Webcomic 8-Bit Theatre deserves a mention here. A throwaway line in Episode 7 pays off big in Episode 1221, nine years later with no reference to it at all in-between. Whether you consider it foreshadowing or the longest brick joke in history, you have to admire the planning involved.
Also, in the “Thursday Next” books by Jasper Fforde, Thursday hides a gun for herself in the first book, only to retrieve it at a critical moment in the fourth book.
The Shield is amazingly through-planned - way early on in the show they’re already mentioning in passing the structure of the Armenian mob that played such a major role later on in the show, for example.
The small bird getting crushed in the cage, for one example.
What I was particularly thinking of was:
The trick where making a bird seem to disappear was done by being willing to kill an identical bird (by flattening it) each time the trick was done.
Since Gyrate opened the webcomic door, The Order of The Stick is renowned for this sort of thing, introducing panel details in one strip, and using them a few hundred panels later. TVTropesgoes into much more detail than I can remember, but it’s a pastime among OOTS fans to try and tease out future plot elements from the current strip. One running joke is that one of the minor characters is in a pool of magical darkness, yet there are enough clues in all of the ~850 strips (counting extras in like Dragon, and such) that you should be able to figure out what the MiTD is. No one’s definitively figured it out yet though, AFAIK.
I don’t think there’s been a nine year wait between jokes, but at the rate Burlew’s updating the comic…
Simmer down, I know about the car wreck. If you can’t make fun of those things you really enjoy…
“But where’s its brother?”
There’s some terrific foreshadowing in the wedding scene of The Godfather. (Open spoilers alert.)
On an IMDB thread, I pointed out that Paulie’s envy over the wedding purse (“If this were somebody else’s wedding…”) foreshadowed that Paulie would later sell out his Don for money.
Another poster pointed out that that scene was chock-full of subtle foreshadowing…Sonny’s running off to screw Lucy Mancini practically under his wife’s nose showed the recklessness that would be his downfall (and very nearly Vito’s death); Fredo had to insinuate himself into an introduction to Kay (even this early, he’s being overlooked by his younger brother); Clemenza snaps in an instant from carefree wedding guest to snapping orders at Paulie (just the same as he can go from easygoing spaghetti-sauce chef to planning a murder), and so on.
I’m not sure if it’s foreshadowing, exactly, but in Looper:
The kid on the farm has some toy action figures in his room that look exactly like the Rainmaker’s goons will in the future. Here are the relevant screencaps.
My favorite, and one it took me three years to catch:
In the very first episode of Arrested Development, the Narrator introduces “George Michael, and his cousin, Maebe”.
His cousin. Maybe. It’s revealed later on that George Michael and his cousin may, actually, not be related.
Hrm… I actually read that as intentionally telegraphing what was to come, rather than subtly foreshadowing it… But either counts as “clever foreshadowing” I guess.
Another one: L.A. Confidential. Everyone knows about Rollo Tomasi, but a more subtle one was from an earlier scene where James Cromwell tells Ed Exley he can’t be in homicide because he wouldn’t be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect, plant evidence, or shoot someone in the back. By the end of the movie Exley has done all of those things.
My all-time favorite example is the Community Beetlejuice. In Season 1, there’s a throwaway gag in which someone is compared to Beetlejuice. In Season 2, someone’s blouse is compared to Beetlejuice. And in Season 3, someone’s music selection is called “Creepy Beetlejuice music”. At the third mention of his name, Beetlejuice appears.
Does a thread about foreshadowing need spolier warnings? Anyway, SPOILERS FOR BABYLON 5 in this post… not using tags as they’re already out there, but a warning anyway.
Correct, in the original version of the pilot, Kosh says nothing. The line from Kosh was put in for the revised, re-edited version, which was done at the same time as “In The Beginning” and aired between seasons 4 and 5. It’s about a million times better than the original version.)
And of course, there’s no way that could have been the line in the original version, as that wasn’t the original plan for Sinclair, but a fix made after the change of lead actors. (Details of the original plan for B5 were released by JMS and summarised here and here.)
Other Babylon 5 foreshadowing:
From Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
In the 3rd season finale, when Faith and Buffy share a dream, Faith tells Buffy as they make her bed that her “Little sis is coming” and calls her Little Miss Muffet. In the season 4 finale, Tara tells Buffy in a dream that she has to “be back before Dawn”. When Dawn does finally turn up in season 5 - first seen on the same spot that Faith and Buffy were making a bed in their dream - someone refers to her a “eating her curds and whey”.
Speaking of Lost…
No, let’s not. Or, maybe…
One example of a tightly-written series, with rather profound foreshadowing, is Life on Mars. The protagonist finds himself in a rather difficult to explain situation. Early on he makes a list of possible explanations for what has happened to him, including coma, purgatory, time-travel and so on (looking rather like the list many fans of Lost came up with for that show). Alongside the list, he places a big question mark, and it’s suggested that the truth is likely something other than one of the items on his list.
At the end of the series, it turns out
The truth is indeed something other than one of the items on his list.
I found it to be a very satisfying conclusion to an interesting series. And, IMO, an example of some pretty clever foreshadowing.
Specifically, the Doctor losing, then wearing, and then once more not having his jacket in the episode Flesh and Stone, with the payoff coming in The Big Bang.
For bonus points, consider something else we’re explicitly told.
[SPOILER]Angier’s lookalike (“When I get through with him,” says Michael Caine,* “he could be your brother”*) meets Borden – who helpfully explains that he’s used the same method to work his own version of the Transported Man trick, pointing out that “when I incorporated this bloke into my act, he had complete power over me.”
Since he’s obviously just saying it to pit the guy against his employer – and it immediately has the desired effect – it’s danged easy to disregard.[/SPOILER]
I still have my tape of the original airing, and went back and looked when this issue first cropped up. It’s there.
In The Silence of the Lambs, during their first interview, Clarice Starling comments on one of Hannibal’s drawings – a cityscape of Florence. He replies that it’s “The Duomo, as seen from the Belvedere.”
Something always bothered me about the way the line was delivered. If Hannibal Lector had spent enough time in Florence to be able to sketch the Duomo from memory, his Italian pronunciation should have been rather more up to scratch – not “doo-OH-moh” but “DWOH-moh”; not “BEL-veh-deer” but “bel-vih-DARE-eh”.
My first thought was to chalk it up as an actor’s mistake – even Sir Anthony is not immune. Later on I decided that Lector was simply mocking Clarice’s West Virginia accent.
On the umpteenth viewing I finally noticed that the name of the town where Buffalo Bill was discovered was Belvedere. :smack: Yes, he *was *mocking her accent, but at the same time giving her a clue that sailed far over her head.
There is also another aspect that goes right over her head. When Clarice asks Lechter how to find Buffalo Bill he says “Simplicity, Clarice.”
Starling thinks that he means that she has to think simply about the case. But Simplicity is a famous maker of dress designs. Lechter is actually telling Clarice what Buffalo Bill is doing , but she doesn’t know enough to realize it yet.
Holy crap, that’s subtle!
Damn. That one never occurred to me, either. Going to have to re-watch tonight and parse every word Lector says.