Wham Shot / Film

Movies/franchises with their own pages:

• Marvel Cinematic Universe

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Films — Animated

• 101 Dalmatians Jasper and Horace have entered the Radcliffes' house to make off with something. Nanny, whom Jasper had temporarily trapped before he and Horace escape, initially believes they took the good silver, but to her shock and horror, what they have actually stolen were the 15 Dalmatian puppies.
• The Bad Guys:
  • In the prison scene, after the Crimson Paw — a legendary thief that disappeared years ago — swoops in and takes down the entire police force inside the prison, she walks up to the Bad Guys and takes off her mask, revealing herself to be Governor Diane Foxington.
  • Following the highway chase, Professor Marmalade had managed to steal the meteorite back from the Bad Guys, and in the aftermath, he's interviewed by Tiffany Fluffit on live television to save face. He takes a moment to applaud himself... and the lights of the meteorite turn on and off with the claps, revealing it to be a decoy made from a lamp.
• Cars: Lightning stopping just inches before the finish line to let Chick win, before proceeding to help The King cross the line, showing his change of heart has fully taken effect.
• Coco: Dante taking on the technicolor palette of Pepita, revealing he was an alebrije all along.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show: The first shot of the alley that was destroyed in the Eds' latest scam that went awry, especially since it came off the heels of nearly two minutes of tranquil silence.
• Frozen: Hans stopping just inches away from Anna's lips to kiss her and revive her of her frozen heart, then giving a rather scary grin, which not only alerts Anna, but also the whole audience, that something is not right.
• Frozen II:
  • Agnarr and Iduna's shipwreck being found on the coast of the Northuldra's forest, and NOT the Southern Seas as Anna and Elsa had been led to believe for 6 years.
  • Elsa's hands starting to freeze once she reaches the deepest part of Ahtohallan. It isn't long before the rest of her body starts freezing.
• Incredibles 2: At an event celebrating Elastigirl capturing the Screenslaver, Elastigirl looks at one of the screens showing her fight with the villain and sees the action being played on a screen in the background. By realizing that the Screenslaver somehow accessed her suit's camera, Elastigirl has a "Eureka!" Moment that gets her one step closer to finding the person responsible. This is then followed by Evelyn, who's been "helping" her the entire time, slapping a hypno-mask on her.
• Inside Out: While Joy is breaking down in the Memory Dump, a tear falls on the happy memory of the twisty tree; while wiping it off, she rewinds the memory and it turns blue, revealing it was a sad memory turned happy where Riley was upset her team lost until her parents and team reassured her. This causes Joy to realizes Sadness's true job at Headquarters: Empathy.
• The LEGO Movie: After Emmet falls into the abyss, he wakes up but is portrayed as a minifig in real-life (not talking or animated) as we see that the entire movie is the playtime of a young boy named Flynn. This is then followed up by the reveal that "The Man Upstairs" is Flynn's father, played by Will Ferrell who is also the voice actor of Lord Business.
• Lightyear: After Buzz is captured by Zurg, his body opens up to reveal his true identity: an old man who looks a great deal like himself. A confused Buzz asks if he's his father, but the man replies "Guess again" and shows him his dog tag — it's his own tag.
• The Lion King (1994): The last wildebeest in the stampede revealing Simba Mufasa's dead body.
• Moana has two back-to-back.
  • When Moana finally makes it to Te Fiti's resting place, she finds that the island itself has vanished entirely. This leads directly to the second Wham Shot.
  • Moana sees the symbol of Te Fiti on Te Ka's torso, revealing that Te Ka is Te Fiti.
• Monsters, Inc.:
  • We have this moment accompanying Waternoose's Wham Line.
    Mike: Um, sir...that's not her door.
    Waternoose: I know, I know...
    (Suddenly, Randall appears next to the door, opening it with a maniacal grin)
    Waternoose: It's yours.
  • Waternoose winds up on the receiving end of this in the climax, when he grabs what he thinks is Boo — only to realize that he actually grabbed the kid in the simulation room from the beginning of the movie, and his confession to enslave children to keep his company going is caught on camera.
• Monsters University has a shot that reveals the door that Mike found and opened to the human world doesn't have one child, but an entire summer camp.
• Mulan's musical number "A Girl Worth Fighting For" abruptly ends mid-lyrics when the soldiers arrive at a village razed by the Huns. And then that gets one-upped when they see the battlefield where General Li's entire army was massacred.
