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The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 drama film directed by Frank Darabont based on Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption from his 1982 collection Different Seasons.

In 1947, young banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. On fairly convincing but circumstantial evidence he is sentenced to life in prison, and his sentence is to be served at Maine's Shawshank State Penitentiary. The conditions are terrible, many of his fellow prisoners are dangerous and/or sadistic, and some of the guards are even worse — but life begins to look up as Dufresne becomes acquainted with an older con, Ellis Boyd Redding (Morgan Freeman, who also serves in-character as the movie's narrator), commonly referred to as "Red." A friendship begins after Red, "the man who knows how to get things," procures a rock hammer for Dufresne, an object he wishes to own in order to carve an alabaster-and-soapstone chess set.

Nearly twenty years pass within the prison walls, showing the growth and strength of Andy and Red's friendship, Andy's various attempts to better the lives of his fellow inmates through education (something he is allowed to do because he provides free financial advice to the prison's corrupt warden and guards), the quest to prove his innocence, and the attempt to remain mentally free and hopeful even when surrounded by the crushing gray of prison walls.

Shawshank has since been adapted for the stage.

Five years after the film's release, Frank Darabont would go on to write and direct The Green Mile, another period prison drama based on a Stephen King story—which is now widely seen as The Shawshank Redemption's spiritual successor. The two films' close connection is bolstered by the fact that both have gotten considerable critical attention for their use of religious themes and subtext, with both being interpreted by many viewers as modern-day Christian allegories, albeit in slightly differing ways: The Shawshank Redemption is a mundane drama primarily inspired by Jesus' ministry and the story of his resurrection, while The Green Mile is a fantasy story inspired more by the story of his crucifixion. As such, both films frequently come up in discussions about the enduring artistic legacy of Christian scripture in modern cinema.

For tropes from the original story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, see the work page for the novella collection, Different Seasons.

The film has examples of:

• Adaptational Context Change: The novella is narrated by "Red" who got his nickname because he's a red-haired Irishman. In the film, Morgan Freeman plays the role of Red, and the nickname comes from his last name Redding. When asked about why he's called Red he still claims that he got the nickname because he's Irish, but here it's a bit of obvious sarcasm.
• Adaptational Onscreen Appearance: Linda Dufresne and Glenn Quentin appear in the Cold Open before the moment of their murderer breaking into the latter's house. No such scene was depicted in Different Seasons.
• Adaptational Timespan Change: The time frame is cut from 30 years (1947-1977) in the novella to 21 (1946-1967). An actor's age range can only be stretched so far with makeup and still look realistic.
• Adaptational Villainy: A subtle case: in the novella, Red mentions that new prisoners who go into hysterics on their first night are usually dragged to the infirmary and given a sedative. In the film, they get beaten into submission (and, in poor old Fat Ass' case, to death).
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • The movie makes several changes to the novella to keep the story moving.
    • There are four wardens mentioned in the novella over the years Dufresne is in Shawshank — in order they were George Dunahy, Greg Stammas, Samuel Norton and Rich Gonyar. Only Norton is dealt with in the film adaptation.
    • The movie decides to kill off Tommy, while the novella simply sees him transferred.
    • In the novella, Andy sold off his assets before going into prison and invested them with the help of a friend on the outside. This subplot is eliminated in the movie, in which Andy simply steals all the money he'd laundered for Norton, making the revenge that much sweeter (both for him and the audience).
    • Several characters are combined.
    • Chief Normaden, the Native American inmate who Andy briefly shared a cell with in the book (and who held up Andy's progress scraping the wall by a few months), was cut from the movie.
    • In the novella, Andy required two rock hammers to complete the task. Red narrated that the first was "worn down to the nub."
  • The stage version is mostly based on the film, but makes some more changes, including a couple that return closer to the novella.
    • The wardens are condensed down to one, like the movie, but this time it's Stammas, not Norton.
    • Andy keeps his Rita Hayworth poster throughout.
    • Andy has his own assets rather than stealing the warden's embezzled funds, again like the novella.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The scene where Andy plays "Sull'aria" from The Marriage of Figaro over the prison loudspeakers was not written into the novella by Stephen King. After seeing it for himself, King said he wished he had.
  • The movie adds further explanation as to where Andy hid his rock hammer while in prison. Andy hides the hammer in his prison-issue Bible in the Book of Exodus.
• Adaptation Title Change: The title was shortened from the novella's Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
• Admiring the Poster: Invoked and subverted. Andy Dufresne wants people to think this trope is in play, and it helps that he changes posters as time passes, but it's really to hide the tunnel he digs on the cell wall.
• Affably Evil: Played with. Red, Heywood, Brooks, and the other inmates Andy befriends all seem like nice guys, but they didn't wind up serving decades in a maximum security prison for being nice. Granted, the years have mellowed most of them and some show genuine remorse for their past actions, but they're still murderers, robbers, etc.
• Air-Vent Passageway: The famous escape during the climax; although instead of an air vent, it's a sewage pipe.
• And Starring: "And James Whitmore as Brooks".
• Arc Words:
  • "Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'."
  • "We're all innocent in here."
  • "Rehabilitated."
  • "Brooks Was Here."
  • "His Judgement Cometh and that Right Soon...."
  • "Hope."
• Armor-Piercing Response: Andy delivers one in response to Red's Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids! speech that cuts Red to the bone.
  Red: Hope. Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It's got no use on the inside. You'd better get used to that idea.
  Andy: Like Brooks did?
  Red: [takes his lunch and walks away]
• Arson, Murder, and Admiration: Red describes Tommy Williams as a "Young punk, Mr. Rock and Roll, cocky as hell." He then states that everyone liked him from the start.
• Artistic License – History: In a scene set in 1949, Andy refers to "the IRS." The organization did exist at that time, but it was known as the Bureau of Internal Revenue until 1953. Calling it that probably would have confused contemporary viewers a little, though (Red is quite correct to call it that in a later scene set in 1963).
• Artistic License – Law:
  • While he may be saying it to appease the warden and not worry that he'll reveal the money laundering and fraud, or he may not genuinely know, Andy most likely would not be held just as liable as the warden for the crimes that Andy does for him while in Shawshank, as any reasonable lawyer would argue that Andy feared retribution for refusal.
  • Tommy is sent to a maximum security prison - alongside murderers, rapists, and armed robbers, for stealing a television. True, he was a repeat offender, but he was never a violent criminal.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • When Andy breaks the pipe, sewage fountains out, going upwards to make a great image for the cinematographer. However, because the end of the pipe Andy crawls out of was not sealed, the sewage wouldn't have been under any pressure at all.
  • An old building like that is going to be drafty as heck from all the imperfect eroded seams and small rusted gaps between various structural members, with air currents from the crawlspace constantly sucking or blowing air on the poster, once Andy breaks through the wall.
• Artistic License – Prison:
  • The Warden has an inmate killed, making it look like a case of him being shot while attempting escape because the prisoner in question has evidence that would exonerate the Warden's meal ticket. In reality, shooting an unarmed prisoner, even during an escape attempt, would trigger a serious investigation, as ideally, inmates attempting escape are supposed to be recaptured alive. Given the corruption involved in the story, this can be explained away as Norton buying off the right people. Also, bed checks and cell inspections really should have turned up the rather large hole that Andy Dufrense had made in his cell wall. Certainly, regular maintenance of the plumbing system would have probably uncovered the hole from the other side long before the escape attempt was made.
  • Stephen King actually addressed some of these issues in the original novella, making it an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole. The prisoner was not shot escaping, the warden simply had him transferred to another prison. Since Andy was a quiet, well-liked prisoner who was always respectful of the guards and did favors for them (tax returns, investment advice), his cell was just given a cursory inspection. The hard, rip-everything-apart searches were done for the trouble-makers and loud mouths. Also, in the story, Andy actually finished the hole and then waited years before making his attempt, since there were too many unknowns and he kind of froze, according to Red's narration. It wasn't until he learned a renovation to the sewer system would reroute the pipes and seal his route forever that he finally decided to take the risk.
  • Tommy is a thief convicted of stealing a TV and breaking/entering, yet he's sent to a maximum security prison alongside murderers and other violent felons. The stage version fixes this by making him a car thief who accidentally hit someone in the course of a robbery, which presumably got him a Felony Murder conviction.
• As the Good Book Says...: Andy and Warden Norton trade Bible quotes during their first direct conversation with each other.
  Norton: I'm pleased to see you reading this. Any favorite passages?
  Andy: "Watch ye therefore, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh."
  Norton: Mark, 13:35. I've always liked that one. But I prefer, "I'm the light of the world. He that follow me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
  Andy: John, chapter 8, verse 12.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • An example involving actual bait; Andy finds a grub of some sort in his first prison meal. As he's examining it, he has the following conversation with a crusty old con who's been in prison 50 years and may or may not have a few screws loose:
    Brooks: Are you going to eat that?
    Andy: Hadn't planned on it.
    Brooks: [holds his hand out] Do you mind?
    [Andy hands it over skeptically]
    Brooks: [with a satisfied smile] Ahh, that's nice and ripe.
    [He moves the grub towards his mouth, then opens his jacket and feeds it to a baby crow in his pocket]
    Brooks: Jake says "Thank you."
