For your pleasure, we have created a gallery full of screenshots from The Departed featuring more than 20 of the background Xs – and you’ll note that all of them feature characters who aren’t still breathing when Roy Buchanan’s “Sweet Dreams” begins to play and the end credits start to roll.
Lastly we have the sad story of Anthony Anderson’s Tony Brown.
Watching the film knowing about the Xs, you can’t help but feel bad when one pops up right next to him shortly before the elevator containing Billy and Colin closes its doors.
Unlike Colin Sullivan or James Barrigan, Brown is an uncorrupt trooper serving as an honorable member of the Boston Police Department, and the only reason he gets dragged into the whole mess that is The Departed’s plot is because he is a friend of Billy Costigan’s from the academy.