History Headscratchers / TheSixthSense

** Ghosts see what they want to see and that scene was intended to show that he was finally capable of moved on. If he had seen his ring on his finger, that would have implied he still saw himself alive (and thus would never see the real ring) or still saw himself as married (and thus not ready to move on and probably censoring out the experience in his own head).

** The house is about 200 years old, by the look of it and the neighborhood it's in. The kid that accidentally blew his brains out while showing a friend his dad's gun had hair and clothing that indicated he was from the early 70's. The housewife that slit her wrists (apparently as a way to escape her husband), looked like she was from the 50's. Neither realize that decades have gone by, because of the strange time-sense. (Hence the ghost at the school still protesting that he didn't steel the master's horse.)

*** Ditto for when Crowe is listening to the old tapes of his sessions with Vincent, where he can hear the Spanish Ghost speaking to Vincent. Based off of LawOfAverages, this Troper suspects it would be highly unlike that some Spanish man died in Crowe's office was at the time or where ever the session was being conducted.
** Ghosts were just drawn to Cole. It's stated the reason they're still hanging around is because they want his help - that's why they go to him (or to others who can see them, like Vincent). But they "only see what they want to see". They probably don't realise they ''have'' gone to him. The sick girl said to him "I'm feeling much better now"; she probably thought he was her father, or stepmother. The woman screamed at him as if he were her husband. It wasn't until Cole specifically said "Do you have something you want to tell me?" that the girl gave him the tape. They kind of know they want something off him, but in a subconscious way, and they don't know what. If they actually were fully aware that they were dead, at least ''one'' of them would have said "Hey, kid, can you give me a hand with this?" and made a conscious effort not to frighten him.

*** It was threw and threw and off to the side where it could be hidden by his jacket or arm or whatever. He bled out through his back.

* Once you know the twist, the anniversary dinner scene briefly becomes {{Fridge Brilliance}} before you realise that it reduces to Malcolm's wife inexplicably booking a table at a fancy restaurant in order to sit and eat alone, getting upset in public about her dead husband and paying for the privilege.

** Phe's a divorcée from what a appears to be a dead beat, and holds two jobs (as per the conversation during the car accident). Perhaps Cole was on Malcolm's waiting list (he has notes on the kid previous to their first encounter), but since Malcolm had just been awarded by the city of Philadelphia in the opening scene, it may be plausible that Cole was a pro-bono case.

* Whenever Cole is talking to Malcolm in public, wouldn't people who see him get suspicious/worried about a kid walking around talking to himself and intervene somehow?

*** Look at the sheer ''disbelief'' on the father's face as he realizes what he's watching. Had his second wife murdered his daughter in such a fashion, you'd think that ''anger'' would have predominated over shock.

*** Both the suicidal housewife and the gunshot boy seem to mistake Cole for people they'd known. We know that ghosts' perceptions of ''themselves'' and of surrounding objects can be warped, because Malcolm doesn't perceive his own wound or the desk in front of his office door until he realizes the truth. So it's possible they ''all'' see Cole as somebody from their own lives and don't even realize they're terrifying a little boy. Even Malcolm may only have seen Cole as he really is because he'd already been assigned to be Cole's therapist before he was shot and may have known what the boy looked like.
*** Ditto for when Crowe is listening to the old tapes of his sessions with Vincent, where he can hear the Spanish Ghost speaking to Vincent. Based off of LawOfAverages, this Troper suspects it would be highly unlike that some Spanish man died in Crowe's office was at the time or where ever the session was being conducted.

