History Fridge / AmericanPsycho

* If you listen to the music Patrick Bateman plays and speaks passionately about [[spoiler: during his most graphics murders at his apartment building,]] you notice the message in the songs describe Bateman's personality. Music/HueyLewisAndTheNews song "Hip To Be Square" is a song about faking it to make it and blending into society rather than standing out, which Bateman admits to his fiancé he was doing, as well as him making this clear through narration. The second song was Music/WhitneyHouston's "Greatest Love Of All", which is about the power of loving ones self. Simply put, [[TheSociopath Patrick Bateman fakes his personality to hide his true nature, and the only person he cares about is himself]].

* There is one potentially for an employee named Marcus Malberstram. Bateman claims they wear the same glasses, use the same barber, and wear the same type of suits, and Marcus even does the same job as Bateman. This is the reason many people mistake one for the other. If this is true, then if the murders are proven real, Malberstram could easy be the one charged with the serial killings and convicted, not Bateman, which might have been his plan all along in dressing like him.

* If you listen to the music Patrick Bateman plays and speaks passionately about [[spoiler: during his most graphics murders at his apartment building,]] you notice the message in the songs describe Bateman's personality. Music/HueyLewisAndTheNews song "Hip To Be Square" is a song about faking it to make it and blending into society rather than standing out, which Bateman admits to his fiance he was doing, as well as him making this clear through narration. The second song was Music/WhitneyHouston's "Greatest Love Of All", which is about the power of loving ones self. Simply put, [[{{TheSociopath}}Patrick Bateman fakes his personality to hide his true nature, and the only person he cares about is himself.]]

* Paul Allen and Patrick's lawyer both mistake him for someone else and are the only two people (in the film, anyway) who think of 'Patrick Bateman' as a complete dork. The only other character referred to in this way (by Patrick himself) is Luis Carruthers. It's likely that Paul Allen and Patrick's lawyer both think Luis is actually Patrick Bateman. Paul could even have mistaken Luis' fiance Courtney for Evelyn.
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* A bit of Fridge Horror if you don't mind. Early on in the book in a dinner conversation Patrick quietly, and coyly, mutters this line, in response to Evelyn's claim of him being a boy next door type.
-->"No I'm not," he laughs, "I'm a fucking evil psychopath."
While this line is both devilishly humorous yet alarming on the first read of the book, one is most likely imagining the Bateman played by Christian Bale saying these lines, and it elicits a bit of an "ahaha, he's an american psycho," on the second read of the book, once the reader has digested the full, dreadful, unending nightmare of Bateman's utter devotion to murders of the most heinous and disgusting degree, one probably not seen in many other books. The second reading of this line, especially in respect to what he did to Bethany, the girl whose stomach he "ripped open with [his] bare hands," and the girl featured in the chapter "Girl" (the rat one), this line made me more than a little queasy.
Well played, Easton Ellis. Well played.

* All the business cards presented during the showdown are misaligned, with the lettering being crooked, misaligned, or both. Plus, all misspell "Acquisition" (omitting the "c") while Patrick's is also missing a space between the ampersand and second "Pierce" in "Pierce & Pierce". This shows that for all their bravado and posturing, the men have no attention to detail and are more concerned about how things look at first glance.

** There are a few more hints to this that are fairly easy to overlook. The reader can buy that Bateman's friends and business associates might be so self-absorbed and vapid that they don't notice his many admissions to his crimes, but having the ''maid'' come in and clean up the blood in his apartment, who also fails to notice direct evidence that something gruesome obviously took place in his home? He kills a police officer with a .357 magnum, is spotted by several other officers while in pursuit, then he just... ducks into his apartment and the matter instantly goes away forever? His murders may or may not take place 100% in his head, but it seems like if he is doing any real killing, then it's at least very heavily embellished and [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness filtered through his insanity]], given how often reality seems to bend over backwards to accommodate him (and ''NO'', it does ''not'' matter how affluent you are; if you shoot a cop in the head the other cops ''will'' keep hunting for you, even if you are a white male yuppie with seven figures in the bank). There are also other details that don't really pass the sniff test for a knowledgeable reader, like the MadeOfPlasticine nature of some of the more grotesque mutilations Patrick commits, and the very questionable knowledge of the guns he supposedly has, like how he purports to own a "TEC Uzi" (there's no such thing, and "Uzi" has been a genericized term for compact, pistol-type submachine guns for a long time, being a classic instance of MisidentifiedWeapons,) and he describes his slapping a "clip" into his .357 before going on that shooting spree, which revolvers do not use (automatic pistols in .357 magnum caliber actually were around in the 80's, including the famous [[HandCannon Desert Eagle]], but given the [[ShownTheirWork details and specifics]] he displays with other subjects, one suspects that Ellis would have made it clear if that's what Bateman was using). Things like this give the impression that what we're witnessing him do is mostly happening within his fevered imagination, colored as it is by the all the superviolent action and horror movies he likes to watch.

* There is one potentially for an employee named Marcus Malberstram. Bateman, claims they wear the same glasses, use the same barber, and wear the same type of suits, and Marcus even does the same job as Batman. This is the reason many people mistake one for the other. If this is true, then if the murders are proven real, Malberstram could easy be the one charged with the serial killings and convicted, not Batman, which might have been his plan all along in dressing like him.

* There is one potentially for Luis Carruthers. Bateman, claims they wear the same glasses, use the same barber, and wear the same type of suits, and this is the reason many people mistake one for the other. If this is true, then if the murders are proven real, Carruthers could easy be the one charged with the serial killings and convicted, not Batman, which might have been his plan all along.

* In the book, pretty much every outfit described by Bateman is blatantly mismatched, but not because the people around him wear mismatched combinations of clothes but rather because Bateman is terrible at recognizing brands of clothing.

** The images are from a series called "Men In The Cities" by Robert Longo. Longo took friends to his studio where he photographed them dodging tennis balls and being pulled by ropes, then made charcoal drawings of the photos. The work was iconic within the New York art scene in the mid 80s, it makes sense someone like Bateman would own some of them. The fact that they look like someone being attacked is also probably a happy coincidence.