentation linking the identities. The possibility of fitting dates together or imagining an intermediate story does not amount to that confirmation. Nor is it enough that Tarantino uses connections between characters in other titles.
The theory about King and Paula Schultz deserves its own space, because it requires comparing works and weighing arguments. Here, the answer can remain more limited: the headstone does not prove that relationship. Anyone arriving from the Django Unchained guide should distinguish between the surname they recognise and the information Kill Bill actually provides.
The absence of a detailed biography does not prevent us from analysing the effect of the name. Paula Schultz makes the place of confinement memorable, allows it to be mentioned from a distance, and adds an outside identity to the threat of disappearance. Those functions are present in the sequence even if any family connection with another film is ruled out.
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