What may be even stranger than finding this pathological process known as scapegoat theory buried within the subtext of a runaway train drama is the fact that this process is not all that strange. Yes, holding a subway train hostage is strange. Yes, the perplexing Travolta-Washington bond strange, but the relationship is not merely a convenient literary device or an action movie cliché. To a lesser degree, this psychological process plays out in classrooms all the time, for instance. Imagine a bully who terrorizes his classmates, most likely members of the "geeky, physically meek" out-group. There is always one member of that out-group arbitrarily selected to play sidekick to the bully. Mixed signals and mistrust run amok as the bully pours out his soul to a sidekick who sits with gritted teeth waiting for the other shoe to drop. The bully is subconsciously confusing the meek geek with himself due to some random psychologically unifying criteria.

This sort of distorted thinking can potentially inflict us all, from the mentally ill to the classroom bullies to the benevolent citizens stuck in a flood. There are two sunset endings to this sort of movie. The obvious one takes place in that predictable final scene when the good guy is standing over the bad guy with a smoking gun in his hand and admirable reluctance on his face. The threat is over, the good guy is hero. The less obvious sunset is the one that is perceived by the bad guy and represents the delusional connection between him and the good guy. It almost makes you feel bad for the sociopath. Almost.