Spotting The Thread / Film

Spotting the Thread in Animated and Live-Action Films.

Animated Films

• Incredibles 2: Elastigirl twigs on to something being wrong with her infiltration of the Screenslaver's lair when she wonders why the Screenslaver, who obviously had access to a lot of resources, only used mundane deadbolt locks on his door. She then realizes that the Screenslaver she fought was a fake when she figures out that the heavy goggles he was wearing could serve as the screens for the Screenslaver to control him. She also notices that footage from her mask is being broadcast on Screenslaver's TV, when the mask is supposed to be closed circuit.
• Leroy & Stitch: When Leroy disguises himself as Stitch after he has been kidnapped, Lilo was able to tell he was an imposter because he was not wearing the tiki necklace she gave the real Stitch prior to his departure from Earth.
• Megamind:
  • In the climactic battle, Titan realizes that Metroman is actually Megamind in disguise due to the distinctive way he mispronounces Metro City.
  • Although it serves as Five-Second Foreshadowing, Roxanne realizes that Metroman's hideout can't be as abandoned as it seems because there's still a drink with unmelted ice on the side.
• In The Road to El Dorado, the two con-men protagonists convince the natives of El Dorado that they are gods in human form. However, the high priest Tzekal-Kan realizes the truth when he sees that Miguel has a bleeding cut from playing ball (think full-contact Mayincatec basketball) against a team of natives.
  Tzekal-Kan: Do you know why the gods demand blood sacrifices? Because gods don't bleed.
• Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph realizes that something suspicious is going on in Sugar Rush when he notices that there’s a picture of Vanellope on the side of the arcade machine, contrary to King Candy’s claim that she’s a glitch character that was never supposed to be in the game.
  Ralph: If Vanellope was never supposed to exist, why is her picture on the side of the game console?
• Rango has to use a Snowball Lie to bluff his way out of one of these, when he claims to have killed the Jenkins brothers with one bullet and is immediately asked "All seven of them?"
• Batman: Assault on Arkham: Batman, suspecting that Harley Quinn deliberately let herself get captured, takes a look at Arkham security camera feeds. He recognizes guards who shouldn't be there that night and realizes that he's seeing recorded footage from the previous day.

Live-Action Films

• In the Taiwanese spy-action film 21 Red List, the Japanese double-agent, Kiki, lies to protagonist Chi-wu that she's been in the shower while waiting for him in his bedroom, when she's actually searching his room for the titular list. Chi-wu however sees through her lies because even though the bathroom's floor is wet, there isn't any steam on the mirrors.
• In Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, "Master of Disguise" Sam Smith blows his cover after infiltrating the tomato camp, by asking for ketchup to put on the arm he's about to eat.
• A Beautiful Mind: a variation: this is how John Nash finally realizes his chronic hallucinations. One of his hallucinations is a young girl, but even though he's seen her for years, she's never grown any older.
• In Big Eyes, when Margaret finds a shipping box of paintings by S. Cenic in the closet, which helps her realize that Walter had been lying about painting in Paris.
• The point of the Voight-Kampff Test in Blade Runner is to spot the thread for Replicants. Replicants are biological androids completely identical to humans down to blood, sweat and bad breath, but they have no empathy. The test involves asking questions that would provoke an empathetic response in a human and note when the replicant fails to show any physical signs. It is notably not entirely foolproof: it's supposed to produce a response in 20 questions, but Decker questions Rachel for hours, and even then has nothing that confirms that she's actually a Replicant, only his suspicion, until her creator confirms it.
• The Bodyguard From Beijing: John is able to tell apart assassins and common civilians during the mall shootout, because the assassins all have pens clipped to their pockets. A supposedly cowering civilian gets gunned down by John the moment he sees the pen on his front, dropping his pistol in the process.
• In The Bounty Hunter, Nicole initially becomes suspicious of an apparent "suicide" because the dead man would have allegedly jumped through trees and hit the ground head-first. If the victim was serious about killing himself, the trees might have broken his fall (or at least slowed it to a non-fatal speed) when he would have gone straight to the pavement if he jumped off the other side of the building, and anyone jumping off a building would hit the ground feet first.
• In the documentary Catfish, Nev begins to realize Megan is not real because he finds out she took other people's songs and said they were hers.
