The Matrix Hides Mirrored Chords, Chicago Easter Eggs and a Warning About Conspiracy Thinking

One of the coolest shots in film history hides two realities in a single frame. When Morpheus offers the pills, Neo's left arm reaches up on the red pill side, but on the blue pill side that same arm stays lowered: one reality where he reached out, one where he never did. I believe this shot not only changed cinema, it pushed society into red pilled paranoia, sending people down rabbit holes driven by an itch to find the glitch.

The Matrix is a perfectly crafted masterpiece coded with existentialist philosophy, Christian theology, themes of gender identity and conspiratorial details. On this latest pass I discovered dozens of new details, and I realised the film prophetically trapped us in a matrix of misinformation: lies we prefer to the truth, because red meat tastes better than Tasty Wheat and ignorance is bliss.

Don Davis's opening chords mirror the Matrix and the real world

The film opens with composer Don Davis's horns, and the two opening chords, E minor and C major, are mirrored versions of each other. E minor steps down four semitones and then three; C major steps up four and then three. E minor is the sorrowful hell of the Matrix, played by a whole horn section, the imprisoned masses. C major is the triumphant freedom Neo flies toward in the final shot, played by fewer trumpets, the few free.

Each film then ascends to show mankind's gradual climb toward freedom: the first in E minor, Reloaded in F sharp minor, and Revolutions a half step up in G minor.

Green code, Ghost in the Shell and sushi recipes

Every shot inside the Matrix carries a green tint to convey its artificiality, while the real world is blue and human constructs are blank canvas white. Green was the colour of early monochrome monitors, and starting in this green coded world makes us feel our own world may be simulated. Opening with green text is one of many things the Wachowskis pulled from the 1995 anime Ghost in the Shell, which they showed Warner Bros. producers when pitching. The Major's similarity to Trinity, plugs in the head and cracking concrete on landing all evoke it.

The raining code mixes mirror images of half width characters, Western letters and numerals, and designer Simon Whiteley reportedly based it on his wife's sushi recipes. Mirror images recur throughout, and so does raining code: window wipers on the skyscraper, rain on the bridge and on a car's back windshield. These are literal prison bars.

The opening call already sets up Cypher's betrayal

The film opens on a point of view shot from the Matrix itself, a trace program listening in on Cypher's call with Trinity. Cypher is annoyed she relieved him, because these late night shifts are when he feeds intel to the agents. When he teases, "You like watching him," he knows the real voyeur is the Big Brother listening in.

The 312 area code is Chicago, the Wachowskis' hometown. They shot in Sydney, but street names like Wells and Lake are Chicago references, and Neo's boss has a picture of Chicago. The 555 is a fake movie number. Then we push into a zero to reveal columns of analog machinery, suggesting even something as simple as a zero masks simulated clockwork.

Trinity's name is the first of many nods to Christian theology. Her room, 303, triples Neo's apartment number, 101, and 303 is also the HTTP status code meaning the resource is at another location. It is the same room Neo runs to in the final chase, where Smith, remembering the hotel from this opening, cuts him off. Signs for kung fu and an actively smoking sign for guns and ammo foreshadow the action to come.

Bullet time was built to show privileged moments of consciousness

A split focus shot keeps Trinity and a cop sharp in the same frame, a way of showing heightened sentience, but not as cool as bullet time. VFX supervisor John Gaeta, who won an Oscar for this film, credited Katsuhiro Otomo and Michel Gondry. He fired an array of still cameras in sequence and combined them with tracking motion cameras, reaching upwards of 12,000 frames per second. Gaeta wanted "a visual analogy for privileged moments of consciousness within the Matrix."

Those visuals also relied on wire stunts choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping. Trinity's laptop shows images of Neo, so she knows the Matrix will target him tonight, and Choi and Dujour, with her white rabbit tattoo, were likely Morpheus's agents too. The rooftop sets came from Dark City, another story about a constructed simulation. Costumer Kym Barrett designed Trinity's leather to look like an oil slick, as if she slips in and out of code. And I like how Trinity curls her fingers into fists before going through the window so she doesn't break them on the glass.

Neo's false awakenings set up a Christ figure who doubts

The first act shows Neo waking three times, each making the previous scene feel like a dream. These false awakenings foreshadow his true awakening in act two and his final awakening as the One in act three. Neo asks if you ever feel unsure whether you are awake or dreaming, which comes from René Descartes, who hypothesised the perceived world might be an illusion created by a demon. It also echoes Zhuangzi, who argued that only after waking do we know it was a dream.

