10 Horror Movie Characters Who Didn't Know They Were The Victim

10. Jacob Singer - Jacob's Ladder

Let's kick the list off with a sure-fire cult classic - 1990's unforgettable psychological horror Jacob's Ladder. Tim Robbins stars as Jacob Singer, a soldier in the Vietnam war who in the film's opening scene is stabbed by a bayonet-wielding foe.

Jacob wakes up in a New York City subway several years later, and the rest of the movie plays out with him experiencing increasingly disturbing visions of the world around him.

At film's end, however, it's revealed that Jacob is still very much in Vietnam and living out his final moments following that opening bayonet attack.

Worse still, the attacker was one of his own men, who was driven insane by a drug called The Ladder that was being secretly tested out by the Army on Jacob's unit.

Almost the entirety of the movie has been Jacob's dying vision, including a comforting final image of his dead son (Macaulay Culkin) leading him towards a bright light, before we cut abruptly back to Vietnam where Jacob is declared dead.

It's the sort of twist ending that filmmakers can't really get away with anymore, but it certainly landed with a bruising impact 30+ years ago.

Plus, having Jacob be a victim of his own country's surreptitious chemical warfare experiments makes him a most unique kind of war casualty.