• The Da Vinci Code: Zigzagged. Bank manager Andre Vernet is helping the protagonists flee the police by putting them in a truck and pretending to be the driver. A detective, though, notices a Rolex on his hand and wonders how a truck driver can afford it. Without skipping a beat, Vernet convincingly plays it off as a fake he bought from some shady dealer and even offers to sell it to the cop for cheap.
• In Dark City, Inspector Frank Bumstead realizes that John Murdoch isn't a serial killer after he finds a goldfish swimming in a bathtub near the body of one of Murdoch's recently murdered "victims". He deduces (correctly) that Murdoch accidentally knocked over the goldfish's bowl, but moved the goldfish to the bathtub so that it wouldn't die. He realizes that a remorseless murderer wouldn't have taken the time to save the life of a fish, which leads him to the realization that Murdoch has been framed for murder by the Strangers.
• Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection has a US Agent able to get close to the Big Bad, Ramon Cota, and become his second in command. However, he gives himself up when he sets up Cota's arrest during his flight on a private jet, because he was the only person Cota told about it.
• In Die Hard 2: Die Harder, McClane notices two men sitting at a table who, despite being dressed in business casual attire, are wearing combat boots rather than appropriate shoes. Becoming suspicious he follows them, reports them, discovers they are Mooks of the Big Bad who are up to no good, and does everything in his power to foil them, which would have worked without a hitch if the cops in the airport weren't such belligerent, incompetent assholes.
• In Die Hard with a Vengeance, McClane gets in an elevator with several terrorists disguised as cops and security. He notices they're using terminology incorrectly, referring to the elevator as a "lift" (a European/British term) and a weather report as raining "dogs and cats" (instead of "cats and dogs"). McClane is visibly suspicious, and spots that "Detective Otto" is wearing a police badge that belongs to a friend of his. He assesses whether anyone in the elevator is a real cop by asking what the lottery numbers were last night, since it's been established that all New York cops play the lottery. When no one knows, McClane realizes that they're all imposters.
• In Double Indemnity Keyes is entirely satisfied that the late Mr. Dietrichson's death was not suspicious and entirely accidental...until he realizes that the man had broken his leg right after signing up for a generous accident coverage policy, yet he didn't file a claim for his leg. This is the first piece of evidence that Dietrichson didn't even know about the policy in question.
• Dredd:
  • Judge Dredd trips up a corrupt Judge on Big Bad Ma-Ma's payroll this way. When the Judge states that he is responding to a call for backup, Dredd points out that the Judge didn't ask about the rookie Anderson; Dredd is alone in hostile territory at the time, and a Judge really responding to such a call for Dredd and Anderson would have have asked where the missing rookie is.
  • The same thing happens with the rookie herself. The corrupt woman Judge of the group sent by Ma-Ma claims she will kill the rookie, because as a Judge, Anderson is likely to trust her and hesitate. Anderson, being psychic, sees through the deception almost immediately and kills the corrupt judge after a brief exchange.
• Enola Holmes: At the end of the film, Enola receives a coded letter from her mother just as she had been hoping for all movie. However, she quickly realises that it was actually written by her older brother Sherlock because firstly, it was signed 'Mother' when her mother would use a codename and secondly, as a radical feminist in Victorian London Enola's mother would never arrange to meet her at the Royal Society, an institute that routinely snubbed female applicants.
• In A Few Good Men, an Armor-Piercing Question shatters Col. Jessup's confidence in his testimony. Jessup had kept his cool, arrogantly stating that his orders have always been followed and that he did not order the Code Red. Kaffee seizes on the Logic Bomb: if Jessup gave an order that Santiago wasn't to be touched, and his orders are always followed as he so claims, then why would Santiago be in danger, and why would it be necessary to transfer him off the base? Jessup clearly looking uncomfortable and fumbling over his words is a clue that the trial has taken a turn.
• Get Smart: Max spots the traitor because, after visiting the Big Bad's destroyed lair and reporting that there was no longer any active uranium there, the traitor sets off the Geiger counter concealed in Max's watch. On mentioning this he then spots that the traitor's stab wound is freshly bleeding, as if nerves of being detected were prompting a higher blood flow.
