Foreshadowing / Red Dead Redemption 2

• One of the first things Dutch and his group do in the game is save a woman from bandits... and accidentally burn down her house. Just a harbinger of how the Van der Linde gang tends to make things worse despite whatever ideals Dutch preaches. Additionally, it's Micah who knocks over the table.
• At the start of the cinematic ride during "Who the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall?", one of the notable landmarks in the distance is the top of Mount Hagen, the setting of the final mission in the story.
• The first chapter basically foreshadows what happens in other chapters to the gang due to Dutch's leadership. They are on the run due to getting into trouble with the law, they set up camp, Dutch hatches a plan to get money against everyone's wishes when they are supposed to lie low, the plan inevitably goes wrong, the law shows up, the money isn't enough and the gang is forced to move again and people start to doubt Dutch.
• Unlike all the other debt collections, the one for the Downes family is mandatory. Arthur ends up catching the same disease that afflicted Mr. Downes: tuberculosis. And it's implied he got it either from beating him up or from him coughing up blood on his face.
  • When riding back to camp from the Downes farm, the scene is eerily quiet, with the only sound being your horse snorting in the distance like coughs; once he begins to get within range, Arthur dabs the blood off his face and solemnly stares at it. Novice players will feel disquieted that an innocent family man — and a sick one at that — was hurt so badly, while veteran players will feel the added discomfort that Arthur has just pointlessly doomed himself by his own brutality and Strauss's greed, and he doesn't even know it.
  • After the O'Driscoll Boys torture him in Blessed Are The Peacemakers by beating him and denying him food and water, Arthur shows his cough for the first time. All three are risk factors for tuberculosis, which likely began to become active because of the ordeal weakening his immune system.
  • After landing in Guarma, a Caribbean tropical island, Arthur begins to regularly cough in intervals. Humidity and wet conditions are also extreme risk factors for tuberculosis.
• In his very first scene where he begs Arthur to back down and spare Tommy, Mr. Downes briefly coughs, hinting to his health problems.
• During the second train robbery, as Sean moans about his head injury, Arthur replies "Least you ain't got a hole in it." Cue Sean getting half his head blown off at the end of the next chapter...
• With none of his usual humor, Dutch asks Arthur why he didn't give Agent Milton a chance to capture Dutch in exchange for his freedom, hinting at Dutch's paranoia and growing mistrust of Arthur.
  • Hosea notes as early as chapter 1 that Dutch's behavior seems to have changed, again hinting the start of Dutch's Sanity Slippage.
  • Same with John. One conversation between him and Dutch early on has him confront Dutch that he seemed to be acting crazy during the Blackwater heist and killed a girl for seemingly no reason.
  • Dutch abandoning Arthur during the oil refinery was foreshadowed by John commenting after Arthur and Sadie free him from prison that there appeared to be a moment at the Saint Denis heist that Dutch did see John surrounded by Pinkertons and in trouble but did nothing and left him.
  • It's also shown early on that Dutch has a habit of Gaslighting others, especially Arthur, enforcing his ideals while also going back on them, and becoming sharp and aggressive if anyone doesn't agree. One of the final breaking points for Arthur is when Dutch insists he did not leave Arthur to die at the refinery when Arthur clearly saw him do so.
  • In high honor, after being shocked by Dutch killing Gloria, Arthur asks Dutch whether Dutch will strangle him next. Dutch simply says he's doing the best as he can, while not outright refusing Arthur's allegation.
• After clearing one of Colm's hideouts in Chapter 1, Dutch notes proudly about it made them all jovial after a disastrous escape from Blackwater and notes "Outlaws for life". By Chapter 6 it's made clear that Dutch can't let go of the outlaw life and is Moving the Goalposts for this reason.
• If Arthur beats Dutch in a chase in American Distillation, Dutch will joke that he didn’t know Arthur was "good at running away" while Arthur snipes back saying he didn’t know age had slowed Dutch down so much. In Chapter 6, Dutch chases Arthur and John down with intent to murder them. Dutch also tells Arthur that once he reaches Dutch's age, he'll understand time is a bastard. Arthur would never reach that age.
• At the end of Chapter 1, Hosea discusses the plight of the Native Americans at the hands of the Army, as they were being forcibly settled into reservations. This becomes a major plot point in Chapter 6 as Dutch begins to aid the Native Americans to divert the attention of the Pinkertons and the Army.
