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Amphibians in Movies   Dallas Buyers Club (2013)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   Matthew McConaughey was awarded a best actor Oscar for his performance in this film about the early days of HIV and AIDS treatment. In the frog scene, we see McConaughey in a strip club where he sees a man who is a janitor at a hospital where McConaughey wants to get some experimental drugs to treat his AIDS disease. The janitor is reflected in a mirror next to an aquarium with an African Clawed Frog swimming in it. This is trivial background stuff that I wouldn't bother with except that then we see a close-up shot of the frog which looks like it is staring at McConaughey. Maybe the tank was already at the bar location where the scene was filmed and they showed a close-up of the frog just because it was weird looking. I can't figure out any other reason or symbolism for why they showed it. This movie does deal a lot with studies of drugs for curing H.I.V. so it could be that somebody was aware of the large part the frog once played in diagnosing pregnancies and in laboratory experiments. But that is so far-fetched, even a herp-obsessed guy like me doesn't believe it.