• In Ghost Ship, Epps catches on that the villain has killed and impersonated her last remaining crewmate when he doesn't ask her what happened to the second-to-last one, who's been killed in the interim. He drops the act and admits he already knows because he killed the other one too.
• The climax of The Godfather Part II is a famous example. During a conversation with Michael early in the movie, Fredo claims that he's never met Hyman Roth or his lieutenant Johnny Ola. Later, when Michael and Fredo are watching a lurid live show at a nightclub in Havana with Johnny and a few other family associates, Fredo gets excited and accidentally reveals that he took Johnny to see the show a few days previously. Turns out that Fredo and Johnny have met before, but Fredo lied and claimed that they hadn't. From this tiny slip-up, Michael is able to figure out that Fredo has betrayed the family, and is working with Hyman Roth to bring him down.
• In Godzilla (2014), after breaking back into old Janjira, after it was quarantined due to a reactor meltdown, Joe Brody realizes the place isn't radioactive when he spots three dogs chasing each other, when they should be dead from radiation. A quick check of his Geiger counter confirms his suspicions.
• In the 1974 film Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, the human protagonists begin to suspect that the disguised Mechagodzilla is a fake when it attacks Anguirus...something the REAL Godzilla wouldn't do since he and Anguirus are allies. Their suspicions are confirmed when the original Godzilla shows up to do battle against Mechagodzilla for the first time. Anguirus also immediately notices that the disguised Mechagodzilla is a fake because it doesn't sound or act like the Godzilla he knows.
• In The Gourmet Detective, title character Henry Ross realises that an alleged ‘suicide message’ he received on his answering machine was faked when he realises that it records a one o’clock and two o’clock chime from a distinctive clock in the same message fifteen seconds apart, thus confirming that it was actually created from a series of other conversations spliced together.
• The Great Escape: This is how Bartlett and MacDonald are captured. A Gestapo agent asks to see their identification and asks them questions in French, as their cover identities are French businessmen. When he is finished, he says "good luck" to them in English, and MacDonald blunders by replying in English. A case of Truth in Television; this is pretty much exactly how Roger Bushell (the basis for the Bartlett character) was caught in the real escape (see "Real Life").
• In Hangmen Also Die!, Inspector Gruber figures out that Dr. Svoboda and Mascha weren't actually having an affair when he sees lipstick smeared on his own cheek in the mirror, recalling that the lipstick mark on Dr. Svoboda's cheek was immaculate and thus deducing that it must have been placed there intentionally to throw him off their scent by making it seem like what they were up to was having an affair.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry and Ron's plan to disguise themselves as Crabbe and Goyle is nearly undone at the start when Malfoy notices "Goyle" wearing glasses. When Harry gives the excuse he was reading, Malfoy's response is "READING?!......I didn't know you could read."^note A line which was ad libbed by Tom Felton
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Barty Crouch Jr. used a Polyjuice potion to disguise himself as Mad-eye Moody. However, Barty Crouch Sr. spotted "Moody" doing Junior's signature tongue-flick, which gave him away. Note this was only done in the film version.
• This is a plot point in The Hateful Eight, as soon as Major Marquis Warren arrives at Minny's Haberdashery he immediately notices that things are wrong. For example: a single jelly bean is lying on the ground far away from its storage jar, visitors are wearing hats inside (which the rules of the haberdashery don't allow), Minny is said to be on vacation (a flimsy story), Minny's famous stew is still fresh despite the fact that she's been gone for a while according to Bob, guests are sitting on Sweet Dave's chair (which would never be allowed), and Bob (a Mexican) has been hired to watch over the haberdashery while Minny is "gone" (Minny hates Mexicans so she would never do this.) His suspicions are proven to be correct.
• In Hot Pursuit, cop Cooper and drug lord wife Daniella barely escape when masked killers shoot up a mansion. Cooper calls for help and is met at a diner by cops Dixon and Hauser who said they were responding to her call. Cooper reflects on how she only put out the call 20 minutes earlier and to arrive here from the station so fast, Dixon and Hauser would have had to have been doing 180 miles an hour. She then sees their car's fuel gauge indicating they have only traveled about 30 miles which is where the mansion was. The clincher comes when Cooper sees Hauser has the same arm tattoo as one of the masked gunmen.