• The Stinger of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks features the reveal of Twilight Sparkle's human counterpart in the Equestria Girls universe. It turns out that she's been attending a different school all along—and she's become aware of recent strange events at Canterlot High School following her alternate self's arrival.
• The shot in ParaNorman that reveals that the witch is just a scared little girl, who looks uncannily like Norman.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Puss's fight with the bounty hunter Wolf in the bar, after losing his eighth of nine lives, ends with the wolf's sickle slashing Puss's forehead. The shot of Puss's wide, panicking eyes staring at the Wolf as he begins to hyperventilate, while blood drips between his eyes, firmly establishes the film's Darker and Edgier tone and the threat the Wolf presents.
• Scooby-Doo Direct-to-Video Film Series:
  • Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island: The gang has incapacitated a zombie, and Fred decides to pull the mask off to find out who it is. However, he eventually ends up pulling the whole head off, revealing that the zombie is not just a man in a costume, but a very real zombie.
  • Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost: The supposed diary of Sarah Ravencroft to prove she's not a witch has a demonic-looking skull on the cover and is ragged. This would look far too spooky to be a diary; in fact, it's not a diary at all, but a spell book. This is but moments before Ben reveals Sarah wasn't a Wiccan and she really is a Wicked Witch and tricked Mystery Inc. into helping him summon her.
  • Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster: The plan to trap the monster in the climax is going well. Then Daphne reaches for her walkie talkie to contact the others and First Mate McIntyre grabs her arm, launching a Spanner in the Works mutiny to try and capture the monster himself and sell it on the black market.
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: At the end of the film, there are a few that show that Miles ended up in the wrong universe.
  • First, shortly after Miles confesses to being Spider-Man to his mother, who says she has no idea who or what Spider-Man is, he begins glitching out, something that happens to anyone who's in another universe without special equipment.
  • Shortly afterward, Miles sees a mural memorializing his father Jefferson, who died in Aaron's place.
  • Miles ends up captured by the still-living Earth-42 version of his Uncle Aaron. After giving him a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech that falls flat, telling Aaron he doesn't have to be the Prowler, Aaron reveals... he's not. At which point the Prowler of Earth-42 emerges, and unmasks himself to reveal that he is the Miles Morales of that world.
• In The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, SpongeBob and Patrick are drying out in a gift shop on the surface and they believe that they didn't reach Shell City and failed their mission...until Patrick notices a sign above them reading "Shell City: Marine Gifts and Sundries". Yep, they did make it.
• Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay: All throughout the movie, Reverse Flash has been one of many villains chasing the fabled Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free Card. His reasons for doing so are made clear in the climax, when Thawne takes off his mask to reveal a bullet wound clean through his head, the same one he received in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Mario gets sent back to Brooklyn as the Mushroom Kingdom's warp pipe vacuums in at an alarming rate. Spike is just about to yell at him for getting in his way when, with no warning whatsoever, Bowser's airship bursts out of the ground, bringing the final battle to Brooklyn which only a few incarnations of Mario in the past have done.
• In Toy Story 2:
  • "YARD SALE".
  • The man who Al had called to repair Woody ends up painting over Andy's name on Woody's boot. The DVD Commentary notes that at several screenings, audience members audibly gasped at this scene.
  • When Woody asks his Roundup friends to come back to Andy’s house with him and the other toys, he turns around Stinky Pete’s box to find him gone—and screwing shut the grate on the air vent. That’s when we find out that Pete is Evil All Along rather than a gentleman, going to any lengths to keep Woody with them en route to Japan, which he’d been trying to do since Woody told him, Jessie and Bullseye that he still belonged to Andy. It starts when Pete wakes up Al by turning up "Woody's Roundup" while Woody tries to retrieve his detached arm.
• In Toy Story 3, the toys manage to escape from the shredder and Rex sees what he thinks is daylight at the end of the shaft. However, when Woody goes to look, he realizes that they aren't looking at daylight. The camera then zooms ahead to reveal that the toys are heading towards the flames of the incinerator.
• In Turning Red, the shot of Ming walking toward the SkyDome as a Kaiju sized red panda.
• In Up, such a shot reveals that Carl's house is now in the middle of a construction area.
• In Wreck-It Ralph
  • When Ralph sees Vanellope's picture on the side of Sugar Rush's arcade cabinet, meaning that she's not a Glitch Entity as he has been lead to believe, but a legitimate character who was unfairly cut out of the game.
