12 Subtle Movie Plot Points You Probably Overlooked

2. Teddy Wanted To Be Lobotomised - Shutter Island

The Plot Point: Prior to its release, many viewers thought they had Shutter Island pegged from the trailer alone: they found themselves extremely satisfied that the asylum's missing patient 67 would turn out to be Leonardo DiCaprio's Teddy Daniels, and in fact, they'd be right. At the movie's conclusion, it's revealed that Teddy, whose real name is Andrew Laeddis, murdered his wife (Michelle Williams) after she drowned their two children, and the movie's events have been an attempt to break Laeddis' paranoid insanity. However, this is just the prelude to the more thought-provoking twist at the end of the movie. When Laeddis talks to his shrink Dr. Sheehan (Mark Ruffalo) in the final scene, he refers to him as his fictional identity Chuck, causing the medical staff to assume that Teddy isn't cured, and as such he's sent off to be lobotomised as the movie ends. However, Laeddis' final question to Sheehan, "Which would be worse? To live as a monster, or die as a good man?", heavily implies he had already been cured of his insanity, but simply didn't want to live with the knowledge of his children's deaths and having murdered his wife, so faked a relapse in order to be lobotomised and metaphorically "die" (by having his memory erased). Why You Probably Missed It: Because the plot twist that comes minutes before is such a game-changing moment (predictable though it was), attention was largely focused on the fallout of that rather than on the more subtle and relatively unambiguous implication from Sheehan's reaction that Laeddis actually knew exactly what he was doing. Some might still argue the opposite, but it's difficult to see why that quote was thrown in there otherwise.