As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance:
- This movie practically requires this to make sense of it, especially the third act, but does good job at providing enough evidence to easily do so.
- In the scene where Costello is making the Chinese Microchip deal, Ellerby works with the FBI to put the entire place under surveillance cameras and gloats about "how I love the Patriot Act", there's a small cut to a FBI techie who seems to sneer at him. The entire sting is a bust because the cameras are angled poorly and the meeting is conducted in a huge blind spot. Later we find out that Costello is a FBI mole, so the entire scene has the FBI guys screwing Ellerby and the Staties over to protect their man.
- Sullivan strolls out of his meeting with Queenan and flirts with the secretary which means he doesn't spot Billy and know he was already in the police and interviewed by Queenan for his special unit.
- While Costello is interrogating Billy by slamming a shoe against his already broken arm, he asks him to swear on his mother's grave he's not a cop. Billy yells that he's not a cop, but never swears on his mother's grave. Costello seems not to notice.
- Some people say Sullivan deleting Billy's file would be discovered in any remotely realistic situation. Who says it wasn't? Maybe someone else in IA was quietly building a case against him, and it was just another way he would've eventually been caught, like the evidence Billy left with Madolyn, or the evidence Costello sent to the FBI (possibly).
