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Foreshadowing / Western Animation

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Other examples:

  • Adventure Time:
    • Regarding the Ice King;
      • "The Eyes": When a horse spies on Finn and Jake all night, Finn remembers all the adventures they have in that week. One of them is rescuing yet another princess from the Ice King, who screams: "I only want to be happy!" The end of the episode reveals that the horse is actually the Ice King in disguise, and that he's spying on Finn and Jake in order to learn how to be happy.
      • "Fionna and Cake": Fionna tells Cake to take off the Ice Queen's crown to "not catch her crazy". In the second part of "Holly Jolly Secrets" is revealed that the Ice King used to be a human antiquarian called Simon Petrikov who found the crown, which eventually made him lose his sanity.
      • In the same episode, the Ice Queen is shown to be a much more competent villain than her main-universe counterpart. This seems like just a case of Women Are Wiser, but is actually foreshadowing that the whole episode was a story written by The Ice King.
    • Every single alternate version of Finn (excluding Fionna) has a robotic arm note . Sure enough in "Escape From The Citadel" he loses his right arm trying to stop his Dad from escaping the Citadel prison.
    • In "It Came From the Nightosphere", Marceline's dad claims that the most evil creature in all of Ooo is the Ice King's pet penguin, Gunther. Seems like a one-off joke at first, but Gunther is later shown to be a Not-So-Harmless Villain in "Reign of Gunthers" when he takes over the Candy Kingdom with an artifact he stole from the Ice King. Later still, "Orgalorg" reveals that Gunther is actually a weakened form of some Eldritch Abomination who was stranded on Earth millennia ago.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
    • In "The Mystery", as Ms. Simian closes the door on all the suspects, the camera hangs on the door's window, through which Bobert can be seen standing on the stairs. We later finds out he was turned off and had caught what actually happened to Brown on video.
    • In "The Genius", as Principal Brown explains to the family why Darwin was taken away, Anais can be seen darting her eyes away several times. It turns out that Anais was the one who actually wrote the test that got Darwin sent away, though this one was something of a Captain Obvious Reveal in light of the characters, though.
    • In "The Remote", if you pause at just the right moment, you can see that the "remote" Anais smashes is actually a calculator, before it's revealed that she was faking.
    • In "The Storm", Masami's comment on Alan and Carmen's relationship is a fate that could really only apply to Carmen, hinting that she actually likes Alan.
    • In "The Void", when Penny falls to the ground, her limbs and antlers fall out of her body, proving it's not part of her body sticking out of her shell as it seemed like. In "The Shell", it's revealed she's actually a yellow shape-shifting fairy, which has antlers, but her limbs don't have fingers/toes, and are different of the ones she used while she was still in the shell.
    • The title of "The Nobody". If "The Pony" is anything to go by, Rob fits the definition of "nobody" far better than anyone else in Elmore.
      • In the same episode, as Gumball investigates the fridge, the title card from "The Void" plays. The titular nobody turns out to be Rob, who has escaped from the Void.
    • In "The Bus", Principal Brown gets some mysterious texts that seem to tell him what to do. We don't find out who is texting until near the end:
      Principal Brown: *reading a text* "Stick to the pan or everyone dines?"
      Rob: Darn autocorrect... this stupid thing never works.
  • Around the World with Willy Fog: As Fog and his companions begin their journey across the USA, the narrator notes that the things which could delay them include "impassable herds of buffalo, raging blizzards and, most dangerous of all, hostile tribes of Indians on the warpath." Over the next few episodes, the travellers encounter all three. First, Transfer stampedes a herd of buffalo across the path of the train in which Fog and co are travelling, causing a six-hour delay, and he later convinces a local tribe that an "iron horse" is going to attack, prompting the tribe's chief to launch a pre-emptive attack on the train. Finally, a blizzard causes Fog and the others to be delayed in Chicago, leading to them purchasing an ice boat which they use to get to Buffalo, though they have to stop along the way when it becomes clear that being exposed to the freezing cold is endangering Tico's life.
  • The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
    • "The Masters of Evil" begins with a taxi driver reading a newspaper with a headline promoting a Baxter tenant's recollections of the time he got replaced by an alien. At first, this seems like just another of several Mythology Gags featured in the paper (which also contained references to The Punisher and the X-Men). However, later episodes reveal that shapeshifting Skrull aliens have started infiltrating the Earth, and replacing various crimefighters and villains, as part of a plan to Take Over the World. The fact that it was a tenant of the Baxter Building (home of the Fantastic Four) specifically also foreshadows The Reveal from “The Private War of Doctor Doom”, described below.
    • "The Private War of Dr. Doom" gives a hint of one person who will become revealed as a Skrull in the end: When Tony Stark calls out Reed Richards on ignoring Sue, Reed tells him that Sue's also been ignoring him lately; she seems distracted with something he can't figure out.
    • Hank Pym has a private fit of rage in "To Steal an Ant-Man". The camera cuts to a yellowjacket wasp afterward, in reference to the fact Hank will soon assume another superhero identity, Yellowjacket.
  • Batman Beyond features an episode where Mr. Freeze gets a cloned body that lacks the degenerative and cold-dependent condition the original has. While at first he is redeemed and Victor Fries is happy for a brief period, naturally his body begins to break down and degenerate even faster than the original did. The episode smartly foreshadows this inevitability by having "cured" Fries still be bald — Victor before his condition in Batman: The Animated Series had hair and the baldness was brought on by his condition.
  • Bluey:
    • In "The Show", Chilli says there is some "debate" about when she and Bandit met. "Fairy Tale" would later establish that Bandit met a female Red Heeler around his age when he was ten, who he thinks is Chilli, but she has no recollection of that.
    • In "Baby Race", Chilli asks her mother-in-law for advice raising Bluey instead of her mother, and in "Granddad", we see Chilli's father, but not her mother. "Dragon" would later reveal that Chilli's mother is dead.
    • In "Family Meeting", Bluey only says that she was doing "something". The "something" is later revealed to be using Bandit's tablet on a weekday, which she isn't allowed to do, and so she didn't specify to avoid getting in trouble.
    • In "Spy Game", Bandit says that by kicking Bingo out of the eponymous game, Bluey is setting the others up for disaster. Sure enough, the other kids do later have trouble playing without Bingo.
    • In "The Dump", Bandit looks shifty when asked what he's dropping off at the dump. This foreshadows the fact that he's getting rid of, among other things, some of Bluey's drawings that she wants to keep.
    • In "The Pool", Chilli says at the beginning, "Boring things are important too," and when Bluey denies, Chilli says, "You sound like your dad". This foreshadows that some things Bandit dismissed as "boring" will later turn out to be important.
  • Bojack Horseman:
    • Season 4 has the new transition sequence between the house at morning and at night be the titular character in the middle of a kaleidoscopic nightmare of all the important relationships he's ever had, rather than the grounded imagery (grocery store, movie set, movie premiere) of previous seasons. The reason? The coffee that he drinks in the intro has been spiked with amphetamines, hinting that Bojack's half-sister Hollyhock was being constantly drugged by a now senile Beatrice.
    • There's a lot of foreshadowing involving Sarah Lynn's death in 3x11, "That's Too Much, Man!" such as:
      • Her first appearance as an adult (or young adult) is in a planetarium. Not only does she reveal that the reason she loves planetariums in the aforementioned episode is because she admires domed building, it's also where she dies.
      • Her first conversation in a flashback sequence with BoJack, off script, involves her telling him she wants to be an architect. Her Final Words are "I want to be an architect."
      • In "Prickly Muffin", BoJack outright states that she is taking way too many drugs, hoping they're sugar pills. That says a lot coming from another addict.
      • In "Prickly Muffin" when BoJack wants to check her into rehab, she tells him she'll just find another place to party. When he tells her she "... should not... do that," she replies with "Oh, I know. I know, but I can, so I will. I'm at a point in my life where I don't have to 'grow as a person' or 'rise to any occasion', so I can just keep surrounding myself with sycophants and enablers until I die tragically young." BoJack offers a single-word stunned response, to which she replies "Yeah, it's pretty much too late for me."
      • In "Downer Ending", she suggests that the ending to his memoir should be her killing him for the sheer irony. BoJack winds up indirectly killing her.
      • In "Still Broken", BoJack suggests the entire cast get back together some time, to which they respond that the next time they'll see each other is at someone else's funeral. Everyone looks at BoJack and informs him that he's the oldest. Sarah Lynn says that she's so high, she honestly doesn't know where she's looking.
      • In "BoJack Kills", the BoJack being referred to is a brand of heroin, the heroin that Sarah Lynn will overdose on.
      • In "That's Too Much, Man!", besides the actual death scene, of course, they pull a Bait-and-Switch and have Sarah Lynn briefly unresponsive in a motel room, just to reveal she was being so because BoJack was boring her.
      • On a more meta level, they set her up as a Former Child Star – already nothing good can come of that, but they took it up to eleven.
    • There's also a lot of foreshadowing of BoJack's near-death experience via drowning:
      • The intro sequence always ends with him falling into his pool.
      • In "Downer Ending," when trying to come up with a way to end his memoir, BoJack pictures himself in a lake in Maine, succumbing to the waters.
