Foreshadowing/Live-Action TV

This page needs visual enhancement. You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.

Examples of Foreshadowing in Live-Action TV include:

• Dani's House has S4 E9 Pen Pal with Jack's pen pal talking in a very fake Japanese accent. He's faking it - he's Cornish.
• Lost has many examples, but the most prominent is in the pilot: Locke and Walt play backgammon and Locke mentions that it's the oldest game in the world and there's two players: one light, one dark. The final season reveals that the series' events revolved around two people, one "light" and one "dark", each having a goal that's part of what's essentially a game they invented in their childhood, and they've been at it for two thousand years.
  • The first time we see Juliet's face, it's her reflection in a mirror. In season 5 she sacrifices herself believing it will create a Mirror Universe.
• The Wizards of Waverly Place's episode "Future Harper" is a festival of foreshadowing.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer is laced with foreshadowing, because of Joss Whedon's long-term planning:
  • "I'm so evil and skanky. And I think I'm kinda gay."—Willow Rosenberg about her vampire Doppelganger, a year before she did become gay—and three before she almost destroyed the world.
    • Results in something of a terrifying echo, especially if you watch the second season again after knowing what happens. When Willow first utters 'Bored now' as a vampire, it actually gives you chills.
    • Forshadowing only counts if it's intentional. Joss has admitted that neither of those plot lines were in the works when that line was written.
      • Wrong. He had been planning either Willow or Xander to be gay for a while. Though, I still think the man needs to learn the word bisexual or just say that Oz was confusion (oh, and verbally bitchslap Kennedy with the word sooner or later for her actions towards Satsu).
  • Similarly, Dawn Summers' arrival was foreshadowed by dream dialogue in two different episodes in season four: In "This Year's Girl," Faith and Buffy are making a bed in Dawn's future room when they have this exchange:

Faith: Little sis coming. I know.
Buffy: So much to do before she gets here.

• • • And in the season finale "Restless", one episode before Dawn's appearance, Tara urged Buffy to "be back before Dawn."
    • There's also a remark somewhere about "trying on big sister's clothes".
  • Faith's mention of counting down from "seven-three-oh" foreshadows the fifth season finale, exactly 730 days later. The end of season 4 also makes reference to the scene with Faith while foreshadowing season 5, and mentions that a clock showing 7.30 is now "way out".
  • Xander dresses as a pirate in the season six episode, and then in the seventh season he loses an eye and has to wear an eye patch.
  • There's a very subtle one during first season where Buffy is hanging out with her friends and she says bite me. Cue Angel looking all weird at Buffy.
  • At the end of "The Harvest" Angel appears to be standing next to a sign saying WATCH YOU—appropriate enough for his Mysterious Watcher role. But when he walks away we see the sign actually reads WATCH YOUR STEP, foretelling his Face Heel Turn into Angelus. Similarly at the end of "After Life" Buffy's other vampire Love Interest, Spike, is standing next to a discarded door with a BEWARE OF DOG sign, hinting at the Destructive Romance to follow.
• Angel had its share as well. "Soul Purpose" in season 5 pops to mind rather quickly. When Fred is doing surgery on Angel in his coma-dream, she looks in and tells him "there's nothing left, just a shell". A Lthough mainly referring to Angel, it was likely also a reference to her becoming a literal shell for Illyria several eps later.
  • In the same ep, Gunn growls like a cat during another dream scene. In "A Hole In The World" the white room's cat conduit is gone, replaced with a evil Gunn twin.
  • Earlier in season 3, Wesley has a talk with Gunn about "the pull of conflicting loyalties". This is a kind of foreshadowing of Wes's own conflict with Connor and the team.
• Highlander the Series foreshadowed Richie's immortality in the first ep, after the defeat of Slan.

Connor He will need watching.

