# Scenes/plots you totally misread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 14, 2013, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894 "2013-03-14T05:12:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/21 "2013-03-18T03:35:40Z")
> [@C.Montgomery\_Burns](#): > > A very minor one just happened to me. I was watching The Blues Brothers for about the zillionth time, and towards the end there’s a scene where Jake and Elwood are in the building to pay the tax bill for the orphanage. All the police, SWAT team guys, and so on are closing in on them and Jake and Elwood are in an elevator with Muzak playing. The scene cuts back and forth between the elevator and the guys chasing them. After they get to their floor, Elwood tells Jake to hold the door. He pries off the control panel and sprays some kind of aerosol at it and lights it. All this time I thought it was because they were trying to kill the Muzak because it annoyed them. Then I realized they were killing the elevator so it wouldn’t go back down and people could use it to come up and capture them! I don’t know if they still do, but that scene was **ALWAYS** cut when it was shown on non-pay TV. Normally I’m not much of a fan of censorship, but in that case I agreed with it. I didn’t know that most aerosols were inherent ‘flame throwers’ until my big brother showed me when I was 11 or 12! BTW, the govt flunky that eventually processes the Blues Brothers claim at the very end was none other than Steven Spielberg! He wasn’t physically recognizable way back then. Speaking of Spielberg, in regards to the scene I mentioned from\* A.I.\* it wasn’t until someone pointed it out\* here on the SD board\* that I realized that they weren’t aliens but the futuristic mecca robots! ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/22 "2013-03-18T03:57:16Z")
A friend of mine went to see _The Crying Game_ and must have sneezed or something at just the right moment about halfway through the movie, so he missed The Big Reveal and was puzzled as to why the main character was throwing up all of a sudden. Eh. As it turns out, if you don’t know that Del’s a guy, it is a _completely different movie_ from that point forward. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/23 "2013-03-18T04:23:15Z")
I read the Narnia series through at least 2-3 times as a kid, and completely missed the whole Christian subtext & symbolism until seeing other people talk about it many years later. This is despite being raised in a Christian home and at the time being a Christian. ---
**Author:** ![Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/24 "2013-03-18T08:08:29Z")
I have one from Empire Strikes Back, too. In the scene where Vader is talking to the hologram of the Emperor, I thought it was the ghost of Gov. Tarkin. Since Tarkin seemed to be in charge of things in ep. 4, it made sense to me. I was ten. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/25 "2013-03-18T12:44:31Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I read the Narnia series through at least 2-3 times as a kid, and completely missed the whole Christian subtext & symbolism until seeing other people talk about it many years later. This is despite being raised in a Christian home and at the time being a Christian. Other than not being a Christian, that was me! I descriptions of the evil god at the end actually made me start to think it was an occultist book and I stopped reading it. What’s worse is that I discovered them in my church’s library! In my defense, at that age, that was the least explicit Christian fiction I’d ever read. Every other bit of Christian fiction ended with people talking about being saved and leading someone in a sinner’s prayer. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/26 "2013-03-18T14:34:56Z")
Here’s a kinda weird one, not really in line with the OP, but possibly worth mentioning: In [The Hospital (1971)](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067217/combined), one of the stars is Barnard Hughes. The first time you see him, he’s playing a surgeon. Then later, he shows up as Diana Rigg’s father, a completely different character. If you’re familiar with the actor, that could really confuse you wondering why he’s playing two different parts (not that that’s unheard of). I don’t know, either, but one of the stories is that the person originally cast for Dr. Mallory, the surgeon, was not available to do the role (for whatever reason), and Hughes, capable actor that he is, gladly stepped into it. They did disguise him a little (surgical cap, hairpiece, glasses, fake mustache), but it’s undeniably Hughes. Some sources list a “Douglas Owen” in the role (the character and actor do not appear in the credits). The best indication for that credit is that it’s a made-up name created by using Hughes’ father’s and son’s first names. ---
**Author:** ![Tess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@Tess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tess)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/27 "2013-03-18T17:33:40Z")
There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Miss Hoover tells Ralph to put his head down and go to sleep. Ralph excitedly declares, “Sleep! That’s where I’m a viking!” For the longest time I thought this was Ralph’s way of saying sleep was something he excelled at. Eventually I realized when Ralph sleeps, he dreams he’s a viking. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/28 "2013-03-18T17:49:01Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’ll let it slide because you were only six. But you should have known that if that had happened, George Lucas would have given Mark Hamill a line like, “Being held captive in my father’s prison has made me accept the Dark Side.” “Yonda lies the prison of my fadda?” ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/29 "2013-03-19T05:23:59Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > Here’s a kinda weird one, not really in line with the OP, but possibly worth mentioning: > > In [The Hospital (1971)](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067217/combined), one of the stars is Barnard Hughes. The first time you see him, he’s playing a surgeon. Then later, he shows up as Diana Rigg’s father, a completely different character. If you’re familiar with the actor, that could really confuse you wondering why he’s playing two different parts (not that that’s unheard of). I don’t know, either, but one of the stories is that the person originally cast for Dr. Mallory, the surgeon, was not available to do the role (for whatever reason), and Hughes, capable actor that he is, gladly stepped into it. They did disguise him a little (surgical cap, hairpiece, glasses, fake mustache), but it’s undeniably Hughes. Some sources list a “Douglas Owen” in the role (the character and actor do not appear in the credits). The best indication for that credit is that it’s a made-up name created by using Hughes’ father’s and son’s first names. The first time I saw that movie that bugged the freakin’ hell out of me! I was always very good at spotting actor’s voices, so I knew that they were both the same actor. But my older sister (who was showing me the film) insisted they were different. It didn’t make sense to me, like they were trying to do some kind of big twist ending, that the normal surgeon from the beginning was actually a psychitzo lunatic. But Paddy Chayefsky just didn’t write such ridiculous, tawdry stories! ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/30 "2013-03-19T09:16:03Z")
> [@Tess](#): > > There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Miss Hoover tells Ralph to put his head down and go to sleep. Ralph excitedly declares, “Sleep! That’s where I’m a viking!” > For the longest time I thought this was Ralph’s way of saying sleep was something he excelled at. > > Eventually I realized when Ralph sleeps, he dreams he’s a viking. This is not necessarily a settled point. [http://http://www.metafilter.com/61946/Sleep-is-where-Ralph-is-a-Viking](http://http://www.metafilter.com/61946/Sleep-is-where-Ralph-is-a-Viking) ---
**Author:** ![amaguri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@amaguri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amaguri)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/31 "2013-03-19T20:36:19Z")
I came across “Brokeback Mountain” in a collection of short stories well before the movie was made. I definitely had to go over some excerpts more than once to make sure I wasn’t misreading it 😉 ---
**Author:** ![hiebram](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5fc32e/32.png) [@hiebram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hiebram)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2013, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894/32 "2013-03-20T15:01:36Z")
I was about 2/3 of the way through Kafka’s _The Trial_ when I realized that whatever plot point I had just passed could be seen as a symbolic statement on religion. Then I felt like an idiot for not having realized it sooner. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-plots-you-totally-misread/652894.md?page=1)