History Foreshadowing / DokiDokiLiteratureClub

*** This almost applies in DDLC+ as well, except for Natsuki facing (but not looking at) the screen in the side-story "Self-Love". Also, Monika is not Medium Aware in these stories, and she doesn't face the screen either, except in the very last CGI, which also features all the others ''not'' doing it. Could be seen as foreshadowing that after these prequel events (that is, in the game proper) things are going to be different, even though they're really in a different timeline from the game, and that Monika is just looking at her own in-universe camera.

*** This almost applies in DDLC+ as well, except for Natsuki facing (but not looking at) the screen in the side-story "Self-Love". Also, Monika is not Medium Aware in these stories, and she doesn't face the screen either, except in the very last CGI, which also features all the others ''not'' doing it.

* Portrait of Markov is a reference to ''Das Portrait Meines Doppelgängers'' by Georgi Markov. The book is allegedly about a poker game the main characters are playing. The poker game turns out to be a framing device, with the ''actual'' story being about three of the players attempting to completely ruin the life of the last and about the hidden depths and baggage of the characters--Much like the game itself.

** Similarly, After Yuri hesitantly agrees to do the poem performance during the school festival, she dejectedly says "This club is seriously going to be the death of me..." to which Monika replies that Yuri would be fine while averting her eyes.

* Portrait of Markov is a reference to ''Das Portrait Meines Doppelgängers'' by Georgi Markov. Allegedly about a poker game the main characters are playing, but the poker game turns out to be a framing device, with the ''actual'' story being about three of the players attempting to completely ruin the life of the last, and about the hidden depths and baggage of the characters. Much like the game itself.

* When Sayori mistakenly states that Monika has a boyfriend, Monika quizzically glances at the protagonist. While divining her ''exact'' thoughts would be about as easy as in "Literature/TheLadyOrTheTiger",[[note]]or better yet it's sequel "The Discourager of Hesitancy"[[/note]] this clearly has something to do with how the protagonist is the avatar of the only person she wants to date, and possibly how she's aware of the MinimalistCast of the game meaning there isn't anyone else available anyway.

* There is a very conspicuous lack of any mentions and namedropping of real-life (or fictional for that matter) authors and literary works for what is supposedly is a literature club of well-read people. The observant player will notice that the only character who actually does this a couple of times is Monika.

* Monika makes a mention about "cheating" after you're trying to impress one of the girls, with the player character not having any idea on what she's talking about. Monika's set on a relationship with you, that for her, hooking up with one of the girls would be "cheating". She could also be talking about the player literally cheating at the poetry ''game'', by SaveScumming to make sure they always get a reaction from the girl they want or by just looking up which words correspond to which girl.

** Not helped by the fact that Monika is the only one of the four girls whose sprites have her directly face the screen looking at the MC/[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou the player]], unlike Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki's sprites, which are faced at an angle. The same applies to all the cutscenes; even when Yuri has her face seemingly turned directly at the main character in the towel scene, the scene isn't quite in first-person view, so she's not looking at the screen. Once Monika finally gets her own scene, she's definitely looking through the screen.

** Not helped by the fact that Monika is the only one of the four girls whose sprites have her directly face the screen looking at the MC/[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou the player]], unlike Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki's sprites, which are faced at an angle. The same applies to all the cutscenes; even when Yuri has her face seemingly turned directly at the main character in the towel scene, the scene isn't quite in first-person view, so she's not looking at the screen. Meanwhile, Natsuki's corresponding scene ''is'' from a first-person perspective, and she's got her face turned to the side. Once Monika finally gets her own scene, she's definitely looking through the screen.

** Not helped by the fact that Monika is the only one of the four girls whose sprites have her directly face the screen looking at the MC/[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou the player]], unlike Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki's sprites, which are faced at an angle.

* When Yuri first shows a poem to the protagonist, she preemptively apologizes for her messy handwriting, only to be reassured that hers is lovely. This foreshadows a later scare that involves Yuri making the player read a poem that is not only barely legible but covered in suspicious red and yellow stains.

* When Sayori mistakenly states that Monika has a boyfriend, Monika quizzically glances at the protagonist. It's as if to say, "Did you tell them that we are an item?"
** Alternatively, it could be a misinterpretation of the oblivious main character and she might instead be worried that the player believes she is taken. She instantly denies having a lover, too.

* The tagline is "Will you write the way into her heart?" Notice it doesn't say "their hearts." Just "her."

*** Speaking of the pen, Yuri takes your pen and takes it with her. When she brings up that she wrote a poem using it, she realises what she just said and stumbles on her attempts to clarify what she has said. This could be taken to foreshadow what Yuri says she does with your pen later in the game.

