10 Movie Characters You Didn't Realise Actually Survived

Danny Boyle's rom-com Yesterday revolves around a struggling musician, Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), who after being hit by a bus during a global blackout, wakes up to discover that the rest of the world hasn't heard of The Beatles.

The film's big, third-act twist is the reveal that John Lennon (played under heavy makeup by Robert Carlyle) is in fact still alive, having lived to old age due to not becoming famous as a member of The Beatles and subsequently being murdered.

This is all well and good, but also implies a brighter future for another "character," albeit an unseen one whose existence is nevertheless implied. This is the other departed member of The Beatles - George Harrison, who died in 2001 at the age of 58 from lung cancer.

Within the film's reality, it's not just The Beatles who have been wiped from existence - everyday objects have also disappeared, such as Coca Cola and even cigarettes.

So, given that Harrison himself cited cigarettes as the likely cause for his own throat cancer diagnosis in 1997, which his family believe led to him developing lung cancer a few years later, it's probable that the removal of cigarettes from the timeline would have saved Harrison's life.

It's not a sure thing of course, but given that Harrison also received lung damage from a 1999 stabbing by a mentally ill fan - which is generally accepted to have exacerbated his lung cancer - it's again highly likely that, without being a member of The Beatles, he'd be alive and well in old age today.