• When getting the tour from one of Bronte's Street Urchin grifters after arriving in Saint Denis during chapter 4, Arthur and the kid pass by the doctor's office. The kid opining you don't want to visit there. Arthur receives his terminal diagnosis in the same doctor's office.
  • Related, Arthur will cough numerous times in cutscenes and in-game before he collapses toward the end of Chapter 5. There's also numerous times where Arthur seems unusually winded, which makes no sense since he's in excellent shape and in the prime of his life. These coughs also escalate in severity throughout the game, beginning as small coughs before turning into large hacking fits. If the player takes a good look at Arthur's face before the mission "A Fork in the Road" (particularly at the Barber's to shave his Guarma beard), his unhealthy complexion alone should indicate he is very badly ill.
• When Arthur and Charles are scouting for a new hideout in Chapter 2, Arthur scoffs at the notion that Dutch hiding away in a cave "goes against everything he stands for". Come Chapter 6, as a sign of Dutch's escalating sense of desperation and deteriorating sanity, he moves the gang to a cave at Beaver Hollow. His hideout in the first game, where he's ultimately killed, is also in a cave.
• In An Honest Mistake, Molly tries to ask Arthur if he genuinely thinks Dutch loves her. She can also be seen talking to Abigail about it. This, as well as her constant whingeing and anxiety, seems to set her up as a classic Hysterical Woman for Dutch, and she's killed upon drunkenly admitting that she was the one who ratted them out in Saint Denis, but in order to spite Dutch. In reality, this is a Red Herring, and Micah was the actual mole.
• In an early chapter, when Hosea asks Arthur how he's going to die or be buried, Arthur tells him to "Face me to the west so I can watch the setting sun and remember all the fine times we had that way." These words become a contrast in the High Honor ending of Chapter 6 (if you go with John) when, instead of being a bad man who watches the sunset and reminisces about the old days of being an outlaw, Arthur becomes a good man who looks forward to a better future in store while watching the sunrise on the mountaintop and dying at peace with himself. However, it would later be revealed in the epilogue that Charles laid Arthur's body to rest on the quiet hilltop in a grave that perfectly faces the evening sun, thus fulfilling Arthur's request to Hosea.
• "Mountain Hymn" has lyrics that foreshadow what happens to Arthur in both High Honor endings, as well as if Arthur helped John in the Low Honor ending:
  Your day is done, the time has come.
  You battled hard, the war is won.
  You did your worst, you tried your best;
  Now it's time to rest.
  Now it's time to rest.
• A classic western trope is that the good guy, usually a sheriff or other gunslinger aligned with the law, wears a white hat; the bad guy, usually an outlaw or other Anti-Hero, wears a black one. Now think, who is the only member of the Van der Linde gang who is hardly ever seen without a white hat? It's Micah, and it turns out that he is really a stool pigeon for the Pinkertons.
  • At the very beginning of the story, Arthur will ask Micah if he was talking to someone, to which Micah nervously refuses.
  • Pay attention to the dialogues immediately after the opening cutscenes while discussing the botched robbery. Dutch notes that the Blackwater Heist was a setup since the Pinkertons knew about it. Micah was the one who goaded Dutch into shooting Heidi McCourt, after which the heist turned into a massacre. It was as if the Pinkertons were counting on Dutch making a mistake before rushing in, and someone was assigned to ensure it.
  • When Micah and Lenny argue, Lenny says "When you fall, there would be a party!". After Micah's death, John and Abigail marry and festivities ensure, though sadly, Lenny isn't around to see it.
• In "A Fisher of Men", Agent Milton tells Arthur, "You people venerate savagery, and you will die... savagely... all of you!" This foreshadows how some of the gang (like Hosea, Sean, and Lenny) have met their bloody end, and the same could happen to Arthur if his honor is low. And of course, the futureshadowing of the deaths of Bill, John and Dutch himself with Javier optionally in the first game.
  • Furthermore, during this exchange, Arthur replies "We're all gonna die, Agent." to which Milton shoots back with "Some of us sooner than others." Milton ironically ends up dying a few hours sooner than Arthur during "Red Dead Redemption".
