Of course, the Conversation hides the true evil mastermind until the last moments of the film, when it is revealed that the Director was the victim all along. This, again, is an unusual plot twist for a conspiracy thriller. Perhaps the sting works so well because of how unexpected the twist is. If Jaws set the precedent for shady villains watching the hero's every move, the writers would have been hard-pressed to find a way to flip the plot and expose the shark as the innocent victim.

The character of Harry Caul is the one element of the Conversation that is completely typical of conspiracy thrillers. He is what Peter Knights calls a "clinically paranoid" protagonist. This is a man who sees the world as the thing out to get him and him alone; in this case, the Director and the Director's assistant Martin. The clinically paranoid protagonist is put in contrast to a paranoid politician, who see other forces -- Communism, Russia, North Korea, or even an opposing political...

There is a sense of community preached by the paranoid politician that is absent from the clinically paranoid.
Caul has reason to suspect that Martin is following him, has bugged him, and may physically harm him in some way. Caul demolishes his apartment search for this bug, which may not even exist. He is so knowledgeable about the ways in which a man can be listened in on, that he needs to obliterate his apartment to fully extinguish all possible hiding places for a bug or wiretap.

Melley's theory of "agency panic" is key to understanding the message of the Conversation. Melley argues "agency panic" as the belief that individuals can be shaped or controlled by a powerful external force. In the case of the Conversation, Harry Caul's fear of a powerful external force is brought on largely by the fact that he, himself, is one of those external forces. His job is to tap into the lives of others and record the most private of conversations. It makes sense, then, that he should fear being tapped himself.

Midway through the movie, Caul is bugged by a fellow surveillance artist, as a practical joke, and he is enraged to discover that one of his private conversations had been recorded. At the end of the film, when Martin suggests that Caul's apartment has been bugged, his paranoia increases ten-fold, leading him to destroy all of his possessions.