In the 1999 film The Matrix, Neo takes the red pill.
Morpheus offers Neo a choice between a red pill and a blue pill. The blue pill would allow him to return to his ordinary life inside the Matrix, while the red pill begins the process of revealing the truth about the simulated world. Neo chooses the red pill and awakens in the real world, where his body has been kept in a mechanical pod.
The scene became one of the most famous moments in modern science fiction because it turns a philosophical question into a simple visual choice: comfortable illusion or unsettling knowledge. The imagery also draws on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, including the film’s references to following the white rabbit and going “down the rabbit hole.”
A common mistake is to remember the blue pill because it is presented as the alternative. Neo chooses red; later Matrix films reuse both colors in different contexts. The pill is not simply a conventional drug in the story—it functions as a program that helps locate and disconnect Neo’s body.