Flashback Stares

This is when a character or characters look off to some far distant point or do an Aside Glance to instigate a Flash Back or Imagine Spot. Expect the screen to do that wishy-washy thing that blurs the screen or a fade of some sort. If the stare goes on for too long you hope it's being used for comedic effect. Something of a Discredited Trope these days: many comedies will have other characters confused at the actions, or trying to wake them from their spaced out state.

Examples of Flashback Stares include:

Film

• Happens in Airplane! where the main character stares straight at the camera to get flashbacks to The War, in some cases the viewer doesn't get to see the flashback and only the sound track of gun fire and crashing planes.
• The second Bionicle movie, Legends of Metru Nui, had Vakama's eyes go wide and stare off into space every time he had a vision.
• "The thousand-yard stare" is discussed in Full Metal Jacket.
• In Meet the Parents, Kevin does one of these while remembering his time dating Pam, and Greg glances behind him to see what he's staring at.

Live Action Television

• The IT Crowd does this a couple of times for comedy purposes with Richmond looking into the camera and all the other characters gradually leaning into the shot to look at the same point, clearly not seeing anything.

Roy: "What? What IS it??"

• Played completely straight in an episode of True Blood where every time Sam has a flashback to his childhood he seems to stare off into space and stop whatever it was he was doing, and we cut back to people shouting "Sam! Sam!" in order to snap him out of it. It's very difficult not to laugh.
• Friends had one episode where Penn from Penn & Teller tried to to sell Joey encyclopedias based on the pitch "do your friends ever talk about something and you just nod along", cue the flashback stare. Penn got a little bit worried when Joey hadn't said anything for 2 minutes.
• Lost goes into flashback this way often enough that Television Without Pity dubbed it "the thousand-yard stare of impending flashback."
• While Thirty Rock frequently uses a Flashback Cut as a comic non sequitur, the audience's familiarity of these was subverted in one episode.-

Jack: You know [Tracy's] contract is up?
Liz: Has it been that long?! Boy, we sure have done some crazy things with Tracy in the last 3 years.
Jack: We sure have.
Liz: (eyes wander) I'm thinking about some of them now.
Jack: Me too.

• Applied very often in Scrubs, usually when JD goes into any of his imagination sequences. When someone else does it, or he's seen from an outside perspective, he just stares off into the distance with a blank look until snapping back to reality with some odd non-sequitur.
• Invoked hilariously by Mystery Science Theater 3000 for a fifties short about how to know when you're ready to get married. At one point, while the "marriage counselor over at the church" is talking, the female half of the couple he's advising stares into space for several seconds, apparently not listening. Mike and the robots fill the seconds with gunshot noises and an imitation of an officer bellowing, "Marines, we are leaving!", and when the woman shakes herself back into focus, Mike has her say, "Sorry, back in Danang there for a minute."

Video Games

• Happens all the time in Final Fantasy XIII for the flashbacks to the fireworks festival and previous events. Sadly it's played very straight.
• In Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Layton has two of these when reminded of Claire.
• Happens quite a few times in The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings as some conversation triggers a recall of long forgotten memory.
• In Final Fantasy XIII-2 Serah has many of these, however they're not so much flashbacks, more flashforwards as she looking into the future.

Web Comics

• Shortpacked parodies this when Robin, afraid of DRAMA goes around tackling anyone staring into the middle distance to stop them having angsty flashbacks.
• Used in this strip of Exterminatus Now, it's a bit of shame that it got interrupted because we never did learn what happened to the last people they hired.

Western Animation

• Also played straight during some of Ratchet's flashbacks in Transformers Animated, possibly due to the fact that he's actually freezing up on the battlefield PTSD-style when it happens.
• Hilariously used in an episode of The Simpsons. Moe turns his back on Barney to deliver one of these stares in the middle of a conversation. Barney, confused, asks, "Moe?"
  • In another episode, Homer yells at Bart for staring while he's having a The Wonder Years moment.
  • In another Marge does one of these, and comes out of it saying "And that's why I can't say 'no' to people." Homer points out that he has no idea what she was thinking about. "Why would you think I did?"
• Parodied in the Phineas's birthday clip-show episode of Phineas and Ferb; Phineas starts reminiscing about previous escapades, stares off, it goes into the clip montage, then comes back to another person saying "Was I supposed to see something just then?" "No, it's a clip show thing". Done again in "Doof Dynasty", only this time, the audience doesn't even get to see the flashback; Perry just stares off into the distance and ripples.