• In Inception there's an example of literally spotting the thread, when Saito notices that the carpet in a room he's in is made of the wrong fibre, tipping him off that he's still in a dream.
• Inglourious Basterds, Deiter Hellstrom notes that the Inglourious Basterds pretending to be German officers are behaving strangely. He also says that Lieutenant Hicox's German accent sounds strange. Hicox covers for himself by saying that he's from a small Swiss mountain village with a unique regional accent. This seems to quell Hellstrom's suspicions, but then he asks for three drinks with the wrong hand gesture, using "index-middle-ring" and not "thumb-index-middle", as Germans usually do it. This finally convinces Hellstrom that he's an impostor.
• The Italian Job (2003) has this: Steve realizes Stella is John's daughter because of a phrase she uses, that he's never heard from anyone one else but John.
  Steve: Still don't trust me?
  Stella: I trust everyone. I just don't trust the devil inside them.
• James Bond:
  • In From Russia with Love, Red Grant is impersonating Captain Nash, Bond's MI6 contact in Yugoslavia. Bond is initially suspicious as "Nash" calls him "Old Man" rather than "Old Chap" like a Briton would, so he inspects his briefcase and finds the standard-issue MI6 equipment, allaying his fears. However, during dinner, Nash orders red wine with his seafood dish rather than white wine, something that no cultured Briton would do, he "accidentally" spills Tatiana Romanova's glass and slips some pills in while refilling it and toasts with "cheero" instead of "cheerio". Bond starts to see that Nash isn't who he seems, however, he doesn't put two and two together till after Grant gets the drop on him.
  • In You Only Live Twice, Blofeld sees through Bond's astronaut disguise when he attempts to enter the capsule while carrying his air conditioner unit in his hand, something a real astronaut would never do.
  • In Tomorrow Never Dies, Elliot Carver's tech assistant Gupta immediately uncovers Bond's secret identity. The tech calls it "Gupta's Law of Creative Anomaly", and explains that anyone's personnel record is bound to have errors, past demerits/infractions, and flaws. Bond's fake banker profile is too perfect, meaning he's obviously a government agent.
  • In Quantum of Solace, M wants to know if the CIA is interested in Dominic Greene, so she calls their head office and asks about it. She's routed to the CIA section chief for South America, who denies having any interest in him. M immediately concludes that he's lying because they automatically routed her to the highest-ranking officer in the region of the world Greene is in, which they wouldn't have done if they weren't already tracking him.
• In The Last Witch Hunter, Kaulder has a penchant for spotting those.
  • He realizes that something's sketchy about 36th Dolan's demise when he notes that retirony is normally not Truth in Television.
  • The illusion that 36th Dolan's house is neatly cleaned up is shattered when he notices a Plague Fly - a dead-ringer for Dark Magic - dead on the floor of a house which was locked up for the entire day. When he tests the house for Black Magic because of it, Glamour Failure ensues.
  • His clue to Ellic being part of a gang rather than a singular assassin is the fact that Ellic is too low-level a warlock to perform shapeshifting Kaulder's seen him wear.
• In Legally Blonde, Elle Woods, during the climactic trial, notices that Chutney Windham's testimony included the claim that she had gotten a perm and then taken a shower soon after, just before the incident in which she claimed that Elle's client shot her father. Knowing that you're not supposed to get your hair wet for twenty-four hours after a perm, Elle uses this fact in order to tear Chutney's case against her client apart, eventually finding out that Chutney had shot her father herself when she had sought to kill the client instead, since she'd been angry about her father taking up with someone who was the same age as his daughter.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: The First Avenger:
    • Steve Rogers wakes up in a 1940s-era room. A woman wearing a period-specific military uniform enters to greet him. Rogers catches on that something is amiss when he remembers being at a baseball game that was seemingly broadcast live over a radio in the same room.
    • In a meta example, viewers familiar with 1940s period fashion can tell the scene is in the present and not a dream because the agent is wearing a bra that's noticeable through her shirt (the cups of 40's era bras would have fit closer to the chest). Also, while her hair is curly (as was the style in the 1940s), the curls are much too small and haphazard to be true Victory Curls. Steve seems to notice something is off about her appearance from the second he sees her.