** There's even a minor one with the trailer of [[UpdatedRerelease Doki Doki Literature Club Plus]] where at the end, all of the character's cutscene photos are shown, with Monika's new cutscene photo of her playing a piano. She's the only one of the four who moves by opening her eyes.
* Pay close attention to the poems. At first glance, they seem normal, but many of them allude to the girls' issues. Sayori's poems hint at her depression and desire to make others happy despite being miserable. Natsuki's have a theme of not measuring up and being judged, likely inspired by her abusive father and her classmates. At least one of Yuri's is heavily implied to be about her self-harm. Monika's poems all are based off her awareness of her state as an in-game character, her attempts to connect with the player, and the AndIMustScream state she endures while the game is switched off.

** Yuri's second poem, ''The Raccoon'' is about Yuri's unusual hobbies, and depicts a woman who feeds hand sliced bread to a raccoon, despite knowing that it will always come back for more. She eventually takes a dark thrill in feeding the raccoon, being prepared to feed it wherever she goes. Throughout the poem, Yuri is unusually fixated on the knife she uses to slice the bread, describing the raccoon's hunger and her desire to feed it in terms of an addiction, and even mentioning a "rush of blood" in the final stanza. All of this takes on a sinister light when her propensity for self-harm is revealed in Act 2.

*** If the player reads ''Save Me'' in Act II, they will notice a lot of letters missing from many words, [[NoIndoorVoice and some words that are still intact are capitalized for emphasis]], and when the player scrolls down to the last line, instead of "Load Me", it now says, "Delete Her", a fine clue as to how Monika deletes her friends, and a very fine foreshadowing on how to get rid of her in Act III.

* There's all kinds of "barely noticeable the first time around" foreshadowing on the first and second days about characters discussing the horror genre and Yuri's book seeming innocent at first but then taking a surprisingly dark turn.

* Monika talks about practicing piano, and hopes to play something that'll impress the player. The credits theme is played and sung by her.

* There is a very conspicuous lack of any mentions and namedropping of real life (or fictional for that matter) authors and literary works for what is supposedly is a literature club of well-read people. The observant player will notice that the only character who actually does this a couple of times is Monika.

** At the end of Act 1 where the game's programming now contains visual glitches and encrypted text, Sayori's art in the main menu gets messed-up with an amalgamation of the remaining girls, but one would easily notice that a large portion of the face closely resembles Monika's.
** The glitched-out sprite of Sayori appears early when the protagonist is welcomed by an unknown character (labelled "???") only to be replaced by Monika when the dialog proceeds.

** There are certain lines of text in Act 2 where she overlays herself on top of the text dialog, behind the other girls on-screen.
*** Furthermore, when she does this to tell the player to step outside after Yuri and Natsuki's fight, unlike other times she steps in front of the dialog box, the text doesn't just run beside her - instead, her dialogue automatically has multiple line-breaks that make her whole line visible, fitting to the left of her sprite.

* At the end of the third poetry session in Act I, Monika comments that "Humans aren't two-dimensional creatures. I'd think you'd know that better than anyone." When the main-character asks her if she meant "one-dimensional", she quickly corrects herself, but it's a hint to the fact that Monika is actually speaking to the only person around - the player - that isn't a two-dimensional sprite.
* On the final day of Act I, Monika says about Sayori: "You kind of left her hanging this morning, you know?", referencing to how the protagonist left Sayori literally hanging in her room when, at the start of the day, he decided not to enter her house.

** Similarly, After Yuri hesitantly agrees to do the poem performance during the school festival, she dejectedly says "This club is seriously going to be the death of me..." to which Monika replies that Yuri would be fine, while averting her eyes.

* When Yuri first shows a poem to the protagonist, she preemptively apologizes for her messy handwriting, only to be reassured that hers is lovely. This foreshadows a later scare that involves Yuri making the player read a poem that is not only barely legible, but covered in suspicious red and yellow stains.

** If the player spends more time with Yuri than the other members, Monika will warn the protagonist that Yuri has a hard time opening up to others and that she could accidentally hurt herself. In Act 2, Yuri stabs herself to death after confessing her love the protagonist. This goes even further as Monika will explain that Yuri can sometimes get "overexcited". If the player accepts Yuri's heinously creepy proposal in Act 2, she stabs herself to death because because she gets overexcited and can't handle the fact that you like her.

** ''Parfait Girls'', Natsuki's manga, has four girls in animated poses on the cover, much like the game's title screen. She describes it as starting as a comedy with a chapter about the girls obsessing over a boy in an ice cream shop, before turning to the dramatic later on once it delves into the characters' backstories. She also mentions a character named Minori, who is "unlucky" but still likable, that apparently goes through [[BreakTheCutie something bad]]. This seems to reference the events of Act 1, the reveal of Sayori's depression, and her ultimate fate by the end of the Act.

