Top 20 TV Plot Twists of the Century (So Far)

hold the door [Music] hold the door welcome to watch mojo and today we're counting down our picks for the top 20 tv plot twists of the century so far he played us like a fiddle oh dip eleanor i told you that first night that we were in a prank show oh yeah you did for this list we're looking at the best story turns that were revealed on the small screen between 2000 and 2021 we'll be sticking to one plot twist per television show foreign language and animated series will not be included here because they could each have a list of their own and while it probably won't surprise you to hear this there will be major spoilers ahead which of these plot twists left your jaw on the floor let us know in the comments number 20. george o'malley is the john doe gray's anatomy call that quick i joined the army to be a trauma surgeon i report for duty tomorrow you did what shortly after george announced he'd be leaving the grace lone memorial hospital to become a trauma surgeon a heavily injured john doe came in his face was unrecognizable because he'd been hit by a bus while saving an innocent bystander they spend the episodes struggling to save the mystery man without realizing his true identity when the man is able to communicate he draws out a double 07 with his finger since george was previously given this bond themed nickname fans instantly knew that he was the injured john doe it's george john doe is george this tremendous twist shook viewers more when he started to slip away from the mortal coil it's safe to say that no one was expecting george's journey to wrap up like this [Music] number 19 peggy is pregnant mad men i don't feel so swell i think i should go home i'd stop eating off the cart over the course of season 1 peggy had to endure negative comments and issues with her clothes due to her sudden weight gain she was able to push past these problems and pursue her goals until the season finale when peggy starts to feel particularly awful she sees a doctor and learns that she's pregnant honey didn't mention that you were expecting what you're going to be a mother before she can grapple with this unexpected news she goes into labor peggy's delivery is quickly followed by an impactful scene where she decides to give up her child the choice to end peggy's season 1 arc with this emotional story beat made an already iconic madman character stand out more among the ensemble don't you want to hold him sweetheart number 18 the bent neck ladies identity the haunting of hill house it was like although learning that nell was a ghost at the end of the first episode was surprising there was another twist left in store about her life for viewers before her passing she had gotten terrifying visits from a spectre known as the bent neck lady i'd rather sleep here in case she comes back nell eventually tries to get to the bottom of where the spirit came from by going back to the creepy hill house she proceeds to have a few ghostly encounters that unfortunately lead to her getting a broken neck as nell dies she travels backwards through time and becomes the bent neck lady at various points in her life this devastating and absolutely heartbreaking twist still haunts us today i'm frozen i can't talk or move my arms or legs number 17 frank ends zoe's career house of cards what's your next move trying to figure out how to respond to this i got it a couple hours ago reporter zoe barnes seemed like an integral part of house of cards her close relationship with frank and complex storylines seemed to guarantee her safety so we didn't see anything wrong with her meeting up with frank in a train station during the first episode of season two however we found ourselves gasping when he suddenly pushed zoe towards the train tracks jesus i wanna believe you francis her sudden end made us realize that anything could happen on house of cards unfortunately zoe wasn't the last person who would fall victim to one of frank's shocking betrayals you were the one who told zoey to pursue this she told me what you said the only stories that mattered were the ones that scared you to death okay this isn't just death threats number 16 violet is a ghost american horror story they plan some brutal family dinner for tonight like it's gonna make me feel better do you believe in ghosts why are you asking me when violet took a large amount of sleeping pills after seeing haunting visions a ghost named tate appeared to save her over the next few episodes she avoids going to school and blowflies start appearing in the house it's only when violet tries to leave the house that she has to come face to face with the truth sadly tate wasn't able to stop her from passing away and becoming a ghost i held you you were safe you died he hid this fact from her so that she would be spared the tremendous shock that we all felt watching this episode the combination of the subtle story hints that led up to this moment and its ramifications on violet's story made it a horrifyingly effective reveal what happens now you draw a card and discard no i mean like how's it gonna be number fifteen all the characters are connected this is us explaining to him how you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade in the this is us pilot we see how excited jack and rebecca pearson are to welcome their triplets into the world we're also introduced to two siblings who shared the same birthday with a businessman who just found his biological father 36 years ago you left me at the front door of a fire station don't worry i'm not here because i want anything from you that was raised by two incredible parents since each character had distinct plot lines we didn't expect their stories to be woven together but after a tragic scene where the couple loses one of their triplets they adopt a baby who is left behind at a fire station it's only then we realize that jack and rebecca are the parents of the other three characters we've been following as soon as this is us pulled off this ridiculously clever time jump we knew we had to watch every episode what did he say about the lemons there's no lemon so sour that you can't make something resembling lemonade number 14 arthur's final victim dexter he knows my name occupation he can find out about my family my family what the hell have i done before his final confrontation with arthur aka the trinity killer dexter morgan tried to get his wife rita to get to safety the two men then struggled to stay ahead of the other but their game of cat and mouse finally ended when morgan captured and slayed the villain upon arriving at a dark home dexter listens to a voicemail that reveals that rita returned to their house earlier when he calls her phone it rings in the next room dexter