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- Alice in Wonderland (2010): As the page quote indicates, the live-action version spends most of its runtime with characters waffling over whether Alice is the Alice who came to Underland as a child and whether she is the Alice from a prophecy. She insists she's not in both cases, and Absalom the caterpillar, the one character who seems to know definitively, agrees that she's not. Then at the end, it turns out she just forgot and Absalom's statement was Metaphorically True (she used to be the child Alice, and she was going to be the prophecied Alice, but at this very moment, she was neither).
- Alien: Covenant: At the end of the film, we get a Cruel Twist Ending when the main character realises that the spaceship's android, Walter, has been replaced by the psychopathic David, who forces her back into cryo-sleep and plans to experiment on the other passengers in stasis. The film expects this to be a big twist, but the fact that David's first introduced with shoulder-length hair, which he then cuts off so he's visually nearly indistinguishable from Walter, practically telegraphs that he's going to at least attempt a Kill and Replace; why else have the haircut?
- Angel Has Fallen makes it pretty obvious that Vice President Martin Kirby is the mastermind of the scheme, having hired Salient Global to assassinate President Trumbull and make Mike Banning take the blame.
- In Beauty and the Beast (2017), Belle wants to find out what happened to her Missing Mom, but Maurice doesn't want to tell her. She eventually uses magic to find out, and get this — she died. Of a disease! So...pretty much just what every fan of the original movie naturally assumed. To give them some credit, Belle does know her mother is dead, just not why her father refuses to talk about it and why they had to leave so abruptly. She comes to realize that Maurice was forced to take Belle and leave his wife to die alone (with her blessing) so they wouldn't become infected or be trapped in the city, which has haunted him ever since (though in the end it does boil down to the rather obvious 'the bloke feels bad his wife died and wanted to spare his daughter grim details').
- In Bloodshot (2020), Ray kills the guy who killed his wife in the first act. Guy Pearce, who's a pretty big name and often plays villains, plays the scientist who resurrected Ray and seems to have no active role in the story afterwards. It's pretty obvious that he'll turn out to be the ultimate villain.
- The Craft: Legacy:
- The moment Lily is revealed to have been adopted, many viewers correctly guessed her birth mother was one of the witches from the original film, with Nancy being a top contender.
- Adam being revealed as the villain wasn't all that shocking for a lot of viewers; he'd been antagonistic towards the girls for most of the story, the film emphasizes there's something sinister about him and by the third act there's not really any other options for a Big Bad seeing as the witches are portrayed as responsible and well-adjusted.
- One of the main things criticised about Crimson Peak is that it follows the Gothic Horror formula a little too closely (it's intended to be a homage to the genre), to the point where many of the reveals and plot twists had already been guessed by the audience long before the narrative catches up. This particularly applies to the main twist of the Sharpes being an incestuous couple killing Thomas' wives for their money (Lucille is jealous of Edith to an extreme degree - including spying on her and Thomas in bed - it's mentioned many times the Sharpes are desperate for money) and the ghosts are actually trying to warn Edith (especially as they never actually do anything to harm her). As mentioned under The Un Twist entry, some viewers started to think that Thomas and Lucille were only pretending to be siblings as part of the marry-and-kill scheme (the conclusion Edith initially comes to), only for it be confirmed they're both siblings and lovers.
- Not within the film itself, but during production of The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan insisted that Marion Cotillard (a regular member of his Production Posse) was playing just some random business lady named "Miranda Tate", but then he pushed production back several months because Cotillard was pregnant. Many fans suspected that her character must be more important, and that the most likely candidate from the Batman mythos was Talia al Ghul, the daughter of the first film's villain with good reason to hold a grudge against Batman. Sure enough...
- Expend4bles: While one theory was that a surprise cameo would be revealed as the villain, to no one's surprise ultimately, Marsh turns out to be Ocelot and the real Big Bad.
- The Fugitive: The character of Dr. Charles Nichols is introduced as a colleague and friend of protagonist Dr. Richard Kimball. He has no other plot-relevant purpose for being in the film other than to be revealed as the Big Bad. He's also played by an actor known for playing villains.
- In Hide and Seek, we're supposed to be shocked that Emily's Not-So-Imaginary Friend Charlie is actually an evil Split Personality of her father David. However, the constant and ominous flashbacks shown in David's head every time just before he finds out that Charlie has been causing trouble again make it abundantly clear that at the very least, he's hiding something really big.
