I want to see if we can build a list of titles where this has been a major plot point. It’s inevitable, of course, that this may spoil stuff not everyone reading has seen, so if that worries you, get out now! I actually normally hate spoilers, but I hate this trope more, so any movie/show I haven’t seen that is listed will actually do me the favor of letting me avoid wasting my time.
I’ll kick it off with the movie I just saw in the theater that aroused my ire: Tully. This 90-minute movie (96 including the credits) was so very good for the first 75 minutes, and then it got ruined by this twist (actually, technically the twist showed up more than 75 minutes in, but it was already going downhill in anticipation of the reveal).
A famous example of the trope is of course Fight Club. I can’t think of others off the top of my head, but I know there are lots more.
Let’s define the parameters right off the bat:
(1) While there may be hints that make sense in retrospect, and some sharp-eyed viewers may guess the twist, there can’t be any absolute confirmation that the character is imaginary until relatively late (more than 50% of the way through a movie, or after several episodes of a TV show).
(2) Also excluded: movies that have characters that might be imaginary according to some fan theories. I see this a lot, but it doesn’t count for the genre. The movie or show has to make it seem like the character is real for a while, but then make it clear they are not at some point before the end.
Good to know! I have heard more generally that “Dexter” went downhill toward the end.
James Berardinelli’s review provides three potential nominees for the list:
Although I haven’t seen any of the three, and his verbiage of “fantasy elements” may mean they don’t quite fit into my narrow parameters. There are movies that do that more broadly that I really like: “Ricky” and “The Shape of Water” come to mind.
Everybody remembers Karen Black being chased around by a Zuni fetish doll in the final segment of Trilogy of Terror, but in one of the earlier segments she plays two sisters, one prim and repressed and the other all sexy and evil. You can guess how that turns out.
Along similar lines in the film Asylum, Charlotte Rampling is a girl who’s had a mental breakdown and is being carefully watched by her bullying older brother and a nurse. But her friend Britt Ekland encourages her to rebel, to start taking drugs again and do other, more violent things.
Yes. Not that you realize that at first. When she first appears, it’s like an old friend coming by the house to see Charlotte, who’s just been released from the hospital, and her encouraging Charlotte to start popping pills again to rebel again her brother seems like the kind of thing an old druggie buddy might do. And then suddenly there are scissors and knives, and no one but Charlotte has actually seen Britt.
I was beat down after a long and stressful week when I watched that episode.
The final scene had me crying, and of course, that’s when I got a phone call from someone out of state who, hearing me bawling, was about to drive 200 miles to make sure I was okay.
I had to hang up and take a few minutes before I called them back, letting them know that I was fine, but just saw an episode of a sitcom.
I think that the 2003 movie Swimming Pool would qualify. A writer borrows a country house to have seclusion while she writes a new novel. The owner’s daughter shows up, and lots of things happen. At the end, it turns out that the daughter may have been a figment of the writer’s imagination that helped her write her book.
Not a bad movie. Lots of nudity, if that’s your interest.
In the pilot episode of Raines, we know that the main character “sees” dead people (in reality, hallucinations, and he knows they are hallucinations), but it is not obvious until the end of the episode that a close friend character seen throughout the episode is also just a hallucination.
Elementary had a recurring character at the end of the last season that turned out to be imaginary.
Correct. Eventually you notice that the niece is the same age as when Nash first meets her and that’s the biggest clue. But everyone in the audience thought Charlie was a real character until the reveal, although if you watch closely you see that he doesn’t interact with anyone else.
The Other, a little-remembered 70s horror movie starring Uta Hagen and Diana Muldaur. The story centers on the life of twin boys living on a farm. One boy is a good boy and seems to have a degree of psychic ability. The other boy is… (dun-dun-DAH!)
I suppose it’s debatable if the “imaginary character” is truly an imaginary character, as this character used to be alive and died. But the movie leaves open to interpretation as to whether it’s a ghost or a figment of one person’s imagination.
Would Harvey count for this list?
If a character that the audience sees turns out to be imaginary later in the show/movie, then I feel the audience has been lied to. The primary character may be delusional enough to see imaginary people and/or events, but we the audience are not. How much of the rest of the story was also delusion?
