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00:00 Hello everyone, it's Amy here, and I'm super excited to tell you that today's video is being sponsored by Just Watch,
00:06 but we will have more on that later.
00:07 You'd think it would be bad practice to reveal the entire plot and ending of your film before the thing had even got kicked off,
00:14 but actually, it's a bit more common than you'd think.
00:17 In plenty of famous and great films, hidden in plain sight is the entire plot laid out point by point.
00:23 It's also nonchalant and obvious that we don't pay attention at the time,
00:27 only realising when we get to the end of the film that we've known all along exactly how this would go.
00:32 So let's take a little look at some of them and see if there's any that you've missed.
00:35 I'm Amy from WhatCulture, and here are 10 movies that secretly revealed their endings.
00:41 10. The Prestige
00:43 The twins were hiding in plain sight.
00:45 Christopher Nolan's 2004 mystery thriller centred around the rivalry of two magicians.
00:50 Christian Bale stars as Alfred Borden, who faces off against Robert Angier,
00:54 and the former friends soon become entangled in a bitter feud over who can invent the greatest on-stage illusion.
01:00 Like the film's protagonists, the narrative opts for misdirection whilst leaving clues to its deception in plain sight.
01:07 Alfred Borden's most tantalising trick involves teleporting himself from one side of the stage to the other,
01:12 and it's eventually revealed that, like many of his tricks, Borden achieved this only because he had a secret twin brother.
01:18 Nolan left the clues to this reveal throughout the whole movie.
01:21 During the opening sequence, a passage is read from Borden's diary, stating,
01:25 "We are two young men at the start of a great career. Two young men dedicated to an illusion."
01:30 The way this is framed leads the audience to believe that it's in regards to Alfred and his rival Robert,
01:35 but it is in fact referring to the other Borden brother.
01:37 The twins shared absolutely everything, even a wife.
01:41 Bear in mind, she didn't know this was happening, so that raises all sorts of ethical issues,
01:45 but, ugh, you know, we don't have time for that right now.
01:47 In several scenes, she unknowingly makes reference to the trickery,
01:50 noting that when Borden says "I love you", he doesn't always seem to mean it.
01:54 Indeed, only one of the brothers was actually truly in love with her,
01:58 which is actually kind of miserably sad if you think about it.
02:01 9. Twelve Monkeys
02:03 The beginning was the end.
02:04 Twelve Monkeys is one of Terry Gilliam's most bizarre films.
02:08 Set in 2035, the human race is living underground after a deadly virus has made the surface inhospitable.
02:14 James Cutle, played by Bruce Willis, is sent back in time in an attempt to stop the scientist
02:19 who created the virus from doing so.
02:21 So, it's sort of like Terminator 2 meets Contagion.
02:24 Early on, the audience is shown Cole as a young boy, witnessing a man being gunned down at the airport.
02:29 And, from the outset of the film, Cole is haunted by a recurring dream of the incident.
02:33 Cole travels back in time throughout the course of the movie,
02:35 at one point being incarcerated in an insane asylum along with a crazed environmentalist, Jeffrey Goines.
02:41 Cole explains to Goines that he must save the human race from a deadly virus
02:45 which would return the planet to the animals.
02:47 And this inadvertently encourages Goines to steal a virus from his father, who happens to be a virologist.
02:53 As the narrative plays out, it becomes clear that Cole being sent back in time
02:57 is the trigger that leads to the downfall of humanity.
02:59 Towards the end of the movie, Cole tries to stop one of Goines' associates
03:03 from boarding a plane and releasing the virus around the globe.
03:06 However, his plan fails when he's gunned down.
03:08 That sound familiar?
03:09 Man being gunned down in an airport?
03:12 It's here that it's revealed that Cole's recurring nightmare was actually him witnessing his own death.
03:17 And the movie ends with pretty much the same scene it began with, only from a different angle.
03:21 8. Shaun of the Dead
03:23 Ed lays out the whole plot.
03:25 The 2004 Zom-Rom-Com Shaun of the Dead came out at a time when zombie flicks were all the rage.
03:31 But with its perfect comedy edge, it was quite unlike any others on the scene at the time.
03:36 The film follows deadbeat Shaun, who until the events of the movie has been unconsciously just coasting through life.
03:42 Early on, Shaun gets the boot from his girlfriend for being such a braindead loser,
03:46 and his only solution is to get slaughtered down the pub with his equally deadbeat friend, Ed.
03:51 In a scene which doesn't appear to have much significance to the overall plot,
03:54 Ed tries to comfort his friend with a plan to get over his ex.
03:58 He starts by saying, "Well, have a bloody Mary first thing.
04:01 Have a bite at the king's head.
04:02 Couple at the little princess.
04:03 Stagger back here and then bang!
04:05 Back at the bar for shots!"
04:06 This seemingly insignificant line of dialogue actually outlines exactly what's about to take place.
04:11 The next morning, the two characters kill a zombie named Mary.
04:15 Then, they witness Shaun's stepdad get bitten in the side of the head.
