10 More Fan Theories That Totally Change Your Favourite Movies
2. It Wasn't The Three Fingers That Gave The Game Away - Inglorious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds has no shortage of iconic moments, from the unbelievably tense opening to the slaughter of an entire tavern thanks to just three fingers.
Lt. Archie Hicox and a handful of others go undercover as German soldiers, only for their cover to be blown by Michael Fassbender's character ordering a round of drinks with the wrong three-fingered gesture. Thus the shootout and one of the movie's bloodiest scenes was born.
It is possible however, thanks to this theory, that the soldiers had been made long before Fassbender's finger faux pas. The key was one of Hicox's accomplices, the German soldier-turned-Basterd, Stg. Stiglitz. It is established through the movie that everyone in the German Army had heard of Stiglitz, and after killing 13 Gestapo officers, his face was all over the German newspapers.
There is no way that he wasn't recognised by Major Hellstrom, the man who ultimately blew the Basterds' cover. However, keeping it to himself, he proceeded to try and get the undercover soldiers drunk in order to gain a little advantage when the inevitable firefight kicked off. He only visibly responded to the three-fingered gesture because this was something that everyone in the bar picked up on, and so had to be acted on straight away.
So, even if Hicox had held his three fingers up in the correct German fashion, he and the others would still likely have been killed.