* The manual having a section about "Deleting Save Data & Accessing Files", including the line "In some cases, you may want to delete your save data to start the game completely over." This seemingly neutral, technical and non-plot-related point foreshadows the fact that after a certain point, you can't start the game again normally without doing so. And accessing and deleting individual files, character files specifically, is something Monika will eventually do to the other characters, and what you have to do to her.

* The manual having a section about "Deleting Save Data & Accessing Files", including the line "In some cases, you may want to delete your save data to start the game completely over." This foreshadows the fact that after a certain point, you can't start the game again normally without doing so. And accessing and deleting individual files, character files specifically, is something Monika will eventually do to the other characters, and what you have to do to her.

* Monika makes a mention about "cheating" after you're trying to impress one of the girls, with the player character not having any idea on what she's talking about. Monika's set in a relationship with you, that for her, hooking up with one of the girls would be "cheating". She could also be talking about the player literally cheating at the poetry ''game'', by SaveScumming to make sure they always get a reaction from the girl they want or by just looking up which words correspond to which girl.

* For a possible sequel. When you have got the GoldenEnding, all the character files are still intact, even though the rest of the game is gone...

* A few time, Sayori will mention an unnamed, unspecified "her" or "she" that says some things that seriously upset Sayori, such as "Get out of my head before I listen to everything she said to me" (from her final poem, %). It isn't clear at first who this "she" is, but it's abundantly clear it is Monika by the end of Act 2.

** Also on the logo is a standing pen that casts a notable shadow, which makes the pen take on a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything rather unsettling shape]].

** Monika also has subtle design choices when compared to the other club members, such as wearing red-tipped shoes as opposed to blue-tipped ones, [[EvilWearsBlack black]] [[ZettaiRyouiki Grade B]] stockings as opposed to shorter white ones, and being the odd name out of the four (being a western name ending in -a, instead of a more obvious eastern name ending in -i).

* Yuri mentions that her tastes in literature involve sympathetic characters who act evil not because they want to, but because of their own goals, philosophies, or circumstances. This foreshadows the fact that, despite this being a horror game, there are no ''truly'' evil characters. Yuri herself only becomes frightening as a result of MindRape-induced SanitySlippage, and [[ReluctantPsycho is clearly horrified by her actions]]. Natsuki becomes more verbally abusive, but only because she's also been tampered with; she's even still in there enough to beg the player to help Yuri. Even Monika is a [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds sympathetic figure]], since she's an ordinary teenage girl who's learned the AwfulTruth and is coping with it in an extremely unhealthy way. The same goes for Sayori if you get the normal ending.
* When Sayori leaves the class in a funk (the same day that it's revealed she has depression,) the club has an awkward moment capped off by Yuri commenting that "Stagnant air is common foreshadowing that something bad is going to happen." She later repeats this line in the second loop, on the same day that she stabs herself to death.

* A few time, Sayori will mention an unnamed, unspecified "her" or "she" that says some things that seriously upset Sayori, such as "Get out of my head before I listen to everything she said to me" (from her final poem, %). It isn't clear at first who this "she" is, but it's abundantly clear who it is by the end of Act 2.

** After Yuri describes the plot of ''The Portrait of Markov'', the PC notes that she made it sound like it was going to be a nice story at first until it took a dark turn. This, of course, foreshadows the SurpriseCreepy that comes later. It may also be ProductionForeshadowing for a later game.

* Portrait of Markov, huh? As in ''Das Portrait Meines Doppelgängers'' by Georgi Markov? Allegedly about a poker game the main characters are playing, but the poker game turns out to be a framing device, with the ''actual'' story being about three of the players attempting to completely ruin the life of the last, and about the hidden depths and baggage of the characters. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?

** Some of the depressing word choices like "death", "hopeless", "defeat", and "alone" impress Sayori, of all characters, which gives away her chronic depression and suicidal tendencies. In the second act, these same words count as points toward Yuri, as her unravelling is the focus of that act.

* After sharing ''Bottles'', a poem that is itself foreshadowing, Sayori cheerfully exclaims that she'll write poems until the day she dies. This is a hint towards Sayori's depression and suicidal ideation. Her suicide note is also, of course, a poem.

* Portrait of Markov, huh? As in ''Das Portrait Meines Doppelgängers'' by Georgi Markov? Allegedly about a poker game the main characters are playing, but the poker game turns out to be a framing device, the story being ''actually'' about three of the players attempting to completely ruin the life of the last, and about the hidden depths and baggage of the characters. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it.