  • In the climactic race, Vanellope (who's trying to win) is fighting with King Candy. She starts glitching out while she's grabbing on to his arm, which causes his appearance to destabilize and reveals him for who he really is: Turbo, one-time main character of an old racing game who got both his and another game disabled through being an Attention Whore.

Films — Live-Action

• In 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the scene of Dave and Frank discussing HAL's possible unreliability shifts to closeups of their mouths intercut with HAL's fisheye lens, indicating that HAL is reading their lips.
• Absolute Power (1997): Alan Richmond being the President of the United States is revealed like this. Initially, the audience isn't aware who he is when Luther witnesses his affair with and murder of Christy Sullivan; the presence of his security staff hints that he's a high-placed person, but he's not formally introduced until a White House press conference when the camera pans up to reveal that the President is the same man who is responsible for the death of a young woman that night.
• In Alien, Ripley is getting attacked by Ash. So, Parker hits him in the head using his makeshift flamethrower, and it tears off, revealing that Ash is actually an android.
• Apartment Zero is full of them.
  • When Adrian walks into the apartment and sees Claudia's body.
  • When you see the bloody remains of the man Jack killed for his passport.
  • Adrian is watching the footage of the militants. Then then the camera shifts and reveals Jack watching Adrian.
• Barbarella: After the Excessive Machine scene, the camera focuses on Barbarella's Durand Durand-detector on the floor. The concierge accidentally steps on it, turning it on and it starts flashing and beeping, revealing that the concierge is Durand Durand.
• The ending of Basic Instinct: Catherine is seen reaching under the bed during the final scene with Nick, but when she brings up her hand, it's empty. The final shot pans down to show an icepick under the bed, implying Catherine is the real killer.
• Beau Is Afraid: Beau discovering his father is really a giant, grotesque penis monster.
• Berkshire County: The child intruder is sitting in the hospital with a doctor when a man comes to claim him. The man has the same mark on his arm that the other intruders has.
• In Big Game, Moore and Oskari turning in surprise and the camera moving to reveal dead fish, dead bodies and finally, the tail of Air Force One, which turns out to be submerged in the lake the duo has fallen into.
• Billy Club (2013): When Alison takes of Billy's mask, she sees Bobby Spooner's face, revealing that Billy has been pretending to be Bobby after killing him and taking his I.D..
• The Bourne Identity: The only evidence Jason has to who he is was a Swiss Bank Account number. So, at the Swiss Bank, Jason learns his true identity from his US passport in his safety deposit box. He thinks he's starting to figure out everything...until he takes the top layer off and discovers a pistol and passports from several foreign nations all featuring his photo and different aliases.
• The entirety of Citizen Kane deals with making sense of the eponymous Kane's life, including trying to find the meaning behind the last word he said- "Rosebud." At the very end, when everyone has given up, you see some of Kane's old possessions being burned, including a sled with the word "Rosebud" on it, which Kane had ridden as a young child.
• In Center Stage, during Jonathan's ballet being performed, the camera focuses on Sergei walking through the corps ballet dancers like in all the practices. He reaches his hand out to the dancer waiting in the wings—and it's Eva, not Maureen, who reaches out to and dances with him, shocking everyone especially Maureen's Stage Mom Nancy, who marches out and finds Maureen in the lobby ready to confess she's quitting ballet altogether.
• In Creepshow 2, right after the Blob Monster eats Randy, the camera watches as it slowly moves back into the water. Then the camera pans over to a sign half-hidden by foliage. It reads: NO SWIMMING.
• In Cries from the Heart, Michael types three letters on the keyboard. There's a shot of Terry gasping in shock, and then a close-up of the computer screen with the letters "SEX."
• The Dark Knight: Batman arrives at the address Joker gave him to save Rachel. He bursts through the door to find not Rachel, but Harvey.
• Dear Evan Hansen: As Evan tearfully sings "Words Fail", the truth about Evan's "accident" is revealed in flashbacks. Beforehand, he told everyone that he broke his arm after climbing a tree and falling. But in reality, the new flashbacks show him calmly closing his eyes and letting go of the branch next to him, resulting in his fall.