  • Norton asking Tommy whether he'd be willing to testify that Andy is innocent. He doesn't let him do it- in fact, he has him shot.
  • After Red is released, he narrates about not being used to freedom and considers committing another crime to get back in prison; not unlike Brooks before him. He's seen looking through the window of a pawn shop where several guns are on display, the camera then pans to a compass. In the next scene Red is in his halfway house with the compass, which he later uses to direct him to Andy's hidden stash.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Invoked. After he's finally paroled from Shawshank and working at a grocery store, Red keeps asking the store manager to use the bathroom at the time he was allowed to go while on the job in prison. The manager gets frustrated and tells him, "You don't have to ask, just go."
• Bait-and-Switch Suicide:
  • When Andy doesn't answer for roll call, and following some intense foreshadowing, the audience is led to believe that Andy's escaped by killing himself, especially when the guard stares into the cell and says, shocked, "Oh my holy god." It turns out that Andy actually escaped by the traditional means.
  • Red unfurls his Swiss-Army Knife in a similar manner to Brooks before the latter carved a message before his suicide. Turns out he was leaving his own message, "So Was Red", before leaving for Mexico.
    Red: "Get busy living, or get busy dying." That's goddammed right.
• Bathroom Control: Invoked. After Red's finally paroled from Shawshank and working at a grocery store, he keeps asking the store manager to use the bathroom at the time he was allowed to go while on the job in prison. The manager gets frustrated and tells him, "You don't have to ask everytime you need to take a piss, just go."
• Batman Gambit: Andy played the warden for a chump!
• Big Damn Reunion: When Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding gets out of prison he eventually goes to see the escaped banker and hero of the movie in Mexico where the movie ends.
• Bittersweet Ending: Brooks and Tommy are dead, Andy wasn't exonerated, and Blatch still got away with his crimes. Red is violating his parole by going to Mexico to meet Andy outside of jail, and they are probably both on the run from the law and in no position to turn to it should anything happen. However, Norton did get exposed as a crook, and ended up shooting himself; Hadley got arrested for his role in the murder of Tommy; and at the very end of the movie, Andy and Red finally get to enjoy their friendship outside of jail, which surely must be refreshing for them, it is for the audience, and they can live out their lives in peace. Plus, as Red notes, it's doubtful that the law will toss up any roadblocks for his parole violation, especially for an old crook like him.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Nobody's perfectly morally upstanding in this story. The closest thing to a good guy is Andy. He didn't actually kill anyone but did seem to consider it, seeing as he stalked his wife with a loaded gun while drunk. Red and Brooks are decent fellows who did something to warrant their life sentences in prison. It's known that while he did regret it afterwards, Red committed murder, and it's most likely Brooks did, too (in the novella Red tried to kill his wife by cutting her brake lines, but she picked up her neighbor and her child, and was caught for all three, while Brooks killed his wife and child in a drunken rage after a losing streak at poker). Red's friends are all fairly friendly and likable, but they are still criminals, mostly of the violent sort. Then you have how unbelievably cruel and remorseless the actual villains are.
  Andy: The funny thing is, on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook.
• Blatant Lies: Everyone in Shawshank insisting that they're innocent, Red being the only inmate who publicly admits his guilt.
• Blue/Orange Contrast: Filmed largely in stony blue and grey tones and set in the cold, temperate Northeast, the whole movie actually serves as one half of this with the warmer, mostly yellowish, Southern-set The Green Mile as the other half.
• Book Safe: Andy keeps his rock hammer in his Bible. In the Book of Exodus, no less.
  "Dear warden, you were right. Salvation lay within."
• Bowdlerise: Somewhat humorously in the TV version of the film, the projectionist immediately leaves the room after protesting that he needed to change the reel. In the original, Bogs Diamond tells him to "fuck off."
• Brick Joke:
  • While all the prisoners of Shawshank silently listened to the opera Andy defiantly played over the loudspeakers, Heywood sarcastically asks if he couldn't have played something better, like Hank Williams. Once Andy actually gets the actual money and support for the prison library, he gets the place stocked with books and music...including Hank Williams, which Heywood is shown listening to.
  • Andy goes out and gets drunk at the beginning of the film when his wife demands a divorce. When he arranges for the convicts to get beer later in the film (something that almost gets him thrown off the roof for his trouble), he declines a bottle for himself, saying he gave up drinking. Even Heywood finds it rather funny.
  • At the beginning of the movie, when Andy introduces himself, Red notes that everyone here is innocent and Heywood says his lawyer fucked him. Later on, when Tommy admits to Breaking and Entering and asks what Andy did (as a retort to Andy saying that Tommy isn't a very good crook):
    Andy: Me? [looks at Heywood] Lawyer fucked me. Everyone's innocent here! Didn't you know that?
  • When Andy plays a recording from The Marriage of Figaro over the prison loudspeakers and locks the door, Norton has Hadley and the other guards bust down the door and drag Andy away to solitary. In the climax, Norton locks himself in his office as the regular cops try to bust the door down and arrest him, and, without Hadley to do his dirty work, takes a different method of escape.
• Cacophony Cover-Up: Andy's strikes against the sewage pipe are synchronized with thunderstorms during a heavy rain.
• Call-Back: Red talking about "being guilty of committing a crime" for the second time (referring to his flight to Mexico) sounds a lot like Brooks writing about leaving his halfway house (referring to his eventual suicide). They both also carve their names in their room.
  Brooks: I doubt they'll kick up any fuss. Not for an old crook like me.
  Red: Of course, I doubt they'll toss up any roadblocks for that. Not for an old crook like me.
• Can't Stop the Signal: There's a small-town variation on this. As he escapes and takes all of the secret kickback money out of false bank accounts, Andy drops a package of hard proof of the warden's crimes into the outgoing mail. That gets sent to the local newspaper; in the next scene, the front-page article indicting the prison warden is shown on the Warden's desk, just as the cops are trying to beat down his office door.
• Captivity Harmonica: Subverted. Andy gets Red a harmonica as a gift after Red said that he used to play harmonica, and Red blows a little on it, but doesn't play — because he used to play it before he went to prison, and wants no reminders of his free days.
• Central Theme:
  • Hope. Does hope just prolong the agony of people with nothing left to live for, or is it the only thing that can save them? The movie comes down hard on the side of the latter, after Andy goes through hell to earn his happy ending.
  • Redemption. Yes, atoning for the sins of your past is an important part of life, but no one deserves to suffer for their offenses forever. At some point, everyone deserves the chance to redeem themselves and start anew, even if they have to take that chance by force.
• Chekhov's Armoury: Andy's "one-bunk Hilton" prison cell, starting with...
  • The Rock Hammer, which he uses to dig his way through the wall.
    Red: I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty.
  • Andy beginning to carve his name in the wall is what leads him to discovering that he can slowly dig through it.
  • The Bible, which Warden Norton nearly takes from Andy, but then gives back, never knowing that it contained said rock hammer.
  • The Chess Set. Andy takes it with him during his escape, and mentions it to Red in his final letter before the latter heads to Mexico.
  • The posters on Andy's wall. He uses them to cover up the hole he carves out.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Norton orders Andy to get his stuff down to laundry and shine his shoes twice. He also orders Andy to tell the cleaners to stop "overstarching" his shirts.
  • Andy notices the names of two prisoners who occupied his cell previously carved into the wall, and proceeded to do the same with his rock hammer. Instead, he ends up scraping a whole chunk out of the wall, and realizes how he can put together an escape plan.
  • Special attention is paid to the posters of gorgeous starlets Andy has on the wall of his cell over the years.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Tommy Williams. He once shared a cell with the man who really killed Andy's wife, and he finally makes it clear to the audience that Andy is innocent. When Warden Norton has him assassinated to keep him quiet, Andy's anger galvanizes him into finally making his escape.
  • Randall Stephens, the silent partner. The one with the bank account and the Social Security number, aka the identity Andy takes up for his new life.
• Chekhov's Hobby: Had Andy picked up any other hobby than rock-collecting, he might not have gotten too far.
• Chiaroscuro: Half of Norton's face is lost in darkness as he discusses Andy's future with Tommy, the only person with evidence of Andy's innocence. During his subsequent conversation with Andy, Andy is lost in darkness with the Warden, framed by the light of the door, obscured by the shadow he's casting over Andy.
• Chromosome Casting: The only woman with any role is Andy's wife, and she's been murdered by the five-minute mark. Justified since the movie takes place in an all-male prison. Also, Red's third parole hearing features a woman. There were a couple of scenes in the original script where Tommy Williams is visited at Shawshank by his wife, and the role was cast, but the scenes were cut because the shooting schedule didn't allow time to film them.
• Chronic Villainy: Brooks and Red contemplate breaking their paroles by committing a felony, not out of a criminal instinct — that they no longer have — but because it's a sure way to go back to jail, the only place they feel comfortable. They both find an alternative.
• Cluster F-Bomb: The dialogue of the movie has an abundance of swearing throughout, but most of the swearing comes from Byron Hadley.
