one of my favorite examples of this is from my favorite movie The Great Escape which is the classic uh World War II movie about the prisoners trying to escape from the German um prison of War camp and usually when people think about this movie if you're familiar with it they think of it as a Steve McQueen movie um when really Steve McQueen is a subplot character for most of this story um the main through line of this story is the British prisoners trying to escape they're planning a great big giant escape where hundreds of people
are going to escape the prison and Steve McQueen's not into that he's not a part of that for the entire story he's just in and out like he's doing his own thing his entire story pretty much consists of him trying to escape getting caught getting thrown into the cooler getting out trying to escape again now this is an integral subplot because what he's doing throughout the movie does actually become important to the main plot line by the time we reach the third act so it is integral to what's happening it's not just an extraneous vehicle
for steamqueen to do his thing throughout this random movie but the other thing to recognize and I think one of the points of Brilliance in this movie is that if you look at the structure Steve McQueen shows up at every single plot point and that's about the only time he shows up until the third act so they were able to weave this kind of random seemingly random subplot into this the overall story in a way that seemed pertinent and that kept him familiar and in front of viewers by sinking what he was doing by sinking
his subplot to the major plot points as they happen throughout the movie until like with any plot any multiple plot line they were ready to you know segue him in to the main plot there in the third act so that's just something to think about as you're considering subplots
