Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. There are massive unmarked spoilers below.
open/close all folders
General (Multi-Episode)
- It's mentioned that Cinder and company's cover as students is that they're Vytal Festival contestants from Haven. Turns out, Haven's Headmaster is The Mole for Salem, explaining not just why that was their choice of cover story, but also how they weren't caught.
- Volumes 3 and 4 hint at Qrow Branwen's Misfortune Semblance. Examples include: the Crow Bar's bartender knocking over his glass by accident after Qrow leaves; Ironwood coincidentally showing up at the worst moment to embarrass Winter during her fight with Qrow; the "good" luck Cinder feels she has when she realizes Ironwood's scroll has been infected with her virus, giving her access to the Atlesian cyber-army and Penny's schematics — the infection occurs when Ironwood connects his phone to Ozpin's computer in Qrow's presence; Tyrian landing on a rotted wooden beam and falling into a building during his fight with Qrow, and a loose beam almost falling on Ruby's head before Qrow slashes it in two. He reveals his Semblance to Team RNJR during Volume 4, Chapter 8.
- Throughout Volumes 2 and 3, Cinder seems to have a strange amount of contempt for Atlas and Ironwood in particular. She happily tears through Atlas security while infiltrating the CCT, is notably pleased to see that Ironwood inadvertently infected his phone with Watts' virus, and calls out Ironwood's army specifically when she makes her grand Breaking Speech following Penny's death. While at first this seems to just be a byproduct of Ironwood's paranoia helping her plans along, it turns out in Volume 8 that she has a very personal grudge against Atlas and its elites, having been practically enslaved by one of those elites when she was a child.
- Volumes 4 and 5 foreshadow the Spring Maiden's fate. Examples include, but are not limited to: Qrow telling Raven and Lionheart he knows the Spring Maiden is hiding out with the Branwen tribe; the way Vernal's voice is supernaturally enhanced and lightning strikes from a clear blue sky to prevent the tribe from brawling with Yang and Weiss; Cinder demanding proof the Spring Maiden is who she says she is; and Raven accusing Cinder of having a fake name to reflect her status as the Fall Maiden. All these clues build up to a reveal about the Spring Maiden's power in the Volume 5 climax.
- There's a lot of hints towards Ruby's Heroic Fatigue that slowly builds up throughout the show, something that finally hits its peak during the Solitas arc.
- A lot of songs associated with Ruby, such as "Red Like Roses Part II" and "Die", tend to have very dark and depressing lyrics, which seems odd for such an upbeat character. Only, as the show goes on, it turns out that Ruby is hiding a lot of very serious issues under her cheerful leader persona, and it starts becoming apparent that said persona is her way of coping with them. This reaches its head in Volume 9, where Ruby hits her breaking point from Volume after Volume of trauma, and the weight of keeping up said persona finally becomes too much for her to bear and she ends up being Driven to Suicide.
- During Volume 7, Chapter 5's Good-Times Montage of Teams RWBY and JNR becoming official huntsmen, there's a Running Gag of Ruby remaining excited and awake during briefings while her teammates slowly become more and more tired. It's played as a simple joke about Ruby's excitement over becoming a professional Huntress, but a Freeze-Frame Bonus towards the end of it shows lines on Ruby's face that indicate she's also tired and seems to be keeping herself awake for the sake of her team. It seems like an inconsequential detail, but down the line, especially in Volume 9, it becomes clear that The Chains of Commanding have been coming down on Ruby hard and her cheerfulness increasingly became more and more of a mask to keep her team's spirits up.
The Trailers
- The Red Trailer depicts Ruby fighting at incredible speeds during the climax, which is a hint about her having abilities the trailer isn't exploring.
- The White Trailer depicts Weiss's defeat of the White Knight, which factors into her fighting abilities from Volume 3 onwards.
- The Black Trailer:
- Blake blurs every so often during the fight as if leaving behind after-images. Volume 2 reveals those blurs to be her Shadow Semblance.
- The train is loaded with crates bearing the Schnee logo, first seen in the White Trailer as being connected to Weiss, setting up the show's plot of the Schnee Dust Company's monopoly on Dust mining and trade, the villains' Volume 1 Dust theft operation, and the enmity between the Schnee family and White Fang.
