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These reveals went right over everyone's heads.
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00:00It's always great fun to revisit a movie and realise that the filmmakers were a lot sneakier
00:05than you thought, hiding some sly secrets, canny easter eggs and ingenious reveals in
00:11plain sight. These gotcha moments can hugely enhance the rewatch value of a given film.
00:17From crucial reveals that quite literally change everything we thought we knew,
00:21to minor but fascinating slivers of character context, these reveals all flew over just
00:27about everyone's heads. So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture and let's take a look at
00:32these movie reveals nobody noticed. Starting with Boo's name is Mary, Monsters, Inc.
00:39In Pixar's stone-cold classic Monsters, Inc., the pint-sized human protagonist Boo is never actually
00:45referred to by her real name, only the nickname bestowed upon her by her newfound pal Sully.
00:51And honestly, that's just fine, but the curiosity about her actual given name endures regardless.
00:57Yet for those paying ultra-close attention to the adorable scene where Boo goes to sleep in
01:03Sully's bed, you might notice that the various drawings she scrawled are all signed with one
01:08single name, Mary. And so it's reasonable to assume that this is her name, and that it was
01:13hiding right there in front of our faces the entire time. But if you somehow still weren't convinced,
01:18the official novelisation of Monsters, Inc. indeed confirms Boo to be named Mary.
01:23The name was seemingly lifted directly from Boo's voice actress, Mary Gibbs, who is herself the
01:28daughter of one of the movie's story artists, Rob Gibbs, who sadly passed away in 2020.
01:35Frank's first appearance, Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko has been endlessly dissected and
01:41obsessed over by fans for the last near-quarter century. But here's something neat you probably
01:47never spotted in the opening three minutes of the movie. During the initial montage sequence set
01:53to Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon, Donnie cycles through the streets and is briefly
01:57passed by a red car. To be specific, it's a red Pontiac Trans Am, the very same car that's revealed to be
02:04driven by Frank much later in the movie. More to the point, this is the very distinctive vehicle Frank
02:09hits Gretchen with, killing her, a fact eerily foreshadowed in this opening scene. As Frank
02:15drives past Donnie, the following lyrics from The Killing Moon can be heard.
02:19I know it must be killing time. The lyrics could also reference the fact that Donnie
02:23subsequently shoots Frank dead. Richard Kelly's dense sci-fi thriller is absolutely pat to the gills
02:28with easily missed details. But few are more interesting than knowing that Donnie and Frank
02:34first crossed paths earlier than expected. Leonard is Sammy, Memento. Early on in Christopher Nolan's
02:42astonishing mystery thriller Memento, amnesia-riddled protagonist Leonard Shelby tells the tale of Sammy
02:48Jankis, a fellow amnesiac who accidentally killed his wife by giving her an insulin overdose due to having
02:55no memory of previously injecting her. Near the end of the film, however, we find out that Sammy's story
03:00is really Leonard's. Leonard accidentally killed his own wife, and while wracked with traumatic guilt,
03:06cooked up a false murder mystery story to help repress the truth. But there's a brilliant visual
03:11hint at this a little while before the truth finally comes out. When Nolan cuts back to Sammy
03:16at one point, Sammy is briefly replaced by Leonard for a few fractions of a second. The significance of
03:23the image may not be immediately clear to first-time viewers, but the visual language nevertheless nods to
03:29the fact that in terms of this story, Sammy and Leonard are one and the same.
