8 Even More Movie Scenes You Didn’t Realise Were Tricking You

Easily one of the most iconic "magic tricks" ever to pop up on the big-screen, Heath Ledger's ability to make a pencil suddenly "disappear" in The Dark Knight is about as chilling as it gets. 

For such an utterly sickening moment of brutality then, you'd be forgiven for assuming that even the very much anti-CGI Christopher Nolan would have had no choice but to resort to using digital wizardry to pull off the moment head met lead. 

Or maybe they used prosthetics to achieve the gruesome killing of a henchman by the 'Clown Prince of Crime'?

Nope, the team behind the project actually just shot a version of the scene with the pencil very much on the table, and then one without it (via Vulture).

When head hit table, no pencil was present, of course. Though a few of the shots Nolan wanted did still require actor Charles Jarman to quickly knock the pencil away before his skull came crashing down on the table - a move that resulted in Jarman being knocked out a few times.

Thanks to the magic of editing, most viewers were just left presuming they'd simply witnessed some rather slick CGI in the finished flick. When in reality, this was actually a surprisingly real trick created through masterful editing and a bit of occasionally painful stunt work.