History Film / Predestination

-->'''The Barkeeper''': You know who she is, and you understand who you are, and now maybe you're ready to understand who I am.[[spoiler: You see, I love her too.]]

* TheSixties: The majority of Jane's flashbacks occur in this decade, showing her interactions with Anderson and Space Corp, getting pregnant and having to transition to being John.

* CelibateHero:
** Jane promised herself to stay away from sex:

** {{Subverted}} when she meets ''him''.

* NoNameGiven: The Barkeeper is never addressed by name.

* AdmiringTheAbomination: Mr. Robertson speaks kindly of the Fizzle Bomber and how he helped their organization become better at saving lives. Lampshaded by the Barkeeper: "You sound as if you admire him".

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Fizzle Bomber is eventually taken out of business but the organization subjected Jane to a lifetime of physical and psychological suffering and isolation to accomplish this goal.]]

* {{Hermaphrodite}}: [[spoiler:Jane is revealed to be an intersex woman. She had internal male genitalia discovered during a cesarean section, and complications [[ForcedGenderReassignmentHorror forced the doctors to supersede her external female genitalia with them]].]]

* {{Hermaphrodite}}: [[spoiler:Jane is revealed to be one. She had internal male genitalia discovered during a cesarean section, and complications forced the doctors to supersede her external female genitalia with them.]]

* AmbiguousDisorder: Jane's strange behavior in her early life remains a secret until it gets revealed [[spoiler:that she is a {{Hermaphrodite}}]].

* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: {{Invoked}} by Robertson and the organization who arranged for Jane to be caught in an [[spoiler:[[ParentalIncest incestuous]] time loop where she was her own parents and offspring]], all to become a well-functioning Temporal Agent with no ties to the past or the future.

* LoveMakesYouDumb: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed.]]
-->'''John''': I was young and in love.
-->'''Barkeep''': FamousLastWords.
-->'''John''': What, haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?
-->'''Barkeep''': Once.

'''Because the movie consists entirely of [[TheReveal twists and turns]], many of the trope names themselves are spoilers, and not all of the spoilers have been whited out. Proceed with caution.'''

'''Because the movie consists entirely of [[TheReveal twists and turns]], many of the trope names themselves are spoilers. Proceed with caution.'''

* BittersweetEnding: The Fizzle Bomber is eventually taken out of business but the organization subjected Jane to a lifetime of physical and psychological suffering and isolation to accomplish this goal.

* CrossCastRole: Creator/SarahSnook is a non-intersex woman playing an intersex character who was raised as a girl but transitions to a man as an adult.

* DeadHatShot: A non-lethal version. After the BombDisposal goes awry, there is a close-up on John's burning hat on the floor while John himself rolls around in pain.
* DoorstopBaby: [[spoiler:Jane]]. After [[spoiler:the Barkeeper]] snatches her as a newborn from the nursery, he travels back in time, delivers her to the doorsteps of the City of Cleveland Orphanage and subsequently calls in to make sure the box is noticed.

** The bartender's attempted joke about "What comes first, the chicken or the egg?". It foreshadows the relationship between [[spoiler:himself, John, and Jane]].
** In the early bar scenes when the Barkeeper is talking to John, each time the camera looks at him, the angle changes slightly. Sometimes the "Gentlemen" restroom sign is over his head and sometimes it's "Ladies", foreshadowing the final plot twist.

** When the Barkeeper and John decide to work with one another, one of the bar's patrons plays "I'm My Own Grandpa" on the jukebox.

* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: The Fizzle Bomber explains that if the Bartender shoots him, he will eventually become the Fizzle Bomber. If he wants to break the chain, he has to not kill him. [[spoiler:Too bad, this situation is [[YouCantFightFate predestined]]]].

-->'''John''': "I was young and in love."
-->'''Barkeep''': "Famous last words."
-->'''John''': "What, haven't you ever done anything stupid for love?"
-->'''Barkeep''': "Once."

''Predestination'' is a 2014 Australian science fiction mystery film written and directed by Creator/TheSpierigBrothers. The film [[FilmOfTheBook is based upon]] the 1959 short story "Literature/AllYouZombies" by sci-fi writer Creator/RobertAHeinlein, and stars Creator/EthanHawke, Sarah Snook, and Creator/NoahTaylor.

* AlternateHistory: The movie doesn't update Heinlein's setting to the early [=21st=] Century, likely so they can maintain the DeliberateValuesDissonance needed for Jane's story. As a result we have a manned space program involving year-long missions by the Sixties, and time travel being invented in the Nineties.

* EmergencyTemporalShift: Very early in the film, the Temporal Agent is sent to the 1970s to stop the Fizzle Bomber's reign of terror, only for the latest explosive to go off in his face before he can completely contain it. Near-fatally burned, he only survives because a good samaritan pushes his Field Kit back into his hands, allowing the Agent to transport himself back to Bureau headquarters in the 1990s and receive medical attention. [[spoiler: It's later revealed that the samaritan is none other than the Temporal Agent's future self, left practically unrecognizable thanks to all the reconstructive surgery.]]

* AlternateHistory: The movie doesn't update Heinlein's setting to the early [=21st=] Century, likely so they can maintain the social ValuesDissonance needed for Jane's story. As a result we have a manned space program involving year-long missions by the Sixties, and time travel being invented in the Nineties.

* UnproblematicProstitution: Space Corps recruits physically fit, intelligent women to provide sexual and emotional comfort for astronauts on long term missions, and the recruiters interest in Jane's aptitude for mathematics and physics implies they work as BridgeBunnies when not performing this function. Rather than prostitutes (who are often psychologically unsuitable for space work anyway) the recruiters prefer virgins because they can be trained from scratch. Jane mentions that the recruits are guaranteed to end up with a husband as such women are the [[CommonalityConnection only kind astronauts can relate to]] by the end of their own careers.

* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong: The Temporal Bureau's stated goal is to prevent crimes before they happen due to their knowledge of the future, and John is stated to have saved thousands of lives, but the only case we actually see them working on is [[MyGreatestFailure their greatest failure]]: the Fizzle Bomber's 1975 attack in New York City. [[spoiler:Ironically the Fizzle bomber himself is doing this--his attacks forestall far greater casualties in alternate futures.]]