• • • We did find out later that immortals can sense pre-immortality faintly, so it's probably justified.
• Charmed's Season 3 finale gives Prue Halliwell the line, "This has to end now or our lives are over!" At the end of the episode, she dies. Permanently.
  • From the season 2 episode "Morality Bites" when future Phoebe receives a premonition of how she killed a man, she is seen floating up into the air. In season 3 she gains the power of levitation.
• Friends: Some may be a bit far-fetched in retrospect but:
  • Chandler and Monica's relationship (which began on the 4th season finale): Several previous episodes hint at the possibility, and often near the end of a season (i.e. when Ben's born, when Mon laughs at the hypothetical scenario).
  • Ross and Rachel: From the very first episode, although that's pretty obvious as the show (especially during its beginning) is basically about them.
  • In a 2nd season episode, Ross mentions he likes that name. Two years later, he meets an English girl called Emily, who then becomes his second wife.
  • Rachel's baby's father: It's a bit suspicious that there's no major interaction between Ross and Rachel during the 7th season's last episodes (i.e. after they slept together and when she realizes she's pregnant) and the 8th season's premiere. Then, on the 8th season's second episode, she mentions the best sex she ever had with him. Guess what's revealed at the end of that same episode?
• Dawson's Creek, especially in the third season and regarding the Pacey/Joey/Dawson love triangle. It's mainly foreshadowed in dialogue between Pacey and Jen, with lines such as "the sidekick never gets the girl" or "what does (Joey) have that all men seek her?" (or something to that effect).
• Beverly Hills, 90210, third season as well: Dylan seems oddly concerned about Kelly dating a guy he thinks is not good enough for her. Then, when Brenda leaves to Paris, Dylan is seen walking with Kelly. Then guess what happens...
• Extensively used in Babylon 5, noted for having a pre-planned five-year arc. For example, characters often say "Watch your back" to security chief Michael Garibaldi during the first season ( said character is then shot in the back in the first season finale). Almost every company mentioned in the series becomes somehow important in the storyline, even if they are used in throwaway lines in the beginning (Interplanetary Expeditions, ISN, Edgars Industries, etc.)
  • When Sinclair and Garibaldi return from Babylon 4 he tells disappointed Susan that next time he'll take her. Of course later when they go back through time to steal Babylon 4 he leaves Garibaldi on the station and takes Susan.
  • When Mr. Morden asks Vir what he wants. The answer is exactly what Londo does to him later in the series.
  • Or the Technomage's warning to Londo. Only a few episodes later Londo starts the Narn-Centauri war.
  • Londo's vision of his death and the one of the Shadow vessels on Centauri Prime.
    • Pretty much all of the numerous visions in the show. Even if some aren't exactly what they appear to be...
  • Londo refers to his three hated wives as "Famine", "Pestilence" and "Death". By exclusion that leaves himself as "War". Guess who ends up escalating the simmering Narn-Centauri conflict.
• Virtually all of Arrested Development's major plot twists are repeatedly hinted at long before they take place.
  • "This party's gonna be off the hook!" -Buster, one year before he loses his hand and gets it replaced by a hook.
  • That's not nearly as bad as "I never thought I'd miss a hand so much!" in reference to his hand-shaped chair.
  • Light Treason.
  • Michael: I don't even have a girl, much less a stupid one.
• Rewatch all the Tony elements of NCIS's fourth season in light of the context of the season five premiere. Then kick yourself for not spotting the gradual setup for The Reveal that his relationship with Jeanne Benoit is actually an undercover operation to get at her father, La Grenouille. In particular, the scene early in the season when Tony asks Director Shepard for relationship advice takes on an entirely different and kind of creepy subtext that is not evident the first time around.
  • Also, Gibbs' furious reaction at the end of the second season premiere takes on a whole new meaning given the third season finale.
    • When Kate is held hostage by Ari in the first season finale, Gibbs suddenly imagines her dead via headshot for a moment. Exactly one season later in the second season finale, Ari snipes Kate dead, and she falls to the ground in an identical scene to the one Gibbs imagined. This however, actually wasn't preplanned as Kate was only killed because the actress decided to leave, which wasn't known until the 2nd season was already underway, making this an aftershadow of sorts.
• The Wire has many cases of foreshadowing, but the two best examples are:
  • A conversation between three drug dealers in the first season about chess, and how the pawns get "capped quick", while the queen is the best because it's stable and "makes all the moves". By the end of the fourth season, all three of the participants in that conversation had died, because they were, like many of the low-level drug traffickers, simply pawns themselves.
  • In the third season, detective Bunk Moreland witnesses a group of children pretending to be stick-up artist Omar Little and his group of robbers, with one small boy constantly asking to play as Omar. Two seasons later, that same child, Kenard, would be the one to shoot Omar dead in a convenience store, the result of a surprise attack that was the calling card of the victim.
• A questionable one occurs in Law and Order. Just before the season finale where Serena Southerlyn is fired and outs herself as a lesbian, there was an episode where McCoy successfully argues to have gay marriages in the state ruled invalid to remove a claim of spousal privilege. Southerlyn's disgusted reaction to homophobic comments in the episode and refusal to even consider helping McCoy could be seen in a new light.
