20 Movie Reveals Nobody Noticed

7. Marcee Isn't Real - A Beautiful Mind

Scream 2022
Universal

The big reveal in Ron Howard's iconic, Best Picture-winning drama A Beautiful Mind is that mathematician protagonist John Nash (Russell Crowe) is actually suffering from schizophrenia, and several characters he interacts with - namely his friend Charles (Paul Bettany), Charles' niece Marcee (Vivien Cardone), and agent William Parcher (Ed Harris) - are mere hallucinations.

But this is actually slyly nodded to much earlier in the film, when John visits Princeton University to see Charles, and we see Marcee run across a field populated by pigeons.

Despite Marcee running frantically around, as kids do, the pigeons oddly don't move at all - extremely unusual behaviour for the birds, as everyone knows.

While one might immediately assume that the pigeons were added in post-production and the VFX team didn't have time to animate them flying away, the truth is that it's surreptitiously revealing that Marcee isn't real, so of course the pigeons wouldn't fly away, because nobody's bothering them.

 
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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.