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier:
    • Steve notices an ammo bunker at what's left of the decommissioned Camp Lehigh that's way too close to the barracks for either safety or Army regulations. It turns out to be the secret base holding Zola's uploaded brain.
    • Earlier in the film Steve realizes the friends and colleagues piling into the elevator with him on apparently innocent business are there to attack or restrain him because he spots the tell-tale signs of nervousness and weapon-readiness they are trying to conceal. Being Steve Rogers, he gives away the element of surprise by asking if anyone wants to opt out of the coming fight.
  • Captain Marvel:
    • After lecturing Carol that everyone calls him Fury, and absolutely no one calls him anything else, Fury is on high alert when another agent calls him "Nicholas". Carol is also able to track another Skrull onto a train when they assume the form of an old woman...whom Carol had run into by accident getting off of the train just before getting on the train herself. This small detail also comes into play for the audience in ''Spider-Man: Far From Home, as "Maria Hill" refers to Fury as "Nicholas" in the beginning, hinting that "Fury" is really Talos the Skrull.
    • A double-whammy when Yon-Rogg confronts Carol near the end of the movie: "Carol" answers his questions perfectly until he presses "her" for more detail and "she" slips up. This both clues him in to "Carol" being a Skrull and to "Vers" having turned on him.
• In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, murderous thief Sabine is canny enough to know that IMF is after the intelligence she stole (killing IMF Agent Hanaway to do so), and realizes that Ethan and Brandt are IMF agents when she sees Brandt's hi-tech contact lens, which Hanaway had been wearing when she killed him at the start of the film.
• Not Okay: Harper realizes Danni's lies about going to Paris as Danni said it was clear then, but actually the city had rain at the time. Then there was how Danni claimed to have toured Notre Dame Cathedral, which would have been hard given it was shut down after the massive 2019 fire. She then dug deeper into it and uncovered that this was all made up. She gives Danni the choice between coming clean herself or Harper blowing the lid. Danni chooses the former.
• In Our Man Flint, the protagonist reveals two fake guards that have had plastic surgery to look exactly like the regular ones. The give-away is that they wear uniform ribbons made from an existing - but unofficial - medal. Flint spots this at first glance.
• In Paycheck, Jennings suspects that the Rachel he meets in the cafe is an impostor when he sees a colored contact lens shift out of position while they kiss.
• On the train ride back home near the end of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Neal reminisces on the ordeal he's finally putting behind him and thinks back over some of the things his traveling companion Del fondly said about his wife and his home. It only clicks that something is wrong when he recalls Del also casually saying "I haven't been home in years." He returns to the train station to find Del still sitting there alone, who confesses to Neal that his wife died eight years ago, and he has no home to go back to.
• The ending of Primal Fear has Martin Vail realize something is off when his client, Aaron, said "I hope her neck is okay." The injury he refers to happened during an attack made by his split-personality, during which Aaron allegedly has no memory - and yet he apparently knew about where "Roy" had attacked the prosecutor.
• In Rags, Lloyd manages to discover that Charlie is Rags by noticing a conspicuous signature on Rags' shoes, which matches the one on Charlie's.
• Zigzagged in Scream (1996): Billy Loomis, who has been suspected of being the killer for the entire movie, and even taken into custody at one point (although he was later cleared) is asked by his girlfriend Sidney who he called with his "One Phone Call" when he was arrested. He tells her that he called his father, but Sidney points out that the station called his father. Not thirty seconds later, he is killed, exonerating him from suspicion. However, it turns out that he actually was the killer (or one of them anyway) and had faked his death, and the thread Sidney had spotted earlier was probably correct.
• This happens at near the end of Scream 4. After it seems like the latest Ghostface Sidney's cousin, Jill, got away with the perfect crime in murdering Sidney, and replacing her as the Final Girl, she makes a fatal mistake. She tells Dewey about her arm injury pointing out how it was the same injury Gale Weathers had. When Dewey mentioned this to his on-again, off-again life mate, she points out that Jill could only have gotten the same injury if she was the Ghostface who attacked her at the annual Stab party. Before they can expose Jill, Sidney fights and kills her after Jill found out she was still alive and tried to finish the job.