03:34John Milton is the series' ultimate villain, Scream 3. Here's something that even many die-hard
03:41Scream fans haven't really thought about. The overarching antagonist of the entire franchise was actually
03:47revealed back in Scream 3. Though Billy Loomis and Stu Marker were of course the original Ghostface
03:52killers, and also responsible for the murder of Sidney Prescott's mother, Maureen, a year prior,
03:57Scream 3 reveals that the buck didn't stop there. Rather, Billy was goaded into killing Maureen by
04:04her estranged son and Sidney's half-brother, Roman Bridger. After Maureen rejected contact with
04:09Roman, he recorded footage of her having an affair with Billy's father, in turn triggering
04:14Billy's murderous response. But even Roman isn't really the true evil architect of the Ghostface
04:20lineage. It's actually John Milton, the Hollywood producer, who allowed Maureen to be sexually
04:25assaulted at one of his parties, resulting in her becoming pregnant with Roman. Beyond
04:30Milton partaking in the gang assault himself, the implication is that he may well be Roman's
04:35father. And even if not, he facilitated the events which would ultimately cause every single
04:40one of the Ghostface murders. To say that he has a lot of blood on his hands, even decades
04:45after being killed by Roman, is quite the understatement. Hooded Justice and Captain
04:51Metropolis's relationship, Watchmen. Love it or hate it, Zack Snyder's Watchmen is absolutely
04:57filled with subtle details. And perhaps the most interesting reveal happens during the movie's
05:02magnificent opening credit sequence. While it's little secret that the glimpse of Silk Spectre's
05:07retirement party is framed to resemble Leonardo da Vinci's iconic painting, The Last Supper,
05:13Take a peek at the right-hand side of the frame, and you'll see two heroes, Captain Metropolis
05:18and Hooded Justice, sharing an intimate conversation. One might infer that their closeness is probably
05:24a bit too close for mere friendship. And that would be because, as implied by Alan Moore's
05:29original comic, Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice are actually secret lovers. The body
05:34language says it all without Snyder having to spell it out. Though the more recent HBO Watchmen
05:39TV series dispensed with the innuendo and directly confirmed the pair to be romantically involved.
05:45Yet for 2009, when the prospect of a gay superhero on screen was something studios would
05:50unfortunately squirm at, Snyder had to settle for a fleeting visual implication.
05:56Vaughn's poor eyesight, Major League.
05:59Midway through the classic sports film Major League, we learn that rookie pitcher Ricky Vaughn struggles to
06:05control his 100 miles per hour fastball because he has poor eyesight. This is soon remedied by
06:10fitting him with glasses, and he immediately becomes a force to be reckoned with. But Ricky's
06:15problem is actually visually signposted much earlier in the film, when he's at a restaurant
06:20with teammates Jake and Willie. Jake spots his ex-girlfriend Lynn across the restaurant,
06:25and after Jake looks in her direction, so too do Willie and Ricky. However, unlike Jake and Willie,
06:31Ricky has to squint hard in order to see Lynn. An incredibly subtle hint to the very issue that's
06:36causing his pitching problem. Even accepting the fact that Charlie Sheen has always been a bit of
06:40a squinter. This is a surprisingly sneaky way to foreshadow the big reveal regarding his character.
06:47No incoming calls allowed, Fight Club.
06:51David Fincher's Fight Club boasts one of the all-time great WTF plot twists, when we learn that
06:56anarchist Tyler Durden actually isn't real, but merely an invented alternate persona existing
07:02within the mind of our unnamed insomniac protagonist. And while there are a number of
07:07visual hints at the twist peppered throughout the film, none are quite as emphatic or brilliantly
07:13subtle as this one. After the protagonist's apartment is blown up and Tyler calls him from
07:18the payphone, Fincher shows a close-up of the phone which bears the text,
07:22no incoming calls allowed. And so if there's no way for the payphone to receive incoming calls,
07:28then how can Tyler even be calling the protagonist? While first-time viewers might simply assume that
07:33this was a production mistake on Fincher's part, let's be honest, would the ever-meticulous Fincher
07:38let a goof like this slip through the cracks? And even if he did, he'd surely fix it in post-production.
07:43In retrospect, of course, it was clearly a sneaky nod towards the fact that Tyler doesn't really exist.
07:49Dog days were numbered. John Wick
07:52The events of the first John Wick are set in motion by the murder of John's beloved pet beagle, Daisy.