• Supernatural often has episodes which help set up future events in the series. For example, Dean's almost suicidal guilt over not dying in "Faith" happens on a much bigger scale over Season Two where his father dies for him. "Crossroad Blues" also sets up his actions in "All Hell Breaks Loose" where he's so guilty over Sam's death that he sells his soul for him.
  • • Also from "Faith" is the reverend telling Dean that he chose to heal him because Dean has a very important purpose and it isn't over yet. Cue Season 4, when Castiel tells Dean that it's his job to stop the Apocalypse.
  • Ruby tells Sam that she's a demon and manipulative is in her job description... the finale of the next season has her admit that she's been manipulating Sam all along. See also her quiet rebuttal to Dean that she doesn't believe in the Devil when her game plan was actually to free him because she believes that Lucifer will lead demons to Paradise.
  • Also, "Nightmare" sets up the end of "No Rest for the Wicked". At the end of "Nightmare", Sam's powers are triggered by seeing Dean die in a vision (he telekinetically moves a dresser out of his way). At the end of No Rest For The Wicked, he watches Dean actually die, and then his power apparently reawakens (Lilith can't kill him).
  • The supposed heartwarming moment (which now comes off as half-arsed) in "Nightmare" where Sam says that, all things considered, their Dad wasn't that bad (i.e incredibly abusive like Max's Dad) and Dean repeats the line in a strange tone sets up/is paid off by "Something Wicked"/"Dead Man's Blood" where we find out exactly how crappy John can be.
  • Not to mention Dean's seemingly out-of-character behaviour of hating the food and chucking the wrapper in the backseat in "Simon Said" and the love of the Hollywood/Prison food in "Hollywood Babylon" and "Folsom Prison Blues", which gets paid off in "What Is And What Should Never Be" where he's practically orgasming over his Mom's homemade food.
  • Several of Bela's seemingly-flippant/catty remarks in Season 3 actually make more sense upon a second viewing, including "We're all going to Hell, Dean. Might as well enjoy the ride", her response to Dean's snarks about her father and how damaged she is, and her theft of the Colt, setting up The Reveal in her final episode that she sold her soul to kill her abusive dad and is trying to get out of it by doing whatever the demons tell her to.
  • In the 4th season finale, "Lucifer Rising," when Zachariah reveals to Dean that his role as the angels' Chosen One is not to stop Lilith, but to defeat Lucifer, they are standing in front of a painting of the Archangel Michael with his foot on Lucifer's neck. In the 5th season premiere we learn that Dean is the intended vessel for the Archangel Michael.
• The new Doctor Who series always foreshadows its season finale as early as the second episode of the season. It uses, however, very (very, oh so very) cryptic foreshadows like "Bad Wolf" or "Doctor-Donna". Whenever psychics are in, expect to hear a lot of complete nonsense that will finally be put together in the final episode.
  • In the Series 3 episode "Utopia", the whole episode is pretty much foreshadowing of the return of the Master
    • Which started a lot sooner than that: when the Face of Boe tells the Doctor You Are Not Alone, many fans thoughts instantly jumped to the Master.
  • A very subtle bit of foreshadowing happens in the Christmas episode of Season 4. When the tourists of the Titanic teleport down to Earth for a brief visit, the temporary companion for the episode, Astrid, exclaims that there are no stars in the sky! The season long story arc of Season 4 centres around the stars disappearing in the sky. Russel T. Davies, I never knew you had it in you.
  • The taxi which tries to pick up Stacey Campbell in "Partners in Crime" has an ATMOS sticker, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it piece of foreshadowing to "The Sontaran Stratagem".
  • "Silence in the Library" foreshadows "The Time of Angels" (and presumably a few more) through a throwaway line from River.
  • Series 5's "The Vampires of Venice" ends with the villain of the week telling the Doctor to dream of her and her race, a subtle foreshadow of what the next episode is about.
  • And in the next episode, watch what Rory replies after the Doctor says "I've crushed your flowers". He replies "Oh, Amy will kill you". Later on Amy and the Doctor commit suicide to get out of the dream, with Amy driving the car into the house at high speed.
  • In "The Hungry Earth", Rory goes to put Amy's engagement ring back in the TARDIS for safekeeping, saying "Go on, I'll catch you both up". At the end of the double episode, Rory is killed. By "The Pandorica Opens", however, he's been resurrected as a Nestene duplicate, thus "catching up" to the Doctor and Amy later in their time-stream, also, in "The Big Bang" he then waits for nearly two thousand years beside Amy's stasis-locked corpse for the Doctor and Amy's younger self to show up and re-animate her. He caught up with them twice!
  • Although the Classic series wasn't done in the same cinematic style as the new Doctor Who, there is subtle foreshadowing to be found (some of it may be unintentional though).
    • The Third Doctor's regeneration may have been foreshadowed by Sarah Jane in The Monster of Peladon. In one scene she says, "The Doctor always says that while there's life, there's..." She trails off, letting the sentence hang in midair, the word 'hope' left unspoken. In the very next episode Planet of the Spiders, the Doctor's final words to her are, "While there's life, there's..." He loses conciousness just then and never finishes the sentence. He regenerates a moment later, making those his last words before his 'death'.
• Day One of Torchwood: Children of Earth had an incredibly blatant and yet easy to miss piece of foreshadowing in this bit of banter by Jack and Ianto:

