10 Best "Everything You Know Is A Lie" Moments In Movies

10. Neo Takes The Red Pill - The Matrix

The Matrix is an especially interesting example given that, unlike most movies on this list, the big revelatory moment for the protagonist comes not at the conclusion of the entire story, but the end of the first act.

Neo's (Keanu Reeves) life changes forever when he's taken to meet the legendary Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who offers him a choice: take the red pill and learn the truth, or take the blue pill and go back to "normality."

Neo takes the red pill of course, at which point his reality begins to dissolve, and he wakes up in a gooey pod alongside countless other pods.

He's then rescued by Morpheus and brought aboard his ship, where Morpheus reveals that Neo has been living inside of a simulation, The Matrix, where humankind is enslaved by machines who use them as batteries. Oh, and it's actually 200 years further into the future than Neo believes.

The "it was a simulation the whole time" twist has never been done better, and it's largely because it isn't saved for a climactic rug-pull, but effectively serves as the instigating shock that tees up the rest of the movie and indeed franchise.