07:59And once John has had his bloody revenge, he ends the movie by breaking into an animal shelter and
08:04freeing a pit bull, which becomes his pet for the remainder of the series. But there's actually a
08:08little more to this than first meets the eye. If you look closely, when John is liberating the dog,
08:13you can see that the dog's patient notes have the words to be put down stamped in red ink.
08:19So anyone worried that John stole a dog from an actual owner can rest easy. He actually saved the
08:24canine from being imminently put to sleep. Given that John himself spends the entire franchise
08:29scarcely skirting death until fate finally catches up with him, it's a rather apt metaphor that he
08:34saves a dog from being shuffled off their mortal coil. Hail Abraxas, Late Night with the Devil
08:40The terrific horror film Late Night with the Devil concludes with the shock reveal that late-night talk show
08:46host Jack Delroy made a pact with the devil, sacrificing the soul of his wife in exchange
08:52for fame, in turn causing her fatal cancer diagnosis. But Jack gets his just desserts by
08:57film's end when demon Abraxas tricks him into stabbing cult survivor Lily to death on live television,
09:04sealing his fate. Abraxas and the cult that worships him are introduced in the film's opening
09:09newsreel montage. Though there's also a sneaky hint here that the demonic entity has the ability to
09:15influence our perception of reality. When we see a front page clipping from the Hollywood Observer,
09:20the bottom of the page names the movie of the week as Hail Abraxas, a sly suggestion that things
09:27aren't quite what they seem, and that Abraxas has the potential to bend reality to his will.
09:33Flip phones in 2011, Final Destination 5. The fifth Final Destination drops one hell of a
09:41jaw-dropping twist in its final moments, when we learn that the entire film has actually been a
09:46secret prequel to the original Final Destination, with the few surviving characters boarding the
09:51doomed Flight 180, which explodes shortly after takeoff in the first movie. Considering that Final
09:57Destination 5 was released in 2011, and the original film is set in 1999, there should have been a few easy
10:04details, right? Except the film does a fantastic job of mostly distracting the audience from this fact,
10:10save for the presence of one thing throughout, flip phones. Foldable flip phones were enormously popular
10:16in the late 90s and early 00s, and they're present in several scenes despite largely fading from use by
10:222009, all while smartphones, which were surging in popularity by the 2010s, were nowhere to be seen.
10:30This is one of those ingeniously sly early reveals you'll kick yourself for not noticing,
10:35even though it's probably the most subtle thing ever put into any Final Destination movie.
10:40You already have it, Puss in Boots The Last Wish.
10:45Get ready for a bit of a feels trip with this one. In the surprisingly brilliant Puss in Boots The Last
10:50Wish, Goldilocks intends to use the fallen wishing star to wish for a human family in place of her
10:56adopted family of bears, much to their understandable upset. But when Goldie stumbles upon her favourite
11:01childhood fairytale book, In the Dark Forest, there's actually a hidden message concealed on one
11:06of the pages. If you take the first letter from every line, it spells out, you already have it. As
11:12in, Goldie already has a family with the bears. Given that the Dark Forest is a pocket dimension which
11:18conjures illusions of travellers' own memories, effectively reflecting their own thoughts and
11:22feelings back to them, this is basically Goldie's subconscious telling her that she doesn't need
11:27to wish for a family when she's already got a loving, albeit non-human one already. Foreshadowing
11:33doesn't get much sweeter than that, really, does it?
11:36Elle's one dollar bills, Kill Bill Vol. 2
11:40In Kill Bill Vol. 2, Elle Driver makes a deal with Bud to buy the bride's precious Hattori Hanzo sword
11:46for one million dollars. When she rocks up to his trailer with the money though,
11:50Bud removes a few stacks of cash to find that Elle has hidden a black mamba in the case, which
11:56promptly kills him. Elle's scheme was a little more precarious than it actually seems though,
12:00because if you look closely, when Bud is first inspecting the money, the case clearly isn't packed
12:05with one million dollars. Though Elle has placed a hundred dollar bills on top, the edges of the bills
12:11below are clearly one dollar bills, because why bring one million dollars to a deal with someone you're
12:15just planning on killing anyway, right? But this definitely presented a lot of risk on Elle's part.