Ianto: You are going to get us all killed.
Jack: No, you get killed, not me. You die like a dog, like an ugly dog.

• Strangely, the much maligned decision to turn an entire season of Dallas into a dream seems to have had plenty of accidental Foreshadowing. The 'Dream Year' has a strange, slightly surreal air completely at odds with the rest of the show as noted in this article.
• House: In Season Three, Wilson's reasoning - he was afraid that House might think he was God and take an even bigger fall later on if he made a mistake - for his ill-advised, badly timed attempt at teaching House humility turns out to be well-founded when House pisses Tritter off in "Fools For Love" and utter disaster ensues.
  • In one of the many Season Four examples foreshadowing the finale, when the Hospital Inspector tells House that he's heard his name before, House replies that most people have because his name is also a noun. In the finale, the mystery woman's (who is really Amber) amber necklace helps House solve the mystery of who's dying.
  • Each season finale foreshadowed the Season 5 finale, with increasing obviousness.
• Firefly has several foreshadowing moments. It is possible that some of them never were fulfilled, because of the cancellation.
  • In the pilot there are two. 1) Jayne tells Mal that Dobson tried to bribe him, but didn't accept because "the pay wasn't good enough". In Ariel, it was. 2) Kaylee asks for a new compression coil for the engine, warning that they'll be adrift in space if it breaks. That happens in Out of Gas.
  • River sometimes repeats "two by two, hands of blue". The two agents who hunt River have blue gloves.
    • And in Ariel, though it looks like River's attack on Jayne is just regular River craziness, he IS wearing a Blue Sun t-shirt at the time...
  • When Simon mentions Early knocking out Book, Early says "that ain't no Shepherd" in Objects in Space. Book also seems to be come kind of Alliance VIP, as shown by their willingness to give him medical aid.
  • When coupled with the subtle hints in 'Serenity' that Book had at some point been an Alliance Operative like the one in the film (explaining their eagerness in the above point), this could have been a foreshadow of plot points Joss Whedon wished to expand on later in the series. The comic 'Serenity: A Shepherd's Tale' provides another possible version, this time as an Independent mole in the Alliance navy.
  • In the first episode "Serenity", when the ship is about to be boarded by by Reavers, the camera cuts to a scene of Inara taking out a syringe of some description. Later in "Out of Gas", Inara utters the line "I never want to die at all". Both foreshadowed the fact that Inara had a terminal illness, and was aboard Serenity as a means to see more of the world before her demise. The payoff was never revealed though, due to premature cancellation. Confirmed by Word of God.
  • A good one in "Trash" when Simon confronts Jayne about his betrayal on Ariel. After Simon leaves, River, in a seemingly funny and Cloudcuckoolander statement, says "Also, I can kill you with my brain". The significance of this statement is revealed in "Objects in Space" where River's intelligence, creativity and strategising comes together to defeat Jubal in a giant Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• In the Freaks and Geeks pilot, Nick declares, "Disco sucks! I hate disco!" The show's final episode sees him wholeheartedly embracing disco culture.
  • In the Halloween episode, the geeks go trick or treating and receive circus peanuts from one house. Bill asks the woman "Do these peanuts actually contain peanuts? Because if they do, I could die." Later in the season, Bill ends up in the hospital and almost dies after a bully tricks him into eating peanuts.
• The Heroes Season One episode "Five Years Gone" foreshadows much of Volume Four, "Fugitives".
• Law and Order: Criminal Intent. In "The Healer", a voodoo priestess warns Det. Logan: "You think before was bad, Detective? Just you wait." In Logan's next episode, "To the Bone", Logan shoots an undercover cop, which leads to Captain Deakins being accused of recommending a promotion for a cop in exchange for backing Logan's account of the incident. (In fact, Deakins was set up by Frank Adair, a former friend & ex-cop, whom Goren and Eames arrested for murder in "My Good Name".) As a result, Deakins resigns.
• Smallville has this almost as often as spoken dialogue. The Smallville wiki has a list of how many times they do this. Right here.
• Numb3rs. In the episode "Dark Matter", Colby gave out an detailed explanation about technology used in school ID tags to track students. Everyone else stared at him and he explained that he read it in a magazine. At the end of the season, it's revealed that's he's a Double agent for China. So, someone like him would know a great deal about tracking technology.