• Compressed Adaptation: The novella took place over thirty years, compressed to twenty in the film. Other small examples pop up besides this: for example, Red spends several months hunting for the volcanic glass rock in the novella, but in the film appears to find it after only a few hours. Justified, as in the book, Andy only tells Red about the rock as an incidental aside while telling him about how it has the key to a safety deposit box with the rest of his new life in it, and only says "it's in a hayfield in Buxton," which is one of any number of hayfields (it's sheer luck that Red decides to look for it, and Andy thinks to leave a letter for him after getting out). In the movie, Andy gives Red specific directions on how to find it.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror:
  • Red gives a matter of fact narration about life in the prison, whether he's talking about work details, the monotony of routine piled on routine, or the daily fact of Prison Rape.
    Red: Sometimes [Andy] was able to fight [the Sisters] off, sometimes not. I do believe if life had continued that way, prison would have got the better of Andy.
  • Somewhat subverted but also played straight with Heywood and the Fresh Fish game. He goads Fat Ass into breaking down in hysterics and laughs at having won the game, but gets quiet and scared because Fat Ass isn't stopping in the face of Hadley's fury. He quietly pleads with Fat Ass to shut up and can't bear to watch as Hadley beats him to a pulp. He's somewhat recovered by the next morning and asks how that fish of his is doing, and becomes somber on learning the man died during the night with no doctor to help him. Then he snaps at Andy when Andy asks if anyone knew Fat Ass's name, rubbing salt in the wound. The rest of the movie makes it clear that Heywood, despite the crime that gave him decades in Shawshank, is basically a decent guy who isn't okay with the horrors of prison life. Everyone around the table reacts in much the same way, including the man who was working the infirmary that night and delivered the news of Fat Ass's death. It hurts, but they have to ge over it quickly because this is just breakfast at Shawshank.
• Content Warning: Much surprising, FX aired the uncut version of the movie during the Oscars weekend with the same disclaimer like Straight Outta Compton at the beginning, plus abridged disclaimers coming out of every break. See for yourself.
• Contrived Coincidence
  • A man killed Andy's wife and her lover on the exact night that Andy was drunkenly stalking them with a loaded gun, using the a gun that was the exact same caliber as Andy's gun. Lampshaded by Andy and the prosecution in the opening scene.
    1946 D.A.: When they arrived, you went up to the house and murdered them?
    Andy: No. I was sobering up. I got back in the car and drove home to sleep it off. Along the way, I stopped and I threw my gun into the Royal River. I feel I've been very clear on this point.
    1946 D.A.: Where I get hazy, though, is the part where the cleaning woman shows up the next morning and finds your wife and her lover in bed, riddled with .38 caliber bullets. Now, does that strike you as a fantastic coincidence, Mr. Dufresne, or it just me?
    Andy: Yes. It does.
  • Tommy went from being Blatch's roommate to Andy's pupil. What are the odds? Even better, Blatch bragged about the entire incident with just enough details for Tommy to connect the dots when Red offhandedly mentions the crime along with Andy's prior occupation as a banker.
• Conveniently Timed Distraction: Andy Dufresne's remarkable string of luck includes a thunderstorm that serves to mask the loud banging noise he's making as he smashes a hole in the sewage pipe.
• Correspondence Course: Tommy completes his GED by correspondence course, supervised by Andy. Out of necessity, since he's in prison.
• Covers Always Lie: The back cover of the movie's VHS tape features an embrace between the attractive Mrs. Dufresne and her lover... two characters who are out of the picture within the film's first five minutes.
• Creator Cameo: Director Frank Darabont doubles for the close-ups on Andy's hands when he's loading the gun and carving his initials on the prison wall. He does the same for Norton when he's loading his gun as he's about to be arrested.
• Darkest Hour: Prior to the final act, Andy has spent 2 brutal months in solitary confinement with Tommy killed by the Warden, along with any hope of Andy's freedom. In addition, Andy is forced to continue as the Warden's personal slave in the Warden's scams and has obtained a rope from Heywood, likely to kill himself. Red outright states this when he says that very night was the longest night of his life, not knowing if his friend would still be around by the next morning.
• A Deadly Affair: Andy is sent to prison for murdering his wife and her lover. He maintains that he is innocent, and that he threw his gun into the river instead of shooting anyone with it. Later, it's revealed that the murders were committed by a burglar who was there to rob the lover's house.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Warden Norton and Tommy Williams. In the book, Norton quits Shawshank a broken man instead of committing suicide (the bit where Andy exposes his crimes is absent), and Tommy is bribed with a transfer to a minimum security prison instead of being murdered. Also Brooks, who commits suicide when he gets out in the film, but goes to a retirement home in the book.
  • Averted in the stage version, where the Warden is neither killed nor a Karma Houdini - Stammas is arrested while trying to flee to Canada after Andy tips off the state about his embezzlement, and ends up in prison himself.
• Death by Woman Scorned: Subverted. Andy's wife was cheating on him, and he goes to jail for her murder. Although he did consider killing his wife, he's actually innocent of the crime (someone else got her first).
• Desperate Plea for Home: Early in the film, the seasoned convicts "go fishing" for new arrivals, placing bets on which one of the "new fish" will break down crying over their first night in prison. Heywood eventually manages to badger the man next-door to him into a breakdown, prompting the poor guy to start screaming that he wants to go home; before long, he's crying for his mother as well. The breakdown ends with Captain Hadley storming onto the cellblock, dragging the man out of his cell, and delivering a fatal beating.
• Divorce in Reno: Andy's disloyal wife wants a divorce. Andy's response — "I'll see you in hell before I'll see you in Reno" — is part of what convinces the jury that he killed her. (Reno was then a divorce Mecca in the days when no-fault divorce was rare.)
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Several moments in the movie subtextually associate Andy with Jesus. Probably the most noticeable is the scene where the guards are astonished to find his cell empty after his escape, which strongly evokes the moment in The Bible where the Judean women are astonished to find Jesus' tomb empty after his resurrection.
• Double-Meaning Title: Andy and Red are both imprisoned at Shawshank for murder, and the story sees both of them finding redemption in their own ways. Red (who's guilty) comes to honestly atone for his crimes, and ultimately convinces the parole board that he deserves a second chance at life. Andy (who's innocent) still blames himself for indirectly getting his wife killed by driving her into the arms of a man marked for death, but he proves himself to be a genuinely decent man with his good deeds behind bars, and ultimately escapes from Shawshank when he decides that he's earned his second chance at life.
• Double Take: Heywood gives a nonverbal version of this to Red saying, "Guy likes to play chess. Let's get him some rocks." (Andy expressed interest in making his own chess set out of rocks he didn't have.) Heywood nods agreeingly, then turns to look at Red confused.
• Down the Drain: Andy makes his escape by tunneling into the jail's sewer system and using it to both get away from the jail and mask himself from the bloodhounds used to track him.
• Dramatic Drop: Norton, when he finds the hole Andy made in his Bible to hide the rock hammer, and promptly drops said Bible.
• Dramatic Shattering: Norton shoots himself in the head to avoid being arrested at the end, and the bullet smashes the window behind him.
• Drunk Driver: Andy went to a few bars before driving over to Glenn Quentin's residence and was still sobering up when he decided against going inside the house and drove home to sleep it off. It's a miracle he didn't cause an accident and it's possible he sees it as one of the mistakes he needed to pay for in Shawshank.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Andy goes to prison for a crime he didn't commit and is stuck there for 19 years (while the guy who actually did it gets away with it), is repeatedly attacked by fellow inmates and guards alike, and then is thrown under the bus multiple times by the warden because of a perceived threat to reveal his embezzlement... but manages to escape and then follow his dream to go to the Pacific. Meanwhile, after Red has been in prison for 40 years for a crime he committed long ago and regrets, repeatedly denied parole, he is finally granted it and follows Andy, where they reunite in Zihuatanejo for possibly the most well-earned and most-deserved victory in cinematic history. Let's just say they more than earned it.
• Empathic Environment: In Red's parole hearings. The first time he goes, the room is all shadows and gloomy grey lighting behind him, and Red is wearing a grey shirt with a dark jacket over top. The second time, he's lost the dark jacket and sunlight is shining on his face, but still leaving most of the room behind him in shadow. The third time, Red has swapped out the pale grey shirt for a peaceful light blue and sunlight is streaming through the windows onto his face as he basically tells them to stuff it. They let him go.
• Epic Movie: A rare crossover between this genre and a prison movie. Although almost all the action is confined to a single building site, the large volume of characters, the long time passage of time that the story covers, the larger-than-life characters who all get their justice in the end through many years of struggle, and the universal themes of hope, freedom, and redemption means it definitely qualifies.
• Everybody Smokes: Played straight with most of the prison population, but makes sense given the time period. Pretty common in prisons even today. The prisoners make bets with cigarettes as the winning pool in their first scene.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Hadley and Norton, when searching Andy's prison cell, came this close to uncovering his escape attempt, and would have succeeded if they'd only either 1) opened his Bible or 2) checked behind his poster.
  • During Andy's last night, nobody, not even the guards or Red himself notices that Andy is wearing the Warden's dress shoes. Lampshaded by Red himself, nobody really looks at anyone's shoes unless there is a reason to do so.
    Red: The guards simply didn't notice. Neither did I...I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?