- Blake and Adam discuss humans as if they don't fit that label, and the trailer's song "From Shadows" mentions being subjugated by humans and treated as "worthless animals". Adam himself appears to have horns on his head. This sets up the introduction of the Faunus, a human-like race with animal traits that suffer racial prejudice and fight for equality. The end of Volume 1 reveals that Blake is a Faunus who is trying to pass for human by hiding her own cat ears under a bow.
- The Yellow Trailer:
- The quote at the beginning of the trailer foreshadows Yang's Volume 4 character arc.
- Yang is shown to be looking for a woman. Who that woman is and why Yang is searching for her is revealed in Volume 2.
Volume 1
- In Chapter 1, Ozpin's first comment upon meeting Ruby is to declare she has silver eyes. The reason why he says that is revealed in Volume 3, Chapter 12.
- The second verse of the Volume 1 Opening: "This will be the day", which talks about a lovely, happy life coming to ruin with the return of darkness, broadly plots out the arc of the first three volumes.
- Multiple episodes show that Jaune Arc is obviously behind the others when it comes to combat. He didn't design his weapons, which are low-tech family heirlooms. He needs to have Aura, one of the cornerstones of Huntsman abilities, explained to him and unlocked for him. On top of all that, Jaune doesn't know what a landing strategy is. Professor Goodwitch comments that Jaune's transcripts do not match the reality of his abilities, which are inadequate for the prestigious Beacon Academy's entry requirements. All this sets up that Jaune falsified his records to enroll at Beacon in the first place.
- In Chapter 3, Blake is reading a book about a man with two souls, each fighting for control of his body. This foreshadows the Volume 4 reveal that a character is paired with another in the same body, and Volume 6, where they fight each other for control over that body.
- Chapter 4: When Pyrrha pins Jaune to the lockers early on, pulling back her spear is accompanied by the sound of a magnetic hum, which foreshadows her Polarity Semblance, the ability to control magnetism.
- In Chapter 11, bully-boy Cardin shoves Jaune into a locker that is assigned to students to store their gear whenever they're in class. By entering coordinates into the locker, a rocket powers up, blasting the locker into the air and sending it off to an unknown destination. This is foreshadowing for Pyrrha doing the same thing to Jaune in Volume 3 as a way of sending him away from Cinder to protect him and prevent him from stopping her return to Beacon Tower.
Volume 2
- The Volume 2 opening credits shows Ruby's eyes fading to white; this foreshadows an event that occurs at the end of Volume 3.
- In the World of Remnant mini-episode Dust, the Female Narrator reveals that people can fuse raw Dust into their bodies. This was deliberately added to foreshadow a character doing exactly that in Volume 5.
- In Chapter 1, a food fight reveals the full extent of Pyrrha's Semblance in a comedic situation. This is a set-up for the villains taking a personal interest in her because of her Semblance, and setting her up for a Volume 3 fight against Penny, where the villains manipulate her into unleashing the full force of her Semblance in front of a global audience.
- In Chapter 2, Team RWBY is seen playing "Remnant: The Game" in the library. How the game's military tactics and fates unfold foreshadows
how the fighting unfolds in the Volume 3 finale. - Chapter 12:
- Weiss briefly and faintly conjures an ice blade during the fight. This sets up her future summoning abilities.
- Ironwood convinces the Vale Council to strip Ozpin of his authority over the Vytal Festival's security in favor of the general, with his administration at Beacon being called into question. This sign that Ironwood will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals is a major plot point of Volumes 7-8.
Volume 3
- In the Volume 3 opening, Teams RWBY and JNPR are broken apart from their formation dive, and the camera focuses on Pyrrha falling into nothingness. At the end of the credits, Team RWBY is under the Dramatic Spotlight, and Ruby is the only one with her head up, everyone else is hanging their heads dejectedly. This is foreshadowing how the volume ends.
- The World of Remnant mini-episode Huntsmen discusses how the Academies are designed to be independent from kingdoms and political agendas, and that things are different in Atlas. This becomes a plot point in Volume 7.
