10 Tiny Movie Details That Give Away Character Secrets
6. Sammy Jankis Briefly Morphs Into Lenny, Hinting At Lenny's Big Secret - Memento
Christopher Nolan's ingenious thriller Memento follows Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), an amnesiac who attempts to track down those responsible for murdering his wife.
The film is framed by a series of black-and-white sequences where Shelby relays the story of an insurance case he handled for a man named Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky).
Sammy similarly suffered from amnesia, which ultimately caused him to accidentally administer an insulin overdose to his wife, killing her.
The end of the movie implies that this story is actually Leonard's, who accidentally killed his own wife under similar circumstances. He then constructed an elaborate, false revenge narrative in order to assuage his own guilt over the killing.
It's a fantastically shocking reveal, albeit one that is also implied by a fleeting shot earlier in the film.
During one of the black-and-white sequences where we see Sammy in the hospital, he's replaced with Leonard for a few fractions of a second before the shot cuts away.
It's easily missed even on repeat viewings, but provides an extremely compelling hint of the reveal to come.