Foreshadowing / Black Mirror

• Black Mirror: The National Anthem: Scenes of the team at 10 Downing Street discussing what to do are intercut with shots of everyday Londoners glued to their television sets to follow the story. The "commoners" include a man watching from home, a group of rowdy pubgoers, an entire hospital's staff, and a rustic-looking man going about chores. That man is the only one not watching the coverage. He turns out to be Carlton Bloom, a Mad Artist who orchestrated the event to make a comment about the Internet age. Not only does his refusal to turn on the TV make perfect sense for someone who's critiquing the Bile Fascination trope, but it also serves as a clue to viewers: Bloom doesn't need to view the action because he knows what's happening already.
• Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits:
  • Bing is trying to talk with Abi but is interrupted a couple of times by the ads for the porn program "Wraith Babes". It seems like a funny Running Gag at the beginning, but it's really not.
  • Bing might be looking for a real connection, but apparently it has to be with someone who's pretty and has a nice singing voice - he completely ignores the plainer girl who seems to be crushing on him, and even uses the vending-machine trick she taught him to impress Abi. It's an early sign that he's Not So Above It All, foreshadowing his selling out in the end.
• Black Mirror: The Entire History of You: Two moments allude to the point where Liam gouges his implant out: A female party-goer says that hers was forcibly removed in an incident, and Liam threatens Jonas with the possibility of gouging his implant out.
• Black Mirror: Be Right Back:
  • The episode has Martha and Ash singing "If I Can't Have You" together, and after a lighthearted argument in the van about The Bee Gees, Martha jokingly threatens to crash on purpose. Ash will soon die suddenly in a car crash, leaving Martha struggling to live without him.
  • In the beginning of the episode, real Ash recounts how his mother would immediately stash pictures of his siblings into the attic following their deaths. Martha would finally do the same with Replacement Ash, leaving him to idle indefinitely in the attic.
• Black Mirror: White Bear: The most notable moment is when the protagonist picks up the dropped phone and the other survivor points a taser at her claiming she'll go mad if she looks at it; it's later revealed that the protagonist would have seen it was all a setup, and the tasers are used for days when things don't go according to plan.
• Black Mirror: The Waldo Moment:
  • When asked about going to South America next, Waldo's team is asked if they speak fluent Spanish, to which Jamie's manager cuts in by doing so. Guess who eventually replaces Jamie when they do go international.
  • When Jamie first threatens to call it quits, his manager makes it clear that they will go on without him with the Waldo character if necessary, and even uses his "Waldo voice" in response to Jamie claiming the character is him. This is exactly what happens up towards the end of the by-election. Even before that, Jack Napier appears in a meeting about a Waldo series with an iPad over his face with Waldo on-screen mimicking his expressions as he speaks.
  • Roy warns Gwendolyn that Waldo is attacking Monroe now but will go after her later, and warns her to stay away from Jamie if she wants the campaign to do well. After a brief meeting when she explains to Jamie that she can't continue seeing him, Waldo/Jamie vengefully publicly exposes her on live television, destroying her political career.
  • Jack tries to convince Jamie to continue with Waldo's campaign, citing the character becoming a number-one trend on YouTube, is 'proof' that a real digital democracy can work. Jamie corrects him by pointing out that a video of a dog farting the theme from Happy Days is ahead of them. This foreshadows the campaign wherein Waldo finishes second to Monroe, but it's enough for Waldo's creators to spread the character worldwide; it also foreshadows how the new Waldo order results in a ridiculous, irrational but nonetheless very harmful tyranny of the bottom line.
• Black Mirror: White Christmas:
  • Joe has an unblurred photo of Beth on his wall in the cabin, showing that at some point the block has been lifted.
  • Joe immediately shuts off the radio as it's playing "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday".
  • Matt mentions to Joe in the beginning of the episode that they haven't spoken much in five years.
  • Jennifer tells Harry that she hates Christmas parties, save for the last one when she was on drugs, which she says she'll never take again, and shows more interest when Harry appears to be talking to himself. Jennifer is in fact, an unmedicated schizophrenic who "forges" a Suicide Pact with Harry.
  • Matt tell Joe that "it was only [him] watching", which is immediately revealed to the viewers to be a lie. Later he gets Joe to tell his story by saying "it's just us here", which is also revealed to be a lie by the end of the episode.
  • After Joe first notices the clock, it's shown again a few seconds later and at least a couple of hours appear to have passed judging by the position of the hands. It's also the same clock as in Bethany's father's kitchen.
  • Joe observes to Bethany that Gita is "more into" Tim than he is into her. Tim is having an affair with Bethany.