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows:
  • Holmes and Watson work out which of the ambassadors at the peace summit has been replaced by an impostor when Watson deliberately knocks a tray of glasses over. The fake is the only one who doesn't turn and look, being too enveloped in his role to produce a spontaneous reaction.
  • Holmes identifies where Moriarty is keeping his important secrets; in a small notebook he keeps on him at all times. But it'll be encrypted, so Holmes needs the cipher key. Oddly, the brilliant and detail-focused Moriarty has allowed his windowbox plants to shrivel up, despite having a well-thumbed book called The Art of Domestic Horticulture'' next to his chalkboard, where Moriarty has clearly been working out something. Sure enough, the book is the key.
• in Stalag 17, the Germans have planted a spy, Price, in a POW camp posing as an American flier from Cleveland. Sefton (William Holden) suspects the ruse, and in the climactic scene confronts Price:
  Sefton: When was Pearl Harbor, Price, or don't you know that?
  Price: December 7th, '41.
  Sefton: What time?
  Price: 6:00. I was having dinner.
  Sefton: 6:00 in Berlin. [To the other barrack members:] They were having lunch in Cleveland.
• In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Kirk and party are within seconds of successfully bluffing their way out of the hospital with the wounded Chekov in tow when this exchange occurs.
  Guard: How's the patient, Doctor?
  Kirk: He's going to make it.
  Guard: He? They went in with a she.
  Kirk: (to himself) One little mistake...[they run]
• In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Kirk finds something off in "God's" demands for his followers:
  "God": This...starship...could it carry my...wisdom beyond the Barrier?
  Sybok: It could! Yes!
  "God": Then I shall make use of this starship.
  Sybok: It will be your chariot!
  Kirk: Excuse me...
  "God": It will carry my power through every corner of Creation...
  Kirk: Excuse me, I'd just like to ask a question...What does God need with a starship?
• The dramatic thrust of Sucker Punch is almost entirely dependent on whether or not the audience can do this. There's a really big clue, though, just before The Reveal that a twist is coming because a character's wearing a dress she shouldn't have.
• The ending of the 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three has the last remaining hijacker accidentally giving away his identity with his recognizable sneeze.
• Titanic (1997): Jack talks down a suicidal Rose, while removing his jacket and shoes incase he has to jump in to save her. Unwilling to admit this, they claim she simply slipped and he pulled her back up (which did happen). Lovejoy immediately spots the flaw, if she slipped so suddenly, how could Jack have had time to remove his jacket and shoes? It is unclear however if he works out the truth.
• In Transformers: Age of Extinction, when Cade is trying to deny any knowledge of Optimus Prime to the CIA, he refers to Optimus as "he", alerting Attinger that Cade must have spoken to Optimus if he was using gender-pronouns, since they were asking if he'd seen a truck.
• In The Truman Show, the world Truman spent his entire life in starts collapsing as he begins noticing multiple threads pulling apart.
  • In particular, there's a point where he observes that a lady on a red bike, a man with flowers, and a vintage Volkswagen beetle with a dented fender, go around the block, over and over again, and always in the exact same order at the exact same time.
  • During the "Nuclear Meltdown" encountered during his escape attempt, his reaction to a police officer uttering "You're welcome, Truman." without ever asking his name or being shown any ID.
  • The writers handwave the falling spotlight as a falling piece of a random satellite, but that's a pretty blatant lie for us.
  • One day when Truman is driving into work, his radio starts picking up interference and he notices that it's narrating everything he's doing (which the radio show host handwaves as being interference from a police scanner).
  • As a child, Truman's "father" had drowned to death to instill a lifelong fear of water (his actor was also getting fired due to a contract dispute). One day, Truman's father suddenly returns to the show, having snuck back in, and they try to handwave it away as "amnesia", but this leads Truman to finally overcome his fear.
  • Meryl's attempt to cheer Truman up with cocoa backfires when he notices how she's giving him an obvious, stilted sales pitch for that cocoa, leading to a heated argument which ends with him holding a kitchen gadget to her neck, at which point she yells "do something" at a hidden camera.
  • While looking at his wedding album, he notices a photo showing Meryl doing a Lying Finger Cross.
  • In a deleted scene, Truman gives his sandwich to a man in a wheelchair, and two days later he notices the same man jogging like he's in perfect health. He's even wearing the same shoes.
