Foreshadowing is like the director leading a trail of breadcrumbs to a big event that happens later in the movie, as the filmmaking technique is something that hints at what’s to come in some kind of creative way. Foreshadowing can come in different forms, it could be metaphorical, symbolic, or just simply hinted at with a specific object or mark appearing before a murder or death happens.
Some foreshadowing might be as clear as day, whereas others might require fans to dig a little deeper, as hints only appear for literally a single frame, and these are some of the most inventive in the history of cinema.
Jurassic Park (1993)
The iconic dinosaur movie is full of incredible scenes featuring the T-Rex, but there was just as much thought gone in the scenes where people are sitting around talking as there are in the scenes full of dinosaurs. On the island in Jurassic Park, John Hammond made all the dinosaurs female so that it was impossible for them to breed, but as Ian Malcolm said earlier in the movie, life always finds a way.
The frog DNA used to create the dinosaurs enabled some of them to switch sex. This is perfectly foreshadowed in the helicopter on the way to the island, as Dr. Grant only had two female connector parts of the seat belt, but he found a way and tied them together.
Seven (1995)
The final scene of Seven in which Mills is screaming, “What’s in the box?!” at John Doe didn’t just spawn loads of memes, but the final scene of the screenplay influenced director David Fincher’s neat and extremely subtly little bit of foreshadowing.
As the ending sees Tracy’s decapitated head in a FedEx box, which is one of the most disturbing final movie scenes ever, up until that very point, the audience never once saw the character except for her shoulders and up, heavily hinting at her morbid end.
The Departed (2006)
In The Departed, one of Martin Scorsese’s great late-career gangster movies, the director expertly tells the audience who is going to get killed right before it happens by placing crosses around them.
There are crosses on the windows as Queenan plummets to his death. There is a cross made out of tape in the elevator behind Billy before he gets shot, and there is a cross pattern on the carpet of Colin’s building hallway before he gets shot too. This happens for every character who gets murdered, and it’s one of the hidden details that everyone missed. But in the end, crosses don’t really matter, as virtually everybody in the movie ends up getting killed anyway.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The second entry into the giant Star Wars franchise set a lot of sequel trends, and one of them was by featuring a giant plot twist, with that twist being that Darth Vader was in fact Luke Skywalker’s father.
The twist is so well known that even the few people who have never seen the movie know about it. But before the big twist arrived at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, there was a huge foreshadowing when Luke was being trained by Yoda. On Dagobah, Luke envisions his face under Vader’s mask, heavily hinting at his family tree before it was properly revealed.
Magnolia (1999)
At the end of Magnolia, the 3+ hour melodramatic epic, it starts raining frogs out of nowhere, causing tons of catastrophes. Throughout the movie there are several hidden signs with the numbers eight and two.
The weather forecast says there will be an 82% chance of rain, “82” is graffitied everywhere, and an audience member of the game show is straight up holding a sign that says Exodus 8:2. This is because in Exodus 8:2 of the bible, it threats that there will be a plague of frogs that will reign down on the world.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Everything that the warden does (except for the abundance of crimes he commits) in The Shawshank Redemption is based on his religion. When the warden picks up Andy’s bible, Andy clearly tenses up for a moment.
The warden momentarily looks at the bible and says, “salvation lies within.” At the end of the movie it’s revealed that the bible was hollow and its where the inmate was hiding the rock hammer he used to escape. As it turns out, salvation really did lie within.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
The Usual Suspects is a whole playground of foreshadowing, and after watching the movie for the first time and seeing the twist, it makes the second viewing a lot more fun, trying to catch all of the subtle hints to the big reveal, which is one of the ways the movie has aged well.
Whether it’s the the name Kobayashi underneath the coffee cup or the copious amounts newspaper cutouts scattered across Kujan’s wall, there are so many hints hidden in plain sight that Verbal Kint’s story is completely fabricated.
The Matrix (1999)
It’s easy to forget that Neo was a lonesome office worker before he was the chosen one and battled armies of Agent Smiths. However, at the beginning of The Matrix, Neo had a modest cubicle job, and as with every cubicle job he had a power-tripping middle manager. But that manager inadvertently predicted Neo’s future and secretly told the audience what would happen in the movie.
His boss tells Neo that he thinks the rules don’t apply to him, and that he thinks he’s special. The boss then ends his lecture by telling Mr. Anderson that he has to make a choice.
Fight Club (1999)
Seven isn’t the only Fincher directed movie to feature ingenious foreshadowing, and Fight Club is full of them in almost every scene. Being one of the movies where the main character isn’t given a name, and that in itself is a foreshadow for the big plot twist, it leaves the audience guessing what’s going on. But for those who have their eyes peeled, there’s a chance they could have caught a few tidbits that foreshadowed the Narrator and Tyler being the same person.
For starters, Tyler randomly appears in single frames before he’s formerly introduced in the movie, and he appears in the TV commercial for the restaurant that the Narrator ends up working at. But the best foreshadow of them all is when the Narrator beats himself up in front of his boss, he is reminded of his first fight with Tyler.
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather series features the ultimate use of foreshadowing, and it’s one that has been borrowed by many other movies in the almost 50 years since. In all of the Godfather movies, there’s always an orange, or several oranges, placed next to somebody who will get murdered at a later point.
Even the Godfather himself, Vito Corleone, is at an orange stand when he gets shot, and Michael is holding a single orange when he dies in The Godfather Part III. So many shows have paid homage to this too, including Breaking Bad and Mad Men.