Examples of the many cases of Foreshadowing in Nope:
- When he's introduced, Otis Sr. makes a reference to "keep[ing] our heads up out of the clouds", which is ultimately how the Haywoods avoid Jean Jacket's attacks — by refusing to look at it, they're keeping their heads out of the clouds. He also mentions about not needing to sell any more horses if they can strike it big with their latest client, hinting at the ranch's later dire straits and how Ricky has been feeding horses to Jean Jacket.
- In the beginning of the film, the Haywoods are laid off from a film opportunity with one of their horses because the film crew don't respect the horse's boundaries and it lashes out because of it. OJ eventually realizes that Jean Jacket is attacking because its boundaries aren't being respected, namely that people keep trying to look at it when it views that as a sign of aggression.
- When OJ asks Jupe about potentially buying his horses back when he's got the money, Jupe hesitates before awkwardly agreeing. Jupe's been feeding the horses to Jean Jacket the whole time. It's also why he's so insistent on getting the ranch.
- As OJ tries to track down Ghost, he sees the stadium lights at Jupiter's Claim come on, and hears Jupe's voice very faintly stammering over the loudspeaker. Jupe had not only discovered the existence of Jean Jacket some time ago, before or after Otis Sr.'s death, but has been rehearsing the Star Lasso Experience show, including his stage patter.
- While mourning their father, the Haywood siblings listen to the Dionne Warwick classic "Walk On By", in which Warwick implores a former lover to not look directly at her.
- When Em is "ringing the dinner bell" to summon Jean Jacket, she throws on the Bahamian folk musician Exuma's track "Exuma, The Obeah Man"
. The lyrics are surprisingly prescient:Exuma was my name when I lived in the stars
Exuma was a planet that once lit Mars
I've got the voices of many in my throat
The teeth of a frog and the tail of a goat- The line about 'the voices of many' correlates with the screams of Jean Jacket's victims inside its' digestive tract; the story of the song overall, telling of a mystical personality who can perform miracles, parallels with the almost-magical cinematic endeavour that the four heroes are attempting.
- The saucer's darting from cloud to cloud is an awful lot like what a wolf or other canine eye-stalking a potential meal or warning off a threat does. As it turns out, this is exactly what Jean Jacket is doing.
- Another clue to the UFO's true nature is how it often glides low over the mountains in an almost ray-like fashion.
- Why would a UFO hang out around nowhere land when there's juicier targets like military bases or actual towns to hit? OJ seems to realise something is off about its apparent patrolling patterns. That's because it's less like a vehicle patrolling a set area and more like an animal establishing territory, and furthermore, animals prefer territory away from human activity.
- Why would the crew of a vehicle leave out literal red flags when it's clear they're trying to hide, as well as having demonstrated the ability to camouflage? Because it's not a crew - it's more like an animal choking on plastic trash, having no way to remove it.
- Gordy's rampage was set off when the already on-edge chimp was frightened by popping balloons. At the end, Jean Jacket is killed when it tries to eat a giant balloon and it pops inside of it.
- OJ decides to name the creature Jean Jacket, after the horse that Emerald was supposed to train as a child for the first time before her father gave him to OJ to train for a movie (The Scorpion King). Emerald is ultimately the hero of the climax, managing to lure Jean Jacket over to Jupiter's Claim, kill it with a giant balloon it attempts to eat, and capture a picture of it right before it dies with the analog camera well attraction at the park.
- Emerald recounts to OJ that their father never taught her how to ride a horse. Indeed, she never gets to ride a horse in the film, but at the end she does ride something faster than a horse: a motorcycle.
- Early on, when Em introduces herself and OJ, she mentions that she's skilled with motorcycles. It's what helps her survive in the end.
- Gordy attacks his human costars when an unexpected factor occurs which riles him up (in this case, a balloon popped). It's heavily implied that Jean Jacket ends up eating Ricky and his family and audience after months of passivity because it got agitated when it accidentally ate the horse statue, which got caught in its equivalent of a throat.