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug reveals that the mysterious Necromancer is none other than Sauron, the Big Bad from the original trilogy. Everybody, even those unfamiliar with Tolkien's work, guessed it. Though to be fair the revelation of the Necromancer's identity was made clear in The Fellowship Of The Ring book, so hiding this fact in the adaptation of the prequel would be almost impossible.
- Honeymoon: Bea's strange behavior would be kept mysterious through most of the film if not for the fact that the bright, descending lights pouring through her window on the first night make it pretty obvious that aliens are to blame.
- In a meta example, in 2008, Joaquin Phoenix claimed he was retiring from acting to become a hip hop performer, grew a wild beard, and began making bizarre public appearances while Casey Affleck filmed him. Most commentators instantly assumed that the whole thing was an act for a mockumentary film similar to Borat, which had recently made waves. In 2010, Affleck and Phoenix released a film about Phoenix's behavior called I'm Still Here and shortly thereafter revealed, to the surprise of almost no one, that the whole thing was fake.
- IO: It gets revealed halfway through the movie that Sam's father is actually dead. Ah yes, the character we haven't seen for the entire movie has been dead all along, we definitely never saw that coming. We 'totally' believed Sam when she told Micah that her father was just taking a multiple-day hike out in the middle of the toxic mountains somewhere.
- In I, Robot, the fact that VIKI is the Big Bad should be blindingly obvious within a minute of their introduction, particularly when they say they can't retrieve the security footage from the room that Dr. Lanning jumped from.
- It: Chapter Two: The reveal that Stanley died by cutting himself could be an example of this. We see someone lying in a bathtub at the start of the film, and while the audience probably wouldn’t recognise him because he was grown up, we then see all the other characters are alive and well. Then there’s the scene where the fortune cookie messages spell “Looks like Stanley couldn’t cut it.” After that the reveal over the phone isn’t that surprising.
- James Bond:
- Live and Let Die: Bond and MI6 wonder why Doctor Kananga, the leader of the fictitious Caribbean island of San Monique, is involved with the Harlem drug lord Mr. Big, before it's revealed that they're the same person. The problem is the reveal falls flat because Yaphet Kotto obviously plays both, wearing paper-thin makeup as Mr. Big, and he has the same henchmen serving him in both personas.
- Spectre:
- Really, the twist of a James Bond movie called Spectre is that the leader of the titular organization who has his face initially hidden in the shadows is actually Ernst Stavro Blofeld? Yet they are upfront about the new and more surprising angle that he's Bond's estranged adoptive brother. They sure they shouldn't have done the reverse?
- Max Denbigh. He acts with a villainous attitude from his very first appearance, so everybody figured out that he would be working for Blofeld. The fact that Andrew Scott's most famous role was the one of a villain pretending to be a good guy didn't help either.
- Joker: Arthur wasn't really dating Sophie, he just imagined her there during times we see them together to cope with his loneliness. Problem is, nobody else sees Sophie with Arthur either, not even Sophie's young daughter, and also, why would Sophie be so cavalier about dating a lonely, mentally ill weirdo who lives with his mother and stalked her to work? Granted Arthur didn't mean any harm at that point, but still, there was no reason why Sophie would have been interested in a man like him in the first place, so the twist she barely knows who he is really isn't a shock.
- Jurassic World treats the revelation that Indominus rex is part velociraptor as a big surprise, but given that she is a known hybrid and demonstrates the trademark intelligence of a raptor, a lot of viewers were more startled that it was supposed to be a surprise. This isn't helped that the other twist about the Indominus Rex, her being a Living Weapon, was also quite obvious due to the movie's Big Bad complaining a lot about how dinosaurs should be use for more militaristic purpose.
- The Layover: One of the biggest complaints about the movie is that the twist that the wedding Ryan was so desperate to attend was his own was transparently obvious since the second the wedding is first mentioned.
M-Z
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier: The Winter Soldier is Steve's Heterosexual Life Partner Bucky Barnes. Even if you weren't familiar with the comic books (or any prior adaptations; there had been two or three), the fact that Bucky's actor played the Winter Soldier was a giveaway. Even Marvel had given up any pretense of it being secret by the time the movie premiered; Bucky's actor Sebastian Stan was openly on the pre-release press tour, insisting that his character died in the first movie and he's just here for moral support. Fortunately, the actual twist of the film — that SHIELD had been infiltrated by HYDRA at its inception — was kept remarkably well hidden before the big reveal.