*** Let's not forget the scene where Cole explains to Malcolm that prickly sensation where the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. That sounds pretty sixth sense-y to me.
** I'm not at all certain if it's literal sight. In film they have no choice but to use two senses to represent all sorts of different things (imagination, hallucination, visualization, metaphor, and in this case, psychic phenomena), and of course a child wouldn't know how else to express the experience in words but to refer to it as though it were literally "seeing" dead people, and would be so used to the experience that he no longer consciously recognizes the difference between it and "ordinary" sight. Or maybe he does literally see him and they just needed a snazzy title. [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal Alliterations sell]].
*** If it were him taking visuals that are indistinguishable from normal sight, that would still be sight, just sight of a different kind. Similar to using infrared goggles - you're seeing things the naked eye could not, but you're still seeing them. If he could mistake regular sight for sensing ghosts, then it has to be sight.
** A sense is a means in which your body perceives outside stimuli, the way in which you conceptualise it is related, but not the same thing. The actual mechanics of the boy's power are unexplained, but I'm going to guess that it is not a case of light reflecting off a ghost, hitting his eye and being picked up in this manner. He clearly has some ability to pick up stimuli that normal humans lack, hence an additional[[note]]Humans actually have at least 10 senses, the ones that Aristotle missed are nociception (pain), equilibrioception (balance), proprioception and kinaesthesia (joint motion and acceleration), sense of time and thermoception (temperature differences), and depending on what definition is being used it can go up to about twenty. Sight alone can be considered as three different senses - colour, brightness and depth.[[/note]] sense.

** If she had, I'm sure she could find a much better dead psychiatrist than Creator/BruceWillis.
** The way I originally interpreted it was that Bruce Willis's character was put on the case before he died, hence why he shows up at the kid's house at the beginning. However, the mother doesn't know that he's hanging around all ghostly and still being a therapist; as far as she knows, he passed away and she's on the waiting list for another guy/Cole is seeing another therapist on the side/she gave up on the idea of therapy.
*** The same reason all the other ghosts do. He needs help getting closure.

*** At the ''absolute latest'', Cole ''has'' to know Malcolm is a ghost by the time they talk after the Sword in the Stone play. He's happy because for him, things have taken a turn for the better, yet he's also on the verge of tears and can't quite keep his smile - watch that actor, the boy is ''amazing''! That's why he thinks they won't be seeing more of each other - he's heard Mal's story, he knows this will have given him the closure he needed, and now he'll be moving on.
*** It's firmly established in the film that people can detect ghosts, but don't - it gets cold when they get emotional - it's cold in Cole's house, and when Willis figures it all out at the end you can see his wife's breath. One can easily assume that someone as sensitive as Cole can tell a ghost from a mile away no matter how the ghost is feeling.
*** Do note that after Cole and Malcolm's first meeting in the church, that Cole, on the way to the exit, loots one of the [[{{Foreshadowing}} religious figurines]] from a nick-knack table. Apparently, he feels the need for an additional protective totem for his anti-ghost tent at home. Interesting...

*** Probably also depends on how they died. Kind of hard to censor away a hanging.
*** [[Literature/AnOccurrenceAtOwlCreekBridge Or is it?]]

*** In social events like that, adults tend to be unaware of children they're not responsible for and/or aren't doing anything out of the ordinary.

** IIRC, she was quite poor. Therapy is expensive and not everyone can get (or wants) charity.
*** Probably this, since she's a divorcée from what a appears to be a dead beat, and holds two jobs (as per the conversation during the car accident). I do believe Cole was on Malcolm's waiting list (he has notes on the kid previous to their first encounter), but since Malcolm had just been awarded by the city of Philadelphia in the opening scene, it may be plausible that Cole was a pro-bono case.
** I assumed that she had originally intended Bruce Willis to be Cole's shrink; when he died, she was put on a waiting list for another shrink or gave up on the idea. Otherwise, there's no explanation for why he showed up at Cole's house at the beginning.
*** Ooooo, nice WildMassGuessing. I like this.
*** Some of this isn't necessarily WMG; Malcolm's profile of Cole notes that he was "referred autumn 1998", so it's possible that he was supposed to start therapy with Malcolm before the good doc got busy with his not-being-alive-ness.