- In Chapter 1, Nora falls into a panicked rant while explaining what will happen if Team JNPR does poorly in the upcoming tournament, and undergoes Color Failure as she's comforted by Ren. Toward the end of Volume 4, Ren's Semblance is revealed to allow him calm his and others' emotions to hide them from Grimm, which manifests as their colors fading and turning washed-out. So that earlier incident wasn't a sight gag, but Ren trying to calm Nora down.
- In Chapter 2, the bartender accidentally dropping a glass as Qrow leaves foreshadows Qrow's Semblance reveal.
- Chapter 4:
- Weiss trains with Winter to try and unlock her summoning ability. When they leave, a tiny ice sword is left unnoticed and disappears in front of the camera. This sets up her being able to partially summon a giant blade during the climax of the volume to save a life.
- When Qrow says "they don't give medals for almost", Ruby replies that "They do, and it's called silver!". This foreshadows the end of Volume 3, where Ruby almost achieves something, triggering a reveal about her and her mother that she didn't previously know.
- In Chapter 5, Penny tells Ruby about an incident where she got a magnet stuck to her head and had to wear a hat to hide the fact she's a Robot Girl who is vulnerable to magnetism.
- In Chapter 6, Pyrrha lists the names of a few Remnant fairy tales during a conversation with Ozpin. They focus on the The Story of the Seasons, revealing the origin and existence of the Four Maidens. However, she also mentions the titles of several other fairy tales including The Tale of the Two Brothers and The Girl in the Tower. Ozpin changes the subject to the Four Maidens when Pyrrha mentions the latter. Volume 4 reveals the significance of The Two Brothers and Volume 6 reveals the significance of The Girl in the Tower.
- In Chapter 8, Velvet is taking photographs of everyone and shows the one she's taken of the passing Sun. She only captures his torso and weapon, leaving Ruby trying to politely compliment a photo she thinks is terrible. It's actually foreshadowing Velvet's weapon.
Volume 4
- In the Volume 4 Character Short, some things Ruby is able to do with her Semblance are seen for the first time in this short and then barely referenced again until Volumes 7 and 8 where they become plot points.
- In Chapter 1, when Ruby tells the blacksmith they're heading to Shion village, the blacksmith warns them that they've lost contact with the village ever since the attack on Beacon, and warns the group things might not go smoothly for them. This foreshadows what happens at Shion when they arrive.
- In Chapter 3, a giant hoofprint appears at Shion that Ren and Nora seem to recognize. This foreshadows the Volume 4 climax.
- In Chapter 6, Ren reveals he's heard of Oniyuri and the "one" Grimm that prevented it from being completed. It foreshadows the Volume 4 climax.
- In Chapter 9, Ironwood admits he's sure Haven is Salem's next target, he doesn't trust Leo to handle it, is enforcing the promised embargo, will recall his troops, and shut down the Atlesian border. This foreshadows how Ironwood prioritizes in Volumes 7-8.
Volume 7
- In Chapter 3, the Ace-Ops fight a Geist; when a shard of Dust flies off and is caught by Clover before it can explode, he says "What would you do without me?" At the end of the volume, he is separated from the Ace-Ops, and they're forced to fight without him. They quickly separate without Clover to hold them together.
- In Chapter 5, Robyn is introduced and offers her hand to Clover when asking him to trust her. The camera focuses on her hand as a faint shimmering sound is heard. Clover hesitates then refuses to take it. A few episodes later, Robyn reveals she's a Living Lie Detector, and her Semblance's ability to identify lies when she holds someone's hand is common knowledge throughout the kingdom.
- Chapter 7:
- In the beginning of the chapter, Ironwood apathetically disregards Mantle's demands that their defenses and infrastructure be repaired as "Appeasing a few city blocks". He would later in the volume decide to abandon the city entirely and focus on elevating Atlas away from Salem's reach.
- While talking about how powerless he felt during the Fall of Beacon, Ironwood hallucinates seeing the black queen used when Torchwick hacked his robots symbol on his computer terminal. Cinder planting a black queen made of glass on his desk would push his Trauma Button, sending him Jumping Off the Slippery Slope
- In Chapter 9, Oscar telling Ironwood Ozpin's secret results in Ironwood warning him that he can't handle any more surprises. This foreshadows the fallout that occurs when Ironwood experiences his next big shock two episodes later.
