Red pill and blue pill

It is implied that the blue pill is a sedative that would cause Neo to think that all his most recent experiences were a hallucination, so that he can go back to living in the Matrix's simulated reality.

[3] Neo takes the red pill and awakens in the real world, where he is forcibly ejected from the liquid-filled chamber in which he has obliviously been lying.

And then the third movie is the most ambiguous because it asks you to actually participate in the construction of meaning...[5]In the 2021 film The Matrix Resurrections, the Analyst uses blue pills to keep Neo's true memories suppressed in the guise of therapy sessions.

Blackford argues that the Matrix films set things up so that even if Neo fails, the taking of the red pill is worthwhile because he lives and dies authentically.

Blackford and science-fiction writer James Patrick Kelly feel that The Matrix stacks the deck against machines and their simulated world.

[9][10] The central concept of the film has been compared to Plato's Allegory of the Cave,[11][12] Zhuangzi's "Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly", René Descartes's skepticism[13][14] and evil demon, Kant's reflections on the Phenomenon versus the Ding an sich, Robert Nozick's "experience machine",[15] the concept of a simulated reality and the brain in a vat thought experiment.

[16][17] The Wachowskis asked star Keanu Reeves to read three books before filming: Simulacra and Simulation (1981) by Jean Baudrillard, Out of Control (1992) by Kevin Kelly, and Introducing Evolution (1999) by Dylan Evans.

[28][29] The supposed truths revealed to those who refer to themselves as "red pilled" often include conspiracy theories, as well as antisemitic, white supremacist, homophobic and misogynistic beliefs.

[31] The first known political use of this metaphor is in the 2006 essay "The Red Pill" by University of Colorado sociology professor Kathleen J. Tierney, in which she argued that those who felt that the U.S. government had a poor response to Hurricane Katrina should "take the red pill" and realize that "post-September 11 policies and plans have actually made the nation more vulnerable, both to natural disasters and to future terrorist attacks.

This metaphor has been embraced by commentators including libertarian Michael Malice, whose 2022 book The White Pill advocates the latter point of view.

[38] Malice defines the term as, “It is possible that we will lose, it is impossible that we must lose.” The metaphor of the blackpill was first popularized by the incel-related blog Omega Virgin Revolt.