*** I was kidding. That was what the link to WeirdnessCensor was supposed to indicate. You See Dead People. ByTheEyesOfTheBlind may have been better, but I didn't think of it. My apologies for any confusion. In addition to the opinion above and below that Bruce Willis' ghost stopped paying attention to existence most of the time, just wandering around without thinking, it's also possible, nay probable that he would have figured it out before, and blanked it out, like a lot of ghosts do in other movies. Probably what the hanged ghosts were doing almost constantly. "I've been hanging here a while, when am I going to finally die? Hey, that kid in the weird clothing walked through my leg! I must already be dead! Nooooooo! Noooo! Nooo... Ah, well, whatever." Three hours later: "Hey, I've been hanging here a long time..." You've got to remember, he wasn't dating and most of his patients stopped seeing him a while back.
** I once read a very key theory about this film: he's only manifest when he's on-screen. Therefore, he hasn't been knocking around for a year, he simply thinks he has because his brain is filling in the gaps in his awareness.
*** This makes sense. If you notice, when he thinks he is late for his anniversary he says "I can't seem to keep track of time" or something similar. He also does seem to notice himself 'losing' time, and regularly thinks he is late for things.
*** No it doesn't make sense. First of all, he's a ghost. He doesn't have a brain. Also, if he's only around when he's on screen then what determines when he's on screen and when he isn't? All the other ghosts seem to be around all the time, not just when we see them, so why should Malcolm be an exception? If, as the point below suggests, he knows on some level already that he's dead but just hasn't accepted it yet, that makes more sense but still doesn't really answer why he didn't accept it after like a week of everybody completely and unnaturally ignoring him in every respect.

** I assumed that, deep down, Crowe knew he was dead. That's why he was very careful not to do anything that would make him face it, like directly addressing Cole's doctor or mother.

* Do we ever find out ''why'' the mother was poisoning her daughter in the first place? ForTheEvulz? I mean, what the hell?

*** Besides having all the hallmarks of Munchausen's, there's also the fact that the little sister is growing ill - the mother has moved on to a secondary target. Had the ghost not sought Cole's help, or Cole not conquered his fear to help her, the mother would've continued harming her daughter, giving her an infinite supply of sympathy for the poor woman with one daughter dead and another sick. (Possibly consolation: With no further victims to move on to, it's unlikely she would've deliberately killed her - just kept her ill and miserable.)
** That was her mother? I thought she was an WickedStepmother.
** The film doesn't say anything either way. But they did choose an actress who looked quite similar to Mischa Barton - shoulder-length blonde hair, angular jaw - so it's likely Shyamalan intended her to be the biological mother.
** The script refers to her as 'Mrs Collins' and 'the girl's mother', so yes she is the biological mother.
* At the end we can see Anna's breath because it gets cold when ghosts get mad. But was his character really angry? I always thought he was rather sad and wistful at the realization, and he gives a touching goodbye rather than getting angry and fighting the realization.
** I'm going to go out on limb and say that ''any'' strong emotion can cause a temperature drop, and anger / sadness are the most common for ghosts. So as he realizes he's a ghost the emotional shock makes the temperature drop.
** After finding out that I'd been dead for a year and too much of a jackass to realize it, I'd probably be FURIOUS. Besides, emotions are almost never mutually exclusive, even in the weirdest combinations. One can be sad, wistful, and angry all at once. And more besides.

* Why is Cole encountering so many ghosts ''in his house''? I had this discussion with my little brother, and his thought was that the kid who'd been shot was the son of the abused lady, and that the husband/father killed both of them. This makes sense, until you think about why the poisoned girl was there. She seemed to be seeking Cole out, which doesn't make sense if we accept that the ghosts don't know they're dead.

** This troper always assumed ghosts were just drawn to Cole. It's stated the reason they're still hanging around is because they want his help - that's why they go to him (or to others who can see them, like Vincent). But they "only see what they want to see". They probably don't realise they ''have'' gone to him. The sick girl said to him "I'm feeling much better now"; she probably thought he was her father, or stepmother. The woman screamed at him as if he were her husband. It wasn't until Cole specifically said "Do you have something you want to tell me?" that the girl gave him the tape. They kind of know they want something off him, but in a subconscious way, and they don't know what. If they actually were fully aware that they were dead, at least ''one'' of them would have said "Hey, kid, can you give me a hand with this?" and made a conscious effort not to frighten him.

* Didn't Cole's teacher mention that Philadelphia (their city) is one of the oldest parts of America, and most buildings have had previous uses? Like the schoolhouse. People may have died in Their apartment before it became a home.
* Why didn't Kyra give her father the videotape ''before'' she died? Was she just TooDumbToLive, or was I just missing something?
** That was likely the incident that killed her. She was "making a recovery", as we see in the tape, so the mother gives her a stronger dose of the stuff. She may not even have seen it before dying. Many speculate that watching the tape after death is what lead Kyra to realizing she was, in fact, dead.