• In the first episode of the second series of Primeval, Cutter says to Stephen: "You think I would have just stood by and watch you get torn to pieces?" which is exactly what happens at the end of the series, except Stephen was behind a door only he could open.
• In The X-Files, there are several obvious moments foreshadowing Scully's cancer in season 4. But one quite subtle one is in the episode 'Unruhe' where a crazy guy tries to lobotomise her to remove what he calls 'The Howlers' that are causing her 'unrest'. When he points to where the Howlers are, it's the exact spot where her cancer is.
• Lampshaded in this segment of The Colbert Report.
• In Community episode "Football, Feminism and You" Troy tells Jeff that he needs to accept where he is and stop fighting it. He recommends taking a pottery class. Later in the season, Jeff does just that.
• True Blood has many examples; some apparently innocent and casual statements pronounced by usually secondary characters foreshadow lots of future events. Basically if somebody says something that "could" happen, It will.
  • One night, Hoyt tells Sookie that he approves her relationship with Bill and even asks if he has a friend of his age he could date. Turns out that Bill does; Jessica. Guess what happens between them.
  • In Season 1 last episode the cast is watching the news where it's announced that vampire wedding is now legal in Vermont. Arlene, a secondary character back then, innocently teases Sookie about the fact that she can marry Bill now. Sookie tells her that she wouldn't know what to say if Bill proposed to her. And that's exactly what happens in season 3 when Bill finally ask Sookie to marry him.
• At the start of an episode of Noah's Arc, Chance is giving Noah advice that there's always a time when a man has to choose between his principles and his paycheck. During the next episode, Chance has to choose between helping a lesbian couple and allowing Eddie to keep his career (one of the lesbians is Eddie's boss's wife).
• Many assumed that Roseanne had jumped the shark in its final season, as things got sillier and more unbelievable. Then came the Downer Ending that revealed that the entire season, and a lot of the series, was Roseanne's fictionalized (with a heavy dose of Wish Fulfillment) autobiography that she started writing after Dan died of his heart attack. The real foreshadowing, however, is that VERY early on in the series it was shown that Roseanne had wanted to be a writer, but that her plans had been derailed by marrying Dan and having kids.
• Done both subtly and not-so subtly on The Amazing Race. There are times when you can tell a team is going to be eliminated just by what they say at the beginning of the leg, while there are other lines that take on a lot more meaning once you've seen the end of the season.
  • One example of the subtle variety came from leg 2 of All-Stars, where, upon leaving the Detour at the same time as Eric & Danielle, Rob said that even on Eric's best day, he had no chance of beating them. Rob & Amber were eliminated two legs later, while Eric & Danielle won.
• In Season 1 of Gossip Girl, Blair breaks off her apparently casual relationship with Chuck because he manipulated everyone and didn't care if he hurt her in the process of those manipulations. She even says the line "This is why you and I can never work." Two and a half seasons later, when they're in a long-term serious relationship, he manipulates her into prostituting herself for his benefit, causing the most heart-breaking break-up of the series.
• "Ua Hala", the second-season finale of the reimagined Hawaii Five-0, begins with a cop being set up for his murder by being lured to what he thinks is a dead body but is actually revealed to be a mannequin. This seems to be a subtle foreshadowing of the end of the episode, where we learn that McGarrett's mother, whom we had been led to believe died before the series, is actually alive.
• In a flashback in the third episode of Person of Interest, "Mission Creep," Reese has a chance encounter with his former lover Jessica in an airport. In the course of the conversation, he tells her, "In the end, we're all alone and no one is coming to save you." Later in the season, in "Matsa Nyaya" and "Many Happy Returns," we learn that Jessica ended up in an abusive marriage. She made a desperate call to Reese for help, but he was on a mission and couldn't get there, and her husband beat her to death. She died all alone, because no one came to save her.
  • Also foreshadowed by Reese's opening narration from "Pilot," which he repeats in "Many Happy Returns" as he confronts Jessica's husband Peter.
  • Subtly reinforced in the second episode, "Ghosts," when Jessica's picture appears on one of the screens showing the people on the Machine's "irrelevant" list (people about to be involved in a violent crime, but not relevant to national security).

---