8 Movie Plot Twists So Subtle You Totally Missed Them

The Planet Of The Apes is Earth, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, Bruce Willis is a ghost; plot twists don't just shock you, they manage to redefine the entire movie. They're narrative A-bombs that arrive with the impact of Mjolnir and the relative destructive force of a Noisy Cricket. Heck, The Usual Suspects is a masterclass in tight screenwriting, but all everybody chooses to remember is that cup-drop of a final five minutes.

And why wouldn't a director want to make a big deal out their trickery? If you're going to yank the rug from under an audience's feet, you want them to go flying head over heels and not just knock over a rickety coffee table.

But sometimes a filmmaker doesn't want to offer up narrative unrest on a platter - they want the audience to work for it. And so it is that some of cinema's greatest twists can go by completely unnoticed until people come back to the the film a second, third or fourteenth time. There's something advantageous to a subtle reveal, making rewatch and evaluation that much more rewarding, as you'll see to today.

Here are eight such twists that you didn't even realised happened until you watched the film a second time.