Choi calls Neo his savior, his own personal Jesus Christ. Neo is an anagram for one and means new, while Thomas Anderson nods to doubting Thomas, and Anderson means son of man. A foreign headline about killings in Amman shows the Matrix using media to paint Morpheus as a terrorist. Neo's apartment, 101, recalls Room 101 in George Orwell's 1984.

Neo hides his files in Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, which the Wachowskis required the cast to read, about society adopting simulated copies of things as reality, with Disneyland as the example. I think nostalgia is a crazy phenomenon: we remember the last time we remembered, not the real experience. That's why I find it ironic that Neo hollowed the book out on a page titled On Nihilism, too apathetic to investigate his own apathy, and filled it with a capitalist side hustle. The white rabbit runs through the film as an Alice in Wonderland metaphor.

The film holds valid readings as a gender dysphoria allegory

The Wachowskis shot the club scene in a real Sydney BDSM bar. Neo meets Trinity, whom he knows as a renowned hacker, and tells her he thought she was a guy. The Wachowskis, once known as brothers, have since come out as trans women, Lilly and Lana, and many critics have offered fully valid interpretations of the film as an allegory for gender dysphoria. Switch was originally going to switch genders moving in and out of the Matrix, and Smith's condescending "Mr. Anderson" represents the way people go out of their way to misgender someone.

Metacortex translates to transcending the boundaries of the brain, and Neo's boss, Mr. Rhineheart, mirrors Smith: oppressive authority always wears the same face. Neo crouch running through cubicles would later inspire Everything Everywhere All at Once. On the scaffolding, cars drive against the traffic arrows because this is Sydney.

Neo's file says he was born March 11, 1962 in Capital City, USA. His mother is listed as Michelle McGahey, the art director, and his school as Owen Paterson High, after the production designer. His passport expires September 11, 2001, one of many details that fed internet conspiracy theories. The agents melt his mouth shut so the moment feels surreal enough to dismiss as a dream, and when the MCU later had the Scarlet Witch erase Black Bolt's mouth, it wasn't as haunting.

Morpheus borrows from Plato's cave and Philip K. Dick's glitch

Coppertop is slang for plugged in humans, after Morpheus's battery metaphor. The crew debug Neo in a moving car to be harder to track, then bring him to a hotel with checkered floors like binary switches. Neo was originally offered to Will Smith and Morpheus to Val Kilmer. Morpheus is the Greek god of dreams, fitting for the lord of awakening.

The term matrix appeared in cyberpunk before, including William Gibson's Neuromancer, building on ideas from science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who in 1977 said we are living in a computer programmed reality whose only clue is when some variable changes. That is where the Wachowskis got the glitch. Plato's allegory of the cave also fits: Morpheus, like Plato's philosopher king, unchains the unenlightened, and Neo's eyes hurt because he has never used them.

Sunglasses tie into real versus simulated perception (also, they look cool). Smith's and Morpheus's lenses reflect Neo back, mirrors as windows into alternate paths. Cypher, Morpheus's phone guy, later pats himself down empty handed because he tossed his phone to set up the trace. Mirrors are the first code to break down, so only Neo sees the liquid mirror, before his scream turns into digital noise and he wakes in a greasy pod.

The real world gets about 14 minutes before the kung fu returns

The Nebuchadnezzar is named for the Babylonian king who, according to the Bible, had a dream he couldn't remember. Its plaque reads 2069, Mark III No. 11, possibly a nod to Mark 3:11. The construct evokes the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the desert of the real quotes Baudrillard directly.

What works best is that the film skips the Animatrix backstory and keeps the lore on Neo, so, like Cypher, we are more lured by the simulation than the grim truth. It spends only 14 minutes in dystopian sci fi before swinging back into kung fu. The Wachowskis agreed to higher pay and final authority on fight choreography to land Yuen, and it paid off. In one combination Keanu Reeves throws three kicks with the same foot while balanced on his left, which I always fell on my face trying during taekwondo as a kid. Reeves and Laurence Fishburne kept bruising each other, so Yuen altered the choreography, and stuntman Chad Stahelski would later work with Reeves on John Wick.

The jump program is a Kobayashi Maru built to teach that the mind makes it real. Many extras in the agent training program are duplicates, two nuns, two sailors, two bald men, because Mouse saved code. When Morpheus says Neo won't have to dodge bullets once he is ready, it tells us the rooftop dodge is not the final victory.

