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There’s a cinematic motion within the end credits of After Hours (1985) that is easy to overlook. It’s likely most viewers pass it by without a second thought. When the film was showing in theaters, half the audience would have been up and out of their seats before it happens. Its easily-missed placement raises the question of its importance as relative to the maddening story that preceded it, or completely irrelevant.

When Paul (Griffin Dunne) arrives at his desk the morning following his crazy night in SoHo, still covered in plaster and exhausted from the ordeal, his computer greets him: “Good Morning Paul,” the screen reads. The camera then backs away from his desk and weaves through the cubicle farm that constitutes his office, cycling around the various walls and desks and workers. When the camera comes full circle around the office to reveal Paul’s desk again, he’s gone. Where did he go? Why isn’t he there anymore? And for the love of bagel-shaped paperweights, what does it all mean?

Perhaps once Paul gets back to the comfort of his previous life, he chooses to leave. Despite the hideous evening he had out in the city, it’s possible he realized something about himself. He learned there’s more to life than routine and complacency, though it doesn’t have to be as off-the-wall as his experiences in SoHo.

It could also symbolize that Paul died in the cab at the beginning of the film, at least in a metaphorical sense. In the director’s commentary on the DVD, Scorsese makes reference to the cab driver being the ferryman Charon who transports souls between the realm of the living and the dead. While that could be literally interpreted, it’s more logically assumed as a metaphor. The “old” Paul who was bored with life, bored with routine, bored with being a word processor, “killed” his old life and whisked himself off to SoHo to experience something new. Once his efforts wind him back to where he started, he can’t commit. He disappears.

Whatever the true intent, Paul finishes After Hours a changed man. Even if he settles back into his old ways, he’ll do so with the scars and memories of his surreal evening. Something about him isn’t the same—and for that, he vanishes.