With a ton of hidden details and red herrings, here are all the details that you might have missed on your first watch of Daniel Craig's Knives Out!
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With a ton of hidden details and red herrings, here are all the details that you might have missed on your first watch of Daniel Craig's Knives Out!
A classic case of whodunit and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc with his donut theory, Rian Johnson really outdid himself with the Knives Out franchise that quickly created two more sequels. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is the latest in Benoit Blanc’s murder mystery, but ahead of the upcoming film’s release, it’s time for a rewatch of the one that started it all.
Upon a rewatch, we discovered several things that had hinted at the killer and the secrets of Harlan Thrombey’s family all along. These details were, of course, useless upon your first watch, but when viewed a second time, these details really put the film together and tie up all the loose ends quite perfectly.
Naturally, we decided to make a list of all the hidden details that you might have missed upon your first watch of Knives Out.
The film opens, and the stage is set. Detective Benoit Blanc joins two police officers who are here to interrogate (or rather question) the family about the events involved around Harlan Thrombey’s 85th birthday.
Linda, Harlan Thrombey’s daughter, mentions Ana de Armas’s Marta was there during the party. She also states that Marta’s family is from Ecuador. In the next scene, where Richard is sitting, he states that Marta’s family is from Ecuador. Thus, no one in the family was actually aware of where Marta was from, except Harlan Thrombey, a subtle detail that revealed the true nature of these family members.
Speaking of how bad the family was, the opening scenes of the film also feature how each character is lying through their teeth. When Linda is questioned, the flashback scene shows her and Richard putting down the cake for Harlan Thrombey during the party, who is laughing joyously.
However, when Walt reveals his take on the tale, the flashback scene features Walt and his wife Donna setting the cake for Harlan Thrombey, who is laughing joyously. This little detail highlights how each one has a secret to hide and how they all consider themselves to be the center of the story.
Perhaps the most iconic scenes during the questioning were the subtle and annoying piano tiles that Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc plays at random intervals. While Joni, Richard, and Linda answer the police officer’s questions, we hear a piano tile go off randomly in the background.
However… the piano tiles weren’t random. Detective Benoit Blanc was already familiar with the truth and was playing the piano tiles anytime someone lied during the interrogation! A subtle detail, but way cool during a second watch.
Although it might not be plain visible upon your first watch but the baseball featured in Knives Out led to a greater discovery in the movie. We see the baseball in Harlan’s office when Richard walks in and finds a letter that Harlan was going to deliver to Linda.
The letter had incriminating evidence that Richard was cheating, and Linda was not supposed to know. Finding the letter empty, Richard rages and throws the baseball out of Harlan’s office.
This baseball is later picked up by Benoit Blanc, who gives it to one of the dogs to play with. The dogs later go to Linda with the ball, and Linda goes to Harlan’s office to put it back. Upon entering the office, she discovers the empty letter, but holding it against the fire, she reads the secret message that Richard was cheating on her.
So, a baseball helped Linda uncover the fact that Richard was cheating on her, all because Richard threw the ball out the window in the first place.
Another popular theory suggests that Benoit Blanc knew everything from the start. It was a classic trope of the murderer hiring a detective to be the fall guy or to put the blame on someone else (in this case, Marta).
However, Benoit Blanc was aware of it and instead withheld his suspicions from the police until he zeroed in on the client. Hence, Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc already knew ‘who’ killed Harlan Thrombey, but he was just waiting for the right time to reveal it.
A shocking confession, but an intriguing one nonetheless. Almost all of the characters are showcased using an iPhone or an Apple device. All… except Chris Evans’ Ransom. This is because Apple has a clause that its devices cannot be used by a villain.
Hence, you will not see a villain holding an iPhone, and quite conveniently, Ransom, who is the killer, never uses any phone throughout the entirety of Knives Out. It’s a neat little method of finding out the bad guy.
During the start of the movie, when Harlan Thrombey’s death is showcased, Harlan realizes that he has been accidentally poisoned by Marta (though he wasn’t). During that moment, Harlan says something along the lines of 'That's as foolish as not knowing the difference between a real knife and a stage prop.'
Well, in the end, when Chris Evans’ Ransom is found out as the killer, he grabs a knife from the Knife Throne and tries to stab Marta with it, only to realize that it was a retractable stage prop.
How many details were you able to spot during your first watch of the 2019 film? Knives Out is available to stream on Netflix (USA).