• Diggstown: The final boxing match seems like a desperate battle against overwhelming odds. Then, mere seconds into the match, Caine whistles for Torres's attention and motions for the opposing boxer to throw the fight while deliberately mimicking Gillon's body language from when he pulled the same stunt earlier in the film. This reveals that Torres is working with Caine, and has been since before the movie began, allowing Caine to triumph over Gillon.
• Exit 0: After Billy and Lisa check out of the Doctor's Inn, the innkeeper finds they left a photo behind. The photo is of a kid with his parents, and it's dated 1986... the year the murder seen in the videotape happened.
• Final Destination 5: The ending has this for a wham shot. After they're convinced that they're off Death's list, Molly and Sam head off on an airplane to France, where everything is pretty normal...until Sam looks over and sees two people getting thrown off the plane. Didn't get that? Turns out the people getting thrown out were Alex Browning and Carter Horton, the duo who are some of the survivors to the Flight 180 Disaster, the very same disaster seen in the first movie. Yeah, this just became a prequel.
• After Tommy drops Jason into the tractor harrows in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, a closeup on the corpse reveals that the killer wasn't Jason after all, but someone else.
• Ghost Ship: The close-up of the mysterious instigator of the Antonia Graza massacre after he kills Francesca, revealing the demon to be the supposedly meek and heroic Ferriman, who originally led the protagonists to the ship.
• Goliath Awaits: The divers are pretty surprised when they reach a ship that sunk over forty years ago and see a live woman staring at them out of a porthole.
• In the film version of Gone Girl we get the shot of Amy driving a car with a determined look on her face. That in it of itself might not seem like much, but the caption reveals that this takes place on the day of Amy's disappearance. And then it hits you: Amy staged her disappearance.
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: Gandalf confronts the Necromancer at Dol Guldur. At first a mass of shadowy magic assaults Gandalf, but then the Necromancer appears to reveal his true identity: the shadow of an armored figure, surrounded by fire that forms the iconic image of a massive flaming eye. The Necromancer wasn't one of Sauron's pawns, as the audience might've expected, but Sauron himself.
• Hotel Rwanda: When Paul is driving in the van through the fog along the river and complains that the driver must have gone off-road for it to be so bumpy...and then the van stops and he gets out and looks back behind him, and he realizes that the van was on the road, but it's positively littered with the corpses of Tutsi refugees. The sight is enough to nearly cause Paul to puke.
• The Hunter:
  • When the loggers harass the environmentalists gathered at the Armstrong home, there's a shot of their family friend Jack Mindy in the back of one of their trucks, keeping his head down.
  • When Martin finds Jarrah's body in the mountains, he finds one of Bike's sketches in Jarrah's jacket and then sees the logo of the Red Leaf Corporation on it, revealing they've been after the tiger longer than previously implied and that Jarrah worked for them before becoming an environmentalist.
• At one point in The Invitation (2015), Will witnesses David lighting and hanging a red lantern outside. At the end of the film, after The Invitation is revealed to be a death cult and everyone except Will, Kira and Tommy is dead, Will and Kira look out and see several other houses in the Hollywood Hills area hanging the same red lantern, as sirens and gunshots ring out in the Hills.
• It (2017) has a meta example for those who aren't familiar with the book, or with the exact nature of the adaptation: at the end of the film, the title "IT" appears on the dark background, the shot lingers for just a moment too long...and then the words "Chapter One" appear beneath it. Turns out Pennywise isn't quite as dead as the Losers might have hoped...
• Jojo Rabbit: Jojo chases a butterfly through the town square, keeping his head down, and when he stands up after it flies away, we see his mother's feet dangling next to him, having been hanged by the Gestapo for being a member of the resistance.
• Joker (2019):
  • The entire sequence where we flash back to Arthur and Sophie together, which reveals that she was never with him in the first place.
  • For people familiar with Batman lore, the Waynes come out of a theater showing Zorro, the Gay Blade. This ends up segueing into Bruce's tragic origin story.
• Jurassic Park:
  • Jurassic Park (1993):
    • The Brachiosaurus, the very first dinosaur we see in all her glory in the park and the moment that drives home the fact that this film is about freaking dinosaurs being brought back to life.
    • Later, the escape of the Tyrannosaurus rex, which is where things finally get real.
    • And later still, when Ellie is ambushed by a raptor after turning the park's power back on, she's seemingly found by the chief engineer, Ray Arnold... only to discover that it's actually his severed arm, signaling that the raptors killed him.
