Gone Girl: 8 Easter Eggs & References You Might Have Missed

6. The Psycho Bra Change

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opens with a scandalous scene showing two people just after, shudder because this was the sixties, getting intimate. Marion Crane, our de facto hero, quickly gets ready, whacking on a fully white ensemble. But after getting off work early feigning a headache and stealing $40,000, she changes into a black bra - yay, symbolism. It's a nice visual motif for the character's morality (she removes it shortly after deciding to go back home and face the music) and helps play up the mystery of who the titular person is. There's various Hitchcock references in Gone Girl - Desi's beach house is rather similar to Vandamm's Mount Rushmore mansion from North By Northwest, while the whole notion of outwards appearances and changing looks is central to Vertigo. But it's this reference that is really interesting, with Fincher invoking that film's shifting moral ambiguity; just as in Gone Girl, in Psycho we don't know who the real psychopath is until a way through the plot. When Amy kills Desi, his gushing blood turns her white underwear incredibly dark, almost black. It's the same symbolism as Psycho, sure, but what makes it a direct reference is the subsequent shower scene, where the blood washing away mirrors a shot from Hitchcock's movie's shower scene. This also explains the thematic reasoning behind why Amy doesn't get the blood washed off her in the entire time she's at the hospital. Sort of.