      • "It's You" sees a particularly ugly argument between Diane and BoJack, the former spouting, "You know what's gonna happen? You're gonna win that Oscar, and you're gonna go up on that stage and give your little speech, and then you're gonna go home. And you're gonna be so miserable, you'll want to kill yourself. And you're gonna have nobody left to stop you." Right before BoJack tries to kill himself, he calls Diane beforehand, hoping she'll save him, but she doesn't pick up. He is pretty much devoid of a support system at this point, and the only reason he survives is because the family who's currently living at his house finds him.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers: in "The Conqueror", Ma-Ti finds Zarm's heart empty. In "Summit to Save Earth, Part I", he describes Zarm posing as the President as "nothing (...) like there is nothing there". And by the end of Part II, he says blatantly that Zarm has no heart.
  • An easily overlooked one appears in the Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot episode "Night Bears", where Wonderheart uses the phrase Take Heart! to activate her belly badge powers in her dream sequence. This would come back in the sequel series Care Bears & Cousins not only as the cousins' catch phrase, but is also an important indication of Wonderheart's belly badge powers.
  • The Casagrandes:
    • In "The Kid Plays in the Picture", the woman who Carl signs the contract for is foreshadowed as evil before she does anything bad when her contract is shaped like a skull and she does an Evil Laugh.
    • In "Do the Fruit Shake", Maybelle is revealed to be the missing ex-singer. Her Trademark Favorite Food is mangoes, and the singer's stage name was "Mango".
    • In "Just Be Coo", Marcus the pound owner is seen eating pistachio ice cream. Later, he was revealed to have framed the pigeons for pooping on a statue by using pistachio ice cream.
  • Centaurworld:
    • "Hello Rainbow Road": When Rider stops to pant after cutting the rope bridge, her voice is noticeably deeper than the narrator's. This is the first hint that the narration is being actually done by Horse.
    • "Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!": The whaletaur shaman is always crying, hinting at the later revelation that she absorbs the pain of everyone she swallows into herself.
  • Central Park:
    • In Season 1 "Skater's Circle", when Owen goes to see Gary, he's singing a song to himself with the lyrics "Do it while we can". It turns out he's singing the last song of the episode.
    • In Season 1 "Dog Spray Afternoon", the guy who tags the park actually passes Birdie when he's singing about "the guy with the paints". Birdie even notices him. The tagger also rubs his hands on his pants when he's nervous just like Owen.
    • In Season 1 "Hot Oven", lampshaded by Birdie when he tells the audience that while Molly and Brendan sings about having a perfect relationship despite not knowing much about each other, they will be surprised when they actually do learn something about each other.
    • In the Season 1 finale, "A Fish Called Snakehead", there were hints that Dick Flake was lying about catching the snakehead. When Birdie introduces Dick Flake as a "big-game fish hunter", he uses Air Quotes around it, and as the narrator, he already knows the truth about him. When Paige took a picture of the snakehead that Dick caught, she immediately noticed something off about the fish and Dick refuses to answer her question on how he caught it. Also, there was no signs of struggle between Dick and the snakehead before it was caught.
  • Western Animation/Clarence, In "In Dreams", the first sign that Clarence didn't actually close the garage door is that he's seen doing it in his regular clothes rather than in the pajamas he was wearing in the previous scene.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • In The Stinger of the episode "Operation: C.A.B.L.E.-T.V.", Mr. B's age-altering ray is found by the Delightful Children. In "Operation: G.R.O.W.-U.P.", they use it to turn Numbuh One into an adult.
    • In "Operation: Z.E.R.O.", while several villains are ambushing the KND museum, they destroy wax statues of the long-lost Sector Z, which the artist complains about. Later, it's revealed that the Delightful Children are in fact the missing Sector Z.
    • At the end of "Operation: M.E.S.S.A.G.E.", the note Numbuh 2 was hired to deliver makes an allusion to one of the most crucial elements of that season's Myth Arc; "Muffy- The splinter cell is real! Pres. Eggleston".
  • Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood: In "Margaret's First Thank-You Day", Margaret is heard coughing several times early on in the episode. It's not until later on that it turns out she's sick.
  • Disenchantment:
    • On the very first episode you can catch a quick glimpse of a Steamland zeppelin flying overhead Dreamland just as Bean and her friends enter the enchanted forest (right after their cart is lit on fire and they fall down the hill). Steamland isn't even mentioned until half-way through the second part of Season 1, and they don't become a major part of the show's narrative until well into the first half of Season 2.
    • Similarly, in the very first episode the Arch-Druidess gloats that "these yokels will believe anything she says" while describing their strange tongue-in-cheek version of Christianity. In that context it just seems to be mocking folks who take anything a religious figure says at fact, but it's also foreshadowing that she is the double-agent in league with Steamland who was responsible for trying to murder King Zog.
  • On The Dragon Prince Callum says during the first season that he was never good at anything except using magic. At the end of the second season he is the first (known) human who was able to establish a natural magical connection to one of the elements. Something that was previously reserved for elves.
    • Runaan tells Rayla in the first episode that she is far too good-hearted to be an assassin, even though she is physically more than capable. At the end of the third season, she gets her true destiny and becomes the new dragon guard of the dragon queen.
    • At the beginning of the second season, Callum went on a date with Claudia. Rayla seems upset, or at least dissatisfied, about it. The end of the second season shows that she is in love with Callum herself.
  • In the Duckman episode "Room With a Bellevue", Cornfed has to break Duckman out of an insane asylum, and so flips through his large collection of previously-prepared contingency plans to find the appropriate one. One of the other plans is labeled 'Duckman becomes dictator of a South American country.' Two episodes later...
  • During Lena's nightmare sequence in the DuckTales (2017) episode "The Other Bin of Scrooge McDuck!", one of Dream Webby's accusing remarks is "I know what you really are... a MONSTER...". Since this is followed with "just like your aunt!!", you'd be forgiven for thinking that the use of the words "what you really are" and "monster" were metaphorical. But in light of the later revelations about Lena's true nature...
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show
    • At one point, Eddy says "Man, I'm really starting to hate slapstick." That was right after the last injury Eddy received before meeting his brother.
    • There were a few times in the series that hinted at Eddy's brother's true nature, such in the episode Ed...Pass It On..., where Rolf is thrown into a panic, barricading himself and his animals in his house when he hears about Eddy's brother returning to the cul-de-sac and, at the end, when it seems like Eddy's Brother really has come home, Eddy looks genuinely terrified. Another example is near the end of An Ed Is Born, when Eddy says, "No more beating up little Eddy, huh, big bro?"
    • At around the movie's halfway mark, there's a little Wizard of Oz joke: Eddy tells Ed he lacks a brain, Ed cheerfully asks Eddy to have a heart, and Double D tries to give himself some courage. In the last few minutes of the movie, that joke ends up coming to fruition: Double D is the first to stand up to Eddy's brother, Ed defeats Eddy's brother by using his brain, and Eddy lets his guard down and admits his faults and insecurities. Only when the Eds show these traits do the kids finally accept them.
  • Fillmore!: the first few minutes of the first episode, "To Mar A Stall", shows one character's gloved left hand. At the end, it's revealed that she's wearing the glove to conceal red pen on her wrist - evidence that she committed the vandalism the episode is about.
  • The third season of The Flintstones had several episodes where Fred mistakenly thought his wife, Wilma, was going to have a baby. This eventually built up to an episode where it turns out that she actually is pregnant, leading to the birth of their daughter, Pebbles, towards the end of the season.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
    • In Wrath of the Spider Queen during a flashback when Boogey cheats during the Reaper election, he states the only way someone could win the election fairly after the ballot is stuffed is if everyone remaining voted for that person. It turns out this is actually how Grim won. He stopped Boogey from cheating then replaced all the voting ballots with ones that had Velma's name on them instead. When Velma thought he rigged it for himself, he chased Boogey down and did a terrifying performance in front of the whole school, so everyone who hadn't voted yet voted for him instead of Velma or Boogey.
    • At the beginning of the flashback in the same episode, after Grim comments on how scary Velma is when she wants to be, she chalks it up to “pent-up rage”. She then motivates Grim by telling him that he has it as well, and that he just needs to figure out how to harness it. Turns out all he needed was a scythe.
  • Futurama:
    • In "The Luck of the Fryrish", Fry's father tells Yancy, Fry's brother, that his name was passed on from his father's grandfather, to his grandfather, to him, then down to Yancy. He leaves out his father, or Yancy and Fry's grandfather. This is because in the next season episode "Roswell that Ends Well", it's revealed that Fry becomes his own grandfather.
    • In the very first episode, Nibbler's shadow is clearly visible at several points when Fry is goofing off in the cryogenics room, a seasons-long foreshadowing that Nibbler was present at, and in fact was directly responsible for, Fry being frozen for a thousand years. Here's a picture.
      • The scene is revisited in "Jurassic Bark". This time Nibbler's shadow is joined by Fry's, foreshadowing Fry's time travel in "The Why of Fry".