12:20If Bud had chosen to inspect the stacks of cash a little more closely before picking up the one
12:25concealing the black mamba, he would have easily realised that Elle was ripping him off. Then again,
12:29you can argue that Elle knew just how much of a dope Bud was, and that this plan was effectively
12:34foolproof. Genetically modified kaiju, Superman. Midway through James Gunn's Superman, Lex Luthor unleashes
12:43a kaiju upon Metropolis in order to distract Superman while he infiltrates the Fortress of
12:48Solitude with Ultraman and the Engineer. The film never explicitly reveals precisely how Luthor obtained
12:54said kaiju, though when Mr. Terrific scans the creature, attentive viewers can learn a little more
12:59about it. Beyond listing the entity's dimensions, the scan also mentions that the kaiju has undergone
13:05genetic modification, with its DNA slash RNA being altered by an unknown party. It's not much of a
13:11leap to assume then that the villainous Luthor was responsible for this. While we still don't know
13:16where the kaiju came from, Luthor almost certainly captured and experimented upon them. We can also
13:22deduce that this experimentation likely explains the creature's ability to grow from pint-sized to
13:28skyscraper-sized in a mere matter of minutes. Knowing all this, the big guy's demise at the hands of the
13:34Justice Gang is even more tragic. Marcy isn't real, a beautiful mind.
13:40The big reveal in Ron Howard's iconic best picture-winning drama A Beautiful Mind is that
13:46mathematician protagonist John Nash is actually suffering from schizophrenia, and several
13:50characters he interacts with, namely his friend Charles, Charles's niece Marcy, and agent William
13:56Parcher, are mere hallucinations. But this is actually slyly nodded to much earlier in the film,
14:01when John visits Princeton University to see Charles, and we see Marcy run across a field
14:06populated by pigeons. Despite Marcy running frantically around as kids do, the pigeons
14:11oddly don't move at all. Extremely unusual behaviour for the birds, as everyone knows. While one might
14:17immediately assume that the pigeons were added in post-production and the VFX team didn't have
14:22time to animate them flying, the truth is that it's surreptitiously revealing that Marcy isn't real.
14:27So of course the pigeons wouldn't fly away, because nobody's bothering them.
14:32Strawberry's future, Anora
14:35Sean Baker's multi-Oscar-winning masterpiece, Anora, may feel like a wholly self-contained comedy
14:41drama, but it does nevertheless open up the world of Baker's previous film, his acclaimed 2021 black
14:47comedy, Red Rocket. During the Las Vegas sequence, an establishing shot of the strip briefly features a
14:53billboard on the left side of the frame, with a picture of Red Rocket's female lead, Strawberry.
14:58In that film, Strawberry was an aspiring porn actress, but the story ends on an ambiguous note,
15:04where her future path remains unclear. Yet, Baker appears to have clarified that entirely in Anora,
15:09given that the billboard refers to Strawberry as Starlet of the Year, before advertising a two-week
15:15live stage show she's starring in. It seems pretty evident from this that Strawberry made it,
15:20insomuch as she became famous enough to have a billboard promoting what is presumably a strip
15:25show. While we still don't know the particulars of her adult film career, the clear implication is
15:30that Strawberry succeeded in her goal.
15:33Keck gets himself killed, The Thin Red Line
15:36Like just about everyone else in the movie, Woody Harlson has a small but unforgettable role
15:41in Terrence Malick's poetic war epic, The Thin Red Line. He plays Sergeant Keck,
15:46a soldier who dies an especially horrific death while taking enemy fire. Keck reaches for his
15:51grenade, but accidentally pulls out the pin while the grenade is still attached to his hip. With
15:56little time to react, he leaps clear from his comrades just as it detonates, mortally wounding him.
