10 Movie Characters You Didn't Realise Secretly Died In Movies

8. John "Scottie" Ferguson - Vertigo

The opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's masterful psychological thriller sees detective John "Scottie" Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) chasing down a perp, when he slips on a roof and is left hanging from the gutter.

A police officer partaking in the chase then stops to help him, but Scottie's hesitation - per his fear of heights - causes the cop to slip and fall to his death.

After a moment, the scene transitions to Scottie now safely off the roof and recuperating at home, with the audience offered no explanation as to how he was rescued.

Given the film's overall cerebral tenor and Hitchcock's well-noted penchant for toying with audiences, this has prompted some viewers to suggest that, in fact, Scottie died after falling from the gutter.

The rest of the movie, then, is simply a trippy result of his synapses firing wildly during his brain's final moments of activity.

Considering the film's increasingly surreal absurdity and central focus on Scottie's fear of heights, it follows that the story is really nothing more than Scottie's mind frantically trying to make sense of his fate in the nanoseconds before he disappears into nothingness.