    • Speaking of, in "I Second That Emotion" a veterinarian suggests the number of rings in Nibbler's chipped fang could indicate his age and Fry remarks "It'd take some kind of genius to count all these rings", with the actual number being four. Yet another Fry is dumb joke, but it also foreshadows the much later reveal in The Day The Earth Stood Stupid that Nibbler is actually a member of an advanced alien species and is really 14.6 billion years old.
      • And during the Time-Passes Montage, you can see Planet Express, where Fry ends up working, being built.
    • Leela's cycloptic parents can be seen among the sewer mutants when Fry and pals end up in their city. It's not until much later that Leela learns who they are.
    • In "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", whenever Bender reboots, he scans for the dominant lifeform in the area. When he scans Leela, the Robo Cam reads Species: Human.
    • Similarly, the robots in "Fear of a Bot Planet" repeatedly refer to Leela as being human, despite her protests to the contrary.
    • In "Into the Wild Green Yonder", when Bender bursts out of the Donbot's wife (who is cheating on the Donbot with Bender), he quickly comes up with a flimsy excuse about having been sucked through a wormhole thousands of lightyears away. Guess how the Feministas elude Zapp Brannigan later in the movie? And how the Planet Express Crew escapes Brannigan again at the very end?
    • In "Why Must I Be A Crustacean In Love?", the King Decapodian states that he lives a life of celibacy in order to uphold the rules and traditions of his culture. It seems like he's just stating his objectiveness in matters of love, but it turns out that Decapodians die upon mating.
    • In "Anthology of Interest I", Fry asks the What If? Machine what would have happened if he had never come to the future. The machine answers that a time paradox would have destroyed the Universe. "Roswell That Ends Well" reveals that Fry is his own grandfather, and by never coming to the future he would have broken the Stable Time Loop and retroactively prevented his own existence.
  • Gargoyles:
    • The "City of Stone" 4 parter and the following episode "High Noon" set up the 3 part episode "Avalon" as the Weird Sisters take control of Demona & Macbeth, as well as securing the three talismans (the Grimorum Arcanorum, the Phoenix Gate and the Eye of Odin).
    • Lexington's Halloween costume in Gargoyles #4-5 is identical to Cyber Lex. Furthermore, when Brentwood choses to join Thailog, Lexington's only objection is, "You're making me look bad."
    • In "The Price", Macbeth attacks the Manhattan clan out of nowhere, is apparently killed, then comes back, and throughout this uses the same few lines over and over again, including an almost random exclamation of just "Trophy!" It's revealed at the end that it wasn't Macbeth at all, it was a robot built by Xanatos to keep the gargoyles busy while he kidnapped Hudson, explaining his somewhat erratic and out-of-character behavior.
    • Demona gives two. In "The Mirror", she snaps at Puck, "You serve the human, you can serve me!" This hints that Puck is actually Owen. Then, in "City of Stone", she says to Owen, "Since you are the tricky one...," which hints that Owen is actually Puck.
  • Green Eggs and Ham:
    • The group called BADGUYS actually get along so well compared to our main characters. It's because they're the good guys this entire time.
      • Speaking of, you notice it's always in all caps when they're mentioned? It's an acronym that names them as anything but bad guys.
    • McWinkle and Gluntz always refer to their boss as "the Bigman". That's because it's not a nickname for Snerz; it's someone actually named Bigman, although he's actually really small.
    • Sam stating that Guy is "the brains" and he's the "other brains". Because Sam is a smooth-talking scam artist with people skills in comparison to Guy's technical genius.
    • Also, even though Sam is determined to get the Chickaraffe home, why is it that he doesn't seem to have any knowledge about it at all? Because he's lying; he's an animal smuggler scam artist.
      • He usually uses Guy's money in order to pay for everything, and also acquires the Goat's credit card. Again, part and parcel of being a scam artist.
    • Michellee is able to draw an accurate description of the Chickeraffe, and later on draws a spot-on portrait of her daughter in crayon. She was actually an artist before her husband passed away.
    • The fact that Guy initially mistakes the Giroosters for Chickeraffes foreshadows Sam using a Girooster to fool Snerz.
    • In "Car", after Sam discovers the Chickaraffe is missing, the episode cuts to Snerz learning that the person he hired to capture the Chickaraffe has lost it, heavily hinting that he hired Sam. In this instance, the series tries to throw the viewers off by showing the BADGUYS getting a call from their boss right after, suggesting that they're working for Snerz.
  • Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law:
    Phil Ken Sebben: I was wrong. Dead wrong. Ha! Ha! Foreshadowing. About being dead, not the being wrong part.
  • Hazbin Hotel, there were a few hints surrounding Vaggie’s identity of being a fallen exorcist.
    • In the "Pilot" noticeably, Vaggie stands out from the main cast of characters because of her dull palette of white and gray.
    • In "Scrambled Eggs", she acts like a Drill Sergeant Nasty for the simple task of handling a trust exercise, with her words implying she had an actual military background.
    • In "Dad Beat Dad", at the end where Charlie told Vaggie that she was coming with her to Heaven, Vaggie was rather displeased.
    • Later in "Hello Rosie", Camilla could figure her out easily just by looking at her design.
      Carmilla: You have a giant "X" over your eye, and wield an "angelic spear", it’s not rocket science.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): In "Origin of the Sorceress", the background of a flashback scene features She-Ra's sword.
  • Hilda: The forest Hilda and Johanna visit for their camping trip has variety of locations identical to Johanna's artworks that she thought just came from her mind... like if there's a magical barrier in her mind that blocks memories about this place?
  • The Hollow:
    • Death says that there are only two people who can lead them out of the world they're in. While one of them is the Weird Guy, he is hastily stopped before being able to talk about the other one, but it still foreshadows the existence of the Last Ironwood Tree in the following episode.
    • When the trio first meet the Weird Guy, he aggressively asks them if they think this is some kind of game. It is a game, and he's the host of it. Later on, he tells Kai and Adam that they "chose to be here" when they prod him for answers, which they assume to mean that they were destined to end up in this world. He literally meant that they chose to be contestants on the show.
    • The characters in each realm cannot leave their area. Just like NPCs in any other game.
  • I ♡ Arlo: In the Pilot Movie when Edmée is letting Arlo go, she tells him the reason she kept him isolated is because she feared not for what it would do to him, but what it would do to her. Flash-forward to Season 1's "The Uncondemning", it was revealed Arlo's departure angered a creature called the Bog Lady who secretly protected him to the point she didn't want him to leave the swamp at all, thus she captures Edmée as bait, hires Ruff and Stucky to lure Arlo back with a ransom note, and devises a plot to get him to stay forever.
  • Jem: There was foreshadowing that Roxy was illiterate prior to "Roxy Rumbles". In the episode where the Misfits go to China she doesn't notice their name is misspelled "The Misfats" on their welcome banner, and she shows no interest in reading Kimber's diary.
  • Justice League:
    • In "The Terror Beyond", Hawkgirl realizes that Dr. Fate is using Thanagarian runes, and demands that he tell what he knows about Thanagar. This is because Hawkgirl is afraid that Dr. Fate may have blown her cover and discovered the Thanagarians' invasion plan. But, given Hawkgirl's cover story, the audience is led to interpret her reaction as her being antsy to return to her homeworld, and thinking that Fate might have information that could help.
    • In another episode, Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl are flying through Brainiac's data banks, J'onn suggest that they could find information about Hawkgirl's homeworld, only to have Hawkgirl insist that they don't have time for that (cause they have to help Superman). In another episode, J'onn also discovers he cannot enter her mind, something that becomes a plot point in Starcrossed.
  • Kaeloo:
    • In Episode 121, Olaf informs the main four that they have been fired from the show and must report for a job interview the next day to see if they can be re-hired. At one point in the episode, Mr. Cat questions the logic behind firing them and immediately hiring them again. It turns out that the whole thing was a "prank" by Olaf and the main four never got fired in the first place.
    • The title card for the episode "Let's Play Hopscotch" has flames on it despite the episode seemingly having nothing to do with fire. Near the end of the episode, Mr. Cat successfully constructs a path to Hell, and Quack Quack is Dragged Off to Hell.
    • In the episode "Let's Play Catch the Mailman", Kaeloo gets a letter in the mail from someone claiming to be a fan of the show, and the letter is quite insulting. It is addressed "Dear frog" instead of "Dear Kaeloo", foreshadowing the fact that the letter was written by Mr. Cat, who often refers to Kaeloo as "frog" or "froggy".
  • The Legend of Korra: Photos of Tahno and Councilman Tarrlok appear on newspapers held [1], and attacked [2], respectively, by Korra in "A Leaf in the Wind". Though they serve as innocuous introductions for both characters, Korra is speaking with Tenzin about pro-bending while she holds Tahno's newspaper, and is attempting to airbend Tarrlok's in vain after a long day of practice.Tahno becomes her rival in the pro-bending arena and Tarrlok uses her lack of airbending ability as verbal whiplash against her in a later episode.
    • Amon reveals a seeming immunity to bloodbending. Turns out, he's a waterbender himself who is so adept at bloodbending he can permanently take away the bending of others using it: in all likelihood, he was bloodbending himself to cancel out an attempt to use it on him.
