When Travis pulls away, he feels content. He is driving in the city, a place that maybe has become less frightening to him. As he continues driving, he glances in the rearview mirror and sees a portion of himself. His forehead, eyebrows, and eyes come into view and the scoring goes ominous.

At the very end of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, looks into his rearview mirror and sees a brief, flickering reflection of himself. This moment is highly debated among film scholars. Most interpret the sudden, jerky movement of Travis adjusting the mirror and his intense gaze as a sign that his "inner demon" or his violent, psychopathic tendencies have not been cured by his "heroic" act. While the public sees him as a vigilante savior for rescuing Iris, the mirror shot suggests that the ticking time bomb of his psyche is still active. The musical score by Bernard Herrmann swells with a dissonant, haunting chord during this look, reinforcing the idea that the cycle of alienation and potential violence is beginning anew. It is a chilling reminder that the person the society has embraced as a hero is the same unstable man who was ready to assassinate a presidential candidate just days prior, and the mirror reflects the fragmentation of his reality.