• Fauxshadowing: Andy's mentally broken and uncharacteristically traumatized behavior after he gets out of solitary, along with some intense foreshadowing, (Brooks' suicide, Andy buying rope, "get busy livin' or get busy dyin',", etc.) sets us up to expect that Andy is going to escape the pain and sorrow of Shawshank Prison by hanging himself in his cell. It's all part of his plan to escape in the traditional sense.
• Feedback Rule: Andy Dufresne finds himself into the warden's office, with access to a phonograph and the microphone for the prison's paging system. After putting Le Nozze Di Figaro on the record player, Andy locks the door and turns on the microphone, which immediately begins to feedback.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Many of the prisoners (those who aren't monsters) become this. It's a nightmare you have to find a way to live through. Andy joins Red's group and then the two become best friends.
• Fisher Kingdom: The way that Brooks Hatlen's story plays out is a parable on just how insidious prison life can be for a long-term inmate, making it difficult to live outside of the stone walls which have come to define their entire existence. Red calls it becoming "institutionalized," with the implication that everyone who remains there for a sufficient period of time will suffer that fate. He even suggests that it would have done so to Andy eventually, if of course he hadn't escaped by the end of the film. Red himself also ultimately transcends this fate as well.
• Fish Out of Water: Life in prison institutionalizes people, to the point where they can't adapt to life in freedom anymore. Played for drama with Brooks and mirrored by Red, but with a subverted outcome. See Fisher Kingdom above.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • Norton drops his unfinished cigarette to the ground and stamps it out well before it's reached its natural end, moments before he has Hadley do the same thing to Tommy. With a rifle. From a guard tower.
  • One of the cops shouts, "Make it easy on yourself, Norton!" seconds before he decides to do just that.
• Food Porn:
  • An icy cold Bohemian Style Beer has never been so yummy-looking before.
  • Even a pie presumably cooked by someone the Warden describes as someone who can't bake well looks pretty good too, if Red consuming the pie is any indication, given the Mess on a Plate the prisoners are often used to.
  • Subverted when Andy finds a termite in his lunch.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Red describing Andy's dreams of getting out as "nothing but a shitty pipe dream." Andy escapes by crawling through a pipe full of excrement in the middle of the night.
  • At one point Andy sits on the floor of his cell, staring at the poster on his wall.
  • When they let Bogs out of solitary after he beats Andy so badly that he ends up in the hospital, the guard says "Time's up, Bogs"... a guard who knew exactly what Bogs had waiting for him when he got back to his cell...
  • Andy's line during the library scene, to Heywood (referring to The Count of Monte Cristo): "You'd like it, it's about a prison break." And much like Edmond Dantes, Andy escapes his prison through a hidden tunnel and takes revenge on those who have wronged him - although in this case, Warden Norton wasn't the man responsible for Andy getting sent to prison, but he is responsible for keeping him there. And then there's the record Andy plays: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, which is about a servant outwitting his master, and he specifically plays the duetino Sull'aria, in which Susanna and the Contessa make their plan to dupe the Count.
  • Listen very closely when Red talks about having "long nights in stir," and after the thunder cracks, you can hear the sound of Andy attacking the pipe with a rock.
  • In many of the later scenes, Andy has very noticeable dark circles under his eyes that get more intense the older he gets. One could conceivably pass this off as the effects of the stress from the Warden's pointedly cruel treatment, but it's actually from all those sleepless nights he spends digging away at the wall of his cell.
  • When Andy is giving Hadley some taxation advice, the latter is very distrustful, and angrily accuses him of wanting to get him locked up in prison alongside him. By the end of the film, Andy's shenanigans result in the public learning about Hadley's abusive treatment of the Shawshank prisoners, and his last scene has him being read his Miranda rights as he's being arrested.
  • The scene where Andy's cell is being searched is absolutely loaded with this. Attentive viewers will start to suspect the significance of Andy's Bible and the Rita Hayworth poster. Pay particular attention to the shot where Andy is facing the camera with a look of pure panic on his face, while prominently framed on the left-hand side of the screen is the Hayworth poster. Then there's this line from Norton, which gets a direct callback later on:
    Warden Norton: (handing Andy his Bible back) Salvation lies within.
  • Tommy is called upon to meet with the warden regarding what he told Andy that could get him exonerated, in the night, in the yard. There isn't much reason that the meeting couldn't have taken place in the warden's office unless he wanted to frame Tommy's murder as an escape attempt.
• Four Is Death:
  • Hadley takes 4 shots at Tommy when killing him.
  • Andy's wife and her lover were shot four times each. The prosecutor even uses this to paint Andy as a cold-blooded murderer. A revolver only holds six bullets, so in order to fire eight times the murderer would have had to stand there and reload.
• Friendship Moment: To show that life in prison isn't a complete nightmare, the inmates get a lot of moments to show that they care for and support one another, such as Heywood making it a point to walk over and offer Andy a beer as he sits to the side by himself, inviting him into the group. Andy and Red get a lot of these as they become Platonic Life-Partners.
  Red: I'm thinking Andy could use a nice welcome back when he gets out of the infirmary.
  Heywood: Sounds good to us. I figure we owe him that much for the beer.
• Gallows Humor:
  • Andy participating in the running gag of everyone being innocent. Ironic in that he's (presumably) the only one who's actually innocent.
  • Red's narration of Warden Norton's suicide is dripping with this.
    Red: I'd like to think the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet, is to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him.
• Gambit Roulette: A large passage in the novella consists of Red enumerating all of the things that might have gone wrong with Andy's plan, but somehow did not. The movie, to its credit, tries to explain some of these problems (such as where Andy hid the rock hammer, or how he secured a change of clothes).
• Gendered Insult: The head bull casually insults the prisoners by calling them "ladies."
• Gentle Giant: Andy stands at an impressive height of 6'5" and is shown to be a very polite, unpretentious man.
• Glasses of Aging: As Andy and Red get older, they have trouble reading. We see them having to hold books or notes at arm's length to read them before getting reading glasses.
• Goodbye, Cruel World!: Played straight with Brooks's postcard, subverted by Red's.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Happens when Norton shoots himself. He is shown placing the gun under his chin before the camera quickly cuts away to a shot of his blood splattering onto the window behind him (and the bullet breaking the glass). His corpse with the entry wound and some...stuff on the floor is shown afterwards, though. It's a particularly well-executed example of this trope. At no point do we see the bullet enter or exit the head, but Darabont has commented (in the publication of his shooting script) that just by using sound and general atmosphere, one could make the audience think they saw something they didn't.
  • The scene in which Hadley beats Fat-Ass to death is lit in such a way that both men appear as silhouettes, more or less amounting to this trope.
  • Hadley gets in his first few licks on Bogs onscreen, but the beating clearly continues long after the cutaway.
  • Andy's first beating at the hands of the Sisters. We see it beginning, but once Andy is knocked to the ground, the camera slowly retreats around a corner and away from the sight of the beating, though we can still hear it happening.
  • When Bogs himself is beaten by Hadley and the guards, we don't see the rest of the beating after Bog is dragged back into his cell. In fact, the original script called for Bogs to be pushed off the railing near his cell (which is at the top of the cellblock) with the impact presumably causing his paralysis as seen in the next scene. This was not shot on film so how he was paralyzed exactly is supposed to be left to our own imagination.
• Great Escape: Near the end of the movie, Andy escapes, praising his newly found freedom.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Elmo Blatch, the real killer of Andy's wife and her lover. It's for his crime that Andy is sent to Shawshank.
• Grin of Audacity: When Andy locks himself in the office and plays The Marriage of Figaro over the loudspeaker, Norton (with several guards backing him up) bangs on the door, shouting at Andy to turn the music off. In response, Andy sits up and turns the radio up as he grins at the furious warden. Even when Hadley peers through the window with a Psychotic Smirk as he taps the door with his baton and calmly says "Dufresne! You're mine now," Andy maintains his grin.
• Hair Flip: The prisoners are shown watching Gilda. When Rita Hayworth flips her hair back, the entire audience cheers and whistles.
  Red: This is the part I really like, when she does that shit with her hair.
  Andy: Oh, yeah, I know. I've seen it three times this month.
• Happy Rain: When Andy Dufresne finally gets out of the prison, it's raining. It's even shown on the promotional poster. Of course, he had more reason than most to be happy with a heavy rainstorm, since he had just "waded through a river of shit" literally.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Tommy's murder at the hands of Captain Hadley and Warden Norton is a variant (more like, "Would you be willing to tell someone else?" Even though the other prisoners know about Andy's innocence, they have no power to tell anyone outside of the prison, and they have no real evidence beyond their words anyway, which aren't believable.
• He Had a Name: Andy asks of "Fat Ass": "What was his name?" (We don't find out what it is.) This dramatizes how Andy is less callous than the other prisoners.
• Hellhole Prison: A constant theme, along with how it becomes home after a while despite it. After allegedly killing his wife along with her boyfriend after he catches her cheating on him, Andy Dufresne is sentenced to two life sentences at Shawshank, where he encounters a gang of prison rapists known as "The Sisters", the vicious leader of the prison guards Captain Hadley, and the corrupt warden Samuel Norton who wishes to use him to embezzle money. Fortunately, Andy manages to gradually improve Shawshank as the film goes on. The prison itself is a fairly mild example, especially compared to the era it's set in, but the corrupt staff is definitely not.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Andy and Red become inseparable best friends for the rest of their lives through their experience in prison. The movie's director even describes the movie as a platonic love story.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: How Andy makes off with Warden Norton's shoes.
