Theory: Split takes place in the same universe as The Sixth Sense, too

Not only was Split the first M. Night Shyamalan movie in a number of years that didn’t completely suck, but it was also the first to draw a direct link to another film in the director’s oeuvre. In the film’s post-credits scene, we see Bruce Willis reprise his role as David Dunn from Unbreakable and name check Samuel L. Jackson’s character Mr. Glass. The story of these characters, along with James McAvoy’s multiple-personality-having villain, will continue in Shyamalan’s next film, Glass. But some fans are starting to speculate that the interconnectedness of these films won’t end with this trilogy, but set up a whole, sprawling Shyamalanaverse.

The theory comes to us from Reddit user eatraylove, who makes the case that, in addition to being an Unbreakable sequel, Split also takes place in the same world as The Sixth Sense, just eighteen years later. The main evidence for this theory comes from the scenes involving Kevin’s therapist Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), who does controversial work with patients suffering from dissociative identity disorder (DID). During a Skype conference with a group of intellectuals, Dr. Fletcher suggests that DID is “the ultimate doorway to all things we call unknown” and is “where our sense of supernatural comes from.”