• Starting around chapter 4, Dutch starts wanting to use Micah on jobs more and at one point in a tirade at Arthur says that Micah is the only one who's still loyal. Micah has been worming his way into Dutch's confidence to turn him against everyone else to make the gang easier pickings for the Pinkertons.
• Speaking of Chapter 4, during the time you mingle with the party guests in "The Gilded Cage", you can overhear one of the three women you need to serve drinks with speaking about her husband on his journey while he's sick, and wishing that he would die a quick death, and the other woman replies, "Tuberculosis is a strange disease," a clear indication of what will happen to Arthur in the next chapter, since he got it from Thomas Downes two chapters ago and its latency period is getting a little weaker...
• In the Stranger mission "Of Men and Angels", Arthur tells Sister Calderon that all he wanted was a dignified death. That's because he's very sick and in pain with tuberculosis; but if he maintains his high honor by the end of the game, then it's very likely that he'll get one in either of the two good endings.
• At the end of "Goodbye, Dear Friend", Arthur comes across a letter from Mary, which says, "There's a good man within you, Arthur... but he is wrestling with a giant." This foreshadows his final battle at the end of Chapter 6, in which the "good man" symbolizes Arthur, while the "giant" symbolizes Micah or his teachings from Dutch. Furthermore, her following sentence, "And the giant... wins, time and again," foreshadows what Micah will do to Arthur if his low honor gets the better of him. If Arthur has high honor, though, he will defy the odds and come out on top, albeit critically wounded by Micah in his final stages of TB, and thus pass on to his heavenly reward of redemption. Similarly, Arthur remains loyal to Dutch and enables his crimes, thus not being able to move on from the gang. If Arthur manages to keep doing good and raises his honor to a high level, he would abandon his loyalty to Dutch to save Marston and his family from him and the Pinkertons, but if he lets the "giant" win, he would die at Micah's hands while going for money and revenge against Dutch and Micah.
• At the start of the mission "That's Murfree Country", Dutch and Arthur discuss the gang's situation in chess terms, and Dutch mentions the game isn't over until he's made his move. This is exactly what happens in the final mission of the game, as Dutch resolves the game's only remaining conflict by shooting Micah. While John finishes Micah off immediately afterwards, it's still Dutch's move that effectively ends the game.
• During a camp interaction, when Micah jokingly asks Arthur if he'd like to get shot, Arthur retorts that from a close up range, he'd miss. During the final mission, Micah attempts to shoot John from close up range several times, but John manages to dodge him.
• Another camp interaction from Chapter 1 shows Dutch plainly saying that he expects Arthur to turn on him, saying that, "You seem the type". Indeed Dutch believed Arthur to turn on him near the end of the game.
• When Bill is seen sitting around a table with Lenny and Sean, he goes off an unusually aggressive tangent that if he were to lead a gang, it would be with such ferocity and determination that no one would question him, to which Lenny and Sean quickly agree. Bill would go on to start his own gang in Red Dead Redemption 1.
• When Hosea is teaching Jack to read with Abigail, Jack will remark that he wants to be a gunslinger when he grows up, to which Abigail says, "Over my dead body". In Red Dead Redemption 1, we experience Jack's first gunslinger moments shortly after he mourns over Abigail's grave.
• After Dr. Alphonse Renaud provides Arthur with instructions for a tincture (an alcohol-based medicine), he specifically warns Arthur that it won't work on anything chronic. The story concludes with Arthur getting chronic tuberculosis.
• Almost anything that the Blind old Beggar (and the Elderly Creole Woman in Bayou NWA/Bluewater Marsh) NPCs will say in their interactions with Arthur or John counts as this.
• During Strauss's early money-lending missions, Arthur will (half-jokingly) comment on how collecting debts goes against Dutch's bluster on "helping people". By the end, Arthur will bitterly note that Dutch himself doesn't practice what he preached throughout the game.
• In a camp interaction, Arthur calls Javier the most loyal of the gang. Come Chapter 6, Javier is certainly loyal enough to Dutch so much that he readily turns against Arthur and tries to kill him when he revealed that Micah is the traitor.
• In a camp interaction, Tilly jokingly asks if Dutch would be mad if she killed Miss Grimshaw. Arthur replies that Dutch is generally against murder in camp, except for one time when the person being killed was a traitor. Miss Grimshaw is killed in camp for being a traitor to Dutch.

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