- Captain America: Civil War: Bucky killed Howard and Maria Stark as the Winter Soldier. A montage shown in The Winter Soldier heavily implied that the Starks were assassinated by HYDRA, and the Winter Soldier was the most likely to carry it out as he's an infamous HYDRA assassin. Tony calling out Steve, who had the same information as the audience, could be considered a Lampshade Hanging:Tony: Did you know?
Steve: I didn't know it was him.
Tony: Don't bullshit me, Rogers, did you know?
Steve: ...Yes. - Spider-Man: Far From Home: Even those who were completely unaware of the comic character probably figured out easily that Mysterio is Evil All Along and the Big Bad of the movie. Not only is casting illusions and tricking the people Mysterio's schtick in the comics, the fact that the Elementals - who were marketed as the villains of the movie - are purely CGI without any known actor and without a single spoken line in the trailers and actual movie, while Mysterio is played by A-List actor Jake Gyllenhaal made many suspicious. Also, Quentin Beck being very nice and understandable towards Peter can be read easily as an act.
- Men in Black: International: Even a casual viewer could tell who The Mole was early on. From the vagueness of the Eiffel tower prologue to Agent C being an obvious Red Herring, to High T's overt generosity and "It's never who you expect", the ease of High T rescuing them from the Diad aliens in Naples triggering Spoiled by the Format alerts all in addition to Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize. It ended up a twist that everyone knew was coming.
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout: The terrorist "John Lark" is actually August Walker, the menacing CIA Agent who's been assigned to work with Ethan Hunt. He's openly antagonistic to Ethan and company, he has a reputation for unnecessary brutality, and he gets several ominous low-angle closeups during otherwise innocuous scenes. Even the movie's trailers included footage of him blatantly shooting at Hunt. Halfway through the movie, he even tries to frame Ethan with obviously false evidence, and when The Reveal eventually comes, the movie treats it more like a formality than anything else, because honestly, there's not really any other options for who Lark could be.
- Morgan: It's pretty easy to tell early on in the film that something's off about Lee. Given the prowess with fighting and guns she shows in the climax, the reveal that she's an Artificial Human like Morgan isn't so much a twist as a "Called it!"
- In Ophelia, Mechtild being Gertrude's twin sister is played up as a minor plot twist, but it barely comes off as one due to them both being played by Naomi Watts; even before Mechtild's face is clearly shown in her first scene you can recognize her voice. In the previous scene, Gertrude had also told Ophelia not look Mechtild in the face and had earlier mentioned having a sister, so it's not hard to put two-and-two together (Ophelia herself figures it out the instant she sees Mechtild). The advertising for the film didn't help, as it didn't even try to hide that Watts was playing two separate characters, so even before watching the movie many viewers had already guessed this plot point. Luckily, it's revealed quite early in the story and the movie doesn't much dwell on it compared to the less-predictable plot twists.
- Ready Player One: It's pretty easy to tell that Aech's voice is a female voice modulated to sound a little deeper. It's easier to pull off a twist like this in a book, where you can't hear the characters.
- Saw:
- Saw III: Amanda being the one behind the rigged traps can come out as very blatant in the hindsight of the large number of films in the series that follow this one, not only due to the fact that she's the only known killer connected to Jigsaw at the time, but also because she clearly shows her testing field outfit in the brief shot when Kerry sees her.
- Both of Saw V's main twists fall right into this.
- Between the video for the first trap being roundly unsubtle ("Today, five will become one with the common goal of survival.") and the chambers in the second trap clearly being large enough to fit more than one person, most people immediately figured that the victims of the Fatal Five were meant to work together.
- Hoffman successfully framing Strahm and getting him killed is handled so poorly that it doesn't even come across as a twist ending.
- Saw 3D: Ever since Saw II, a progressively increasing number of viewers had thought (whether it be out of suspicion or as a suggested fan idea) that Lawrence might have survived and become an apprentice of Jigsaw, since his ambiguous fate from the first movie's events was referenced in some way in every following one as a sort of Myth Arc, starting with the figure who performed Michael's eye surgery on the Death Mask video tape from Saw II (initially meant to be John) having a notable limp (intended on part of the figure's actor Darren Lynn Bousman, who wanted a flavored movement that showed the progression of John's cancer by the time of the film) comparable to Lawrence's self-amputated leg. Once it became Ascended Fanon as the final twist of Saw 3D (and thus the final one of the original seven films, albeit with Lawrence being a more minor accomplice rather than a full-term apprentice), said viewers, in addition to many others, were able to see the reveal coming, not helped by the movie opening with Lawrence losing consciousness after attempting to treat his stump, then showing him midway through completely fine in the Jigsaw Survivor Group meeting, where he gives Bobby a mocking speech with a rather suspicious tone, followed by Cale referring to him as "the creepy man with the cane" when he talks to Bobby after the meeting.