soon finds that his wife has been slain and that his child has been left at the crime scene this shocking sight still stands as one of the show's most striking and sobering images sure you don't want to tell them about rita i just wanted to have one more good day number 13 arriving on earth battle star galactica all right i'll release your crew we go to earth together the space-faring humans on battlestar galactica endured a devastating surprise attack survived a conflict with cylons and had to overcome internal struggles in an attempt to reach earth they finally got a chance to achieve their goal in season 4. upon finally finding the planet they have a big and justifiable celebration but today our journey is at an end we have arrived at earth but they should have taken a closer look at earth before they started to cheer if they had the battlestar galactica crew would have known that the planet was now uninhabitable due to a past nuclear conflict the pain of this harsh truth can be seen on everyone's faces as they stumble around the surface it was clear that the crew would never be the same after losing their hope for earth so the question is where do we go from here number 12 sydney's time skip alias i just remembered [Music] francie doesn't like coffee ice cream no she doesn't after discovering that her best friend was replaced by an assassin sydney is forced to fight her in an intense battle although the heroine prevails she ends up passing out at the end of the fight sydney and the audience were stunned when they saw her wake up in hong kong a short time later however the rug was pulled out from under us again when we learned that there had been a major time skip while she thought she was unconscious you've been missing for almost two years the mystery of how two years could have gone by without her knowing immediately left us hungry for more this alias twist was a great way to keep us guessing about what would happen next in sydney's story they asked me to come back to him to explain come back from what [Music] what are you talking about number 11 dr cox loses a friend scrubs so you still doing the whole kooky guy who brings his camera everywhere thing till the day i die during the my screw-up episode dr cox is visited by his friend ben the camera toting guest mentions that he hasn't seen a doctor since his cancer went into remission meanwhile jd loses a patient who had an irregular heartbeat these two plot lines crash together in a jaw-dropping reveal after dr cox overworks himself while tending to patients to make up for the one that was lost he heads out of the hospital with ben when the doctor arrives at a grassy location he realizes he's at his friend's funeral where do you think we are this devastating turn was cleverly foreshadowed by details like ben's lack of camera late in the episode whether you caught on early or not this was one of the show's most heart-wrenching plots no matter how alone with the help of those around you and i don't have to you'll get through this too number ten all the main characters are in the bad place the good place we're the ones who misled everybody and dragged you all into this mess so we should go to the bad place great okay thought you were gonna at least pretend to fight me on that but whatever this fantastical sitcom centered around four flawed humans who tried their best to fit into a heavenly paradise called the good place however they constantly ran into problems with their sanctuary and each other eventually the group is forced to send two of their members to the ominous bad place but it's then that eleanor realizes they've been in the dark realm the entire time they're never gonna call a train to take us to the bad place they can't because we're already here [Music] this is the bad place this genius reveal reframed the actions of all the good place employees made us do a double take and shook up the show's entire premise the comedy would go on to shake the show's formula up with wilder twists as it continued but the bad place reveal stands as the show's most defining turn next time i'll spread you out so it's more of a slow burn uh next time yeah yeah i'm gonna uh erase your memories you know make a few changes and start over again number nine fitz betrays the team agents of shield you can't be here there's work that needs to be finished what what what it was devastating and shocking to learn that the loyal shield agent ward was actually a hydra infiltrator but the show had a bigger betrayal in store in season four the kind agent fitz became a sinister villain when he was inside a virtual simulation his evil self later returned as a separate entity and committed horrible misdeeds when the good fitz tried to stop his sinister counterpart he learned it was impossible because there was no evil entity it wasn't an anomaly it was you programming the robots keeping everyone else occupied it turns out that fitz had a dissociative episode and committed all those twisted deeds while the shield agents had one of their own turn on them before this fitztwist was the biggest gut punch you had a psychic split but that dark persona that's not you it is me number eight the real reason joe is there black mirror come on for me for christmas what you want to talk about why are you here throughout the famous white christmas episode of black mirror we struggle to piece together why joe and matt are together in a cabin the mystery deepens when we learn people can save a copy of their consciousness that can be placed in new devices eventually joe reveals that he committed a crime that resulted in the deaths of two people after this unexpected turn we learned that matt was just there to get the confession i knew i could do it boom i told you i'd get it all right i'm coming out sorry joe but that's not all it turns out that the joe we met was a digital copy the entire time while any one of those twists would have been strong on its own the expert combination of multiple turns made this one of the most surprising black mirror episodes ever you can keep the silent hacked up as long as you want makes no difference you've already talked also merry christmas number seven river song's identity doctor who because this is it this is the day he finds out who i am river song was initially introduced as an extremely cool professor that had a mysterious history with the doctor that spanned across time after making a few notable appearances audiences finally got to see the surprising origins of this character in the a good man goes to war episode the doctor's companion amy pond has a child named melody since this infant was born with alien timelord dna she had the ability to regenerate into different forms the doctor and his friends soon realize that melody