* I thought she had the camera in her room because she knew that her step mother was trying to kill her and wanted to catch her in the act hoping her dad would see it.

** I thought that the girl turned on the camera to record the puppet show, rushed to bed to avoid getting caught, left the camera on unwillingly and recorded her mother in flagrante delicto by accident and turned it off afterwards without realizing what it had filmed until after she died.

* How come Cole is so calm when meeting Malcolm for the first time when he's shown to be terrified of ghosts? I know that he figured Malcolm was nice, but with the other ghosts he was scared from just sensing or seeing them, without them necessarily doing anything to him. Yet when Malcolm shows up he stays completely calm and has no trouble conversing with him (not counting his shy manner of speaking). Though I guess that if Cole had been shown to be frightened of him at first, the ending might have been given away...

* Once you know the twist, the anniversary dinner scene briefly becomes {{Fridge Brilliance}} before you realise that it reduces to Malcolm's wife inexplicably booking a table at a fancy restaurant in order to sit and eat [[spoiler:alone, getting upset in public about her dead husband]] and paying for the privilege.
** Some people continue the traditions started with [[spoiler:dead loved ones]] even though it emotionally hurts.
** She wasn't getting angry at her husband, if that's what you mean. It seems like it before you know the twist, but after the big reveal it's clear she was feeling ''sad'' about [[spoiler:his death]]. As the above troper said, continuing to observe traditions you shared with [[spoiler:a dead loved one]] is not uncommon. It's just a natural part of the grieving process in most cases.

** I guess this could imply a number of things (but I'm still unsure). One, maybe he saw Cole before his death but didn't talk to him. Two, Cole doesn't actually look as he does on screen, but as a patient Malcolm wished he could help. Three, Cole was just some random kid Malcolm saw and, like the other ghosts, projected onto him what he still needed to do on Earth - not make up with his wife, but to realize he was dead and his career was over. I know this approaches WMG territory, but I'd like to know what others think.

* The TomatoInTheMirror moment seems a bit weird to me. Malcolm's wife drops a wedding ring, the camera shows that she's still wearing hers, and a close-up reveals that Malcolm... doesn't. But that makes perfect real-world sense if Malcolm just wasn't wearing his ring at the time. It seems to me that the reveal would've worked much better if he ''had'' been wearing his ring. The presence of three wedding rings makes no real-world sense, and could've clued Malcolm in that his own ring was part of his own fake ghostly form. Am I missing something here?

<<|ItJustBugsMe|>>

*** Do note that after Cole and Malcom's first meeting in the church, that Cole, on the way to the exit, loots one of the [[{{Foreshadowing}} religious figurines]] from a nick-knack table. Apparently, he feels the need for an additional protective totem for his anti-ghost tent at home. Interesting...

*** Probably this, since she's a divorcée from what a appears to be a dead beat, and holds two jobs (as per the conversation during the car accident). I do believe Cole was on Malcom's waiting list (he has notes on the kid previous to their first encounter), but since Malcolm had just been awarded by the city of Philadelphia in the opening scene, it may be plausible that Cole was a pro-bono case.

* How on earth does someone manage to go an entire year without noticing that noone is talking to him or even noticing him?

*** I was kidding. That was what the link to WeirdnessCensor was suppposed to indicate. You See Dead People. ByTheEyesOfTheBlind may have been better, but I didn't think of it. My apologies for any confusion. In addition to the opinion above and below that Bruce Willis' ghost stopped paying attention to existence most of the time, just wandering around without thinking, it's also possible, nay probable that he would have figured it out before, and blanked it out, like a lot of ghosts do in other movies. Probably what the hanged ghosts were doing almost constantly. "I've been hanging here a while, when am I going to finally die? Hey, that kid in the weird clothing walked through my leg! I must already be dead! Nooooooo! Noooo! Nooo... Ah, well, whatever." Three hours later: "Hey, I've been hanging here a long time..." You've got to remember, he wasn't dating and most of his patients stopped seeing him a while back.

*** This makes sense. If you notice, when he thinks he is late for his anniversary he says "I can't seem to keep track of time" or something similar. He also does seem to notice himself 'losing' time, and reguarly thinks he is late for things.