- Early in the film, the UFO sucks up the horse statue Emerald stole from Ricky's Western-themed carnival. This is because Jean Jacket is just a predatory animal and mistook the statue for a real horse. At the end, Emerald is able to trick it into trying to eat the giant cowboy mascot balloon floating above Ricky's carnival. Jean Jacket thinks it's a person and tries to eat it, but the balloon pops inside it and kills it.
- When Ricky tells Emerald she's free to look around his office, he says "su casa es mi casa" (your house is my house) instead of "mi casa es su casa" (my house is your house). It's later revealed he's trying to buy the Haywoods' ranch.
- Antlers is a cinematographer who is seen reviewing old footage of animals in his office, in particular shots of animals' eyes. In addition to emphasizing the movie's themes of the brutality of nature, this foreshadows the reveal that the UFO is actually a living animal that is attacking people because it hates being looked at.
- Speaking of Antlers, when Emerald calls him, he warns her about the dangers of following her dreams of Hollywood fame and fortune, telling her it's a dream you don't wake up from. In the end, Antlers gets so caught up in the dream of a perfect shot that he willingly gives up his life to get it, provoking Jean Jacket and putting the lives of everyone else at risk.
- This is also foreshadowed when Antlers shows up on the ranch and is introduced looking at the cloud that Jean Jacket hides in, demonstrating a pretty cavalier disregard for his own safety.
- During one scene shortly after the camera system is installed, Angel and OJ have a conversation about UFOs during which Angel brings up his annoyance about the fact that the term has been replaced by UAPs in many contexts, wondering what that even stands for. UAP actually stands for "Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon", and the difference in term actually hints toward the major reveal of the film: that Jean Jacket is not an object, but a creature in and of itself.
- A pretty minor one: when Emerald is giving the backstory of her family, she forgets how many generations there are between her and her ancestor in the Muybridge film ("There's another great!"). Later on, we see her watching a video of her father giving the exact same speech. Otis Senior correctly refers to the jockey as his great-great grandfather, and Emerald forgot to update the speech by adding another great to account for the fact that it's her and Otis Junior running the business now, and she's simply reciting her father's words verbatim. This ties into Emerald's general lack of commitment to the family ranch in favour of her other projects.
- Another minor one. When Ricky is about to unveil the UFO to his audience at the Star Lasso Experience, we briefly see that he's embroidered the UFO on his cowboy jacket. Later on, once it's discovered that the UFO is actually a wild animal, Emerald gives the alien the name Jean Jacket.
- The Gordy's Home intro released by Peele as Viral Marketing contains a few notable examples.
- Ricky's character at one point is shown sneakily playing video games by hiding underneath a table in the living room, and Ricky hiding under that same table also happens in the film... but the circumstances in which it occurs are far less light-hearted...
- The intro shows that Gordy's Home has an Apes in Space premise (with Gordy himself presumably being based on Ham), something not made clear in the film, while the chorus says, "you're a strange animal, that's what I know". Both hint at the reveal that the UFO may be bizarre and extremely dangerous, but it's ultimately just an animal with basic animal-level intelligence and, just like the chimp playing Gordy, will act aggressively if not respected.
- The show's theme song is the real song "(You're A) Strange Animal" by Gowan, but doesn't include the first verse, which is about how the eponymous animal is potentially dangerous and should be treated with caution, which is something neither the creators of Gordy's Home nor Jupe years later understood.
- Antlers Holst dramatically recites the lyrics to "The Purple People Eater", and sure enough, the form Jean Jacket takes during the climax has “one big eye”.
- The very first lines of the film are about a rocket scientist anthropomorphizing his pet chimpanzee to the point he doesn't realize that he cannot tell time with a watch. His wife makes fun of him, assuming that someone so smart should know better. This is initially Played for Laughs but we later learn that Gordy’s attack immediately after this was because the show's producers and staff also over-humanized him, by failing to consider the differences in how a chimpanzee might react to unexpected loud noises and a live crowd compared to a human actor. The very first lines of dialogue plant the idea that even someone smart can fail to recognize the differences between animals and humans with disastrous results, one of the film's central themes.