Cypher is the most important character because we are Cypher

Cypher switches off a display that Tank later pulls up showing the hotel blueprints, so he was leaking them. At the steakhouse, the piece of steak changes between cuts, a glitch, and, freaking me out, the other two agents are reflected in the glass behind them. "Whatever you want, Mr. Reagan" is, I'm pretty sure, a joke that Cypher would return as Ronald Reagan, actor turned president.

Cypher is the institutionalised man Smith describes, and to me he is the most interesting character. Let's be honest, we are Cypher. If we knew the truth, we would all choose the blue pill, as we do every day with escapist fiction, sports and games. He gives the film plausibility and stakes, and he is exactly why humanity lost the war.

The Oracle's cookies and the sign that says know thyself

The Oracle was partly inspired by the blind Tiresias. A doorknob close up hides the lens behind a jacket and a fake tie matching Morpheus's. There is no spoon is a solid description of bullet time: not reality bending, but us. Natural light casts the Oracle as an earth mother, and her cookies echo internet trackers that assess identity. Her sign, know thyself, references the Oracle of Delphi, who called Socrates the wisest man because he knew he knew nothing. When Cypher says ignorance is bliss, he's not wrong; we would all do better to acknowledge our ignorance. And she phrases things so whatever Neo says is true: his doubt holds him back until death and resurrection.

The Sophia Stewart conspiracy shows what The Matrix did to society

Sophia Stewart, who calls herself the mother of the Matrix, has claimed she wrote the stories behind The Matrix and The Terminator, and she sued for copyright infringement. In 2004 the Salt Lake Community College Globe ran an article saying she had won and would receive 2.5 billion dollars. The Globe issued a correction, but the story spread into a full blown conspiracy theory. PolitiFact rated her claim false, yet you scroll a long way to find that, which tells me someone has gamed the results. Every post I have made about the Matrix draws replies repeating her claim, and if many were bots, I wouldn't be surprised.

I raise it to illustrate what the Matrix has done to society: repeat a sympathetic claim long enough and the truth gets replaced by their truth. Conspiracy theorists believe only they are red pilled when they actively blue pill themselves because the lie is more comfortable. This is not the film's sole fault, but it remains part of its legacy, and I think we need to separate valid analysis from the rest, because we can never be certain of our reality.

Not like this, and the choice to determine reality

Belinda McClory's read of "Not like this" has haunted me for decades. The accent is a little weird, and I think it's because she is focused on the emotion: dying at the hands of one of their own is the most horrifying way to go. When Tank zaps Cypher, it is definitely Joe Pantoliano's stunt double yanked back on wires.

Smith's failed utopia echoes Immanuel Kant's argument that people are their own agents of deceit. My repeated line, we can never be certain of our reality, is only half the film's root myth: therefore, we must determine our reality. For the Wachowskis, that meant society couldn't dictate their names and pronouns; for Neo and Trinity, the Oracle's words needn't dictate their actions. When Smith says "I can taste your stink," he becomes a bitter, desperate hypochondriac who will never stop.

The lobby shootout showcases Zach Staenberg's Oscar winning editing and Bill Pope's should have been Oscar winning cinematography. Neo and Trinity toss empty guns rather than reload, getting lighter and creating debris as a smoke screen. I love that one of cinema's most iconic moves, Neo's rooftop dodge, is purely defensive. Sprinklers, casings and water form green digital rain, and the helicopter glass undulates before shattering: the Matrix cannot bend, only break.

The subway, the kiss and Neo's final call

In the subway, after their leap, Neo and Smith trade "You're empty" and "So are you," meaning both were counting shots. Neo cracks Smith's sunglasses, chipping at his shell, and a Hewlett Packard ad hangs behind Smith as he is sideswiped. On the train, a respawned Smith keeps gesturing like the man whose body he took. Smith waits in room 303 because he remembers it from the opening.

Trinity's kiss resurrects Neo, and though the sequels reveal the prophecy as a lie, that kiss was a real world miracle; the true anomaly was the two of them together. The final scene returns to the trace program, now failing, with Neo spying on the machines. As he soars upward, he becomes the bullet that will tear through the simulation, leaving us a choice. We determine our reality, and we can always choose the door of enlightenment.

Do you think The Matrix freed our minds, or helped trap us in red pilled conspiracy thinking?