  Red: The guards just didn't notice it, and neither did I. I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?
• Hollywood New England: Like many of Stephen King's novels and films, both the book and the film are set in his native Maine. Many often confuse the film's setting for Ohio, where it was filmed (despite Maine and New England being mentioned many times in the film). The warden sports a hint of a Maine accent, but is the only character to do so.
• Homage Shot: Andy used the exact same method of disposing of his wall fragments that the Allied prisoners in The Great Escape did (hidden pockets inside his pants with a drawstring release to dump the bits into the prison courtyard).
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: Red wins parole when he's finally open and honest with the parole board after multiple failures where he tried to tell them what they wanted to hear.
• Hope Spot: Tommy's story about having been cellmates with the man who really killed Andy's wife and her lover suggests Andy can clear his name. Unfortunately, Warden Norton has other ideas... It's direct and extremely brutal in the scene itself. Warden Norton's exchange with Tommy strongly suggests that he's willing to move on Andy's innocence. As soon as Tommy makes Norton sure, Hadley shoots and kills him from a guard tower. Right after, Norton visits Andy in solitary, in one incredibly nasty Kick the Dog scene.
• Hope Springs Eternal: This is actually the subtitle of the novella (which is part of a collection of four stories called Different Seasons), and a major theme of the story. Andy never gives up hope, even after being wrongfully convicted and experiencing the brutality of prison for nearly 20 years. His relentless hopefulness eventually rubs off on the cynical Red, who initially doubts he could even survive outside of prison.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • The guards deliberately subject new convicts to this, marching them in freshly hosed down and deloused, naked and carrying their clothes, in front of all the other prisoners.
  • Andy subjects his tormentors to these in the end. Norton kills himself rather than go down for his crimes, and "They say Hadley cried like a baby when they came for him."
• Ignoring Sexual Orientation: Discussed between Andy and Red when Red tells Andy that "The Sisters" have taken an interest in him.
  Andy: I don't suppose it would help if I told them that I'm not homosexual.
  Red: Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don't qualify.
• Implied Death Threat:
  • After Bogs gets paralyzed in a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by Hadley, as he is being wheeled away in an ambulance, he and Hadley exchange a look. This look implies that if Bogs says anything to anyone about his beating, it will get a lot worse for him and his Sister friends. Same goes for the Sisters, they get the message and leave Andy alone.
  • Norton's An Offer You Can't Refuse to Andy is full of this. Removal of the protection from the guards and transfer to their cellblock would certainly mean almost certain death for Andy, likely being Driven to Suicide.
    Norton: I'll cast you down with the sodomites. You'll think you've been fucked by a train.
• Improperly Paranoid: At the end of the film, when Red digs up the box Andy left for him under the oak tree he finds a letter and a stack of cash. Red can't help but look around to make sure no one will arrest him or steal it, despite being alone in the middle of nowhere.
• Inconveniently Vanishing Exonerating Evidence: Variation. Andy had a gun and was (seemingly) planning on killing his wife and her lover, but decided against it and threw the gun into a river. Then someone else murdered his wife & her lover, and since they can't find his gun they can't test to see if the bullets match or not.
  D.A.: You claim you threw your gun into the Royal River before the murders took place. That's rather convenient.
  Andy: It's the truth.
  D.A.: You recall Lt. Mincher's testimony? He and his men dragged that river for three days and nary a gun was found. So, no comparison can be made between your gun and the bullets taken from the bloodstained corpses of the victims. That's also rather convenient, isn't it, Mr. Dufresne?
  Andy: Since I am innocent of this crime, sir, I find it decidedly inconvenient the gun was never found.
• Incriminating Indifference: At the start of the movie, Andy Dufresne is charged with the murder of his wife. Though there is other evidence that points towards him, what seems to really cinch the case is that he showed no grief, described by the judge as "an icy and remorseless" individual. The fact that his wife was killed along with her lover and that this might confuse his grieving process is never addressed. Sure enough, about two-thirds of the way through the movie, we find out that Andy really was innocent; how can he feel remorse for something he didn't do? The rest of the film makes it clear that Andy just has a calm, quiet, emotionally reserved personality.
• Instant Thunder: Andy escapes from prison during a thunderstorm; one aspect of this involved him banging on a sewer pipe with a rock during thunder rumbles to drown out the sound. The thunder rumbles were almost at the exact same time as the flashes, from which Andy knew exactly when to strike the sewer pipe.
• Ironic Echo:
  • After Andy claims he's innocent, this exchange happens:
    Red: You're gonna fit right in. Everyone in here is innocent, you know that? Heywood, what you in here for?
    Heywood: Didn't do it. Lawyer fucked me.
  • Later this exchange,
    Tommy Williams: Yeah, well, what the hell do you know about it, Capone? What are you in for?
    Andy Dufresne: Me? My lawyer fucked me. Everybody's innocent in here. Didn't you know that? (everybody else starts laughing)
  • A sort of almost-echo occurs a bit later, after Tommy has revealed what he knows.
    Heywood: Wait, you mean Andy's innocent? Like, for-real innocent?
  • At one point, Norton hands Andy back his Bible, assuring him that "Salvation lies within." Just before escaping, Andy leaves the Bible in Norton's safe: when Norton opens the Bible, he finds a note from Andy telling him "Dear Warden, you were right. Salvation lay within." Andy hollowed out his Bible to hide the rock hammer. The boast here was twofold - the hollowed-out pages where the hammer was stored begin on the first page of the Book of Exodus, which tells of the Israelites' deliverance from slavery.
  • A nonverbal one, when Andy exposes Norton's embezzlement and the FBI comes to arrest him, he looks at the picture frame on his wall "His Judgment Cometh, And That Right Soon."
• Irony: "You strike me as a particularly icy and remorseless man, Mr. Dufresne.". Well, yeah. He's remorseless because he has nothing to show remorse for; he's innocent.
• It's All My Fault: Tommy blaming himself for Andy being placed in solitary confinement, and Andy blaming himself for his wife leaving him.
  Andy: I killed her, Red. I didn't pull the trigger, but I drove her away. And that's why she died: because of me. The way I am.
• I Want My Mommy!: It precedes a serious case of Mood Whiplash, but one of the new inmates breaks down and begins crying for his mother. One of the veteran inmates calls back with "I've had your mother! She wasn't that great!"
• Jerkass Has a Point: Norton seems to have a point when he shoots down Andy's hopes of finding Blatch and getting a retrial. As he points out, even if they did manage to track down Blatch, he was hardly likely to own up to two murders and earn himself a life sentence. However, the trope is subverted because acquitting Andy doesn't require convicting Blatch. Andy would just need to establish reasonable doubt, which could be done by digging up Blatch's employment records at the country club, combined with Tommy's testimony. By dismissing even the possibility of Andy getting a new trial, he was indeed being "deliberately obtuse." This is of course confirmed when he has Tommy killed.
• Karma Houdini:
  • The lackeys in the Sisters group as well, in the movie version. Bogs received his Laser-Guided Karma but the viewer isn't told what happens to the rest of them, other than they "never bothered Andy again."
  • Elmo Blatch never pays for the murders of Mrs. Dufresne and Glenn Quentin, for which Andy wrongfully spent 19 years in Shawshank. He was doing 6-12 years for armed robbery when he met Tommy, with Norton pointing out Blatch may have already been released by the time Tommy tells Andy and Red about him.
• Kick the Dog: Many, befitting the primary setting.
  • Heywood does this early in the movie, as he taunts an emotionally-overwhelmed prisoner by reeling him in with what starts out sounding reassuring, only to go on to something that is practically the opposite of reassuring. However, it's clear in the aftermath that he didn't want the guy to get hurt, he just wanted to win the contest. Especially when he's told that he died; he's one of the few other than Andy who really reacts to the death.
    "Don't you listen to these nitwits, you hear me? This place ain't so bad. Tell you what, I'll introduce you around, make you feel right at home. I know a couple of big old bull queers that'd just love to make your acquaintance. Especially that big, white, mushy butt of yours."
  • After ordering the murder of Tommy Williams because he knew too much about the true murderer of Andy's wife and her lover, Warden Norton visits Andy Dufresne in solitary confinement. There, he threatens to not only have him "cast down with the sodomites" if he withdraws from his money-laundering operation, but he also threatens to dismantle everything Andy has established to improve Shawshank, including the potential closure of the prison library and the subsequent destruction of all its books.
  • After Samuel Norton's visit to the hole, he sentences Andy to another month in solitary confinement. The expression on Andy's face after Norton's departure is utterly devastating.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Sam Norton spent years profiting from the slave labor in his prison and using Andy to launder the money for him. When Andy gets a shot at reopening his case and proving his innocence, Norton tortures Andy with two months in solitary confinement, threatens him with brutal prison rape if he ever sets a toe over the line, and has a young man murdered. Andy promptly turns it around by enacting his long, long term escape plan, stealing all of Norton's money, and sending his decades of meticulously kept financial records to the police, ensuring Norton will be convicted of fraud, torture, and murder, alongside the guards at Shawshank, all of them being sent to a prison like the one where they've acted as cruel gods. Norton eats a bullet instead.