*** Throughout the movie, the colour Red means something has been touched by the Dead People. RuleOfSymbolism.
*** It's called Munchausen's Syndrom By Proxy. The mother abuses her daughter in order to gain attention and sympathy for herself. The bright red suit (apart from being a lovely piece of symbolism) is just an expression of that desire for attention.

** The house is about 200 years old, by the look of it / neighbourhood it's in. The kid that accidentally blew his brains out while showing a friend his dad's gun had hair and clothing that indicated he was from the early 70's. The housewife that slit her wrists (apparently as a way to escape her husband), looked like she was from the 50's. Neither realize that decades have gone by, because of the strange time-sense. (Hence the ghost at the school still protesting that he didn't steel the master's horse.)
** The poisoned girl probably ''did'' know she was dead, thanks to the tape. The boy is implied to have accidently killed himself while showing off the shotgun to a friend, and the woman slit her wrists. One of the rules is that the ghosts see what they want to see, and maybe to them, the rest of the world is a blank slate, other than their place of death and Cole's house. Maybe they can sense and seek him out, just as he can to them. The woman talks to Cole as if he were her husband, but maybe she somehow sensed that Cole can see and hear her, and so she used him as an outlet, since her husband probably has no awareness of her ghost.

** This troper always assumed ghosts were just drawn to Cole. It's stated the reason they're still hanging around is because they want his help - that's why they go to him (or to others who can see them, like Vincent). But they "only see what they want to see". They probably don't realise they ''have'' gone to him. The sick girl said to him "I'm feeling much better now"; she probably thought he was her father, or stepmother. The woman screamed at him as if he were her husband. It wasn't until Cole specifically said "Do you have something you want to tell me?" that the girl gave him the tape. They kind of know they want something off him, but in a subconcious way, and they don't know what. If they actually were fully aware that they were dead, at least ''one'' of them would have said "Hey, kid, can you give me a hand with this?" and made a conscious effort not to frighten him.
*** Ditto for when Crowe is listening to the old tapes of his sessions with Vincent, where he can hear the Spanish Ghost sepaking to Vincent. Based off of LawOfAverages, this Troper suspects it would be highly unlike that some Spanish man died in Crowe's office was at the time or where ever the session was being conducted.

* How come Cole is so calm when meeting Malcolm for the first time when he's shown to be terrified of ghosts? I know that he figured Malcolm was nice, but with the other ghosts he was scared from just sensing or seeing them, without them necessarily doing anything to him. Yet when Malcolm shows up he stays completely calm and has no trouble conversating with him (not counting his shy manner of speaking). Though I guess that if Cole had been shown to be frightened of him at first, the ending might have been given away...

* How come, if the rest of the ghosts don't see Cole as Cole (since the housewife sees her husband, Kyra likely sees her father, etc), Malcom does? Why is he the only one to actually see Cole, the medium, as himself?
** I guess this could imply a number of things (but I'm still unsure). One, maybe he saw Cole before his death but didn't talk to him. Two, Cole doesn't actually look as he does on screen, but as a patient Malcom wished he could help. Three, Cole was just some random kid Malcom saw and, like the other ghosts, projected onto him what he still needed to do on Earth - not make up with his wife, but to realize he was dead and his career was over. I know this approaches WMG territory, but I'd like to know what others think.

* The TomatoInTheMirror moment seems a bit weird to me. Malcom's wife drops a wedding ring, the camera shows that she's still wearing hers, and a close-up reveals that Malcom... doesn't. But that makes perfect real-world sense if Malcom just wasn't wearing his ring at the time. It seems to me that the reveal would've worked much better if he ''had'' been wearing his ring. The presence of three wedding rings makes no real-world sense, and could've clued Malcom in that his own ring was part of his own fake ghostly form. Am I missing something here?
** There are lots of people who rarely or never take their wedding ring off, if Malcolm was one of them, no ring on his hand could have been the clue that something important happenend. Besides, in Christian thought, a marriage lasts "´till death do them part", implying that no ring on Malcolm's hand meant that the marriage couldn't outlast his death.

** If she had, I'm sure she could find a much better dead psychiatrist than Bruce Willis.

** There are lots of people who rarely or never take their wedding ring off. Besides, in Christian thought, a marriage lasts "´till death do them part", implying that no ring on Malcolm's hand meant that the marriage couldn't outlast his death.