Movies

“Shitty Pipe Dreams:” Mind-Blowing, Hidden Clues in Your Favorite Movies

A post chock-full of spoilers you should already know.
By  · Published on August 3rd, 2017

A post chock-full of spoilers you should already know.

Stories, like people, have tells. By that I mean the same way people betray their true intentions through body language, stories betray themselves on occasion with a willful dropping of clues as to where things are going. “Foreshadowing” this is typically called, but the instances I’m talking about are a little more obvious though still obtuse, they aren’t sewn into narrative or atmosphere, they’re right there in your face but disguised as throwaway dialogue or meaningless set dressing. They are hidden in plain sight, and yet we rarely see them.

Like the big death in Skyfall that can be interpreted from the opening credits. Or the one line near the beginning of The Shawshank Redemption that gives away how Andy will escape. Or how the big twist of The Usual Suspects can be determined from the name “Keyzer Soze.”

These moments and others like them are the subject of the following video from What Culture that reveals the best instances of writers and directors being unable to leave well-enough alone, and needing to plant a telling seed for the particularly observant in the audience. There are 10 clues from 10 films here; how many had you noticed before?

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