The Sixth Sense (1999)

Like "Lost," "24" depended on a cliffhanging twist every single week, as levels of conspiracy ran deeper and deeper and trusted characters turned out to be double agents. Even series finales had such twists, as viewers discovered at the end of the very first season. After 24 straight hours of counter-terrorism action, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) finally seems to have thwarted the bad guys, only to discover that his lover-turned-traitor Nina (Sarah Clarke) has murdered his wife. Thus did viewers learn that there's no safety for anyone in Jack's world, and that he would always be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

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Throughout the first two seasons of this ensemble drama about prohibition-era Atlantic City, there were two essential, standout characters: city boss Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) and his protégé-turned-rival, Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt). By the end of the Season 2 finale, Jimmy seemed to have patched up his differences with Nucky. But Nucky refused to forgive him and shot Jimmy dead. It was a shocker, first because we'd never seen Nucky kill someone himself instead of delegating the hit (but then, as Jimmy told him in the pilot episode, "You can't be half a gangster"). Second, it didn't seem like the show could survive the death of such a central character. Some would argue that it hasn't, though the show is about to start its fifth and final season.

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When you think about it, the "Rosebud" twist makes no sense; after all, not even Kane's (Orson Welles) nurse is close enough to hear the dying man's cryptic last word. Still, it's clever of the film to reveal only in its final moments that "Rosebud" is the name of his childhood sled, a memory of the last time he was truly happy, before money corrupted everything. Of course, even once you know, the reveal doesn't really solve the mystery of how Kane became the man he was. Maybe that's why this remains the most famous plot twist in film history; knowing the surprise doesn't prevent you at all from enjoying the film as it traces Kane's evolution from idealistic firebrand to reclusive tyrant.

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In Roman Polanski's classic neo-noir, the case that private-eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is investigating starts out as a simple adultery case, but it soon evolves into a massive cover-up of political corruption, land theft, and murder. And then, Jake's client/lover Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) reveals the big shocker that adds a huge, new dimension of evil to the story: that her "sister" is also her daughter, the product of incest with her father, Noah Cross (John Huston). It becomes clear to the viewer, maybe even before Jake knows it, that he is no more capable of escaping his past than Evelyn is, and that some evil is so vast and overwhelming that there's simply no reckoning with it.

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Maybe if we'd paid closer attention, we'd have spotted the clues -- like Jaye Davidson's Adam's apple -- but then Stephen Rea's fugitive IRA operative didn't spot them either. It's not until he and his new love are getting hot and heavy for the first time, late in the film, that Davidson doffs drag and reveals his manhood. Writer/director Neil Jordan's films often center on impossible relationships, but this one manages to remain swoony, dangerous, and romantic even after the startling reveal.

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The classic nighttime soap had one of the worst plot twists ever -- the reappearance of Bobby Ewing (Parick Duffy) in the shower, indicating that the entire previous season (during which Duffy had left the show) had been a dream. That seemed likea cop-out at best, a cheat at worst. But the CBS drama also had one of the all-time best twists with the season 3 finale, in which J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) was shot by one of his many enemies. Back in the days when CBS was one of just four channels, the entire nation -- and much of the rest of planet Earth -- spent the summer of 1980 pondering the question of "Who Shot J.R.?" (Also, would he live or die? It wasn't clear, since Hagman used the break to renegotiate his salary.) Months later, when the shooter was finally revealed -- it was J.R.'s sister-in-law, Kristin (Mary Crosby)! -- the episode was one of the most-watched events in TV history.

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You'd have to be at least a little crazy to buy into Tyler Durden's (Brad Pitt) program of reclaiming one's masculinity through bare-knuckle brawling and anti-consumerist vandalism. More than a little, actually, since Tyler turns out to be an alternate personality of the nameless narrator (Edward Norton). The revelation itself is more than a little crazy -- how would a guy beating himself up have attracted such a following? -- although director David Fincher plants some Easter eggs throughout that hint that Tyler is not real, that he's some trickster spirit whose anarchist heart is in the right place, even if his frontal lobes are not.

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Sure, if you've read George R.R. Martin's books, the plot twists aren't really a surprise. Maybe you didn't blink when, just eight episodes into the series, the show killed off seeming protagonist Ned Stark. (In retrospect, the fact that Ned was played by Sean Bean, king of the death scene, should have been a tip-off.) Maybe you didn't flinch at any of the shocking deaths of season 4, from Joffrey to Tywin. But even readers blanched at season 3's "Red Wedding," at which conventions of hospitality (and genre) were tossed aside so that guests Robb and Catelyn Stark could follow Ned's example and die violently. The TV version was even more brutal than the print version, since it also depicted the slaughter of Robb's pregnant bride and her fetus. Now, that's brutal.

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The most recent season of the legal drama was full of twists, including the splitting of the law firm into two rival firms, which essentially rebooted the show. But a bigger shocker lay ahead, with the unexpected death of Will Gardner (Josh Charles). For one thing, Will seemed an essential part of the show, both as a founding partner of Gardner Lockhart but also as part of the show's central romantic triangle. Trade news readers might have known that Charles wanted to leave the show, but they wouldn't have expected that he'd exit by being shot do death in a courtroom by a desperate defendant who grabbed a bailiff's gun. His death sent the rest of the characters reeling, especially his erstwhile lover Alicia (Julianna Margulies). If viewers hadn't realized it before, they knew it now: all bets were off.

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In a show made to be binge-watched, the plot twists come fast and furious in the Netflix political drama. Season 2 has scarcely begun when one major character kills another by pushing her in front of a train. But the moment in Season 2 that really made jaws drop and eyebrows vault was the sequence when Agent Meechum (Nathan Darrow), the Secret Service bodyguard to Frank (Kevin Spacey) and Claire (Robin Wright) gets into a threesome with the Washington power couple at their home. Did we know that Frank played for both teams? He did hint at a gay sexual experience in college in a throwaway moment in Season 1. The sequence did seem to grow organically out of past events while forcing viewers to reevaluate what they knew about the Machiavellian couple. At least, now we know why Frank so carefully groomed Meechum for this position.

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The bread-and-butter of "Lost" was a plot-twist cliffhanger every week, so it's hard to pick just one great one. There was the third-season finale, "Through the Looking Glass," which upended the series' typical flashback story structure and revealed that we were now looking into the future, when at least some of the castaways have returned to civilization, only to try to return to the island to rescue the rest. There was the fourth season finale, where we learned that the island could disappear and travel through time. But let's go with the early Season 1 episode "Walkabout," where we learned that, before the plane crash, John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) had been a paraplegic, and that the island had mysteriously restored his ability to walk. This let us know that the show was entering a metaphysical realm, where the usual laws of science didn't apply. It also let us know that the show wouldn't just boggle our minds but also move us to tears.

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Even though the series took place in a military hospital near the front lines of the Korean War, death largely spared the primary cast and stuck to claiming the guest stars who played severely wounded patients. Or so it went until the end of the third season, when McLean Stevenson chose to leave the show. His character, beloved camp commander Henry Blake, was discharged and sent home, only to die (off-screen) when the troop transport plane taking him home crashed. It was the most shocking, somber moment of the show's 11 seasons, and one of the few reminders that, in wartime, no one is truly safe.

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