10 Tiny Horror Movie Details That Give Away Character Secrets

Alfred Hitchcock loved subverting expectations, didn't he?

Directing a movie? "Ah, I'll just make a little cameo," he thought. Main character? "Bin her off halfway through!," he said with glee. Lose some weight? "Do one," he grumbled, stuffing yet another cake into his mouth.

All of that is to say that Hitchcock never liked to play by the rules, but even he wasn't averse to using a classic bit of foreshadowing in his works.

Take this seemingly inconsequential piece of dialogue from 1960's Psycho. The well-trodden tale of Norman Bates dressing up as his mother to knife women in the shower is built around the idea that Bates' mother is watching him at all times.

However, instead of playing a role in her son's killings, she's not playing a role in anything. Because she's dead. And has been stuffed. Gross.

Norman hints at this when he tells Marion Crane that his dear old mum is "as harmless as one of those stuffed birds”, whilst pointing at his taxidermy collection.

The clues to Mrs. Bates' fate were right there in plain sight, so it's really Marion's own fault that she got bumped off. How could you not see this?!