16:01But there's a little more to this scene than a mere accident. Keck actually unintentionally
16:06engineered his own demise. Earlier in the film, we briefly see Keck using a knife to bend the pin on his
16:12grenade. A typical army tactic to make pulling the pin and deploying a grenade easier in a
16:17chaotic combat scenario. However, the trade-off is that it's much easier for soldiers to accidentally
16:22discharge the weapon and make mistakes like this without having the time to do anything about it.
16:29The Dirty Dozen vs. Spinal Tap Small Soldiers
16:33Small Soldiers may not be one of Joe Dante's most celebrated films, but it's still a ton of fun. And if
16:39you were a kid in 1998, there's a decent chance you had a lot of fun with it. Like most Joe Dante movies,
16:45it's also operating on many different levels at once. And one of its most canny elements that's
16:50really only apparent to adults is its frankly ingenious casting. The Commando Elite toys are
16:56mostly voiced by cast members from the classic 1967 war film The Dirty Dozen, namely Jim Brown,
17:02Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy, and Clint Walker. As for their sworn enemies,
17:06the peaceful creatures known as the Gorgonites? Well, they're largely voiced by cast members from the
17:11legendary 1984 music mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry
17:17Shearer. While kids naturally wouldn't appreciate it, for adults, Dante basically made his own unhinged
17:23Dirty Dozen vs. Spinal Tap movie. Because why the hell not?
17:28Richie the Fanboy Scream
17:30The big reveal at the end of the fifth Scream film is that the main Ghostface killer is Richie
17:36Kirsch, the boyfriend of protagonist Sam Carpenter. But Richie's guilt is more or less given away in
17:42the first act of the movie, when he and Sam pay a visit to Dewey to get help dealing with the new
17:47spate of killings. The moment that Dewey answers the door and talks to Sam, keep your eyes fixed on
17:53Richie, whose gaze suddenly turns to one of stunned amazement. Richie being starstruck by Dewey doesn't
17:58make much sense if he hasn't seen any of the Stab movies as he claims. But it makes a whole lot more
18:04sense if Richie is actually a secret Stab fanboy. And from there, it's pretty easy to deduce that
18:09he's actually one of the killers. Indeed, as it turns out, Richie is a disgruntled Stab fan who
18:14embarks on a killing spree with fellow Ghostface Amber in an attempt to give the flagging series
18:19new real-life material to draw from. A Father's Job, Black Panther, Wakanda Forever
18:26In the devastating mid-credits scene of Black Panther Wakanda Forever, we learn that the late
18:31T'Challa had a son with Nakia prior to his death, who has been raised in secret away from the Wakandan
18:37throne. Nakia also remarks that T'Challa prepared her and their son for his impending death, which
18:43might seem like an affecting line in isolation, but it's actually a far more loaded piece of dialogue
18:48than that. This is a direct reference to a scene from the first Black Panther, where T'Challa's late
18:53father speaks to him on the ancestral plane and says,
18:56a man who has not prepared his children for his own death has failed as a father.
19:01Clearly, T'Challa took those words to heart when his own untimely demise came to bear,
19:05an outcome made all the more upsetting by Bozeman's own tragic passing in 2020.
19:11And finally, Martha in the Mirror, Deep Red
19:16It's only near the end of Dario Argento's all-timer giallo horror flick Deep Red that we find out the
19:21killer was Martha, the mother of protagonist Marcus's friend Carlo. However, it's actually
19:27possible for eagle-eyed audience members to figure this out way earlier, right at the start of the
19:31film in fact, when Marcus witnesses the gnarly murder of psychic medium Helga. Marcus instinctively
19:37races to her apartment, as you do, and when he walks through the hallway, he passes what appears to
19:42be a painting. But if you take a closer look, you'll see the painting is actually a mirror reflecting the
19:47face of Martha, who is hidden in plain sight and staring at Marcus. This effectively reveals her
19:53to be the killer about 90 minutes before the movie itself drops the veil in earnest. And yet,
19:58how many of us spotted it? Be honest now.
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