20 Ingenious Moments Of Foreshadowing In Films

How did we miss these hints?

Foreshadowing is a writing device that can take many different forms, and films have managed to use it in some truly mind-blowing ways.

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Thanks to carefully written dialogue and well-placed visual cues, films have hinted at events later in their stories or even later in their franchises. These moments of foreshadowing show just how great these movies really are, so to better appreciate these films, let's take a look at them, shall we?

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

20. Doc Ock's Death - Spider-Man 2

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Otto Octavius's death in this film was a tragic (though temporary) end for his character, but he actually predicted this grim fate earlier on. After breaking out of the hospital, Otto claims that he and his robot tentacles should be at the bottom of the river. In the film's climax, Otto drowns in the river, destroying his fusion reactor and saving the city just as he foretold.

19. A Fistful of Dollars - Back to the Future Part II

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Remember when Marty McFly used a piece of metal to protect himself from Mad Dog Tannen's bullet? This is clearly an homage to A Fistful of Dollars, which features a scene where Clint Eastwood does the same thing. Marty actually caught a glimpse of this scene when he confronts Biff, while the latter watches the film in Part II, which might've given Marty the idea to protect himself this way when facing Biff's outlaw ancestor in the sequel. Heavy.

18. The Bar Names - The World's End

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This Edgar Wright classic shows five friends going to 12 different bars and fighting an army of robots (yeah, it's pretty crazy). The name of each bar represents an event in the characters' journeys throughout the film. For example, Gary faces off against twin robots at The Two-Headed Dog, the boys are seduced by three siren-esque women at The Mermaid, and Andy drives Gary's car through the wall of The Hole in the Wall. Of course, the most explicit hint is how the Earth goes back to the Dark Ages after Gary and his friends reach The World's End.

17. Blue Sky on Mars - Total Recall (1990)

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When Douglas Quaid is setting up his false memories at Rekall, one of the technicians mentions a "blue sky on Mars" that's part of his desired dream. The film ends with blue skies appearing on the red planet, with Quaid wondering if that was all just a dream. So not only was this a clever bit of foreshadowing, but the fact that this ending was part of the dream he asked for implies that the film really was just a dream.

16. The Bird Cage Trick - The Prestige

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In this underrated Christopher Nolan film, two rival magicians compete with each other with their own teleportation acts. The truth behind Borden's act is that he had a twin brother who he had been sharing his identity with for years, and the twin took the fall for the real Borden when he was sentenced to death. This twist is foreshadowed when Borden crushed a bird in a cage in front of a child. Though Borden lets him believe that he miraculously let it out in time, he actually killed the bird and replaced it with another, just like how his brother died so he could avoid death.

15. The Flood - Parasite

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The massive flood that hits during Parasite is a disastrous event that forces the Kim family to sleep in a shelter for a night. This calamity is foreshadowed when Chung-Sook cooks Ram-don, with the ingredients representing the divide between the upper and lower class, as the pot fills up with water before the food is put in it. Also, the scene in which Ki-woo splashes water on a guy peeing outside his house, with Ki-jung calling it a "deluge," hints at the actual flood that comes later.

14. The Truth About Sandie - Last Night in Soho

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The big twist in Edgar Wright's horror fantasia is that Sandie, the woman that supposedly died in Ellie's room decades ago, was the latter's elderly landlord, Ms. Collins, and had murdered many of her male clients. This big reveal is hinted at by Ms. Collins' "no boys" rule and her claiming that she would've killed Ellie's boyfriend when she came home with him. Also, when Ms. Collins asks Ellie to put plugs in the drains to cover up a bad smell, this hints at the rotting corpses that she had hidden away inside the floors and walls.

13. "Have You Lost Weight?" - Tag

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In a surprisingly dark twist for such a fun comedy, we learn that Ed Helms' Hoagie was diagnosed with cancer and was worried he wouldn't survive for the next game of tag. However, when Bob asks him if he lost weight during the first act, the film hints that he has cancer, as weight loss is a side effect of chemotherapy. You probably didn't expect this clever detail to be placed in a movie like this, but comedy does rely on doing the unexpected.

12. T'Challa Freezes - Black Panther

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Fans of Black Panther remember when T'Challa freezes when he reunites with his old flame, Nakia, at the start of the film. The fact that he was told to not freeze by Okoye comes back in a whole new way much later on, as T'Challa's unconscious body is found by the Jabari Tribe and is placed in a pile of snow after he lost to Erik Killmonger.