  • The Loud House:
    • Note that before Clyde's dads appeared in-person, he would always refer to them as "my parents" and never "mom and dad".
    • When the sisters hear Lincoln's mention of Ms. DiMartino in "Study Muffin", note that Luna is the only one to say she is "smokin'". "L is for Love" would later reveal that Luna likes girls.
    • In "Get the Message", if you look closely when Lucy stops Lincoln from falling into the bathroom, his "worst sister ever" letter can be seen on the floor by the sink.
    • In "No Such Luck", Lincoln is seen in the dining room in the morning eating a cereal named "Oh Nuts!", with a squirrel on the front of the box. At the end of the episode, he is made to wear a squirrel outfit.
    • "L is for Love" has a few vague hints that Luna's bandmate and love interest Sam is a girl:
      • The name "Sam" can be gender-neutral, and no pronouns are referred to such.
      • In scenes featuring Luna and her bandmates, Sam is the only one dressed differently than the others, going for a more lighter clothing color scheme which contrasts with the dark colored wardrobe of the rest of the band.
      • Luna's "token" is a purple guitar pick with a pink heart, which is normally associated with females.
    • In the April Fool's episodes, note how Lily is the only one smiling or remaining calm in the instances of Luan's relentless pranks. "Silence of the Luans" reveals she is the only Loud member who actually enjoys her pranks, and happens to be one like her.
    • In "The Loudly Bones", Lisa finds what she thinks is a dinosaur bone, but it appears fractured. It is later revealed to be three bones combined.
    • In "Snoop's On", Luna claims that she got a tattoo on her leg, but it turns out to be made up. Earlier in the episode, she was seen with the leg exposed but the tattoo wasn't there. Her "friend Roxy" turns out to actually be Sam in disguise as well, which is foreshadowed by her wearing the same pants and earrings as Sam.
    • In "Fool's Paradise", Lynn Sr. turns out to have been collaborating with Luan. This is hinted at when, despite being a Lovable Coward, he doesn't scream with the rest of his family when Luan threatens everyone.
    • In "Tea Tale Heart", Lola thinks Lucy's Creepy Doll is haunted because it keeps reappearing after Lola keeps trying to get rid of it. However, it turns out to be Lana bringing it back — the places Lola kept hiding the doll were Lana's favourite places (the backyard, the trash can, and the pond), so it would make sense that she'd notice the doll.
    • In "Present Danger", the "villain" is revealed to be Lincoln's friend Rusty. Early in the episode, he is suspiciously not present when Lincoln is talking to his friends.
    • In "Silence of the Luans", the reveal that Lily and Charles switched places is hinted a few times, specifically "Charles" looks slyly into the basement and acts as if "he" did nothing about it when the family is around, and when in Vanzilla, "Lily" shows no signs of movement. Also, "Lily" is back to wearing just her diaper when she started wearing proper toddler clothes as of "Schooled!".
  • Love, Death & Robots:
    • "Sonnie's Edge": Notice before the bout between Khanivore and Turboraptor, Wes isn't activating Sonnie's affinity link, he's killing it. For Sonnie's opponent, the green light on his head goes on when he's connected to Turboraptor; for Sonnie, the light turns off. Also notice her opponent is walking around and shouting while the fight is ongoing while Sonnie is sat quietly and unmoving... that isn't because she is concentrating, it is because she isn't in there anymore. In a later scene between Sonnie and Jennifer, you might notice a pod clearly designed for human proportions in mind...
    • "The Witness": One of the icons that appears in the title card is an Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, hinting the episode's cyclical nature. The two characters are a man and a woman stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop where they keep murdering each other.
    • "The Secret War": When Zakharov gives a long, forlorn look to the dead teenager in the slaughtered village, that is because the dead boy is about the same age as the Child Soldier on the squad, who is revealed to be his son. Also, Kaminski is shown sharpening his entrenching tool in the quiet camp scene; guess what he uses the thing for in the squad's Last Stand?
    • "Snow in the Desert": When Snow asks Hirald if she has a sun tent, she responds 'no'. Given the desert planet they live on, this would seem to be a suicidal lack of preparedness... but since she is a cyborg, the heat doesn't bother her anyway.
    • "Bad Travelling": When Torrin threatens to shoot Cert, Cert is terrified but otherwise doesn't try to protest his innocence. Odd, until you realize that he voted to sacrifice the islanders too.
    • "Kill Team Kill": Folen wears skull facepaint. He's the last soldier to be killed, and the first person we see.
    • "Mason's Rats": Mason's reaction to seeing the brutal effectiveness in how the TT-15 hunter robot kills the rats in the barn isn't satisfaction, but outright horror at the carnage it causes. This suggests he is a decent fellow at heart and that he isn't supportive of the TT-15's methods, which comes into play at the end when he destroys the TT-15 and becomes friends with the rats instead.
  • Martha Speaks:
    • In "Nurse Martha", Butterscotch is established to enjoy jumping and grabbing things. Later, it's revealed that this is why he's sick: he jumped up and grabbed a sock off the washing line, then ate it.
    • In "The Dog Who Came to Dinner", Francois licks his lips when he sees the girls make cupcakes. This foreshadows that he was the one who stole them.
    • At the beginning of "Martha and Skits", Martha says that a talking dog is unique. Later, it's revealed that only she can talk after eating alphabet soup.
    • In "Ice Scream", the kids are discussing a parody of Green Eggs and Ham titled Blue Mangos, and Alice says that she bets Nick does end up trying the mangos. Later on, she's revealed to find the idea of deciding you don't like something you've never experienced ridiculous.
    • In "T.D. Gets the Scoop", Martha gets a whole pack of dogs to dig up the bone she found. This foreshadows that it's a dinosaur bone.
    • At the beginning of "Martha Takes a Stand", Helen, Alice, and T.D. are doing a homework project on the Bill of Rights. This sets up the plot about Martha obsessing over her "right to stink".
    • In "Down on the Farm", C.K. says that the howl was just the neighbour's Basset hound, but Martha says that it didn't sound like one, then a pair of eyes stares out of the woods nearby. It turns out to be a coyote.
    • In "Martha's Steamed", Ruby is established to be a Big Eater. It's later revealed that her being locked in the car was an accident resulting in her trying to get food.
    • In "Carolina Picks a Lily", Milo enjoys holding and playing with Lily, and is the first one to defend her when Carolina calls her vicious. Later, he adopts her.
    • In "Dog Daze", Helen sprains her ankle, but appears uninjured the next morning. This foreshadows that the entire "next day" was All Just a Dream.
    • In "Bulldozer vs. Dinosaur", Old Smokely the bulldozer is sentient, the dinosaur has a name that wasn't invented in dinosaur times (Susan), and one guy inexplicably speaks Dinosaur. Later, the episode is revealed to be all in T.D.'s head.
    • Lots of examples from "Verb Dog: When Action Calls!":
      • Dr. R being Evil All Along is foreshadowed by his description of Helen — that she "pretends to be your friend and then stabs you in the back".
      • Him being Ronald in disguise is foreshadowed by his first initial.
      • Helen, Al-Ice, and the TD-603 being good all along is foreshadowed by them being based on Martha's friends.
      • The episode being a dream is foreshadowed by Martha mentioning superpowers before being knocked out (showing she was thinking about them), inexplicably not remembering that Helen was her owner, not recognising Al-Ice and the TD-603 despite them allegedly being her friends, and Helen, Al-Ice, and the TD-603 looking suspiciously like the real Helen, Alice, and TD.
    • In "Camp Truman", the newspaper saying that Camp Winnetka is closing is ripped in half, and Terrence notes that if they are closing, it's odd that he wasn't called. This foreshadows that the camp was actually just moving, not closing; the kids got it wrong because of the torn newspaper.
    • In "The Cheating Chump Caper", Martha acts evasive when Helen mentions secrets, and at one point gets "Psst"ed from a bush. She's later revealed to have been working in secret as TD's interpreter.
    • In "April Fool's", it's stated that TD is the biggest prankster on April Fool's Day. At the end, he pulls a big prank on Ronald and Reginald. Ronald also finds the toolbox heavy — at the end, it's revealed that the Kennelly men filled it with rocks as part of the prank.
  • The very first episode of Masters of the Universe: Revelation almost immediately foreshadows that He-Man in the opening is actually the Robot Duplicate Faker. Not only is Battlecat not with him and instead at the palace in his Cringer persona, but the camera lingers on his back long enough for you to notice he lacks his signature Power Sword. Two things He-Man is NEVER without.
  • Milly, Molly: In "Goodbye, Alf", Pepper sneezes. Later on in the episode, she falls sick.
  • On Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends, several hints are dropped as early as "Big Bad Buggysitter" that Spindella and Spiderus are going to become parents.
  • Molly of Denali: Two examples in "Wise Raven and Old Crow":
    • Molly ties the boat's rope to a tree, but she doesn't finish it because she gets distracted helping a frog. The tie comes undone and the boat starts drifting backwards, foreshadowing
    • Bonky keeps shaking on the wires of his pen, breaking the lock little by little, foreshadowing his escape.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Friendship is Magic, part 1: Mare in the Moon":
      • As the camera follows Twilight Sparkle when she's dictating her letter to Celestia, the hourglass distorts everything behind it like you'd expect, but replaces the unicorn head sculpture outside with Nightmare Moon's head.
