10 Best Movie Characters Who Appear In Only One Scene

4. X - JFK

Pulp Fiction
Warner Bros. Pictures

Despite winning two Academy Awards and being nominated for a further six, some people took umbrage with Oliver Stone's JFK for not always being 100% factually correct. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good story, right?

One of the biggest flaws on this front is the inclusion of the character X - also referred to be some as Mr. X or Captain X - who was created purely for Stone's 1991 movie. That said, the Donald Sutherland role was said be an amalgamation of the real-life duo of United States military officer Richard Case Nagell and Air Force One colonel Fletcher Prouty.

Whether X was a real person or not, that doesn't stop him from being one of the most important characters in JFK.

Appearing for just one scene opposite Kevin Costner's Jim Garrison, X delivers the revelation that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a group effort involving the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Mafia, and Lyndon Johnson. Encouraging Garrison to keep on digging deep on his mission to discover the truth, X explains how Kennedy was killed because he wanted to pull the US out of the Vietnam War and that he was also going to disband the CIA.

In that one 14-minute scene, Sutherland wows as his X sets off a whole host of lightbulbs in the head of Jim Garrison.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.