11. That Man's Playing Galaga - The Avengers

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In the first Avengers film, Tony catches one person in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier playing Galaga on his computer. While this may seem like another one of Marvel's throwaway jokes, it actually foreshadows the alien armada that descends on New York from the sky in the film's third act. If only the Avengers had a starship to fight them off like in Galaga.

10. The Sushi - Snowpiercer (2013)

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This film is another work of genius by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. As Curtis and his team go farther up the train, they stop for some sushi in the aquarium car. Minister Mason explains that sushi is only served on the train twice a year to balance its fish population. This foreshadows the shocking truth that the evil Wilford has secretly staged revolts within the train to reduce the number of passengers to a sustainable amount. Even Thanos must look at this plan and think, Oh, wow.

9. X Marks the Spot - The Departed

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There are many, many deaths throughout this Martin Scorcese film, and while they seem to come out of nowhere, there are many hints that tell who will get killed off. There is usually an X present in a shot with someone who is supposed to die later in the film, making the letter a mark for death. This technique was actually an homage to the classic crime film Scarface (not the Al Pacino one, the original).

8. The Number 82 - Magnolia

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Everyone probably thought that the whole "frogs falling from the sky" thing came out of nowhere in this Paul Thomas Anderson film. But the number 82 that's present throughout the movie actually references Exodus 8:2, which says, "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs." There's even someone directly citing the verse with a poster in the quiz show audience.

7. Dust and Blood - Avengers: Infinity War

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We all knew Thanos would succeed in wiping out half the universe before Infinity War premiered, but that doesn't make this foreshadowing any less clever. When T'Challa confronts the Black Order in Wakanda, he claims that Thanos will only have "dust and blood" instead of the Mind Stone. Ironically, that is what he gets when he arrives there, but only when he gets all the Infinity Stones and turns T'Challa and half of all life to dust.

6. Just a Pipe Dream - The Shawshank Redemption

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When Andy Dufresne talks to his pa, Red, about escaping the Shawshank Prison and moving to Mexico, the latter brushes it off as a "s***ty pipe dream." Sure enough, Andy breaks himself out of prison by crawling through a s*** pipe, showing that dreams do come true.

5. My First Fight With Tyler - Fight Club

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The big twist of this classic David Fincher flick is that the Narrator and his friend/enemy Tyler Durden are really the same person, and there is a small but crucial piece of dialogue that hints at this. When the Narrator beats himself up to blackmail his boss, he says in a voiceover, "For some reason, I thought of my first fight with Tyler." Gee, I wonder why?

4. The Armitage Attacks - Get Out

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We could all tell something was wrong with the Armitage family the minute Chris arrived at their doorstep, but there were many hints about what they'll do to him sprinkled in the film's dialogue. For example, Rose says that her brother would've put Chris in a headlock at dinner, which is something he does when Chris tries to escape their house. Also, Chris says to Rose at the start of the film that he doesn't "want to get chased off [her family's] lawn with a shotgun," and Rose does precisely that.

3. Dying Inside Yourself - Zack Snyder's Justice League

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This is a rare case of foreshadowing for a movie that hasn't been made (at least not yet). In this superhero epic, Batman encounters Joker in a hellish future ruled by Darkseid that the Caped Crusader had a role in creating. For his mistakes, Jokers claims that Batman doesn't have the guts to make the ultimate sacrifice as everyone else suffers because of him. His argument foreshadows how Batman was supposed to sacrifice himself to help stop Darkseid in Snyder's planned sequel to Justice League, proving the Joker wrong.

2. Tying the Belt Buckles - Jurassic Park

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When Dr. Alan Grant cannot buckle his seat belt during the helicopter ride to Isla Nublar, he improvises by tying two "female" buckles together. This seemingly insignificant moment foreshadows the revelation that the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park, despite all being female, have learned to mate and reproduce by changing their sex thanks to the frog DNA in their bodies. And thus, life found a way.

1. The Stuffed Birds - Psycho

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What is it with Hitchcock and birds? When future shower-murder victim Marion Crane suggests Norman Bates put his ill mother in a psychiatric hospital, Norman scoffs at the idea, claiming that "she's as harmless as one of those stuffed birds." This couldn't be any more true when we learn that Norman had murdered his mother years ago and placed her mummified corpse in her room like one of his avian trophies. In fact, she's so harmless, she wouldn't even harm a fly.

Do you agree with this list? Were there any other clever moments of foreshadowing that I missed? Please let me know in the comments section below.