20 Things You Somehow Missed In The Usual Suspects

You'd barely know it by looking, but The Usual Suspects recently turned a whopping 25 years old.

A quarter-century on, director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie's ingenious mystery-thriller remains one of the most deftly-crafted films of its type, spinning an intentionally convoluted neo-noir plot into one of the most spectacular, jaw-dropping pay-offs the genre has ever seen.

Beyond the efforts of its cracking ensemble cast, the film is of course best remembered for that climatic twist, in which the surprise identity of shadowy crime lord Keyser Söze is revealed to be none other than cerebral palsy-afflicted con artist Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey).

However, The Usual Suspects is on the whole a film densely packed with details that probably passed you by, from surprise homages and secret references, to unexpected appearances of now-famous actors, and of course, a veritable laundry list of hints towards that climactic rug-pull.

Needless to say, these 20 tasty morsels will ensure you'll never see the movie quite the same way again...

Though the movie's title has existed as a general saying since long before The Usual Suspects ever hit cinemas, its origins are not-so-coincidentally cinematic as well.

The phrase was brought to the public attention and popularised by the 1942 classic Casablanca, where in the film's climax, Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) quips, "Round up the usual suspects."

But writer Christopher McQuarrie only indirectly lifted it from Casablanca, as he settled on the title after reading an issue of satirical magazine Spy with a column bearing the very same name, itself inspired by the movie.

Even so, if you're going to borrow, you may as well borrow from the best, whether intentionally or not, right?