    • And perhaps most famously of all, from the climax: The heroes are cornered by raptors and miles away from any help... a raptor prepares to lunge at them and finish them off, all seems lost... and then the freaking Tyrannosaurus rex comes back and kills the Big One and her minion.
  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park: The little girl from the opening meeting a Compsognathus — the first sign that something here isn't right...
  • Jurassic Park III:
    • The Spinosaurus snapping a T. rex's neck — bear in mind, the T. rexes are the most infamously powerful dinosaurs in the franchise. The fact that the Spinosaurus can kill one with little effort shows that it's a truly formidable enemy.
    • Grant getting a better look at the interior of the seemingly abandoned animal enclosure the group sought refuge in — it's a giant aviary. Which can only mean that not only can whatever is in there fly, but it must be absolutely massive. This is quickly followed by another Wham Shot of a Pteranodon approaching Eric Kirby Slender Man-style from the fog in the Aviary, before snatching him up for lunch.
  • Jurassic World:
    • When Owen and his Raptor Squad finally catch up to the Indominus rex, she suddenly starts communicating with the raptors... leading all four of said raptors to give their former alpha a Death Glare.
    • After Claire convinces Lowery to help her open one of the paddocks at the climax, we get the ominous yet triumphant return of the original Tyrannosaurus rex.
• In Kahaani, a thriller, the terrorist Milan kicks the heavily pregnant protagonist Vidya in the stomach...and then she pulls her belly off, revealing it to be fake, and stabs him in the foot.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service there's the closeup of Arthur's neck, revealing a scar across it that indicates he's had a chip implanted just like all the other politicians in the film. This reveals that Arthur has joined forces with Valentine and the Kingsmen have been compromised.
• Knowing: John finally tracks down the final piece of Lucinda's prediction, namely who is going to die in a just a few days: Everyone Else.
• Lake Mungo: The video recovered from Alice's cell phone from her class trip to Lake Mungo that throws everything about the film and what her family has gone through on its head. To clarify, the video is of a figure that appears to be Alice's own corpse coming at her.
• Layer Cake: At the end, it's revealed that the ecstasy pills stolen by the Duke and his gang was only a fraction of the output produced by the Serbian operation, as their warehouse houses a full-scale industrial production room behind another door.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: The reveal of the Uruk-Hai army. Until this moment the warfare in the films was limited to skirmishes between our band of heroes (with some Red Shirts thrown in here and there) and, at most, a couple dozen orcs or a few Nazgul. And then, all at once, we are treated to the sight of ten thousand troops, all heavily armed and armored, standing and marching in perfect attendance, so unlike the shaby, rag-tag rowdy bunches or orcs we were used to. This also works as a Wham Shot in-universe, for Grima, who is visibly shocked upon seeing the sheer scope of the terrible force he'd got himself tied up with.
• Low Tide: When Red persuades Alan, Peter, and Smitty to do One Last Job, they start robbing the house and then Alan sees a picture of his girlfriend Mary and realizes Red tricked them into robbing her house as an act of spite. And then the cops arrive, having been tipped off by Red.
• During the big duel at the funhouse in The Man with the Golden Gun, Scaramanga goes near the statue of Bond where he finished off the last person out to get him. Then there's a shot from behind the statue, and its fingers that he shot off before have somehow come back....
• Maria Full of Grace: Maria enters the hotel room bathroom and freaks out at the sight of the blood-splattered bathtub. It means her fellow drug-mule has been cut open for the drug pellets inside her stomach.
• Mission: Impossible Film Series:
  • Mission: Impossible (1996):
    • After Ethan has made a call to Kittridge in London with the motive of allowing his conversation to be deliberately traced there, the guy standing to the left of Ethan turns around to reveal himself as none other than Jim, who was supposedly murdered at the start of the film. It's even more significant because this shot occurred immediately after Ethan has hung up.
    • Ethan mentally putting together what happened to his team, showing how Jim faked his own death and murdered the others while framing Ethan as the mole.
  • Mission: Impossible – Fallout: Walker hands Sloane a brand new phone, claiming it was the one they took off of "Lark" when the phone Ethan actually picked up was damaged, revealing that Ethan is being framed.
• In The Monster Squad, after bonding with Scary German Guy, one of the kids remarks upon leaving that he knows a lot about monsters. Scary German Guy agrees and shuts the door after them, revealing numbers tattooed onto his arm. Especially jarring considering this was a kid's film!
