The Sixth Sense / Fridge

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

Once you know the twist ending a lot of things make sense - like why if you watch closely, Cole is the only person who ever pays attention to Malcolm even when other people are around.
- For their anniversary, Malcolm's wife went to a different restaurant than the one where Malcolm proposed to her. He said that was why he was late.
  - Also in another scene he tries to confront the man seemingly hitting on/having an affair with his wife but said man drives off, completely ignoring Malcolm.
- Also, Malcolm wears the same blue shirt throughout the whole movie.
  - Not true! You see him wearing a grey sweatshirt at many certain points. He also goes back and forth between wearing different coats and jacket.
  - If you watch the opening scene closely, everything he wears during the rest of the film is something he had on at one point or another during the opening.
  - You also never see the back of the shirt, which is covered with blood from the exit wound.
- Cole appears to be wary of Malcolm because he's a little kid, withdrawn, and has probably had to deal with other shrinks. Turns he's afraid of Malcolm because he's a ghost.
  - Early on in the film, Cole tells Malcolm he's nicer than the others. We think he means the other therapists he's had, but he means the other ghosts.
- When Malcolm tries to open the door and can't, he then roots around in his pocket for keys, and the scene immediately cuts to him in the basement. On first watching it just looks like the movie skipped the part of him finding the keys and opening the door. But on second viewing you realize that nothing was cut: he literally went from looking for his keys to appearing in the basement. We, the audience, did exactly the same kind of mental lawyering as Malcolm himself, mentally adding in a scene of him finding the keys and opening the door that never actually happened. The whole thing is a foreshadowing of the mental gymnastics the ghosts do constantly.
When Vincent shoots Crowe and then himself, on the surface it seems like an unstable man in the heat of the moment. However after it turns out Vincent also sees dead people, it would seem he offed himself so he wouldn't have to endure Crowe's spirit haunting him.
- And perhaps he shot Crowe in order to avoid having to come back as a ghost to finish his own business (revenge on his unhelpful shrink).
- And look closely at Vincent's hair. He has the same 'white trauma stripe' that Cole has.
Notice the incident where Cole loots a religious figurine from a nick-knack table in the first church scene. Cole is likely reacting to his latest ghostly "friend". Notice that the figurine has the color red too.
Sixth sense or not, why do all these ghosts keep popping up in Cole's house? There's no indication that they're all related or have any connection to the house, and we know at least one of them (Kyra) definitely did not die there. So why and how are they ending up there? Cole lives in Philadelphia, one of the oldest cities in America, and thus one of the most haunted. His school also used to be a courthouse (where people were hanged). His home city is crawling with ghosts around every corner. Cole bumps into a new ghost every other day wherever he goes, and half of them probably sense that he can sense them and follow him home.
- The centuries-old ghosts that appear in the film (the closet ghost at the birthday party and the hanging victims) only appear in the places where they died, never in Cole's house or on the street or anywhere else. It's possible that the longer a ghost is around, the more limited their traveling abilities become, until they can only remain where they died.
  - Probably they stick closer to "home" as it becomes harder and harder to ignore the world changing around them.
Cole decides he doesn't have to be afraid of Malcolm after he does his "magic trick." This does make sense, how could someone so lame be a threat?
The whole movie only happens because of one perfect coincidence: the boy who can see ghosts sees a ghost who wants to help the boy. Ghosts otherwise don't perceive Cole as he is, and they don't ask for his help. If not for Malcolm's profession and its history, he couldn't have helped Cole and Cole couldn't have helped him in turn. This is such an unlikely coincidence that it neatly explains why Vincent (and likely others) just couldn't deal with the gift.
The fact that Cole's grandmother visits him sometimes as a ghost means that she must have unfinished business keeping her on Earth. It's strongly implied to be the unsaid words between her and her daughter/Cole's mother, and possibly a sense of duty to Cole just like Malcolm. When Cole confesses his secret and reveals his grandmother's story about the dance recital to his mom, this likely resolved the grandma's unfinished business and allowed her to pass on.
Lynn listens to music using headphones while doing housework. This might be why she doesn't notice Cole talking to himself (from her perspective, since Cole is really talking to Malcolm) when she goes to make him triangle pancakes.