      • Twilight proclaims that "all the ponies in this town are CRAZY!". By the time the first season ends, all the mane characters have had a mental breakdown at least once.
      • Rarity is choosing decorative ribbons. Upon selecting a particularly glittery one, she declares "Sparkle always does the trick!". Twilight, whose last name is Sparkle, ends up representing the Element of Magic.
      • Twilight exclaims that "the fate of Equestria does not depend on me making friends." By the end of episode 2, it's pretty clear that it does.
      • Listen closely to the music playing at Pinkie's surprise party. It's almost identical to the tune of her song in episode 2.
      • When Nightmare Moon shows up at the festival, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo are briefly shown cowering in fear next to each other, despite the fact that this episode was before "Call of the Cutie", in which they established a club called the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
    • "Friendship is Magic, part 2: Elements of Harmony":
      • As Twilight lists off each of the five known Elements of Harmony (Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty, and Loyalty), the camera pans across her friends in the order of who will come to represent each respective one (Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash).
      • When we first see the Elements of Harmony in their new forms, Twilight's isn't a necklace like the other five, instead taking the form of a tiara (which she comments on in "The Return of Harmony part 2"). In "Magical Mystery Cure", when Twilight becomes an alicorn and a princess, the tiara changes shape slightly and becomes her crown.
    • "Bridle Gossip": When each character first comes into contact with the poison joke, the flowers bend and a tinkling sound is heard, providing an early clue that this contact will be important again later.
    • "Swarm of the Century": When Pinkie plays the harmonica, the Parasprites in Rarity's bag briefly react to the sound, hinting at how they will be later defeated by luring them away with music.
    • "Call of the Cutie": Rainbow Dash tells Apple Bloom that she got her cutie mark after her first race. In "Sonic Rainboom", she says that she's only done a sonic rainboom once before, when she was "just a filly." These are, in fact, the same event, which is shown in detail in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles."
    • "Party of One": During the Sanity Slippage scene, an odd rendition of Discord's theme can be heard briefly in the background.
    • "Return of Harmony: Part 1":
      • After Rainbow Dash says that she'll always be loyal to the princess, Discord ominously says "We'll see about that...". He later gives her a Sadistic Choice and inverts her sense of loyalty.
      • When Discord is taunting Celestia about being imprisoned in stone, he is leaning on one of the pictures in a window, and then knocks on the forehead of the pony whose image he's leaning on. The pony in question is Fluttershy the only one he had to magically touch instead of tempt to turn bad and the pony that would eventually reform him.
    • "Lesson Zero": Spike mentions that Twilight has a cape, and that he and Twilight dropped it off at the cleaners. In the next episode, "Luna Eclipsed", Twilight wears a cape as part of her Nightmare Night costume.
    • "Baby Cakes": At the beginning, Rainbow Dash says that Pound Cake will be "all over the place" when his wings develop, and Rarity mentions that baby unicorns get "strange magic surges" that come and go. Guess what happens while Pinkie Pie is foalsitting them later in the episode?
    • "A Canterlot Wedding: Part 1: When Twilight is shocked her former foalsitter (and her brother's fiancée) Cadance does not recognize her and is acting bullyish to the other ponies, one huge instance is her horn aura is a Sickly Green Glow instead of the light sapphire blue in the flashback. This is a brief dead-ringer "Cadance" is Queen Chrysalis in disguise.
    • "The Crystal Empire: Part 1": When Princess Celestia gives Twilight her final instructions regarding her "test", there's an Art Shift in the background, with Celestia's and Luna's cutie marks looming behind them, and a similar treatment given to Twilight's reaction shot. This foreshadows how Twilight will also become an alicorn at the end of the season.
    • "Magical Mystery Cure": Pinkie Pie's role is switched to running Sweet Apple Acres. The following season, we discover that she may be a distant relative of the Apple family.
    • "Three's a Crowd":
      • Discord casually mentions "Abyssinia", and given the many cultural references in the song you'd be forgiven for thinking he meant the real Abyssinia (Ethiopia). However, in My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) we find out it's a place within the show's universe upon meeting a native of the place.
      • Discord, in full-on jester mode, gives Twilight a friendship medallion of little value. In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Discord gives Twilight the medallion he got from Tirek, assuring her he fully means his friendship this time.
    • "Twilight's Kingdom: Part 2": Before being sent to Tartarus with Luna and Cadence, Celestia weakly tells Tirek that he would not prevail. Her prediction would later come true when Twilight and her friends unlock their rainbow powers from the chest and send him back to Tartarus.
    • "The Cutie Map: Part 1": The cutie unmarked ponies have muted coats and live in rows of houses side by side; Starlight Glimmer, the leader, is the only one whose coat isn't muted, and lives at the end of the village alone. This hints she isn't unmarked like the others; her equal sign cutie mark is really makeup with the real cutie mark underneath.
    • "Appleloosa's Most Wanted" revolves around the Cutie Mark Crusaders helping a pony understand what his cutie mark truly means, hinting at the eventual reveal that helping others on these matters is their own special talent.
    • "Amending Fences": If you're observant, you'll catch a quick glimpse of Starlight Glimmer hiding behind a menu, giving viewers an early hint that she's actively stalking Twilight Sparkle looking for an opportunity to get revenge.
    • Done very subtly with the Season 8 villain Cozy Glow, where you're given only given very disparate hints at her true nature as a manipulative Enfant Terrible: she flashes a couple of ominous expressions and of course her cutie mark is a chess piece. She also thinks the Element of Magic is the Element of Control. Very unfortunately the synopsis for the finale completely blew the surprise before the character even made her first on-screen appearance (though some fans believed that Cozy Glow was just Chrysalis in disguise).
    • The final story arc involving Twilight becoming the new ruler of Equestria was vaguely hinted back in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. When she worries to Spike about being a princess, she thinks Celestia will let her rule a kingdom of her own — she gets the whole kingdom of Equestria to rule once the sisters retire and she takes over.
    • The Reveal that Grogar is just Discord in disguise is only vaguely hinted throughout the last season, although rewatches prove the reason behind it.
  • Over the Garden Wall:
    • The first minute of the series is a montage of events and characters that will come into play in subsequent episodes.
    • Briefly, during the opening narration, a series of blurred shadowy images are shown. Only later do we find out that these images were Wirt and Greg drowning in the river.
    • In the first episodes, a giant dog is attracted to the candy Greg leaves around. He had that candy because it was Halloween when they entered the Unknown.
    • When Wirt sees the turkey in one of the empty houses he says he was looking for a telephone. This is odd given the setting until it's revealed Wirt and Greg come from a modern time period.
    • The Pottsfield woman who asks Wirt "Aren't you a little early? It doesn't seem like you're ready to join us..." is a double example, she's directly referring to the true nature of life in Pottsfield, but it's also a reference to the recurring theme of premature death in the series, specifically the fact that the whole show is some form of a Dying Dream or other world experienced while Greg and Wirt are drowning in the river.
    • The Tavern-Keeper insists bluebirds like Beatrice are 'bad luck'. Beatrice then 'curses' her in spite before taking off, and in the very next chapter, Beatrice admits she was cursed into her current form after angering a bluebird.
    • The residents of the Inn mistake Wirt for a "Young Lover", and throng him with relationship advice, which he claims he doesn't need. Turns out he actually is in love - and his inability to talk to his crush led to him and Greg falling into the Unknown, kickstarting the plot.
    • Likewise, in chapter 5, Wirt treats playing the clarinet, whispering poetry to himself, and having had a crush on a girl as if they're the darkest secrets imaginable. They came to the "entrance" to the Unknown because Wirt desperately wanted to keep said girl from hearing a recording of his poetry and clarinet playing.
    • During each opening title card, if you listen closely, you can hear a faint train whistling in the background. Wirt and Greg ended up in The Unknown by jumping out of the way of an oncoming train and landing in a lake, unconscious.
    • The monster in chapter 1 is revealed to be a dog that ate an Edelwood turtle. The oil in Edelwood keeps the Beast alive, who displays the exact same eyes as the "monster" in chapter 10.
    • Various items in the abandoned mill the Woodsmen inhabits seem much more meaningful when the epilogue reveals that the home belongs to Beatrice and her family.
    • In the first episode, the Woodsman tells Greg and Wirt "We each have a torch to burn, and this one is mine." It's not until later that we realize the true significance of the Lantern to him: it contains his daughter's soul, at least that's what he thought at first, the lantern actually contained the soul of The Beast.
    • A minor one comes with the Beast's design. Seen as a shadowy creature, he has twisted antlers that almost look like tree branches, which seems to abstractly liken him to his domain, the Edelwood forest. Turns out that when the light of the lantern, his own soul, shines on him, there is nothing abstract about his treelike qualities.