• My Soul to Take: An eagle-eyed viewer will probably realize thatBug is the son of Abel Plenkov as soon as Plenkov’s sister-in-law May appears in the present scenes, raising Bug. However, when Alpha Bitch Fang comes down from her room to interrupt a conversation between May and Bug, The Reveal that Fang is Bug’s sister and Plenkov’s daughter Leah, is much more abrupt and startling.
• Oblivion (2013): When Jack and Julia crash-land in a supposedly radioactive area, they spy a second plane land on the ground and watch as the pilot gets out from a distance. It's another Jack.
• The person who will help Will and Elizabeth retrieve Jack from Davy Jones' Locker in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the resurrected Barbossa.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - When the Flying Dutchman rises from the depths with Will Turner at the sterring wheel.
• Planet of the Apes (1968): The shot of the buried Statue of Liberty, showing that the astronauts were on Earth All Along.
• From The Prestige, when we finally get to see that the mysterious Lord Caldlow is actually Angier, who appeared to die at the start of the film.
• The Producers: In the remake, the play Springtime for Hitler starts off as a seeming endorsement of the Nazis and Hitler, only slightly undercut by the ridiculous German-themed costumes, but overall treats this as a positive. The people watch in shock and several people walk out in disgust. Then Hitler appears on stage doing a Nazi salute... and almost immediately switches into a campy pose with flamboyantly-colored lights highlighting him. And then everything goes downhill from there (for the people trying to make the play a flop).
• Psycho: Lila enters the basement to find Mother sitting in a wheelchair. Lila taps her on the shoulder, and the wheelchair spins to reveal her decomposing skeleton. Not long after, Norman runs in, dressed in his mother's clothes and holding a butcher knife.
• Red Rock West: The friendly motorist who picks up Michael is revealed to be the hitman "Lyle from Dallas" when the camera focuses on his Texas license plate.
• The end of Remember Me: after the main character waits in his father's office, a teacher writes the date on the board: September 11, 2001. Then — to show just how relevant that date is — it zooms out of the office, which is revealed to be in the Twin Towers.
• Saw:
  • The first film provides one of the most iconic examples of this trope in modern horror. As Adam plays Jigsaw's final tape, recorded for Zep, we see the supposedly dead man in the middle of the bathroom slowly rise in the background, rip the fake wound off his head, and reveal himself as Jigsaw.
  • In Saw II, when they finally find the Nerve Gas House, the SWAT team enters a room with several monitors and DVRs, one of which says "PLAY." When they press pause, both the footage in the house and at Jigsaw's workshop freezes.
  • Saw IV:
    • Rigg's recklessness ends up killing everyone in his final test, supposedly including Hoffman, who was strapped to an electrified chair that would electrocute him with the water from the melting ice block that Eric was on top off before his death. Immediately after Rigg plays Art's tape, Hoffman is seen standing up and walking from the background behind Rigg, without any signs of having been actually electrocuted.
    • In the film's theatrical cut, this moment is changed to an additional shot exclusive to this version, in which Hoffman is seen untying the chair's fake restraints.
  • Saw VI doubles this with a Wham Line (via voiceover) during one of the reveals, as we finally see what exactly was written in the letter in Saw III that caused Amanda's Villainous Breakdown; it was a blackmail note, written by Hoffman.
  • In Jigsaw:
    • Near the climax of the film, Anna and Ryan are chained up in a room with Jigsaw, dressed in his iconic red hood. He eventually removes it to reveal that he's John, alive and well... at that particular moment.
    • In the Laser Collars scene with Logan and Halloran, Logan goes first and is apparently killed. Halloran goes next, and watches the lasers shooting upwards and burning into the ceiling until his confessions make them stop. In his relief, he stares up at the ceiling... then to the ceiling above Logan, with no burn marks. A couple shots later, Logan gets up.
• Safer at Home: the seemingly dead Jen recovering consciousness just as Evan starts bleeding out after being shot by the police.
• Scooby-Doo (2002): Fred removes what he thinks is a mask of Mondavarious' face, revealing not a human face, but a robotic face.
• In Searching, the mystery plot has been seemingly wrapped up with a murder confession from the culprit and a grieving David uploads pics and videos to a memorial website in preparation for his daughter's funeral...and then notices that the redheaded girl in the "Thank You" stock image looks exactly the same as the profile pic of the "fish_n_chips" user who befriended his daughter on YouCast.