04:18 Shaun climbs a tower block to rescue his girlfriend, making her the little princess.
04:22 And they all imitate zombies to reach the safety of a bar,
04:25 where they're then eventually saved when the military turns up to shoot the undead hordes.
04:29 The clever bits of wordplay leaving you to work it out in hindsight makes this all the more enjoyable.
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05:46 7. The Departed - X Marks the Spot
05:50 The central plot of the film revolves around a couple of moles,
05:53 one infiltrating the mob and one infiltrating the police department,
05:56 both trying to uncover one another's identity.
05:59 After all the ups and downs and plot hills and valleys,
06:02 almost everyone dies apart from Mark Wahlberg,
06:05 who, despite having a fairly small role, walks away as the hero.
06:08 And there, that's the movie.
06:09 All of this happens in the closing few moments of the film.
06:12 Just as we think the protagonist, played by DiCaprio, has everything nicely wrapped up,
06:17 boom, bullet to the forehead.
06:18 You may think that the movie takes you on a ride and surprises you at every turn.
06:22 Well, you maybe wouldn't think the same if you were in on a little secret.
06:26 Scorsese made it clear who would die by the end of this story by having the doomed characters,
06:30 marked with an X, at various points throughout the film.
06:33 For example, DiCaprio is shown framed by giant Xs during a scene in an airport terminal.
06:38 The elevator in which he's killed is also marked by a crude X behind him.
06:42 In fact, the same is true for every other character who dies.
06:45 And a little bit of bonus knowledge, Scorsese's decision to include this
06:48 was an homage to the 1932 American pre-code gangster movie Scarface.
06:53 6. The Usual Suspects - All the Sosa Clues
06:58 The Usual Suspects is a classic misdirection drama which hides the truth in plain sight.
07:03 The narrative is told in flashbacks by a character nicknamed Verbal.
07:06 He recounts to a police detective how he and his associates were recruited to do a job
07:11 by a sinister and mysterious crime lord called Kaiser Sosa.
07:14 After telling the cops his story, Verbal's free to go.
07:17 But the detective soon realises that half the details were taken from
07:21 artefacts littered around his office.
07:23 And it's then strongly implied that Verbal was Kaiser Sosa the entire time,
07:27 and simply inventing half the story.
07:29 There are several clues hinting at this revelation throughout the movie.
07:32 Firstly, Verbal can be seen looking for inspiration around the detective's office
07:36 as he invents his tale.
07:37 Secondly, in an earlier scene where Kaiser Sosa has his face hidden,
07:41 he's shown using a golden lighter and wearing a golden watch,
07:44 which we then see again on Verbal in a later scene.
07:47 He even goes on to pick up the lighter and watch when he's released from police custody.
07:50 But the most glaring giveaway was the name Kaiser Sosa itself.
07:54 The surname Sosa is derived from a Turkish phrase which means "talk too much",
07:59 literally translating to Verbal.
08:01 The character's name was a giveaway from the start.
08:03 Between this and Darth Vader,
08:05 us audiences are not getting a good rap for being able to decode names.
08:09 5. Hot Fuzz
08:12 Chief Inspectors can make people disappear.
08:14 Hot Fuzz is the second instalment of Edgar Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy.
08:19 Rather than duking it out with the undead, however,
08:21 Simon Pegg and Nick Frost unearth a sinister conspiracy in a picturesque English village.
08:26 Like Shaun of the Dead, the movie reveals its own plot early on,
08:30 in a scene in which Pegg's character inquires to the Metropolitan Police Force
08:33 as to why he's being trotted off out of the big city and into the quiet countryside.
08:38 They tell him that, essentially, it's because he's making everyone else look bad
08:41 with how good he is at his job.
08:43 And when he tries to protest, stating that you can't just make people disappear,
08:47 the Chief Inspector looks right back at him and says,
08:50 "Yes I can. I'm the Chief Inspector."
08:52 It turns out that this is perfect foreshadowing of the behaviour of another
08:55 Chief Inspector later in the film, who quite literally makes people he doesn't like disappear.
09:01 Of course, it plays out that Pegg's time in the country is far from the quiet experience
09:04 he was expecting. A number of disappearances and strange killings are eventually revealed
09:09 to be the work of Chief Inspector Frank Butterman, calling back to the earlier quote
09:13 he admits to making people disappear, all because they were ruining the village's aesthetic.
09:17 4. The Shawshank Redemption
09:20 A pipe dream. One of the most cherished Stephen King adaptations has to be the prison escape
09:25 drama The Shawshank Redemption. The film tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a man falsely convicted
09:30 of murder, and his trials and tribulations throughout his sentence. Andy is put through
09:34 all manner of hardships whilst in prison, but eventually he finds his way to salvation by
09:39 tunnelling out of his cell and crawling through 500 yards of sewage, all to emerge to the sweet
09:44 smell of freedom. There are two incidents which not only foreshadow the ending of the movie,
09:48 but spell out exactly how Andy manages to make his escape. Firstly, in a scene where Andy and
09:53 friend Red are discussing freedom, Red tells Andy to forget about his shitty pipe dream.