  • The Patrick Star Show: "Which Witch is Which?" revolves around Squidina's witch grandmother giving her trials to see if she can use her magic. There are multiple hints that Agnes is setting up Squidina for failure:
    • Bunny specifies that she never actually got her powers, but she sees her housekeeping skills as her own kind of magic. In this way, Squidina's "magic" might actually just be her producing skills, and not witch magic like Agnes has.
    • A Meaningful Background Event shows that Squidina didn't actually light Granny Tentacles' house on fire, and that instead, Agnes did it and claimed Squidina did. Squidina's attempts at using her magic wand herself also do nothing.
    • It's also noticeable that Squidina's magic wand looks nothing like the one Agnes is using, being more akin to a children's toy rather than a wooden stick.
    • The magic potion that Squidina mixes has no effect when Patrick drinks it. Agnes's potion does.
  • Phineas and Ferb:
    • "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!" has a few vague hints toward the reveal the episode is All Just a Dream:
      • During Linda's recollection of Candace's tattling over the Big Ideas, she thinks up events that Candace didn't try to bust her brothers for, such as carving her face into Mt. Rushmore, directing a movie, the backyard beach, the treehouse robots, and getting a band back together (which Candace herself took part in).
      • Baljeet acts way out of character, saying he got kicked out of summer school because his grades were "too high", as well as his summer wig.
      • When Linda realizes Candace was telling the truth, she calls her "the best daughter any mother could dream of having," right in P&F's earshot.
    • In "Thanks But No Thanks" when Candace asks her next-door neighbor to come over and tell Linda all about the Big Ideas she witnessed, she refuses because she's not up to leaving the house, so Candace tries to bring Linda over to talk to her from outside. This is a foreshadowing that the neighbor is local criminal Peggy "The Pyramid" McGee, who is trying to stay inside to avoid being exposed to the police.
  • The Raccoons:
    • In "Read No Evil!", there are several hints that Herman Never Learned to Read. Cedric notices he doesn't label his spices, he can't make out the title of Bert's book, and he doesn't bother to read any signs or documents and often needs them explained to him.
    • In "Cold Feet!", Cedric chickens out when Bert tells him to go skydiving together, as the thought of him getting knocked unconscious by hitting the back fins of the plane flashes onscreen. Sure enough, that's exactly what happens when he ultimately decides to go through with it later.
    • In "Go for Gold!", Robin Steel promises Cedric that the triathlon he's proposing for him to organize will get a lot of coverage. However, the only promotion for it is an incredibly small ad in the newspaper, as Bentley points out. As it turns out, Robin is lying about giving the triathlon a lot of promotion and trying to scam Cedric out of his company's money.
  • Ready Jet Go!:
    • In "Backyard Moon Base," the kids find the house remote. They press some of the buttons on it, which causes the house to fly in the air, unbeknownst to them. In "Back to Bortron 7," it is revealed that the Propulsion house is actually a starship turned house. Pressing the remote converts the house back to a starship. No wonder Carrot was especially panicky when he saw the house flying in "Backyard Moon Base".
    • In "Project Pluto", Carrot at one point utters "little frozen Pluto". And in the planetarium show in "Visit to the Planetarium", the aforementioned show refers to Pluto as "dear little frozen Pluto". Both foreshadow the song "Dear Little Frozen Pluto" from "From Pluto With Love".
    • "Back to Bortron 7":
      • During the first song "Is Your Planet Like My Planet?", one of the lyrics is There's no planet like my planet, which foreshadows the song aptly named "There's No Planet Like My Planet".
      • Somewhere at the beginning of the movie, Carrot and Celery are practicing their PowerCube presentation. Their lines are It's not too hot, and not too freezing / And is suitable for breathing / Not too big / And not too small / And planet Earth is what its called!. Later, during the "Just Add Water" song, the cast sing these lines: Plus it's not too hot, and no, it's not too freezing / Add to which its atmosphere is suitable for breathing / It's really not too big / And really not too small / And planet Earth is what its called!
      • At one point, Jet says "What do you call those things in cities that shoot water in the air?", and Sydney and Sean respond with "Fountains." Later, during "Just Add Water", the song stops so Celery can asks what they call those things in cities that shoot water in the air. Guess what Sydney, Jet, and Sean respond with.
      • In the show credits, doodles of the characters are scattered throughout. However in the credits for Back to Bortron 7, at one point we see Mindy in a space suit, which foreshadows the fact that Mindy turned five in season 2, and is now able to go to space.
    • One Small Step:
      • During the song "Super Saucer", the kids sing about how it's easy going to space, but hard getting back. Later, the gang has trouble getting back to Earth from the moon because Sydney used the landing gear crank to fix the saucer. The gang ends up using a parachute and crashing into Little Dipper Lake, where they almost drown but Mitchell rescues them.
      • At one point, Jet 2 presents Sydney with a mysterious object that Sydney thinks is a robot arm. She asks Jet 2 if they will need it in the future, and he says no, so Sydney uses it to fix the saucer. It turns out that the "robot arm" was the landing gear for the saucer. Without the landing gear, the landing will be difficult. So, the kids end up using a parachute and crashing into Little Dipper Lake back on Earth instead.
  • The Real Ghostbusters:
    • At the beginning of "Class Clown", the Junior Ghostbusters complain about Mrs. Stone hardly ever smiling. At the end of the episode, she does end up smiling for once.
    • In "'Til Death Do Us Part", Dixie being a ghost all along is revealed by the presence of a mysterious entity outside the firehouse shortly before her arrival, and by her being a Big Eater and a messy eater in a similar way to Slimer.
    • In "Busters in Toyland", it's revealed early on that someone intentionally broke the clock. It's later revealed that this was to imprison a demon named Lothgar.
    • In "The Treasure of Sierra Tamale", Paco's eyes glow red. Later on, he turns out to be a Coatl in disguise.
    • At the beginning of "Look Homeward, Ray", Ray's friends mention a monster in the town. Said monster later ends up being the episode's secondary villain.
    • In "Nobody Comes to Lupusville", the name of the town foreshadows that the citizens are werewolves. Grogar being a vampire is also foreshadowed by him only wanting to speak at night and not entering the firehouse (referencing the idea that vampires Must Be Invited).
    • At the beginning of "Moaning Songs", Peter plays bad music. This bad music is later used against the skeletons.
    • In "Night Game", the Umpire snaps at Peter when he dismisses the idea of playing a sports game over someone's soul, foreshadowing that he's the one whose soul is being played for.
    • In "Transylvanian Homesick Blues", Vostok is Transylvanian, lives in a castle, and has no silver or mirrors. Later, he's revealed to be a vampire. Also, the bat creatures are intangible and don't register on the PKE meter, foreshadowing that they're holograms.
    • "The Two Faces of Slimer" foreshadows that the evil ghost is a shapeshifted Slimer: both are green, both are big eaters, both leave Ectoplasm everywhere, Slimer seemed to be in a trance when he flew out the window, he'd recently breathed in some gas that leaked from the containment unit, and he seemed tired and chilly the next morning.
    • In "Standing Room Only", Peter thinks he's invented a machine that attracts ghosts, but it turns out the ghosts are simply running away from a demon named Mee-Krah. This is foreshadowed by Slimer (also a ghost) not reacting to the machine, and Egon not knowing how the machine should work.
    • In "Robo Buster", the eponymous robot supposedly destroys Slimer, but it turns out that he's just merged with other ghosts. Earlier in the episode, Egon claimed that ghosts couldn't be destroyed.
    • Early on in "Future Tense", a glowing object falls into the TV. Later, the TV turns out to be inhabited by a water elemental.
    • In "The Haunting of Heck House", Peter laughs off Winston's claim of a many-eyed ghost with "You read too many books". All the ghosts later turn out to be book characters come to life.
    • In "Slimer's Curse", Slimer's new money glows eerily. This foreshadows it being haunted.
  • In the Regular Show episode "Dead at Eight", Death suggests that Muscle Man will die in a hot dog eating contest. Sure enough, in the episode "Last Meal", Death comes back to take Muscle Man's soul during a hot dog eating contest.
  • Happens a lot in Rollbots, most notably with Vertex collecting parts of the Dymex Key and with references to a lost tribe.
  • ThunderCats Roar: When Jaga gets to talking about Snarf, he doesn't actually know how to describe him, while the onscreen trading card shows his stats as maxed out and his skills as "all" with a Arm Cannon next to it. Near the end of "Exodus Part 1", Snarf is revealed to be a robot with tons of tools and weaponry jammed inside him.
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is full of this:
    • In the first episode, when the gang finds the locket that spurs off the plot, Mayor Jones flinches. This is because the people in the locket are Fred's real parents.
    • Also in the first episode, Velma says that Crystal Cove was found by Spanish Conquistadors, who play a crucial role in Crystal Cove's backstory later on.
    • In the fourth episode, the gang finds a newspaper clipping about the missing kids, and Angel seems to be looking at it as if she knows something about the missing piece. That's because she's the one in it.
    • In "Howl of the Fright Hound", Professor Pericles tells the gang to "Beware of those close to you", and gave extra emphasis to Fred. Fred's dad turns out to be the Big Bad of the season.
    • In "Escape from Mystery Manor", Danny Darrow thinks Fred is Brad Chiles of the original gang, and refers to him as "Big Chin Man." The physical resemblances between them foreshadow that Brad is Fred's real father.