• The ending of Sleepaway Camp reveals not only Angela is the killer, she is actually Peter. The real Angela was killed alongside their father years ago while Peter was raised as a girl by his mentally impaired aunt.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
  • In the first stinger, Robotnik is seemingly helpless with no way back home. Then he pulls up a tube containing one of Sonic's quills, suggesting he'll be back sooner than later.
  • A big one for the fans. In the mid-credits scene, a new ring portal opens up somewhere in the forest. Who's the first person we see leap out of it? None other than Miles "Tails" Prower.
  • Another one for the fans closer to the beginning of the movie: when we see Sonic as a child, his power makes him a target to plenty who want to use it for nefarious ends. The ones that attempt to abduct Sonic are none other than the Echidna Tribe, the previously extinct tribe of which another classic character, Knuckles, is the Last of His Kind.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022): The ending of the film shows that not did Agent Stone survive and is plotting revenge, but also reveals a top secret government project. The project's name? Project Shadow.
• In the Cold War drama Special Bulletin, a nuclear bomb is detonated in the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina. One unfortunate reporter, broken and traumatised by what she has witnessed, broadcasts what she is seeing to the station. The entire skyline is on fire.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:
    • Chekov and Captain Terrell are baffled by the discovery of inhabited cargo containers on Ceti Alpha VI, which is supposed to be a deserted planet. Then, Chekov discovers a belt buckle with "Botany Bay" written on it, and he realizes they're really on Ceti Alpha V, where Khan was exiled years earlier. Sure enough, before they can go anywhere, Khan and his followers have returned, taking them prisoner.
    • An In-Universe example occurs after the Reliant has launched a sneak attack that has crippled the Enterprise. Kirk is hailed by the commander of the Reliant to discuss surrender—and it's Kirk's former enemy, Khan Noonien Singh. Kirk is so shocked he can barely speak.
  • A positive example occurs at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. After saving the world, Kirk and his officers are shuttled to their new ship. It looks like it's going to be the new Excelsior, but they fly right past her—to a Constitution-class ship named Enterprise. NCC-1701-A.
    Kirk: My friends...we've come home.
  • In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the Enterprise is escorting Chancellor Gorkon's flagship to a Peace Conference on Earth. Half the bridge officers (including Kirk) are hung over from too much Romulan ale at dinner...and a photon torpedo suddenly hits Gorkon's battlecruiser.
    Kirk: What's happened?
    Spock: We have fired on the chancellor's ship!
  • In Star Trek Into Darkness, Kirk and Spock are interrogating the rogue Commander Harrison, whom they've just captured on Qo'noS, when Sulu reports a ship approaching at warp — and it's not Klingon. Within seconds, the downwarp reveals...a bigass Federation starship, looking like a bigger, meaner cousin of the Enterprise.
  • Star Trek Beyond:
    • The sight of the Enterprise's severed warp nacelles floating away from the ship, their glow dying as power fades. At this point, it is clear that our heroes are screwed.
    • After Scotty meets Jaylah on the planet Altamid, she takes him to her "house", which is actually a crashed ship. Scotty is then stunned when he sees the name of said ship: USS Franklin. It's a Starfleet ship.
• Star Wars:
  • Return of the Jedi has the most famous example of the original trilogy; after Luke refuses to submit to the Emperor and declares that he is a Jedi "like my father before me", the Emperor tells Luke he will die, and shoots lightning out of his hands.
  • The end of Rogue One has a Hope Spot as the Rebels escape with the Death Star plans. Then the lights cut out, and moments later, the Vader Breath starts up and an ominous red light illumines the corridor. Cue Mook Horror Show.
  • At the end of Solo, we get to see who Dryden Vos has been answering to and the true mastermind of the Crimson Dawn Syndicate, the former Sith Lord, Maul. It is even more shocking to those who didn't watch the TV series.
• Some Guy Who Kills People: When the Sheriff goes to get one last beer from the fridge after he and Ruth are about to break up because he had to arrest her son, he sees a mural made from newspaper clippings that Amy made on the refrigerator. He realizes that's why there were cut-up papers like the ones the killer used for his Cut-and-Paste Note, and that the signs that have been making him and the audience think Ken is guilty are misleading.
• In Tales from the Darkside: The Movie the segment "Cat From Hell", it's already clear the Professional Killer isn't going to take out the cat he's hired to kill. But just what this cat can do is made clear when there is a P.O.V. Cam lunging at the hitman's face, and the next shot shows the cat had leaped right into the hitman's mouth.
