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Christopher Nolan, director and screenwriter, The Odyssey, feature length motion picture, Universal Pictures, 2006; depiction of Sinon portrayed by Elliot Page.

Sinon is a character contrived by Vergil for Aeneid 2.57-198. If Sinon was characterized in any literary source before Vergil — perhaps Arctinus, the Ilias Parva by Lesches, or Sophocles who wrote a now-lost play titled after Sinon — we do no know how Vergil's Sinon differs. In Aeneid 2, he bursts onto the scene unknown to the Trojans but sent, we later learn, by the Greeks to deceive Priam and his people. "In Virgil he is a devil, in the guise of an unhappy waif, taking risks at every turn, playing upon the Trojan's emotions, leading them on from jeering to curiosity, from curiosity to kindness and pity, from pity to trust, his luck holding to the end. It is a masterly scene." (Austin). Aeneas, recalling the deception of Sinon years later in Dido's court, summarizes thus: "By such treacheries and the craft of perjured Sinon, the whole ruse was believed; and we were taken in by deceits and forced tears whom neither Diomedes nor Achilles of Larisa nor ten years nor a thousand ships subdued." (Aen. 2.195-98) Vergil's Sinon is the most despicable of the despicable Greeks.

Nolan's Sinon differs from Vergil's in important ways. This Sinon plays key roles in the screenplay's three principal acts. Sinon is the first discernible face shown, impaled by Trojan arrows against the flank of the Trojan Horse on the seashore. We later learn that Sinon's suffering was heard and understood by Odysseus inside the horse. That Odysseus was inside, Nolan's Sinon does not know.

Sinon then appears as the principal speaking character in an interview with Odysseus in the world of the dead. Neither Homer nor Vergil acknowledges Sinon among the netherworld's shades. The communication conveys information more central than any other in the subsequent plot of the film. The token received from Sinon proves conclusive in Odysseus' treatment of the suitor Antinous in the film's final act.

Sinon, who had eagerly sought the adventure of the Trojan War, experiences a sort of vicarious revenge upon the elite draft-dodger who abused the unentitled young man so tragically.

Nolan's adaptation of Sinon is arguably the most significant step away from the literary source in the othering of this bold adaptation.