    • In "Nightmare in Red", the Annunaki possessing Nova tells them that "Everything can be undone, everything can be forgiven." In the finale, "Come Undone", literally everything is undone.
  • Cleverly done in Solar Opposites when Tim manages to escape The Wall, teams up with Cherie, and the two manage to finally free everyone and return them all to their normal sizes. The entire time Cherie not once mentions Pezlie, or cares that Pezlie was left behind in the wall: after all, the entire thing was a Dying Dream of Tim's and he didn't know about Pezlie's existence.
  • In The Simpsons, this sequence from the first of the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episodes foreshadows Burns's later attempt at stealing a lollipop from Maggie.
    Burns: [Stealing oil from Springfield Elementary] will be like taking candy from a baby.
    (Burns looks through the binoculars and sees a baby with some candy.)
    Burns: Say, that sounds like a larf. Let's try it right now.
    Smithers: Er, um, there's some candy right here, sir. Why don't we eat this instead of stealing?
    Burns: Oh, very well.
    • There's a bit on who the shooter is, too. When Mr. Burns challenges a group of armed townspeople, asking who has the guts to stop him, most of them wind up looking away sheepishly. One person keeps glaring at him through the whole scene, however: Maggie.
    • In "Brick Like Me", LEGO Comic Book Guy's "No Outside Realities" sign (shown after one of LEGO Homer's visions of the real Homer's life) wasn't a mere throwaway gag — it was foreshadowing how LEGO Comic Book Guy himself represents Homer subconscious desire to remain in his dream world.
  • Skull Island (2023): There's a lot of foreshadowing to Irene's connection with Annie and reasons for pursuing the girl. From Irene getting angry at one of her mercs calling Annie a "feral freak" and threatening her, to Irene looking regretful after tranquilizing Annie, to her tending to Annie's unconscious body, to their matching eyes; it's not surprising when Irene reveals that she's Annie's long-lost mother.
  • In the Sofia the First Pilot Movie "Once Upon a Princess", Sofia tells her mother she's worried that she'll trip and everyone will laugh at her. Later on, during the dance lesson, with thanks to Amber giving her trick shoes, she does exactly that.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "Nature Pants", Mr. Krabs, Sandy, and Squidward all surmised SpongeBob would realize living with the jellyfish is a harsh and unbearable lifestyle and he'd crawl back to civilization sooner or later.
    • In "Valentine's Day", Patrick crushing a rock heart while thinking SpongeBob's inside is the first sign of how dangerous he can get when he wants something.
    • In "The Smoking Peanut":
      • Clamu does not cry the instant SpongeBob throws the peanut at her; she frantically searches around her enclosure before bawling. This is a visual clue that the peanut is not what's making her cry.
      • In the beginning, Mr. Krabs is shown swiping loads of souvenirs at the zoo on its free day; in the end, it's revealed Mr. Krabs is the real culprit for Clamu's breakdown.
    • In "Frankendoodle" when SpongeBob and Patrick are playing Rock–Paper–Scissors with bubbles, SpongeBob wonders why Patrick always uses paper. Later on in the episode, SpongeBob discovers paper is how to defeat DoodleBob.
    • In "The Secret Box":
      • During SpongeBob's heist to get the secret box from Patrick, he's stuck in the sleeping Patrick's arms. Patrick proceeds to pull on SpongeBob's tongue while muttering about the secret box, foreshadowing the function of the string inside.
      • After being flung into the wall, a picture of SpongeBob and Patrick falls on SpongeBob's head and splits into two halves, with SpongeBob on one side and Patrick on the other. This serves as a literal visualization toward the consequences of stealing the box following when Patrick wakes up, and the imminent end to the duo's friendship.
      • When SpongeBob looks in the box and sees the string inside, the farthest end of the string seems to be fastened to the box. As Patrick reveals after SpongeBob leaves, pulling the string opens a secret compartment holding SpongeBob's embarrassing Christmas photo.
    • In "Missing Identity" when SpongeBob gets dressed, eagle-eyed viewers will notice the front folds of his shirt are missing. Also when Patrick says hi to him, note that his back is turned when he passes Patrick.
    • "Spy Buddies" has several implications that Mr. Krabs and Plankton pretended to be each other:
      • In the beginning, Plankton's shadow is seen three times as large, sneaking into the Krusty Krab and unlocking Mr. Krabs' safe, then SpongeBob turns on the light to reveal it's Mr. Krabs, who nervously says he's checking the formula.
      • When SpongeBob gets a call through Patrick's pants-o-phone, Mr. Krabs tells SpongeBob he's not paying them to goof off. SpongeBob reminds him he never pays him, to which Mr. Krabs corrects himself hastily.
      • When SpongeBob and Patrick crash into the Chum Bucket, Plankton sounds mildly confused when Patrick accidentally reveals their secret mission. Also, Plankton offers them various generic fast food meals when he would normally offer chum meals.
      • When Plankton summons Karen to come, she does not show up once throughout the rest of the Chum Bucket scene, a dead ringer that this is not really Plankton.
    • In "Patty Caper":
      • During SpongeBob's meeting with Mr. Krabs in his office, he shows the bottle to the secret ingredient for the formula. As it turns out near the end, Mr. Krabs stole his own secret ingredient to avoid paying.
      • After SpongeBob sees the hole in the briefcase for the secret ingredient, he utters, "A thief must have cut a hole, and swiped the secret ingredient! But who?" Mr. Krabs immediately shows up right after saying this.
      • Note that Mr. Krabs looked briefly shocked from hearing SpongeBob's description of the thief, just before framing him.
    • In "Plankton's Regular":
      • The second time Nat eats chum, he looks obviously disgusted before proclaiming his love for it.
      • When SpongeBob's disguise as Karen fails and he asks Nat if chum is all he's going to eat, Nat stammers a little when he confirms his thought.
      • Note how Nat reacts to Mr. Krabs' brand of chum hinting he doesn't really like Plankton's.
        Nat: It's the second foulest thing I had ever tasted!
    • In "Barnacle Face", whenever Pearl scrubs her face with soap, more barnacles appear; SpongeBob smells the soap and loves its scent, recognizing it as "delicious" and "familiar". Turns out, the soap is made of Krabby Patty meat.
    • In "Demolition Doofus" when Mrs. Puff violently strangles SpongeBob for cracking a joke about her deflated condition, he very briefly laughs and says, "That tickles!". This gives the viewers a clue toward his Nigh-Invulnerability as an invertebrate and a bad driver once he enters the derby.
    • In "SpongeBob's Bad Habit", SpongeBob starts his habit of Rapid-Fire Nail Biting immediately after Squidward tells him about his life, foreshadowing that he subconsciously implemented the habit from Squidward.
    • In "The Ballad of Filthy Muck", whenever Filthy Muck is around SpongeBob, he hardly says any words; this gives a hint that Filthy Muck is a separate entity from Patrick.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil had quite a bit of this:
    • In season one's "Fortune Cookies", after learning that the fortunes in fortune cookies aren't real, Star laughs off one that reads "A great evil has been unleashed." The same episode has Ludo hire a new minion, Toffee, who would go on to be a constant threat to Star's friends, family, and allies, as well as the very existence of magic in the universe, until his defeat early in season three.
      • Almost every line that came out of Toffee's mouth during his early appearance were hints of his origins and intentions. His self-introduction in "Fortune Cookies" has him tell Ludo that he's "not the first monster to fall victim to their magic." It's revealed the next season that Toffee has been a foe of the Butterfly family for generations, having killed Star's grandmother Comet and battling her mother Moon, with the latter striking him with a curse that prevented regeneration of his finger. Later, he blatantly tells Ludo that "Sometimes, your biggest threat is right under your nose": pointing towards his later control of Ludo's army and, after that, his bodily possession of Ludo himself.
    • "Storm the Castle" has an odd joke play out as this. Star attempts to explain the series of events that led to Marco getting kidnapped to an Earth cop, who assumes Star just likes "magic", claiming that he himself liked to watch magic shows in Vegas... before oddly topping it off with a warning that unwise use of it can cause you to lose everything, much to her confusion. It was originally assumed that this referred to her reckless assault later that episode that results in the cleaving of her wand, it actually refers to the ending of the following season's "Bon Bon the Birthday Clown", where Star ended up using dark magic to spy on Marco's date with Jackie, filling her with negative emotions. Said emotions cause Star's spells to become uncontrollable and violent, giving Ludo the chance to successfully steal her spellbook and mentor, Glossaryck.
  • Star Wars animated series examples can be found here.
  • Teen Titans (2003): "Spellbound" introduces us to the character Malchior of Nol, a powerful dragon-slaying mage from another dimension who Raven reads a book about and becomes enamored with when he himself appears, though is only a spirit trapped in a book. "Malchior" is a suitably mystical-sounding name, being only one letter off from "Melchior," an attributed name to one of the Biblical Magi, but look at exactly what the one-letter difference is: by replacing the E with an A, it becomes "mal", a common prefix derived from the Latin for "evil." Sure enough, that's no coincidence: Malchior wasn't the mage, he was the dragon, and takes on his true form at the end to become the episode's villain.
