20 Things You Didn't Know About Fight Club

To reiterate: Fight Club is a film about dissociation and alienation. From expectations, from father figures, from culture, from previous generations, from yourself - and from masculinity.

Look at the number of references to penises, penis substitutes and castration in the film: beginning with the testicular cancer support group that Marla shows up to.

Marla offsets Tyler’s style throughout - chainsmoking, shades, rings, fur coat. She lives in a hotel, as Jack almost certainly does. When Tyler meets her, he struts and grins but never says a word - odd, for a man who never stops talking (Marla does all the talking instead). Marla calls herself ‘infectious human waste’ in the third person: a term taken from the bins outside the liposuction clinic, which she couldn’t have known about unless 'she' was there.

She walks out into traffic without anyone slowing or reacting: when Jack steps into the road after her, they frantically beep their horns at him. When Jack negotiates with her for the support groups he literally tells her “you can’t have the whole brain”.

It's clear: Marla doesn’t exist either. She’s another alternate personality. Remember that classic shot at the end, the two holding hands? Without trousers on, wearing a long coat, Jack mirrors her perfectly.

You think the restaurant scene - where a waiter appears to take Marla’s order - plays against this? Well, how many other times in the third act do we see insanely loyal Fight Clubbers across the country humour their insane leader's insanity?