will eventually become the time traveling river song hello rory [Music] what's wrong it's my birthday as the series continued this complex twist was further fleshed out and revisited while it might take you a while to put rivers time-bending story together it's definitely worth the effort it's me [Music] i'm melody [Music] i'm your daughter number six bernard isn't human westworld after countless cycles of repetition these hosts they were varying they were on the verge of some kind of change on westworld synthetic beings known as hosts that look like real humans and animals are programmed to behave in certain ways throughout most of the first season we thought bernard was just there to help keep these artificial beings running but the truth was much more shocking it turned out that bernard was a host the entire time and wasn't consciously aware of it the way their existence is purer than ours afraid of the burden of self-doubt i don't understand while we were still reeling from this bombshell his boss forces him to eliminate his love interest teresa although some fans suspected bernard was a host none of them could have anticipated this one-two punch it was a story development that made us question the nature of our reality should be getting back bernard we have a great deal of work to do on the new storylines number five elliot's been imprisoned for multiple episodes mr robot what was that i've never seen that before that's what you needed if we looked up the phrase unreliable narrator in the dictionary we'd find elliot's face staring back up at us although we knew that his version of events could always be questionable we still weren't anticipating a huge season two twist elliot led us to believe that he spent six episodes of the second season staying with his mom and away from the typical cast however it's eventually revealed that he was in prison for a big portion of the season you know you haven't been staying with your mother right i know this unbelievable twist turned a huge chunk of his storyline upside down although elliott apologized to us for the deception we weren't sure we could trust his perspective again after this i'm sorry for not telling you everything but i needed this in order to get better [Music] please don't be mad too long number four walt poisoned brock breaking bad when jesse believes that the son of his love interest has been poisoned with ricin he immediately accuses his cooking partner walt of the crime tell me tell me what it is you think i did brock why did you poison him who's brock you saw him in my living room just last night but after a tense scene the two agree that crime lord gus was the one responsible for this heinous action jesse and walt then work together to bring the kingpin down permanently after gus has been dealt with it's revealed that andrea's son had consumed a plant known as lily of the valley it was most likely a flower called lily of the valley the camera then reveals that that is exactly what walt has in his own backyard knowing that he was capable of poisoning an innocent person just to manipulate jessie marked a shocking new low for the show's protagonist was this you family members within the next few hours what happened i won number three the red wedding game of thrones well let's get ready the wine will flow red and the music will play loud and we'll put this mess behind us we were heartbroken and stunned when we discovered why hodor could only say his own name but the show's most noteworthy twist took place at a wedding after watching the heroic robb stark achieve great victories he and his mother catelyn attended a marriage celebration but the festivities abruptly end once we see one of the ceremonies guests is wearing chain mail i owe my new queen a wedding gift [Music] over the next few minutes we see rob his wife talisa catelyn and his direwolf all meet gruesome ends the horrifying events of this night upset the balance of power in the world while axing off a bunch of main characters at once to this day mentioning the red wedding to a fan is still bound to bring a tear to their eye [Music] the lannisters and the regards number two nina can't be trusted 24. george george is the mole at the start of 24 nina was presented as a high-ranking agent who had some romantic tension with jack bauer neither he nor the audience was expecting the moment that she revealed she was working for their enemies in the 23rd episode of the series nina quickly demonstrated her true twisted nature after she was exposed as a traitor by fatally shooting terry bower having one of the show's most prominent heroes become a despicable antagonist was a brilliant stroke of genius nina's evil turn made fans want to go back and look for signs they missed while we hate what she did to the bauer family we loved how this brilliant twist shook up the show's status quo [Music] before we continue be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos you have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them if you're on your phone make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications number one jack's scenes are flash forwards lost you know anything about me do you have any idea what i've been through since lost begins with people getting stranded on an island the show used flashbacks to show us their lives before the crash so when we saw a series of scenes about a depressed jack in the city nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary but everything changed when it was revealed that these story beats take place after he leaves the island i've been flying a lot what yeah the golden pass that they gave us i've been using it the implication that jack would escape and meet up with fellow survivor kate was game changing not only did this twist make us rethink past events it also opened the door for the show to play with time while lost had many great turns the jack flash forward reveal is the main plot twist we always go back to we have to go back [Music] do you agree with our picks check out this other recent clip from watchmojo and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos [Music] you

Channel: WatchMojo.com

Views: 765,364

Keywords: Drama, Streaming, TV, agents of shield, american horror story, battlestar galactica, best tv plot twists, best tv plot twists of the century so far, breaking bad, dexter, doctor who, game of thrones, grey's anatomy, house of cards, list, mad men, mojo, mr. robot, scrubs, the good place, the haunting of hill house, this is us, top 10, watch mojo, watchmojo, westworld, plot twist, TV plot twists you didn t see coming, Plot twist TV shows, Best plot twist, TV shows with plot twists

Id: QFC8n7u7olk

Length: 23min 58sec (1438 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022