Vanilla Sky Ending: Every Frame Explained

15. Mothers & Fathers

It's made succinctly clear that David has a wealth of daddy issues, and so it's not terribly surprising that the sequence also contains a number of flashes of parental figures.

For starters, Crowe includes an image of a man who is clearly one of his own ancestors (above) - presumably his father - while Cruise also agreed to include home video footage of his parents:

In an attempt to fuse fact with fiction, there are also reminders of David's father's legacy, particularly the cover of his dad's book entitled "Defending the Kingdom":

And of course, who can forget the sublimely creepy painting of David's father (below) which is left hanging in David's apartment? Fun fact: David's dad was played by Robert Rauschenberg, an American painter and graphic artist.