  • In the first episode of Season 1 of Transformers: Animated, when Decepticons are bearing down on his ship, Optimus Prime orders Teletraan 1: "Emergency Defense Program, Codename: Omega". Nothing happens, and the show goes on, where in the last episode of Season 2, the ship transforms into Omega Supreme.
    • Also the revelation that Sari is part-robot is foreshadowed so many times in the first two seasons that it might as well be a drinking game!
    • "You must never sacrifice a piece of the future to restore the past. When your time comes, you will understand." Prowl sure did and the fandom wept.
  • The series Transformers: Prime confirmed Dark Energon to be the blood of Unicron. A behind the scenes video shows Frank Welker as Megatron stating that "Unicron...grows even stronger" meaning he will soon appear in some form.
    • For that matter, all the energon varieties found on Earth imply the Cybertronians have been on the planet before. Or rather, in the planet. Turns out Earth is Unicron.
    • In another Transformers show, Beast Wars, the episode where Rhinox is brainwashed into a Predacon actually forshadows his eventual transformation into Tankor in Beast Machines.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) episode "The Lizard" shows that Doc Ock had several test tubes of animal DNA. Test tubes contained pictures of lizard, rhino, scorpion and vulture. The Lizard and The Rhino have already appeared, Scorpion has appeared but as a martial artist from K'un-L'un, however his debut episodes ends with him being exiled and likely seeking revenge against Spidey and Iron Fist. Vulture hasn't appeared yet, but the existence of a test tube of vulture DNA may be a sign that we will see him at some point.
  • The Venture Brothers uses this a lot. A throwaway line about The Monarch's Henchmen stealing equipment from Sgt Hatred becomes the reason the later decides to become Dr. Venture's Arch-Enemy. The boys being clones is hinted through several times during the first season, most notably when Dr. Venture mentions it could have saved Dean from Testicular Torsion by eliminating it during the "prototype phase".
    • A rule of thumb for viewers: Any line uttered at any given point can become useful to the plot. Any. Or at least the subject of a Brick Joke.
    • Similarly, the name of Brock's assignment "Operation Rusty's Blanket" comes into play at the end of the third season.
    • Possibly an accident, but the first season finale has the main cast dressed at the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, including Dean as Riff-Raff. The in the third episode of season four it turns out Rusty threw out a malformed Dean clone, who survived and looks quite a bit like Riff-Raff.
    • In the season one finale The Monarch tells his minions to send Wonder Boy's charred remains to Captain Sunshine, three seasons later and entire episode revolves around this event.
    • Another is when Monarch casually mentions during a Villain Party that he tricked Sunshine into believing he was invincible. A few seasons later Sunshine is shown to still believe this.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender: In the season 1 finale, Haggar creates duplicates of herself when she confronts Shiro before turning into a duplicate of him. The next season finale confirms that she's Altean as Alteans have the ability to shift into other forms.
    • There's a lot of foreshadowing throughout season 1 that Keith is part Galra. First of all, in the pilot episode, he has to retrieve the Red Lion from a Galra ship. In addition, whenever the Paladins have to use Galra technology, they need to use Shiro's artificial arm or the arms of one of the robot Mooks to activate it, but Keith can use it with his own hands. Speaking of Shiro's arm, the reason he can use it to activate Galra technology is because it was given to him as part of being experimented on by them. It's his right arm that was replaced. Keith pilots the Red Lion, which forms the right arm of Voltron. In the first season finale, Zarkon tells him that he fights like a Galra. The second season has him recognise a Galra symbol because it is the same as the symbol on his knife, and at one point he muses about how due to everything being made of the same substance, everyone could be related to every species, with emphasis on the Galra, as by then he's starting to suspect that he has a connection to them. Season 2 Episode 8 finally confirmed this.
  • Wander over Yonder:
    • In "The Fancy Party", Entazoa rejects anyone she sees as "weak" to bequeath her power to. This is because she's looking for a new, strong body to possess. Also, note she is named after a parasite.
    • In "The Troll", every time Wander ignores Sylvia, she leaves. This foreshadows how to defeat the troll.
    • In "The Hero", only the hero in the "prophecy" can pull out the Sword of Destiny; note that Wander was able to pull the sword out, but Brad couldn't. Also, the "prophecy" seems more modern day than cryptic.
  • We Bare Bears: While waiting for their pizza in "Panda's Sneeze", Panda notices a portrait of Nom Nom in the middle of a "wall of celebrities" photo collection, which Ice Bear throws in the trash, foreshadowing Nom Nom's involvement in the episode's plot.
  • W.I.T.C.H. is famous for its constant foreshadowing of many of its main plot points and plot twists.
    • Elyon being the princess is eluded to many episodes before it is revealed.
    • The mystery surrounding the Mage's identity is also hinted and prodded at many episodes before the big reveal. Also, there are various scenes where we see Julian and the Mage exchange glances of longing for each other, especially after Caleb or Julian mentions their family, foreshadowing that the Mage is Caleb's mother.
    • Will states "Victory at any cost is no victory at all; not if you lose yourself in the process." In the final episode, in order to defeat the Big Bad (former Dragon Cedric), the Guardians connect with their true elements, becoming living manifestations of their powers. This also strips away their humanity, leaving them mindless, and vulnerable to control by Nerissa. Fortunately, that doesn't happen, and their friends and family manage to bring them back to themselves.
    • In "V Is for Victory" we have three in one scene, the one where Will enlists Phobos' help against Nerissa. The first is Raythor being the only prisoner who wasn't already near the energy bars of his cage to follow the conversation when he , hinting about the conversation he was having with an invisible Hay Lin in that very moment. The other two are when Will gets Phobos to swear on the power of Kandrakar to not use the power of the Seal of Nerissa for himself and Phobos is looking at his right, where Cedric is imprisoned, silently asking for warnings if it's a trap, forewarning both Will's plan and Cedric's future betrayal.
  • Wild Kratts: In the Season One episode "Rapter Round Up", when the titular brothers mention "raptors", Jimmy Z (their base's pilot and the one who transports their creature powers) gets scared because he thought they meant velociraptors. Aviva (the one who invented the creature power suits) tells him that her time machine is not ready yet. In the two-part episode "Back in Creature Time", she shows off said time machine.
  • Winx Club:
    • Bloom's obtained a crown in her magic Winx transformation probably hinting at her being of royal descent.
    • Bloom's fairy form briefly appears in "An Unexpected Event", a couple of episodes before she properly transforms for the first time.
    • 'From the Ashes' takes place right after Bloom earns her Enchantix. She's slightly feeble and tired after using a spell on the ice snake. It's revealed in the next episode that her Enchantix is incomplete because she didn't earn it through sacrifice like the others.
    • In the opening Previously on… recap of "A Fairy in Danger", the narrator says the Winx are close to finding the last earth fairy while simultaneously showing a close-up of Roxy.
  • Young Justice (2010):
    • In the episode "Failsafe", the first clue that the team wasn't in the real world was that there was no time and date stamp in the beginning of the episode. Also, the team's reaction to the deaths of the Justice League.
    • The episode itself is littered with foreshadowing of events occurring throughout the rest of the season and even season two, from season two's "alien invasion" premise, a message the Team transmits around the world, to the winter stealth-suits and a mission in the snow, to Kaldur "leaving" the team, Kid Flash being distraught by someone's death, Dick's cold and calculating nature coming out, the Justice League being "gone" and leaving the kids behind in the wake of an alien threat, Artemis's "death", and M'gann's powers causing problems.
    • In one episode, there's an exchange between hero Red Arrow and assassin Chesire that foreshadows that Roy is actually a pre-programmed clone who doesn't realize he's going to take down the League from within.
      Red Arrow: I think you know what I'm after.
      Chesire: I do, actually. Do you?
    • When Kaldur visits Atlantis in season 1, in the background we see a fish boy practising magic. In season 2 he's joined the team as Lagoon Boy. Other cameos of heroes are also common; for example, Barbara Gordan (a.k.a. Batgirl) appears as a civilian in several season one episodes, Rocket is seen saving lives before joining the Team, and both Virgil Hawkins (a.k.a. Static) and Stephanie Brown (a.k.a. Spoiler/Robin IV) are among the Light's hostages in season 2. Garfield Logan stars as a civilian in a season one episode, only to have become Beast Boy by season 2.
    • M'gann makes many comments about racial conflicts and her green skin throughout season one, foreshadowing that her real form is a huge white monster that was discriminated against back on Mars. In the same episode, M'gann's catchphrase "Hello, Megan!" becomes much more important.
    • In Bloodlines, Bart introduces himself to Wally with the line, "You're Wally West! My first cousin once removed!" Since Wally is erased from existence at the end of the second season, Bart had never met him before the events of the episode.
    • In True Colors you're paying attention you get a blatant hint that Green Beetle is a Reach double-agent when he advises Blue Beetle to use a tactic against Black Beetle that Blue's scarab points out would be ineffective. Of course he'd want to use an ineffective tactic against his ally, who clearly just took a dive, and not give the team any tactics that would actually be effective against a Beetle.

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