Factual error: Asystole (the lack of cardiac activity, also known as the 'flatline') is not treated with defibrillation (electric shocks) but with alternating doses of the drugs epinephrine and atropine.
Flatliners (1990)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt, William Baldwin
Everyone makes amends of their sins. Nelson (Sutherland) has to die to make his amends and he is successfully revived by David (Kevin Bacon).
Bill Bergquist
More mistakes in Flatliners
Nelson Wright: Hello, I'm nice, he's nice, we're both fucking lunatics. Can I come in, please?
Question: Just before Lebracio goes to the subway to find the ghost of Billy Mahoney, he crosses the street and about a dozen bicyclists come whizzing past him. Was this a hallucination? If so, why would he have a hallucination like that? If it wasn't a hallucination, what the heck are a bunch of racing bicyclists doing on a wet street that late at night?
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Chosen answer: No hallucination. It was Halloween night, so everyone was acting a little crazy. That's why one of the med students shows up in a skeleton suit. Going further, the 'hum' of the bikes were used not only to throw the viewer off as the same humming noise Nelson describes with coming back from the dead, but to confuse Nelson with death and reality and these new sensations/feelings he is experiencing since being brought back to life. The cyclists are used, in a sense, to scare Nelson and viewers. The same 'hum' can be heard when Nelson first finds Billy Mahoney in the dingy tunnel.