  • The whole subplot of Greta serves to introduce the concept of cookies for the final twist.
  • The idle chitchat between Matt and Joe foreshadow the ending of the episode, making it ideal for a rewatch for a different perspective of the framing story.
    • As Matt strikes up a conversation with Joe, he denies that it is an interrogation.
    • Matt offhandedly mentions to Joe that to get a cookie to comply, you have to speed up their relative time to break them just enough to get them to do anything. The whole episode is this happening to Cookie!Joe.
    • This adds a layer to another of Matt's offhand remark expressing amazement that Cookie!Joe still resists opening up despite years of isolation.
    • Likewise, Matt's fascination for Joe's empathy for cookies appears more significant after you learn that this Joe is just a cookie.
    • Matt tells Joe that he isn't how Matt expected him to be. Matt believes Joe to be a murderer and is attempting to get a confession.
• Black Mirror: Nosedive:
  • The Reputelligent consultant tells Lacie that, barring something like a "public disgrace kind of deal", Lacie will likely achieve 4.5 in 18 months. Lacie shakes her head as if there was no way that was going to happen. It ends up happening, when a drunk Lacie invades Naomi's wedding, gives a very profane speech, and, instead of being upvoted by the guests as she originally had planned, she gets dinged by them, making her rating drop to below 1.
  • After Naomi calls Lacie to ask her to be her maid of honor, a skeptical Ryan mentions all the mean things Naomi had did to her, one of them being that "she fucked Greg". At that point, Lacie openly denies it. However, in her Brutally Honest speech at Naomi's wedding, one of the things she mentions is that "she fucked Greg".
  • Ryan asks Lacie if the Pelican Cove deposit is refundable, if the whole wedding speech doesn't work. Lacie's response is a very angry "can't you just say out of my shit?!". It ends up not working.
  • After reading the maid of honor speech, Naomi asks Lacie to remove the part about where Naomi helps Lacie out with her eating disorder, since it's "a little oversharing". Lacie ends up incorporating that into her drunken speech:
  Lacie: And she was there for me, holding my hair back, as I knelt, vomiting, in front of the crapper. Thank you for that, Naomi.
• Black Mirror: Playtest:
  • On the plane, a stewardess asks Cooper to switch off his device, so it doesn't interfere with the plane's systems. The cause of his eventual death is the interference between the brain interface and his phone, which he switched back on to take a sneaky photo of the prototype game he was testing.
  • During the whack-a-mole game, we're shown a view from a security camera in the room. If that camera were real, Cooper wouldn't have gotten away with turning on his phone and taking a picture of the briefcase.
  • When he's being led to the access point, Cooper goes up the stairs and through the first door on the left, but he hesitates because he thinks he will be presented with some kind of personal horror involving his mother. When he returns home to America at the end of the episode, he goes to his mother's bedroom to see her and is presented with his worst nightmare. Where's his mother's bedroom? Up the stairs, first door on the left.
• Black Mirror: Shut Up and Dance:
  • Kenny is shown to be fond of kids and being altogether friendly with them. As it turned out, it was neither fondness nor friendliness. Note that he doesn't once look at the mother like normal people would do when handing the toy back, he stays focused on the girl. He's also caught absent-mindedly stroking the drawing that the girl made by his boss, who assumes that he drew it.
  • Additionally, Kenny doesn't share his male coworkers' interest in presumably adult women. While it initially appears that he simply doesn't want to follow the example of leering voyeurs such as them, it could be a hint at things to come. He also seems completely oblivious to his female supervisor's niceness toward him, which isn't that out of place for an awkward teenager, but given the revelation that he's not attracted to adults...
  • Likewise, it turns out there's a bigger reason why Kenny is noticeably upset and worried when his sister Lindsey uses his laptop without permission. Pay extra attention to Kenny when she complains she just wanted to watch "some movie thing" and he pauses before asking "...what movie thing?".
  • Played with while Kenny and Lindsey are watching television while their mother is on a date. It would seem that Kenny left the living room after getting aroused by the scantily-clad (and adult) woman in the music video, but knowing what happens later, he is more than likely bored and definitely looking for his usual child porn fix.
  • When Kenny opens Hector's wallet, condoms fall out and we see pictures of Hector's kids. He also looks increasingly more and more uncomfortable when Hector rants that it will all be taken away.
  • At one point, Hector is incredulous that the only thing Kenny did wrong to get blackmailed was masturbating to porn, even quipping that "everyone does that". This hints early on that Kenny's freaking out for some entirely different reason- the embarrassment and social fallout of just a jerkoff video being leaked would be bad, but hardly anything to steal or kill over.