  • Hadley is the head guard and he's the most brutal, beating a man to death on Andy's first night in prison. He's the one Andy goes to to curry favor with the guards by offering to act as a money launderer. He breaks down and cries like a baby when the police come to arrest him using the evidence Andy gave them.
  • Boggs, the leader of the Sisters, is able to commit Prison Rape with impunity because the guards simply don't care what the prisoners do to one another. However, he doesn't get the memo when Andy win's Hadley's favor and nearly beats Andy to death when Andy threatens to bite his dick off when he "gives him something to swallow". Hadly and the other guards paid special attention to Boggs's jaw, because he spent the rest of his life only able to take food through a straw. He also never walked again.
• Left the Background Music On: The opening music turns into the radio in Andy's car as he drinks liquor and contemplates murdering his wife and her lover.
• Locked Room Mystery: This is a major plot point in the movie, as Andy spends years digging a getaway tunnel through the wall of his prison cell. His escape leaves the wardens dumbfounded until they find the tunnel entrance behind a movie poster stuck to the wall.
• Lonely Piano Piece: The deeply haunting "Brooks Was Here".
• Longer-Than-Life Sentence: In the opening scenes of the movie, Andy is painted as a sociopathically cold-blooded and remorseless killer by the prosecutor, and the judge comes to agree with this statement throughout the trial due to Andy's demeanor and seeming lack of emotion, so he sentences Andy to two consecutive life sentences, one for each of the people Andy killed. Except Andy really is innocent, something which isn't confirmed until about 2/3 of the way through the movie.
• Love at First Sight: Bromance style. Though Red doesn't think much of Andy when he first enters Shawshank and bets against him in the Fresh Fish game, he finds his new best friend the first time he and Andy have a conversation.
  Red: I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him, a walk, a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled, like a man in the park without a care or worry in the world. Like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say I liked Andy from the start.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Downplayed. Andy's cell is no nicer than the rest, but he gets a private cell and some leeway as far as contraband goes. Norton later refers to it as his "one-bunk Hilton," so it's presumably a sweeter setup than most prisoners have. Over the course of his sentence, Andy slowly customizes his prison cell with bookshelves, knick-knacks, and posters. Of course, the posters were the only thing he really needed.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • A behind-the-scenes storyboard of Hadley's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of Bogs is supposed to end with Bogs being pushed off the railing and falling to the ground, with the impact likely causing his paralysis. The storyboard was supposed to end with Hadley saying that Bogs had slipped and fell over the railing accidentally instead.^note Take note of where Bog's cell is located, at the top floor of the cellblock. He could have very well been killed by the impact.
  • A variation: Norton sets up Tommy's murder to look not like an accident, but like a justified shooting during an escape attempt.
  • Used as a threat when Andy asks Hadley if he trusts his wife (to give her the $35,000 as a gift to avoid paying taxes):
    Hadley: (grabbing Andy with intent to throw him off the roof) Step aside, Mert. This fucker's havin' himself an accident.
• Make Sure He's Dead: The man who killed Andy's wife and her lover technically did this, although the prosecutor's point when telling the court that the gun would have to have been emptied and reloaded several times was that the killer did so for sadistic rather than pragmatic reasons. Fair point; he just had the wrong man.
• Man Hug: Andy and Red upon being reunited in the final moments of the film.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!":
  • The prison gang tarring the roof starts to work even faster when they realize that Hadley is about to push Andy off the roof.
  • The reaction of everyone in Andy's cell after his escape, when they find out he'd made a huge tunnel behind the poster.
• Meadow Run: They're old men, so running is a bit much to expect, but Red and Andy spot each other across the beach at Zihuatanejo, walk, and embrace.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • Some of Andy's final words to the Warden.
  • Also some of Andy's words to Red before the latter decides to go to Mexico.
  • Red also echoes Andy's earlier statement of "Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'" as a means to realize it is time to embrace hope.
  • Red when he chooses to flee to Mexico. He carves his name by Brooks's in the halfway house, then packs his suitcase and leaves. Some of his words from there echo his own from one of his talks with Andy, and Brooks' words from his suicide letter.
    Red: For the second time in my life, I'm guilty of committing a crime. Parole violation. Course, I doubt they're going to throw up any roadblocks for that. Not for an old crook like me.
• Miranda Rights: At the end of the movie, a police officer reads the Miranda Rights off an actual card as Hadley is arrested. Instead of being a case of Shown Their Work however, the card is there to indicate that Miranda Rights were still new, so the officer in question hasn't memorized them yet.
• Mistaken for Suicidal: This is invoked by Andy, where he talks about dying and requests a good length of rope from Heywood, in order to mask his plan to escape from Shawshank.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence: The Ink Spots 1939 hit "If I Didn't Care" is playing on Andy's car radio as he's contemplating murdering his wife, setting the scene roughly in the 1940s.
• Mood Whiplash: When we see Norton having a polite conversation with a young inmate who wants to testify on Andy's behalf, it seems like Norton might be willing to give the guy a chance after all. Then suddenly Hadley shoots said young inmate dead, apparently on Norton's orders.
• More Hateable Minor Villain: While Norton’s villainy is done to benefit himself and Hadley has some Pet the Dog moments, Bogs Diamond is a Serial Rapist solely For the Evulz.
• Motive = Conclusive Evidence: Andy Dufresne landed himself in jail for being suspected of the murder of his wife simply because he told her that he would see her in hell before he would see her in Reno. He also got sentenced because his shock at the events going on (and thus lack of expression) had the judge and jury believe he was a "stone-cold killer". There was also a preponderance of circumstantial evidence: she and her lover were murdered the same night as their argument, there was evidence placing him at the scene (and he was there, and had actually considered at least scaring them with a gun, before throwing it away in disgust with himself), he owned a gun which he couldn't produce for comparison and was never found... None of this is conclusive, but a biased or swung jury could still convict once presented with the motive story from the prosecution's case.
• Mundane Made Awesome: For four minutes, one opera record played over the loudspeakers turns Shawshank Prison into something like Heaven for the men inside.
• Music for Courage: Andy plays an opera record over the prison's PA system.
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: Andy explains how he's laundering Norton's money to Red. He's invented a man on paper, because he knows how the system works. And that's just how the laundry starts.
• Mythology Gag: In one scene, Andy asks Red (played by Morgan Freeman) how he got his nickname. He thinks for a moment and replies with an ironic grin, "Maybe it's because I'm Irish." In the novella, Red was indeed a red-haired Irishman. Here, it's from his last name, Redding.
• Nasal Trauma: Andy attempts to fend off the Sisters during an attempted Prison Rape in the projection room of the prison cinema, breaking Rooster MacBride's nose with a heavy film reel. Unfortunately, the Sisters take this personally...
• Never Going Back to Prison: Inverted. Inmates like Red and Brooks have spent the vast majority of their lives behind bars, and find readjusting to the outside world, which has changed radically in the meantime, almost impossible. It makes them long to go back to prison, back to what they're used to. Brooks can't adjust and is Driven to Suicide. Red is given a reason to continue, thanks to Andy.
• Nice Guy: One of the reasons Andy is able to carry out his plan is him always being perfectly respectful to the Warden and the guards. Thus, they never give his cell a thorough search.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The Sisters repeatedly administer these to Dufresne, driving him deeper and deeper into despair until he becomes useful to Byron and Norton as a tax accountant. The Sisters administer one more beatdown that nearly kills Andy, Byron administers a huge dose of Bogs's own medicine to him, and the Sisters finally let him alone.
• Nominal Importance: Played With - the rest of the 8-man band bar Andy and Red were never introduced and we only see them as "those guys Andy and Red hang out with" (with the exception of Heywood, who serves as something of a comic relief). They actually do have names, as they are mentioned by Red as he takes bets on his "horse" (everyone seems to think Red's choice of Andy breaking down in prison is a rather poor one). Ranked in order of relative importance after Andy, Red, and Heywood:
  • The big guy who looks like Tom Waits and speaks in an authoritative voice is Floyd.
  • The serious-looking one (who told Brooks to "calm the fuck down") is Jigger.
  • The calm-looking one usually sporting a denim jacket is Ernie. He's the one who wanted a pool table.
  • The big guy with a vaguely Italian look is Snooze. He's the one who accused Heywood of soiling his trousers when confronted by Brooks.
  • The one with the glasses is Skeet.
• No Music Allowed: There is a scene where Andy Dufresne plays opera music through the prison's loudspeakers. The warden is not pleased.
• No Name Given: "Fat Ass" (the one Hadley beat to death) is never actually named. "What was his name?" Nobody knows, Andy. He's even called "Fat Ass" in the credits and the closed captioning.
• No Peripheral Vision: A quite believable one when Andy wears the warden's shoes into his cell as part of his escape plan. Red's narration points it out: "The guard simply didn't notice. Neither did I. I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?"
• Not Used to Freedom: Brooks hangs himself because he can't cope with freedom after 50 years in prison.
  Red: These walls are funny. First, you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.
• Ocean Awe: An ongoing theme for Red during the last half of the movie.
