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

Once the glass shatters, it can't be put back together again.

Coherence Movie
Ugly Duckling Films

Big, earth-shattering revelations are a huge part of what makes movies so enthralling.

Thinking you know one thing only to have that expectation broken into a million tiny pieces, is one of the major reasons we keep forking over a hard-earned cash at the box office.

This is especially accurate when it comes to sci-fi, a genre built on taking real-life ideas and blowing them up to gigantic proportions. A plot twist that affects one person is great, but one that affects the entire universe? That's the stuff right there.

Filmmakers don't always nail this trait - we're looking at you Palpatine being alive in The Rise of Skywalker - but when they do, oh boy is it exciting. That's why we've taken the time to round up some of the greatest reality-shifting moments from across sci-fi in this handy little list.

These twists and turns stand amongst some of the greatest in all of cinema history and serve as a great reminder that science fiction isn't just big lasers and alien costumes made of rubber.

Yeah, it can be that as well, but with good writing, dammit!

10. The “Real World” - The Matrix

Coherence Movie
Warner Bros.

Let's start with an obvious one.

The entire premise of the 1999 classic is that the world we perceive as "real" is actually a high-level simulation controlled by extremely smart machines that are using human bodies as a power supply.

This comes as quite the shock to Thomas Anderson, better known as Neo. One day he's just a humble computer hacker, then upon learning about this facade, his life is totally transformed.

The moment of no return for Neo comes during the legendary red pill/blue pill scene. Morpheus, the leader of a group of free humans, offers our hero the choice - take the red pill and learn the whole truth, or take the blue one and return to a life of blissful ignorance.

In the end, Neo chooses... the blue pill and the whole movie ends there.

Just kidding. He obviously goes red.

Reducing this incredibly complex lore to a decision between two different colours is one of the many brilliant choices the Wachowskis made when putting The Matrix together.

Now if there was only a blue pill available to us to make us forget about the disaster that was Revolutions.

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Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.