- Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Some people are under the impression that "What a twist!" is an actual catchphrase of his, when it actually came from Robot Chicken.
- Career Resurrection: Due to multiple critical and commercial failures, his career was pretty much dead and buried around the beginning of the 2010's and he was more well known as a punchline and cautionary tale of a director who started out strong and faded or someone who believed their own hype too much than for his films. His fortunes began to change with the series Wayward Pines which showed people he still had some life in him and The Visit which was seen as a huge step up from his previous films. He then had a full-fledged comeback with Split which earned him rave reviews and did extremely well at the box office and many are excited to see the follow-up Glass. Unfortunately, Glass was not as well received, perhaps ending this resurrection.
- Creator Backlash: Shyamalan has stated that The Last Airbender was the first film he saw as a genuine failure and still hasn't gotten over how he disappointed thousands of fans of the original source material.
- Fan Nickname:
- Shambles-an - Referred to as such by Sean Moore in his review of After Earth, as a reference to the declining quality of his films.
- Also, M. Night Shamamalama... sama... kun.
- He Also Did: He co-wrote the screenplay for 1999's Stuart Little and stated in a 2013 interview that he did a ghost-write of She's All That.
- Playing Against Type: Playing around with this somewhat in his Career Resurrection. The Visit was far less art house than most of his previous films. Split is more of a return to form as a straightforward Psychological Thriller (unsurprising as it's a Stealth Sequel to Unbreakable).
- Production Posse:
- A number of actors have ended up as main characters in sequential films. Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Joaquin Phoenix in Signs and The Village. Bryce Dallas Howard for The Village and Lady in the Water. Betty Buckley breaks the trend somewhat by not being in sequential films, The Happening and Split.
- All of his films up to and including After Earth were scored by James Newton Howard, though Shyamalan couldn't afford to hire him for The Visit and Split, resulting in the former having a Public Domain Soundtrack, and the latter being scored by TV composer West Dylan Thordson.
- Uncredited Role: He was an uncredited script doctor for She's All That. His contributions are mentioned on the DVD Commentary for the film.
- What Could Have Been: 20th Century Fox initially approached Shyamalan as the screenwriter and director for The Film of the Book for Life of Pi, which would actually have been quite appropriate because the novel's protagonist is also from Pondicherry, India. It was meant to be his first project after The Village; but instead, he then made Lady in the Water.
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