  I wish the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Norton does this to Andy if Andy tries to back off from contributing to his scams. The threats include transfer to a cell block where the Sisters would rape him, and the destruction of Andy's library. Andy does initially go along with this, but then it's subverted when Andy decides to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
• Oh, Crap!: A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in the shower scene when Bogs first propositions Andy. When Bogs enters the shower and stands by an inmate while staring at him, said inmate pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
  • Tommy when Red tells him Andy's in Shawshank for killing his wife and her golf lover, remembering that Elmo Blatch told him how he killed a golf pro and his lover, with the woman's "hotshot banker" husband being wrongfully convicted for it.
• Once More, with Clarity: When Andy leaves the warden's office, it seems like he's given up hope and is planning to kill himself. A few minutes later you see the same sequence of events with a few more details showing how he was putting his escape plan into action.
• One Last Smoke: Norton offers a cigarette to Tommy just before implementing his plan to have him murdered.
• One Size Fits All: Andy steals one of the warden's suits prior to his escape, and wears it the next day when he withdraws money from the bank. Andy is noticeably taller than the warden, yet the suit fits him like it was tailored for him.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Red and Fat Ass, although in a Freeze-Frame Bonus we see that Red's name is Ellis Redding.
• Orbital Shot: There's an orbital shot of Red as he's looking for Andy's hidden cache in the forest, showing how vast and wide the space he's in is, the kind of space he hasn't been in for most of his life.
• The Outside World: Brooks, an old con, having finally been released after serving a long sentence, kills himself when he discovers he can't handle life in the world outside prison. Red considers this, too, after he's released.
• Parting-Words Regret: Andy's last conversation with his wife before her murder was a fight where in response to her asking for a divorce in Reno, he said "I'll see you in Hell before I see you in Reno!" It's clear he regrets that they never got to reconcile.
• Period Piece: The film begins in 1947 and ends two decades later. It carefully matches the clothing styles over the years, particularly with the Warden's suits and glasses (as he's one of the only people depicted in something other than a uniform). The other main indicator of time's passage, apart from the aging of the actors, is Andy's changing posters, from Rita Hayworth to Marilyn Monroe to Raquel Welch. The prison uniforms also update with the decades, with the prisoners shirts being grey in the 40s and 50s, and blue in the 60s.
• Pet the Dog: During Andy's last stint in solitary, a guard informs him that Tommy passed his GED.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The plot is kicked off by the murders of Andy Dufresne's wife and her lover, for which Andy is sentenced to two consecutive life terms. It's later revealed he really is innocent like he claimed.
• Poster Patchup: Andy covers up the tunnel he's been digging in the wall of his jail cell with a poster of, initially, Rita Hayworth. By the time he's ready to escape, the poster has been updated to one of Raquel Welch.
• The Power of Friendship: The Movie. There are few, if any, stronger and clearer examples out there.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: As pointed out in Adaptational Timespan Change, the story's time frame is cut from 30 years (1947-1977) in the novella to 21 (1946-1967). The actors age ranges can only be stretched so far with makeup, with the change in timespan allowing it to be done in a way that still looks realistic.
• Prisoner's Work:
  • Some prisoners are needed to help re-roof a prison building. In this case it's seen as a desirable task as it will allow them to work outside in nice weather, and Red and friends bribe the guards to be selected for the project.
  • Warden Norton initiates the "inside-out" program, in which inmates are used to complete public works projects. Norton pockets not only the profits from the program, but also bribes from other companies that are being forced out of business because they can't compete with his ridiculously cheap labor.
• Prisons Are Schools: Andy repeatedly pesters the government for funds to improve the ersatz prison library, eventually managing to convince the state senate to give him an annual payment of $500. He uses it to expand the library from a cramped storeroom into a set of proper rooms, bring in more books, and begin programs that allow inmates to take high school equivalency exams in preparation for life outside prison. He even takes time to help Tommy, who Never Learned to Read, study for his GED. He manages to pass, but due to being able to clear Andy's name, the warden kills him, as Andy has become too valuable to lose due to his accounting knowledge.
• Psychotic Smirk: Sam Norton has one on his face after delivering a speech to Andy and telling Byron Hadley to give him another month in solitary confinement. Hadley, normally a Perpetual Frowner, also delivers one in the scene in which Andy locks himself in the office and plays The Marriage of Figaro over the loudspeaker, as he peers through the window, taps it with his baton and calmly says "Dufresne! You're mine now."
• Rage Breaking Point: Norton kills Tommy. As soon as he's out of the hole, Andy escapes.
• Rags to Riches: Andy and Red go from inmates working in Shawshank's library and woodshop to wealthy men living off of Warden Norton's laundered money, with Andy planning to build a small hotel on the beach of Zihuatanejo. Andy also qualifies as an example of Riches to Rags as prior to his imprisonment he was the vice president of a major bank in Portland, Maine.
• Rape Discretion Shot: The camera shows "The Sisters" beating up Andy, but pans away from the actual rape (assuming there was one instead of solely being the first of many beatdowns).
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The sisters are the prison gang that take an interest in Andy and pursue him for violent rape, and it goes on for months, only stopping when Andy gains the favor of the guards by offering his services as a former banker to help them launder money. To cement his status as a prime villain and not simply Affably Evil, Norton threatens to "cast you down with the sodomites. You'll think you've been fucked by a train." to force Andy to keep laundering money for him.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: This movie was criticized for portraying prison guards as using beatings to control inmates, but prison guards have been known to do exactly that in real life, and such things would have been even more widespread during the time in which the film takes place.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: While it's averted in the case of the sadistic and sociopathic Warden Norton and head guard Hadley, most of the prison guards are shown to be decent people who are just doing their jobs. Many are quite civil with Andy for helping them with their taxes. It's even implied Shawshank has become a much better place after Norton's suicide and Hadley's arrest. That said, even one of the friendlier guards drops the façade when Andy doesn't show up for morning roll call with a "Come on out or I'll come in there and thump your skull for ya!" and getting angry, walking to his cell with a "I swear to god you'd better be dead or dying in there!".
• Record Needle Scratch: Literally, when Hadley busts into Norton's office and puts an end to Andy's playing of Le Nozze di Figaro. "On your feet!"
• Refuge in Audacity: A minor example: Andy gets Norton's dress shoes into his cell simply by wearing them after being assigned to clean them. This was Andy's stock in trade for his whole stint in prison. He dropped his mop and walked up to Hadley to ask "Do you trust your wife?" in order to offer his services as an accountant, only asking for beer in return. He baits Boggs into merely almost murdering him. He demands a library and finally gets one. He badgers Tommy into bettering himself. He escapes from prison and takes down Norton and Hadley. He spent twenty years hiding a giant tunnel in his cell under a literal Paper-Thin Disguise.
  Red: The guard simply didn't notice. Neither did I. I mean seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?
• Red Herring: At the climax, we're led to believe that Andy is planning suicide. He gives Red a dramatic speech about the choice between living and dying, he buys a length of rope from Heywood, and he fails to line up for roll-call the morning after, with a Discretion Shot of said guard's stunned face taking up the screen when he investigates his cell. Surprise! Andy actually escaped in the night. That big Rita Hayworth/Marilyn Monroe/Raquel Welch poster was covering up his escape tunnel the whole time, and he needed the rope to drag a bag of supplies behind him/attach it to his leg for transport through the sewer pipe and river.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • The surprise inspection scene is so much more tense on subsequent viewings. The first time, all you get is a sense of awkwardness and a vague feeling that Andy is hiding something. The second time around, you cringe at exactly how close the Warden came to finding or walking off with Andy's hammer, or discovering the hole behind his poster. In a more general sense, you get to see just how much time and planning Andy has put towards his escape and his life afterwards.
  • When Andy goes to Red to ask for the Rita Hayworth poster, he shows consternation at Red saying it would take weeks to get Rita, since we know by now he discovered the weakness in the wall.
• Road Apples: There's a scene where the supporting characters are searching for rocks that Andy can carve. One brings one up and asks what kind of stone it is, only to be told it's petrified horse dung (a horse apple).
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Andy's job for his first few years is at the laundry. Norton moves him to the library... so he can start laundering money.
  • What does Warden Norton use as a hidey-hole for his shady records and ill-gotten gains? A space in the wall behind his wife's Christian embroidery.
  • The last intact page in Andy's bible before getting to his hidden rock hammer? The first page of The Book of Exodus.
  Andy: (in a note) Warden, you were right. Salvation lies within.
• Rule of Three:
  • Red is summoned to a parole hearing three times. He is finally granted parole the third time, near the end of the film.
  • The "I'm innocent. Everyone here is innocent." gag is played three times, only the last time the prisoners learn Andy actually is innocent. "You mean for real innocent?"
• Run for the Border: By the end, the heroes flee to Mexico, crossing the border in Fort Hancock, Texas.
• Running Gag:
  • Apparently everyone at Shawshank is "innocent," and just had "a lawyer fuck them." Red is in fact the only prisoner in Shawshank we ever hear admit guilt.
    Heywood: [after hearing Tommy's story] Wait, [Andy]'s innocent? Like, for-real innocent?
  • Also:
    Andy: What are you in for?
    Red: Murder. Same as you.
    Andy: Did you do it?
    Red: Only guilty man in Shawshank.