  • To the audience, the town Truman is living in is obviously fake looking but Truman grew up in that setting so to him all the oddities look perfectly normal. However, the cost of maintaining an entire fake town would be enormous and it's clear that the producers have been Cutting Corners. Sets are reused, same extras are used for multiple roles and continuity is not adhered to. Truman has been basically brainwashed to accept everything that is happening as normal and not to question things that are out of place, but the anomalies are allowed to get so out of control that even Truman realizes that things are massively wrong in his life.
• In Truth, bloggers examine memos used in support of a 60 Minutes broadcast and find out that the memos, allegedly typed in the 1970s, could be reproduced perfectly with the default settings of Microsoft Word, and early 1970s machines that could have produced the memos would not have been available to the alleged author.
• At the end of The Usual Suspects, as Agent Kujan believes he figured out that the testimony he just heard from Verbal Kint was meant to protect Dean Keaton's identity of Keyser Söze, his gaze lingers on the overcrowded billboard of his colleague and makes a connection between its brand ("Quartet" from Skokie, IL) and a seemingly irrelevant anecdote Verbal told earlier about having been "in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois". From there, Kujan realizes that every detail from Verbal's story has been made up based on names pulled from the billboard for the purpose of buying time until he was bailed out and that Verbal Kint was actually Keyser Söze all along.
• In Warcraft (2016), Khadgar realizes that something doesn't add up in Medivh's behaviour when the latter burns down his research on the Portal.
• In Wild Wild West, Jim West immediately recognizes that Artemis Gordon is not the real President Grant (he was basically practicing his decoy costume). When Gordon asks what the tipoff was, West points out his class ring — it identifies him as a Harvard graduate, and President Grant attended West Point. Of course, there's a very good reason why the make-up was so good - Grant and Gordon are played by the same actor.
• Winterskin: One morning, Billy comments that Agnes slept surprisingly soundly for someone who's deathly afraid of skinless monsters breaking into her door in the middle of the night. That's because she was lying to make him stay with her. The only actual skinless monster he ever faces is his father, after Agnes skins him.
• In Wishmaster, Alex eventually catches on that the Djinn disguised himself as one of her friends. The Djinn manages to explain a Saying Too Much slip-up, but his antagonistic behavior and constant offers to do something for her (thereby invoking a wish) give him away.
• In X2: X-Men United, Wolverine figures out Mystique isn't Jean because she has the scars where he stabbed her in the previous movie. Later in the same movie, Stryker takes one look at Mystique from across a large room and knows she's not Wolverine simply saying "I know my own work".
• xXx:
  • Xander Cage spotting the fake diner hold-up and critiquing everyone in on it due to all the dangling threads he spotted within a minute:
    Xander: You know, you almost had me going there for a while. I was a bit groggy before, then I started noticing things. Like, you got a stockbroker over here, all dressed up, reading the Financial Times on a Sunday morning when the market's closed. Unlikely, but okay, I can go with that. I can even go with the stick-up man packing a cop-issue Beretta. But you want to know where you blew it? With her. [points to the waitress] My aunt was in the restaurant business all her life. There's no way in hell a career waitress comes to work in high heels. She'd have blisters the size of pancakes before lunch. And if she ain't real, then this whole thing ain't real. That's how I knew this bozo over here wouldn't get a shot off even if we waited till St. Patrick's Day. Because there's nothing but blanks in these guns. Oh, and no offense, but their performances were terrible.
  • Subverted in the next scene when Xander assumes they are still playing with him after dumping him in Columbian drug cartel territory. He figures it out just before Danny Trejo goes to work on him with a machete. Because the blood on it smells awfully real.
  • In the sequel, Xander is at a market square when a man comes up, strikes up a conversation with Xander, and leaves a bag behind. Xander looks in to find a ticking bomb seconds before a SWAT team runs in to arrest him. Rolling his eyes, Xander takes down a cop and spins around, firing his machine gun, showing it's full of blanks. He relates how he knew it was a test: A teen is listening to expensive headphones rather than the cheaper knock-offs; a woman is running to catch a bus that won't leave for two hours; a "cop" is paying for a drink with foreign currency; and the old man struck up a conversation somehow knowing ahead of time that Xander spoke English.