8 Movie Plot Twists So Subtle You Totally Missed Them

4. Deckard's A Replicant - Blade Runner

The Movie: The greatest sci-fi film ever made, Blade Runner took the baton from Star Wars and redefined the visual landscape of the whole genre, as well as allowing Harrison Ford to go subtly against type as Deckard, one of the titular cops tasked with hunting down renegade replicants (fake humans).

There's numerous different cuts of the film, but all of what makes Ridley Scott's masterpiece work - Vangelis' score, Syd Mead's visuals and the Phillip K. Dick-inspired narrative - are pretty consistent throughout the lot. The main distinction between the much lauded versions, in fact, is the prominence of a major, but on-the-face of it subtle, plot twist.

The Twist You Didn't Notice: Deckard is in fact a replicant. There's various clues, but the most prominent are his eyes flashing a recognisable replicant red and the last minute discovery of an origami unicorn, which matches up to an earlier dream he had (from the Director's and Final Cut).

Decades of reinforcement (and explicit confirmation from the director) have removed much of the subtlety from this reveal - despite being quite clearly a minor undercurrent to the story, many now treat it like a major narrative drive - but that doesn't hide the fact that upon first viewing (particularly if you're watching a version that doesn't have the clarifying unicorn scene) it's delightfully under the surface.