20 Things You Didn't Know About Psycho
13. It's The First Major American Film To Feature A Flushing Toilet
Screenwriter Joseph Stefano was absolutely hell-bent on having the movie feature a flushing toilet in order to accentuate the film's sense of realism, despite the fact that no major American film had ever done so before.
Hitchcock unsurprisingly supported the peculiar crusade, albeit on the condition that Stefano made it an organic part of the movie's story.
And so, he wrote the scene where Marion counts the stolen money and flushes the paper down the toilet, making it a vital part of the story and therefore impossible to remove during editing.
The end result proved shocking to audiences of the period, who were completely unaccustomed to seeing a toilet flush on the big screen. Of all the boundaries Psycho pushed, this might be the low-key best.