Volume 8
- At the end of Volume 7 when Neopolitan presents the relic to Cinder, she takes at from her without thanking her. This foreshadows Neopolitan being constantly ignored by Cinder throughout Volume 8 and eventually leads to her losing her patience. Eventually, Neo steals the relic in order to force Cinder's hand to get revenge on Ruby. However, Cinder uses the opportunity to get rid of both Neo and Ruby at the end of the Volume. according to the Volume 7 Commentary, this was intentional foreshadowing.
- During the Volume 3 opening, Ironwood and the Atlas Military appear in a shot while the lyrics "Crushed by the Weight of the World". While this sequence foreshadowed how the villains managed to hack Ironwood's robotic soldiers and used them to blame Atlas at the Volume's climax, it also foreshadowed how Ironwood would end up dying at the end of Volume 8 by being crushed by the city of Atlas.
- During the Volume 8 opening, Salem and Ironwood are shown on a chessboard with Salem still having pieces on her side while Ironwood's pieces keep disappearing one after the other. This foreshadows how Ironwood loses all of his remaining allies by the end of the Volume Due to his actions driving them away while Salem only lost a few allies throughout the volume such as The Hound, Hazel, and Watts and still has some remaining.
- In "Midnight", during the group shot of the villains, Mercury, Cinder, Salem, and Tyrian are in the front, next to each other. Guess which characters remain a part of the faction by the end of the Volume?
- In Chapter 8, Oscar mentions the fairy tale of The Girl Who Fell Through the World. It foreshadows the Volume 8 climax when Team RWBY, Jaune Arc and Neopolitan fall into the Ever After, the very same world that the girl from the story "Alyx" fell into.
Volume 9
- Foreshadowing in the Volume 9 Opening:
- There are two blue comets shown, a boy's reflection in a mirror behind Alyx, and a second set of footprints when Alyx wakes up on a beach. It's eventually revealed that Alyx did not enter the Ever After alone. The fairy tale doesn't mention it, but she fell with her brother, Lewis. The two comets represent them both, and they both are believed to have reached the Tree at the centre of the Ever After. Jaune believes that Alyx sacrificed her brother to the tree in order to make it back home, then wrote the story to make herself look better and obscure the fact her brother ever existed.
- Neo is sat at a table drinking tea with multiple silhouettes behind her; Episode 8 reveals that the silhouettes are of characters who have died throughout the show, who have been manifested by Neo's Semblance clones for the purpose of driving Ruby to despair.
- At the very beginning of the Volume, a narrator voiced by Morgan Garrett is heard telling a story about a girl with many problems. In the second to last episode of the Volume, it's revealed that the narrator was actually Summer Rose and that it was based off a memory Ruby had of her mother reading her "The Girl Who Fell Through The World" when she was a little kid on the last night she ever saw her before she left for the secret mission that resulted in her disappearance.
- The Curious Cat tells the Red Prince he understands what an unfulfilled purpose is like when giving him a piece of their heart to "heal" them, later "protecting" Ruby by doing the same for the Herbalist, who is swallowed up by the Ever After. The Cat later changes Hawker's purpose entirely to force it to suicidally attack the Jabberwalkers and give Team RWBY time to escape. Jaune reveals the Cat's role is to guide Afterans who can't fulfil their purpose towards "ascension", nourishing the Tree in the process, and believes they led Lewis to the same fate. The Cat eventually admits they've been cursed by the gods with insatiable curiosity and have been effectively driven dangerously insane by the unsolved question of why the gods abandoned the Ever After; they've been trying to break down Ruby for the purpose of possession so that they can seek answers outside the Ever After; the Herbalist's intervention endangered that plan and Hawker's brainwashing hinted at the lengths the Cat will go to in order to achieve its goal.
- The Curious Cat has quite a lot of foreshadowing for their true nature and goals.
- The first thing the Cat does is save Team RWBY from being beheaded by the Red Prince, warning him that humans are fragile things that don't come back when they die. Why would the cat know this, when the only source of permanent death in the Ever After is the Jabberwalker? Because the Cat has killed a human before.
