Why did he go back to save Marcellus Wallace? I thought they were enemies.
Well?
shareYou'd probably get better responses on the Pulp Fiction board, but here's my take. Yes they became enemies after Butch failed to throw the fight, so Marcellus wanted him dead from his betting loss. What happened to them in that shop was horrible and Bruce did have some sort of relationship with him in the past, what that is I can't say, but I think Butch definitely thought about leaving him to those creeps but decided these gross bastards needed to be stopped and through that could make Marcellus forgive him for him not throwing the fight, and apparently it worked. This obviously worked out for Butch because now he doesn't have to live his life on the run and he got a chopper out of it.
shareJust to expand on your take, if you watch the flashback when Butch was a kid we see how his bond to his father's legacy is very strong and it shapes his character as he grows up. Knowing the sacrifice that his father and his fellow service men went through to preserve that wristwatch, which was Butch's birthright, lend heavily to his personal ethos of staking your claim and choosing your own battles. The two Hicks who disrupted his fight with Marcellus did a bigger disservice and insulted Butch's ethos more than the fear of Marcellus' lust for revenge on him could ever invoke and the fact that they were going to bugger him to death after finishing off Marcellus left Butch no choice than to return the favor of death to both of them.
Butch was willing to face the consequences after subduing Maynard and Zed because he knew he did the right thing despite the potential for a bigger crisis, but this time it paid off.