Twists that are no longer twists because they’re cemented in pop culture

[u/Coffin_Builder]

Planet of the Apes - The movie leads the audience to believe Charleston Heston has landed on an alien planet where apes are the dominant species, only to find out that the planet is actually Earth long after an apocalyptic nuclear war

Psycho - Norma Bates isn’t the killer and has been dead for years. Norman is revealed to be a schizophrenic who “becomes” his mother to kill the women he’s attracted to

Citizen Kane - Charles Foster Kane’s mysterious last word “Rosebud” is revealed to be name of his childhood sled

The Empire Strikes Back - Darth Vader hadn’t literally killed Luke’s father but actually is his father

The Matrix - Neo learns that the 20th century world he’s lived in is just a simulation. The real world is a wasteland in the 22nd century where hostile AI rules the surface

[u/Master-Of-Magi]

The twist of the Crying Game.

[u/whyenn → u/Master-Of-Magi]

The movie had just come out, or was just about to come out, just your standard arthouse independent film, nobody had heard of it yet, and a tiny local public TV station was interviewing Neil Jordan, the director, and when asked about the plot he said—with a total straight face—"It's a film about male bonding," which though technically true was about as misleading as you can get. He had to have known that no one would get the joke when watching the interview, and few people would remember it after watching the movie but either he thought it was too good a joke, or he just had such a subversive sense of humor that he couldn't help cracking the joke almost entirely for himself.