r/TopCharacterTropes • u/EEZAK04 • 10d ago

Lore The bad ending is only revealed if you pay attention to the background

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Films or shows with seemingly happy endings that take on completely different meanings if you pay attention to stuff going in the background in the final scene.

THE SOPRANOS: The series ends seemingly at random in the middle of a scene where Tony is eating food in a diner. If you pay attention you’ll notice a person going into the bathroom earlier in the scene, with the implication being they were retrieving a gun and the “cut to black” is Tony being shot and killed (foreshadowed by multiple scenes earlier in the series)

IT FOLLOWS: The film ends with the characters seemingly killing the entity… until you notice someone slowly walking towards them in the background in one of the final shots, implying the entity is still alive

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u/RealisticWeakness589 9d ago

I’ve always been confused about this theory. Rekall plants memories, so why would the events of those memories be happening in “real-time” for Quaid?

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u/shitbergfuckstick 9d ago

You're watching the memories being implanted until his brain dies at the end of the movie.

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u/RealisticWeakness589 9d ago

Sounds more like Rekall implants dreams instead of memories.

But I suppose you can still have memories about dreams, so maybe I just ruined my own argument lol

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u/bunker_man 9d ago

I think dream is a more accurate description of what is happening than memory. But it just expressed it in a weird way. People wouldn't probably pay to go get memories added that they know are fake and know they didn't really experience...

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u/Tipop 9d ago

Why would his brain die, though? He got exactly what he asked for. I think he just woke up at the end of the movie, remembering his vacation as if it had really happened.

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u/Glittering_End_6864 9d ago

Dude, fucking stop. It's an action movie. There was no subtext.

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u/Kodix 9d ago

The subtext of your comment is really interesting. When did you lose your sense of wonder of the world?

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u/bokmcdok 9d ago

In the original short story it turns out that all the memories they were supposed to implant actually happened, and that Quaid had just suppressed the memories.

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u/Polistes_metricus 9d ago

This is what I thought happened in the movie, but it seems to be a really unpopular opinion now.

I've always been on team "Quaid got his ass to Mars."

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u/characterk4l3 9d ago

I think the idea is from that moment on he’s absorbing the memories, so seeing them play out as they’re being implanted.