09:58 And then, sure enough, Andy fulfils his dream of freedom by crawling through 500 yards of shit.
10:04 In another scene, in which Andy has his room shaken down, the Warden comments on Andy's
10:08 Bible. The two discuss their favourite passages before the Warden hands the book back, stating,
10:13 "Salvation lies within." Well, unbeknownst to the Warden, Andy was hiding a tiny rock hammer
10:18 in the hollowed-out pages of the book, the tool which he later uses to tunnel out of his cell.
10:22 So yeah, Andy's salvation was literally hiding within the Bible.
10:26 3. Saving Private Ryan - The Airborne Division
10:30 Steven Spielberg's epic war tale, Saving Private Ryan, recounts the acts of a squad of American
10:35 Army Rangers in the days following the 1944 invasion of Normandy. Tom Hanks stars as Captain
10:40 Miller, the man tasked with leading the Rangers on a mission to rescue a certain member of the
10:44 American Airborne, the titular Private Ryan. The movie opens with a short sequence showing an old
10:49 veteran wandering around a cemetery. The veteran heads to a specific grave, but the camera doesn't
10:53 reveal the name engraved on it. Instead, it focuses on the veteran's face as he becomes
10:58 overcome with grief. The frame then cuts to the beaches of Normandy, and the first face we see
11:03 is that of Captain Miller. The nature of the transition leads the audience to believe that
11:06 the elderly man is indeed Captain Miller, remembering his days as a soldier. And once
11:11 we find out Miller's mission is to rescue a young paratrooper, the audience immediately
11:15 thinks that he must have failed his task, leaving him grieving the death of Ryan well into his old
11:19 age. The movie feels as though it's moving towards a moment of failure, but lo and behold, Miller
11:24 winds up giving his life to save Private Ryan. It's then that the old man is revealed to be
11:29 Ryan himself, but if we had noticed one little detail on his clothing, then we would have known
11:34 that from the start. It was a clever bit of misdirection, but for anyone who spotted the
11:38 old man's airborne badge, it would have been obvious that he was Ryan all along.
11:42 2. Fight Club
11:44 The narrator fights himself. David Fincher's Fight Club has become such an institution in
11:49 pop culture that it's hard to believe it was originally poorly received. It was panned for
11:53 its hyper-bravado and criticised for seeming to incite violence. Now, however, it's considered
11:58 a cult classic. It's a coming-of-age movie of sorts, if that age happens to be 30, speaking
12:04 to people who suddenly wake up and realise that they've spent their 20s living someone else's
12:08 life. Throughout the movie, the narrator tells the story of how his life was forever changed
12:12 when he met Tyler Durden. Durden represents everything the narrator isn't. He's cool,
12:17 he's confident, he's good-looking, and most importantly, he doesn't seem shackled by society.
12:22 The big reveal? Durden was a figment of the narrator's imagination, who was adopting the
12:26 character to escape his own life. Fincher laced clues to this reveal throughout the movie,
12:31 and watching back, it's far more obvious than it was on first viewing.
12:34 The most obvious reveal is when the narrator is seen beating himself up in the boss's office.
12:39 He states, "For some reason, I thought about my first fight with Tyler," whilst the visuals show
12:44 just him beating himself up. It's a pretty glaring clue that his first fight with Tyler was actually
12:49 with himself, and thus they're the same person. 1. Nightmare Alley - How a Geek is Made
12:55 Guillermo del Toro's latest movie tells the story of Stanton "Stan" Carlyle,
13:01 a morally bankrupt drifter whose traumatic past comes back to haunt him.
13:05 Stan finds work at a local carnival, and at a geek show, he's shocked when witnessing a drunk
13:09 bite the head off of a live chicken to entertain the crowd. For a significant section of the movie,
13:14 Stan is portrayed as a man with a drive to succeed. A teetotaler thanks to his abusive,
13:19 alcoholic father putting him off for life, he uses his clear head to hoodwink clients and colleagues,
13:25 eventually becoming a successful mentalist. Much of the movie foreshadows Stan's own fall
13:29 into damnation, however, and at one point Stan is told how someone is manipulated into becoming a
13:34 geek. First, they lure the victim in with booze, assuring them that the job is temporary, and then
13:39 they just get tricked into staying. This is mirrored in the way Stan is later manipulated by Lilith
13:44 Ritter, who convinces him to drink alcohol, feigns a caring relationship, and persuades him to take
13:49 part in a con before betraying him. At the end of the movie, Stan, now an alcoholic and a bum,
13:54 requests a job at a carnival, but what he's offered is a drink and temporary work as a geek,
13:59 realising he's been conned, he laughs and says, "I was born for it", recognising he's been a geek
14:04 his whole life. And with that, we've reached the end of this list of 10 movies that secretly
14:08 revealed their endings. If you can think of any more you would have put on this list, then let
14:12 us know in the comments down below. And remember to check out WhatCulture for more lists and
14:16 articles like this every single day. I've been Amy from WhatCulture, and I'll catch you next time.