• Scenery Porn: The cinematography goes to lengths to make a bleak and oppressive prison look warm and inviting. This was also the movie that got the now-famous Roger Deakins recognised by the Oscars, and for good reason.
• Scheherezade Gambit: Andy manages not to be thrown off the prison roof by a furious Hadley by convincing Hadley that he can help him dodge the taxman. He pulls a more subtle and much longer variant of this by becoming a useful accountant for basically the entire prison staff and particularly the warden, which keeps him in good-enough standing to largely stay out of trouble and away from the Sisters.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment during the shower scene, when Bogs enters and stands beside an inmate while staring at him, said inmate pulls this to get away.
  • Red says Andy decided on escaping once Tommy was killed.
    Red: I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he had been here just about long enough.
• Shame If Something Happened: When Warden Norton refuses to investigate the possibility that Elmo Blatch actually killed Andy's wife and her lover, Andy tells him that if he got out of prison he'd never mention what he was doing for the Warden. Norton responds by giving Andy a month's solitary and killing the only person who can corroborate his innocence, then taunting Andy with his protogé's murder before threatening him with gang rape if he ever gets out of line, finishes it by giving him another month in the hole to think about it.
• Shoo the Dog: Brooks has to send his pet crow, Jake, away when he's finally released from prison.
• Shout-Out:
  • Two of Red's friends in prison are named 'Heywood' and 'Floyd'. Heywood Floyd was one of the main characters in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • Red's cell number is 237.
  • The dirt disposal method is one of the ones used in The Great Escape.
  • The Rita Hayworth movie watched by the prisoners is Gilda.
    Red: This is the part I really like, when she does that shit with her hair.
  • Rita Hayworth in Gilda is Andy's first poster, followed by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, then Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.
  • The alias Andy invents, "Randall Stephens". "Randall" after Randall Flagg, a recurring villain in Stephen King's books^note best known as the Big Bad of The Stand and as Roland Deschain's nemesis "Stephens" after Stephen King. In the novella, the name he makes up is "Peter Stephens".
  • To launder Warden Norton's funds, Andy calls the false person of Randall Stephens "second cousin to Harvey the Rabbit".
• Small Role, Big Impact: Elmo Blatch only appears in one scene 2/3rds of the way through the film in a flashback, but his murders of Mrs. Dufresne and Glenn Quentin led to Andy getting wrongfully incarcerated at Shawshank, setting the whole plot of the film into motion.
• Spoiler Title: Several foreign language translations revealed the ending by making reference to escape.
• Spotting the Thread: Andy realizes fairly quickly that getting assigned to the library is something special. Five seconds after he asks if Brooks has ever had an assistant, Hadley walks in with a guard who needs financial help.
• Stamp of Rejection: We see Red's two requests for parole getting a rejected stamp after the respective hearings and the final one, after the third hearing, getting stamped with APPROVED.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Andy hides his rock hammer in his Bible, specifically in the Book of Exodus.
  • He also hides the tunnel in his cell's wall behind the poster of Rita Hayworth, and later Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch — a literal cover-up. Lampshaded by Warden Norton during his paranoid Villainous Breakdown after Andy's escape. He noted her along with everyone else present as part of a conspiracy; in her case, he was right.
  • Red describes Andy's talk of Mexico as a "shitty pipe dream". Andy has to crawl 500 yards through a sewer pipe to escape Shawshank.
• Suddenly Shouting: Norton goes from calmy, reasonably shooting down Andy's hopes of reopening his case and proving his innocent, to screaming fury when Andy makes the mistake of promising to never talk about what goes on in Shawshank, giving him a month in the hole and yelling "GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" to the guards.
• Surprisingly Moving Song: Andy locks a guard in the restroom and begins playing "Duettino Sull'Aria" from The Marriage of Figaro over the loudspeaker. Red says he doesn't know what the song was about, but he'd like to believe it was something too beautiful to put into words. The prisoners at Shawshank all seem captivated by it.
• Sweet and Sour Grapes: A pretty solid example of this is when Red is going for his parole hearing. The first time he is denied when he puts on a good show and talks about how he's been rehabilitated and has served his penance, sounding like a typical inmate and he is summarily rejected. When his turn comes back around years later, and after Andy escapes he then talks down to the parole committee, describing them as a bunch of young, college-educated suits using made-up words to describe washed-up old cons and saying he doesn't care whether they approve or deny his parole request, sounding instead like the wizened old man that he was...they set him free.
  Red: "I know what you think [rehabilitated] means, sonny. To me, it's just a made-up word, a politician's word, so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. What do you really wanna know? Am I sorry for what I did?... There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then, a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I wanna talk to him. I wanna try to talk some sense to him — tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit."
• Taxman Takes the Winnings: Hadley, the sadistic captain of the prison guard, receives an inheritance of $35,000, but he complains about taxes coming to take most of it away, even if he decides to buy something with it. Andy overhears him and offers to guide him through a financial loophole to allow him to keep the whole sum.
  Hadley: Dumb shit, what do you think the government's gonna do to me? Take a big wet bite out of my ass is what!
• Title Confusion: When the movie was released, one of the criticisms was that Andy, who was innocent and pure, didn't need to be redeemed. In fact, it's Red, the true protagonist of the movie, who is redeemed.
• Token Minority: A possible reason for Red's Race Lift. There are literally two other non-white characters with speaking parts. It's particularly noticeable given the setting, as American prisons have had disproportionately large black populations for much of the twentieth century, although Maine, the state in which the film is set, does have a black population well below the national average.
• To the Pain: After Tommy is killed, Andy refuses to continue to do Norton's work. Norton threatens to take away Andy's privileges from him, destroy the library and lock him up with the rapists if he quits.
• Triumphant Reprise: The same melody played when Andy is led through the prison doors is played again later when Red finds out that Andy managed to get past the border.
• Tropical Epilogue: Andy does this after breaking out of prison, fleeing to the Pacific costal town of Zihuantanejo, Mexico. Red joins him a year later after being paroled.
• Useful Book: Andy hides the rock hammer he uses to dig his tunnel with inside the Bible in his cell.
• Visual Pun: When the warden looks into Andy's Bible, the ribbon-tab opens to the Book of Exodus, showing the outline of the rock hammer Andy used to escape.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Andy vomits on-screen while in the sewer pipe, but it's too dark to see most of it.
• Wall Bang Her: Happens at the beginning of the movie with Andy's wife and her lover.
• We Need a Distraction: The night of Andy's escape, he switches Norton's ledger and documents with a Bible and other faked documents. To conceal this from Norton while he places the fake files in the safe, Andy gives Norton the deposits for the day which the Warden promptly decides to examine, allowing him to sneak the fakes past Norton.
• Wham Line:
  • Innocuous at face value, but heartbreaking in context: "I don't like it here. I'm tired of being afraid all the time. I've decided not to stay." Quoth the last words of Brooks Hatlen.
  • As the story unfolds, Andy approaches Warden Norton about securing a retrial based on new evidence implicating Elmo Blatch, with Tommy as a witness. This moment uncovers the startling truth about Norton's character.
    Andy Dufresne: Well they'd have his last known address, names of relatives. It's a chance, isn't it? How can you be so obtuse?
    Warden Norton: What? What did you call me?
• Wham Shot:
  • After Andy's escape, Warden Norton angrily throws a rock at Andy's Raquel Welch poster and it tears straight through. Cue Red, Norton and Hadley staring through the hole in the wall of Andy's cell with "oh, shit" faces.
  • Done again with Norton when he sees the corruption of Shawshank being front-page news, slamming the newspaper on a desk. The byline even says the D.A. has Norton's ledger, which as far as Norton knew, was still in his office safe.
  • A literal gunshot (four of them) are used to end Tommy Williams's life. It's a shocking turn from the quiet conversation he was just having with Warden Norton.
• What Are You in For?: Played with; everyone in Shawshank claims to be innocent of whatever crime got them there. There is a purpose for this, as a fellow inmate could report your confession to buy himself a reduced sentence. When Red confesses to Andy that he actually did commit the murder that landed him there, it's a sign that he trusts Andy completely to not use it against him.
• Word Salad Title: One of the reasons the movie had a poor box office performance. To even vaguely understand it, you have to know that Shawshank is a prison... but it's a fictional one, so the only way you'd know that is by seeing the movie or reading the book in the first place. Morgan Freeman even joked that the reason the movie had poor word of mouth was that nobody could remember the name of it after going to see it.
• Working on the Chain Gang: Happens offscreen. The corrupt Warden Norton uses the fact that a chain gang is essentially cheap slave labor to undercut local businesses, and then starts taking bribes from those businesses to keep his chain gangs at the prison rather than out working. Given that Norton tries to appear socially progressive, the physical chains are probably not used.
• You Do NOT Want to Know: When Andy defiantly plays a soulful Italian opera piece over the prison intercom (Sull'aria, from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro), Red muses that he doesn't want to know what the ladies in the song were singing about, preferring to think it was something too beautiful to be put into words.
• Your Mom: After the inmates go fishing (baiting new inmates until one of them starts crying) in the beginning of the movie:
  New inmate (Fat Ass): I wanna go home! I want my momma!
  Other inmate: I had your momma, she wasn't that great!