• An In-Universe example in The Terminal. Viktor Navorski, then unable to grasp his situation due to not speaking any English, reacts strongly when he sees the political violence engulfing his country on TV.
• Terminator:
  • The Terminator: Sarah Connor is talking to her mother over the phone. As she's telling her the number for the place she's at, we cut to the other end of the line...and it's the Terminator, mimicking her mother's voice.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Though undermined thanks to Trailers Always Spoil, when John is cornered in a hallway by the T-800 and the T-1000, they each take out their guns and point them forward — the angles make it unclear who is aiming at what, and the movie up to this point has implied the T-1000 is John's protector and the T-800 is hunting him. Then the T-800 shouts "Get down" at John and shoots the T-1000, whose impact wounds show that he isn't an ordinary terminator, but is an advanced model made of memetic polyalloy: liquid metal.
  • Terminator Genisys: John Connor is shot dead by "Pops", who even bleeds...But then the blood turns to Nanomachines, revealing he's now a robot.
  • Terminator: Dark Fate: Right in the opening scene. During the flashback prologue set in 1998 Guatemala, Sarah Connor is seen sitting down, watching John order a drink in peace. Right behind her, another T-800 slowly walks up as a Dark Reprise of the previous one's Leitmotif from Terminator 2: Judgment Day playing...as he goes to point a gun at John.
• Top Gun: Goose and Maverick manage to eject from their falling fighter, only for Goose to crash head-first into the ejected canopy, snapping his neck and killing him instantly.
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: At the end of the film, Noah is in the middle of a job interview when the interviewer reveals that he is aware of Noah having been in Peru and that the US Government would like to thank him for his efforts by not only offering him unlimited access tp healthcare for his younger brother, but also a position within a clandestine agency. He reveals that the room they are in is a front for a hangar containing Cybertronian artifacts and hands Noah a card with information should he be interested. Before the credits roll, Noah takes a look at the card revealing the name and logo of the organization: G.I. Joe.
• The manufacturer's label on the cork board, and later the bottom of the smashed coffee cup, in The Usual Suspects.
• At the end of Unfriended, the ghost of Laura Barnes shows Blaire an extended version of the video that caused the former to commit suicide, revealing that Blaire was the one who filmed it.
• At the end of Valentine, Adam guns down the killer and unmasks them to reveal Dorothy. As Adam and Kate sit and wait for the cops to arrive, Kate falls asleep in Adam's arms and blood starts to drip from Adam's nose, a trademark of the killer. The implication is clear: Adam was Jeremy Melton and just got away with committing multiple murders, framing Dorothy for his crimes as she had framed him all those years ago.
• Vantage Point. Agent Taylor is seen on camera dressed as a cop.
• In The Stinger of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Eddie Brock and Venom were taking a vacation in the tropics when Venom informs Eddie about The Multiverse. That is when they were mysteriously taken out of Sony's Spider-Man Universe and into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just in time to witness the Daily Bugle exposing Peter Parker as Spider-Man.
• In Vertigo when Judy flashes back to pretending to be Madeleine to help fake her suicide.
• At the end of The Wailing, shaman Il-gwang drops a box full of pictures of the victims, just like those the Japanese hermit had in his shack, meaning that the two worked together the whole time.
• In We Need to Talk About Kevin, when Eva comes home after witnessing Kevin turn himself in, she opens the curtain covering the patio (just like in the film's opening scene) and discovers the true reason why Franklin wasn't answering her calls all evening: Franklin and Celia were both killed by Kevin's arrows BEFORE his massacre at the school.
• Werewolves Within: After Parker's been killed and peace has seemingly returned to Beaverfield, Finn and Cecily decide to relax over at The Axe Den. While Finn is alone, he hears a noise coming from a closet, and finds a package meant to be delivered by a different Beaverfield postal worker besides Cecily.
• During the climax of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, we see Judge Doom get run over by a steamroller...and survive, revealing himself to be a Toon.
• In X-Men: The Last Stand, Cyclops and Jean Grey reunite in one scene, resulting in a Big Damn Kiss shot, which starts to focus on Jean Grey as her expression becomes emotionless while her eyes turn black and her skin gets paler, giving the strong implication that she's not exactly herself and that Cyclops is dead meat.

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