• Black Mirror: San Junipero:
  • Yorkie's distaste at seeing a car crash in an arcade game and confessions about never being on a dance floor; she was paralyzed at age 21 (the legal age to be in a bar in the United States) after crashing her car, so she may have never been inside of a real club. This also explains why her entrances into each bar she visits are apprehensive.
  • Kelly at one point assures Yorkie that society has progressed enough that people wouldn't care that two young women are romantically dancing together; conceivably it could have been a reference to some progress being made in select parts of Reagan's America, but in general terms that was emphatically not the case.
  • After Kelly has had enough of Wes' advances, she encourages him to go after one of the locals. He says no, saying "they're like corpses". Turns out he was being semi-literal, as the "locals" are people who died and decided to stay in San Junipero.
  • The club where Kelly and Yorkie meet is called "Tucker's". At the end we see a facility named TCKR Systems, where the data comprising the minds of all the people who decided to "pass over" are stored.
  • When Kelly and Yorkie first meet, Kelly lies that Yorkie is an old friend who has six months left to live in order to get rid of Wes. Wes accepts this without questioning it despite the fact that it would be considered a very dubious excuse in real life. His willingness to take the claim at face value is a lot easier to understand after you learn that everyone in San Junipero is either trying out a digital afterlife because they're in poor health or are already dead and are there permanently. Also, it turns out Kelly has around three months left, and Yorkie plans to be euthanized in a few weeks.
  • An easily missed one is the use of past tense about Bubble Bobble being the first game to have multiple endings.
  • One of the people Kelly talks to at Tucker's is a fit young man in his early twenties talking about his arthritis and knee replacement.
  • Kelly assumes right away that Yorkie doesn't need to wear her glasses, despite no indication of such being given to the audience; in hindsight, it's because she knows that everyone is given 20/20 sight in the computer simulation.
  • Similarly, Yorkie is not fashion-conscious so it seems unlikely that she'd have the fashion skills and wardrobe to recreate looks so exactly from The Breakfast Club or the "Addicted to Love" video. Most viewers likely wrote this off as the standard reality-break of a Costume-Test Montage, but it makes far more sense when you know that residents can create any look automatically.
  • Several songs used in the soundtrack — notably "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle, "Fake" by Alexander O'Neal, "Living in a Box" by Living in a Box and "Girlfriend in a Coma" by The Smiths — hint at the nature of San Junipero before it's revealed. Brooker went on record saying that the latter song by the Smiths cost an exorbitent amount of money, but was a crucial addition to the soundtrack.
• Black Mirror: Crocodile: Earlier in the episode, Shazia has trouble starting her car while going out for her investigation. Later, when she's trying to escape Mia after realizing she's a killer, her car won't start again. This gives Mia time to break into it and pull Shazia out, which results in her death.
• Black Mirror: Hang the DJ:
  • Frank and Amy discuss "The System", and share with each other their theories. Amy thinks The System puts people in dozens of random relationships just to wear them down and accept whoever is decided to be "the one", and Frank ponders if The System is using all the data it's absorbing to actually "think" about and iterate the relationships in meaningful ways that aren't clear at the time. Amy jokingly says the next thing he's going to say is we're stuck in a simulation. Turns out they ARE in a simulation, and the system may indeed be placing people in dozens of random relationships (though the purpose isn't to wear people down) along the way (there are 1000 simulations for each couple).
  • While Amy is skipping stones, Frank has a glance at his Coach device which looks suspiciously suitable for skipping. Later Amy uses her device for exactly that purpose.
  • Along the skipping stones line, Amy points out that she's only ever able to skip a stone exactly four times. It's a very subtle hint that it's a simulation and that the algorithm only ever allows stones to be skipped four times.
• Black Mirror: Metalhead: Bella finds a house with a couple who killed themselves with a shotgun before the dogs could get to them. After Bella's own fight with a Dog with said shotgun, she realizes she can't remove the trackers the dying Dog sprayed her with. To avoid having to fight Dogs who know her location at all times, she kills herself by slitting her throat in that same house.
• Black Mirror: Black Museum:
  • The twist that Nish and her mother are Sharing a Body is foreshadowed by the scene where she holds up her hand to the glass, as it is intercut with a flashback scene of her mother doing the same.
  • Carrie's ultimate fate is foreshadowed by the machine she uses to respond to Jack when she's still comatose. She's only able to reply to stimulation in the affirmative or negative, not unlike the monkey's simplistic two responses.
  • The news story surrounding the murder of Denise Stockley appears in the background of the first two stories before coming to prominence in the third.