Fridge Horror

Cole is naturally terrified of the ghosts because of the way they look (often grotesque) and their violent actions. Scary enough for a kid his age, but there's a scene where his mother looks at a baby picture — seeing an unusually scared baby and a wisp of light in the background.
The scene where the Mother has been secretly keeping her child ill (to the point of killing her) in order to get sympathy for others gets creepier when you hear this bit of dialogue "I heard the little one has fallen ill too." She's already leeched on to her next victim which begs the question, had she not been found out, would it stop there? Would she prey on her husband next when the other daughter's gone? How far was she willing to go with this?
- It gets worse when you see that they kept the hospital bed in Kyra's room after she died. Yep, the implications are horrific.
- Or when we first see Kyra's mother at the funeral. She looks just as mournful as the rest of the attendees, but a few minutes later it becomes obvious that it was all an act, she was genuinely enjoying and getting off on all the attention she was getting as the dead girl's mother. Just look at what she's wearing. While everyone else is dressed in muted colors and mourning garbs, she's decked out in a bright red pantsuit that screams "Look at me!"
Cole's experience somewhat mirrors childhood schizophrenia in the real world, in more ways than one.
The incident with the closet ghost becomes more horrifying the more you think about it. Not only is this the only ghost we never see, but it's also one of the oldest ghosts both Cole and the audience meet. This ghost shouts, "Let me out! I did not steal the master's horse!", which implies he was a slave. Also, since ghosts can't interact with other ghosts and they only see what they want to see, it's possible that this ghost has no idea how much time has passed, only that he's been locked in this closet for an extremely long time, possibly as retribution for a crime he didn't commit. If he didn't steal the horse, was he used as a scapegoat when he was locked in the closet? Or did the real culprit (possibly another slave or member of the household) lock him in there?
- "Master" wasn't a term exclusive to slaves; it's a period-appropriate term for the unmarried males of a wealthy household to which one is a servant. (Hence, Alfred of the Batman franchise calling Bruce Wayne "Master Bruce".) And that closet would have to be extremely old to have been used to lock up a slave in Philadelphia, where slavery was abolished generations before the Emancipation Proclamation.
- On a similar note: do the hanging victims' ghosts appear in Cole's school because they were innocent of the crimes they committed? Or did they have other unfinished business? The idea of having unfinished business for such a long time is terrifying once you think about it.
- Note who the hanging ghosts were: a white woman, a black man, and a little boy.
The ghost of the kid who died playing with his dad's gun. It's implied that he was showing it to a friend, and when we see the bullet wound, it's on the back of his head with no visible entry wound on the front of his head. It's a bit difficult to shoot yourself in the back of your own head at all, let alone on accident. Therefore, it's entirely plausible that his friend was the one who fired the gun and killed him.
- Considering the size of the wound, it's most likely an exit wound. Perhaps they were playing around with the gun, he put the barrel in his mouth for some reason and accidentally pulled the trigger?
How many people are there like Vincent, who had the "gift" but never reconciled with it? How many have there been throughout history?
- It's essentially implied that Cole would have eventually ended up as screwed as Vincent, were it not for Malcolm.
The movie's entire setting paints a very bleak picture of the afterlife and its rules. How many people die with unfinished business (itself a vague concept) and never receive an intervention that lets them move on? What about those whose unfinished business is inherently impossible to complete even with help? (e.g. a centuries-old ghost whose unfinished business was apologizing to a family member also long-dead?) When Cole says he sees ghosts everywhere, he might not be exaggerating.
Cole tells Malcolm that prickling on the back of your neck and hairs raising on your arm means a ghost is near. Think about how often you feel those sensations and then count up how many ghosts are haunting you...
Once you know the twist, re-watching the film is also disturbing in another way, namely in how often Cole - a troubled boy who's very young and clearly plagued by fear and alienation - is left alone without any (non-ghostly) supervision or guidance or support. Yes, his mother does what she can for him, but she's clearly at a loss to deal with her son's enigmatic behavior and probably should have sought out a living counselor's assistance for him some time ago.
If Cole is truly determined to conquer his own fears by delivering the ghosts that'd previously frightened him to their final rest, that implies that he'll need to return to Tommy's house and confront the accused horse thief who'd mauled him in the closet....

Fridge / The Sixth Sense

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