- Jigsaw:
- The film sets up a supposed mystery over whether John is Back from the Dead or if someone else is behind the new spree of Jigsaw killings. However, the latter is blatantly the case due to the series having never tackled supernatural themes once, and that John's autopsy in Saw IV was meant to show that he's already dead with huge emphasis.
- Thanks to the above, many viewers were able to see the Sequencing Deception that the barn game takes place before the first film. Not so much with Logan being the one behind the present killings, though.
- Spiral: Schenk being the Spiral Killer becomes very blatant when he supposedly dies in one of the games, simply due to the fact that, unlike all the past victims (as well as the fact that this already happened in two previous films with other killers), he's never seen getting kidnapped nor is his game itself shown. Also, his surname sounds like "shank" (as in to stab someone in the back), and the fact that he's played by Max Minghella (who's already known for playing twist villains) was enough for some people to figure him out as early as the film's trailer came out.
- Saw X: The Eye Vacuum Trap seen in the movie's first ten minutes turns out to be nothing but an Imagine Spot by John when he witnesses a hospital custodian stealing from a patient, who changes his mind when he notices John watching. It's obvious that the only clear purpose of this scene is to spice up the first act with some gore, as the movie has an otherwise low-key dramatic start, unlike most other Saw films.
- Secrets & Lies: Monica's infertility is signposted fairly clearly by scenes in the film prior to the eventual reveal.
- Silver Linings Playbook: The fact that Tiffany forged Nikki's note to Pat is made obvious by the fact that everything (including the signature) is typed rather than handwritten, the content of the letter don't sound like it comes from someone with a restraining order against Pat, and Tiffany's description of Nikki's mood when handing over the letter sounds dubious. Even if you missed all that, Pat eventually rereads passages of the letter and then glances suspiciously in Tiffany's direction, making it quite clear that even Pat has figured it out. However, when Pat tells Tiffany in the end that he knows she wrote the letter, it's all treated as a big twist.
- Star Wars:
- The "reveal" that Count Dooku is a Sith Lord in Attack of the Clones. According to George Lucas, it was supposed to be a major twist that completely redefined the character. But the first we hear of him is Padmé accusing him of trying to assassinate her, he's openly the leader of the villainous Separatist faction, he's outright said to be a disillusioned former Jedi, he hangs around with Sidious' henchmen from The Phantom Menace, he's played by an actor well-known for villainous roles, the only thing he does to try and avert suspicion is a half-hearted appeal to Obi-Wan that isn't taken seriously even in-universe, and he's an old guy in a black cloak who is named "Count Dooku." Plus, it's Star Wars, so there's got to be a lightsaber duel at the end, and, well...who else could it have been against? Most people don't even realize it is a twist.
- The Reveal in The Force Awakens that Kylo Ren is Han and Leia's son. In his first scene, Lor San Tekka states he didn’t originate from the Dark Side and cannot deny "the truth that is your family". He’s obviously a powerful Force-user and strength in the Force has been shown to be hereditary in some cases (most prominently with the Skywalker family), Han and Leia had become an Official Couple at the end of Return of the Jedi and any kids they had would likely be grown up by the time of The Force Awakens, it wouldn’t be the first time Han and Leia’s son turned evil note and, let’s face it, Star Wars just loves a good family drama. The Reveal is actually unveiled less than halfway through the film. Additionally, just to hammer it in, when Snoke mentions that Kylo's father is onboard the Millennium Falcon, there's a dramatic pause, and then he adds, "Han Solo." Given that no one else onboard the Falcon at the time note could possibly be Ren's father, the last two words are just narm. At least one fan theorized that it was going to be revealed later, given that a later scene clearly treats it as The Reveal, but it seems to have been changed in editing because it was just that obvious.
- Rey being a Palpatine — while lacking foreshadowing in previous installments — is heavily telegraphed in The Rise of Skywalker. Palpatine telling Kylo that Rey is "not who [he] thinks she is" in the opening scene is just the first of many heavy-handed 'clues'. By the time Kylo reveals Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter near the third act, many viewers had already guessed the twist would be something along these lines (although some were still caught off guard by the specifics of the reveal, as Palpatine had never been hinted to have children).
- Time Crimes: The mysterious masked man harassing Hector is a time-shifted version of Hector? In a film called Time Crimes? Fancy that!
