Coin Flipping - in Fiction

In Fiction

George Raft became famous as the coin-flipping gangster "Guino Rinaldo" in the 1932 Howard Hawks/Howard Hughes film Scarface (1932). Bugs Bunny parodies Raft in the classic 1946 animated short film Racketeer Rabbit. Raft himself later parodied his own gangster persona as the character "Spats Colombo" in Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot: Raft sees another mobster flipping a coin and responds, "Where did you pick up that cheap trick?" Raft's coin-tossing established a distinctive motif used in numerous later gangster movies.

In the climax of Sholay, Veeru and Jaidev decide their next strategy over their encounter with the villains by tossing a coin (they are in habit of deciding over the affairs between themselves this way). It is revealed at the end that the coin used by him is actually a trick coin that always come up heads.

The 1972 movie adaptation of Graham Greene's novel Travels with My Aunt ends with a coin toss that will decide the future of one of the characters. The movie ends with the coin in mid-air, leaving their fate unresolved.

The DC Comics supervillain Two-Face, (most famously as a member of Batman's rogues gallery), has a double-headed coin with one side defaced—a parallel to his actual character, because one side of his face is deformed from acid throwing—which he relies upon for all of his decisions. He will do evil if it lands on the defaced side, and good on the other side. The coin is also representative of alter-ego Harvey Dent's obsession with dualism and the number 2. In the film The Dark Knight, the coin starts out clean, and Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart) uses this trick coin to seemingly leave important decisions to chance ("Heads I go through with it"). The coin is later blackened on one side in the explosion that kills his fiancée, Rachel Dawes. In Batman Forever, Two Face, (portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones), flips his coin multiple times in one scene to see how far Bruce Wayne can come within range of his gun. After a number of tries, the scarred side finally comes up and he fires anyway.

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead begins with a series of coin tosses that all come up heads, implying that the characters are suspended in one unchanging moment of time before becoming part of the play.

In the video game Final Fantasy VI brothers Edgar and Sabin flip a coin in order to determine who succeeds the throne of Figaro. It is later revealed that Edgar used a double-headed coin in order to win, allowing Sabin to live without the burden of the kingdom. This coin is also seen if Edgar is present in the first encounter with the gambler Setzer, who is highly amused by it when it is used to trick him into providing his airship.

In the video game "Shenmue 2" gang leader Wuying Ren carries a double-sided coin in each pocket, asking for a head or tail call before pulling the coin out and flipping the coin. This process guarantees him victory in the outcome of the coin toss, usually forcing protagonist Ryo into a dangerous situation. The trickery behind this method is revealed as the characters part ways at the end of the game.

In Futurama episode The Farnsworth Parabox, Professor Farnsworth creates a parallel universe. The only difference between our universe and the other is that every time someone flipped a coin, it landed on the opposite side. This leads to extremely different worlds and humorous confusion.

The DVD of Final Destination 3 has a special feature allowing the viewer to flip a coin apparently to determine the outcome of the movie; however, the outcome is fixed to maintain the plot, and the coin flip is ignored.

Isaac Asimov's short story The Machine that Won the War ends with a character revealing that he made his decisions based on coin tosses.

The final episode of the American television series JAG ends with an incomplete coin flip.

In the book No Country for Old Men (and the film made of it), Anton Chigurh, the story's villain, occasionally flips coins for potential victims to decide whether or not to kill them. He allows people to place their life in the hands of divine providence, and those who refuse to choose are killed anyway, for their obstinacy and refusal to submit to Fate. The meaning of Chigurh's coin-flipping is left ambiguous (in both the book and the film), and has led to considerable discussion: commentators suggest, for example, that Chigurh views himself as simply following the will of the universe, or is "merely cruel," or that it is an inevitable outgrowth of his (perceived) atheism or that Chigurh is in fact a stand-in for fate, or alternatively that his adherence to chance is a way for him to deny responsibility for his actions or to displace that responsibility onto his victims.

In the manga/anime of Hunter x Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi, a servant of the Zaolydeck family challenges Gon and his companions, Leorio and Kurapica, to a game involving a coin flip. The game is simple: Yoshihiro flips the coin in the air and quickly snatches it before the coin falls, then Gon or his companions have to say which hand the employee caught the coin with. This proves to be incredibly difficult due to the unrealistic speed of the coin flipper's hands. Gon is very observant and is occasionally able to guess right. See Flipism.

In The Mentalist episode "Blood In, Blood Out" during season 2, CBI consultant Patrick Jane wins a wager by flipping a coin and it landing on heads 20 times in a row. It is later shown that he rigged the coin in his favor.