- After the Red Prince promise not to kill them, the Cat tells Ruby they need to leave, because "Promises are like birds. They taste great, but they always escape.". The Cat's Start of Darkness was when Alyx broke her promise to take them to Remnant.
- When Ruby tells them about the two Brothers, the Cat laughs and says "Talk about a god complex." It's eventually revealed that the Curious Cat was the Brothers' first creation and has been driven to despair and madness by their need to know why the Brothers left them.
- They also comment on the "implications" of Oscar and Ozpin Sharing a Body. Turns out it's not just them being a Meta Guy: it gives them the idea to possess a human to get to Remnant.
- When Ruby asks if Alyx ever learned her lesson, the Cat pauses and eventually says "Yes, I think she did." Turns out Alyx had a Heel Realization at the end and decided to go back and fix things in the Ever After, and the Cat killed her for breaking her promise to them.
- The Cat tells Team RWBY that the tree will come to them, "unless you're me". Not only is this literally true (the Tree brings them to it when they're ready), it's also the source of the Cat's Fatal Flaw: they are the only being in the Ever After with no one to Ascend them when they break, so they turned evil and treacherous with no way to mend their broken heart.
- The Cat doesn't tell Team RWBY about integral parts of the Ever After's mechanics, such as ascension, and deflect it with You Didn't Ask whenever called out on it. This at first seems to be Culture Clash between Remnant and the Ever After, but takes far more sinister undertones when the Cat's true nature as a Manipulative Bastard is revealed.
- When they enter the Gardens Acre, the Cat warns them not to talk to anyone without their guidance. Team RWBY just think the Cat is protecting them from being beheaded, as almost happened with the Red Prince, but it's later revealed that the Cat's plan to enter Remnant with Alyx first began derailing when she met the Herbalist; the Cat doesn't want the same thing happening with Ruby. Team RWBY does end up talking to Herb without the Cat's involvement, requiring a last minute intervention by the Cat to "save" Ruby; it's later revealed that the Cat was simply trying to prevent Ruby from Ascending and thus destroying their chance of reaching Remnant.
- They brainwash the Hawker to fight the Jabberwalkers, which gets them killed. Such tactics are usually the work of a villain. And then they somehow manage to escape despite the Jabberwalker being previously shown to be a deadly foe for the Afterans, showing the Cat is more powerful than they let on.
- At one point, the Cat says "How are you going to stop [Salem] now that Atlas is gone?" This clearly hits Ruby where it hurts, and this exact thought is one of the main causes of her depression.
- When confronted by Jaune, who thinks that they're taking them to the Tree to feed them to it, they say "I'm not taking you there to ascend, I'm taking you there because you... (very hurried) all have such delightful information for me!" They clearly pulled a Last-Second Word Swap.
- In the same confrontation, they flat-out reveal their desire to go to Remnant, and their rage at Alyx for breaking that promise. They don't make much of it then, but later turn out to have taken it very, very seriously.
- When Neo falls into the Ever After without her weapon, she never goes to retrieve it, instead using a copy made by her Semblance. As the show and the Ever After use weapons as a metaphor for identity, particularly with Ruby and Crescent Rose, Neo making a fragile illusion of her own is an early sign that she's an Empty Shell beneath her facade, who finally shatters as soon as she no longer has a goal.
- When Ruby first meets Little, Little is confused by Ruby's name due to the purpose-based naming of the Ever After, and ask if "Ruby Rose" is her purpose. Later, when Ruby Ascends, she's given the opportunity to become anything, and (with the Blacksmith's guidance) decides to choose herself instead. Effectively, being Ruby Rose is her purpose.
- When Oscar and Ozpin discuss "The Girl Who Fell Through The World" in Volume 8, they conclude that Alyx's grief at the end was because she wasn't the same girl anymore, and compare it to their own situation. Except that the story never explicitly says that's what the grief was about, and we learn why in the Volume 9 finale: the story wasn't written by Alyx, but her brother Lewis, who made it as a tribute to her. It wasn't the grief of being changed, because Afterans see change as necessary and even joyful, but Lewis' own grief at losing his sister.
