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"I think I'll try extra hard to remember today's events and conversations, in case I someday want to recall them verbatim."
A narrative technique in which we're shown events that took place before the episode's main action.
Can be subverted with a flashback to something that didn't actually happen (e.g., the night between Excel and Ropponmatsu #2 in Excel Saga).
Often provides the added bonus of getting actors into period costumes.
Specific types of flashbacks include:
See also Flashback Effects for ways of distinguishing a Flash Back from normal action, and Viewers Are Goldfish for flashbacks to events that are still fresh in the audience's mind.
Examples:
- the characters in Gap once made fun of this, only to promptly flashback to a previous instance when they did the exact same thing.
- Cluster Edge uses this constantly, to the point it conquers the series.
- The scenes set in the 1950's in Angel episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been."
- Virtually every episode of Highlander The Series has an extensive flashback; since the series protagonist is four centuries old, there's plenty of available plotlines to choose from. Usually, the flashback shows the hero's first meeting with the guest Immortal of the week.
- Friends, with the prom video and Thanksgivings past.
- The Golden Girls did several episodes each featuring multiple flashbacks on a common theme. It usually felt like the writers had ideas for gags which were not enough for a whole episode, and was often easily mistaken for a Clip Show. There was also an episode showing how the girls met.
- Bt VS used flashbacks frequently to establish the backstories of characters like Angel, Drusilla, and Spike.
- While the new series of Doctor Who does not use Flash Backs often, it has received some stick for using them to flash back to extremely obvious and memorable scenes from previous episodes. However, this is to help children understand what's going on as - despite generaly featuring a morbidly high body count - the show is aimed at families.
- Without A Trace thrives on these and sometimes includes a Flash Back within another Flash Back. To top it all, one episode featured a Dream Sequence in a Flash Back.
- And another starts at the end of the story, does a How We Got Here flashback to the beginning, proceeds to use several more flashbacks as events of the mystery are unraveled, and when it reaches the end again, it turns out it was All Just A Dream. Surreal, to say the least.
- Subversion: in the first season finale of Arrested Development, two lines that seem to provoke flashbacks ("Your father promised [the company] to me on the day he went to prison.", "We've had some great times.") are followed by blank screens captioned "Footage Not Found."
- Used to death in the B-movie Boggy Creek 2: The Legend Continues.
- Further parodied in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring that movie: During a host segment, Crow, Tom Servo, and Mike attempt to explain a fight that occurred minutes ago via three flashbacks, each blurrier than the last, with none of them adding any new information. Mike then realizes that he was looking for his contacts, and Servo promises his next flashback will have an explosion.
- In The Dark Tower, Book One: The Gunslinger, the first quarter of the novel is devoted to flashbacks to events just prior to the beginning of the novel, and flashbacks to Roland's childhood within those. In Book Four: Wizard and Glass, the bulk of the story is a flashback to a formative event in Roland's early adulthood.
- Because How I Met Your Mother, in essence, has every episode as a flashback, along with its quick editing, it's hard to tell where flashbacks end and begin, or if a Flash Forward (such as Barney's brother's wedding) really counts as a flash forward or if the rest of the episode is a flashback compared to the flash forward. No one seems to mind, though, because everyone can still follow the storyline.
- Naruto likes this one. Some of the Flashbacks contain their own Flashbacks. And many episodes use the last few minutes of action from the previous episode as the first few minutes of action in the current one, minus the flashbacks that were originally used during those specified minutes. Though, the latter case may only be a back.
- Some episodes even contain flashbacks to things that happened earlier in the same episode, as recent as a few minutes ago
- Tenjou Tenge has an entire flashback arc, which takes up a large chunk of the anime. While it is important for establishing the backstories of many of the show's characters, unfortunately the anime didn't get far enough to really do anything with those newly fleshed-out characters before it was cancelled.
- In Valkyrie Profile, flashbacks are often used to show the events leading up to the Einherjar's deaths.
- Unusually for the series, lonelygirl15 episode "Comfort Food" included flashbacks to Daniel's grandmother's funeral. Flashbacks were again used in the series 3 episode "I Miss Her".
- The anime Bleach goes to town with this trope. Two characters are about to embark in what looks like an epic fight, the audience is on its collective toes expecting a good few minutes of slashing action, released soul slayers and all, and suddenly you get a flashback that explains some previously unknown details in the history between the two fighters. This wouldn't normally be so bad, but Bleach's flashbacks tend to last entire episodes. By the end of the episode you know everything on why the current situation has developed, but the enemies have yet to start attacking.
- Lost, which uses flashbacks and flash-forwards to advance the story, often when it's relevant to that episode's plotline.
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has a flash-forward that technically, doesn't exist, as the character who envisions it (Derek Reese), came back in time and killed the inventor of the device that will eventually become Skynet. Which means, if he did that, then the person would cease to exist, and...oh my god, I've gone cross-eyed!
- John Carpenter's film Ghosts of Mars use extensive flashbacks that become increasingly convoluted as the film goes on. Apart from the fact that the entire film is framed as one character recounting the events to her superiors later, every time she or another character meets up with someone new on the planet, that person explains whats been happening to them in their own flashback and this repeats itself when they meet new people. This eventually devolves into the viewer watching a flashback within a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. Quite jarring if you let yourself become aware of it. Kudos to the character speaking to her superiors though, who could remember everything she heard 4th hand, verbatim.
- Lampshaded in this
 Loserz strip.
- Kiddy Grade does this right around episodes 10-12 when Eclair struggles with her repressed memories and the numerous times she's come back from the dead.
- Almost every episode of Forever Knight has a flashback as a part of the case. Most of them are from Nick, the show's main character, but some come from others. The notable exception is the episode 'Games Vampires Play' wherein the spots usually taken up by flashback are used to show Nick playing a virtual reality game.
- There are many jokes amongst fans over the fact that Nick would frequently have his flashbacks while driving or midconversation. This was lampshaded once or twice by other cars beeping at him at stoplights and characters noticing every once in a while and staring at him.
- Invader Zim also lampshades a common problem with this trope: In "The Fry Cook What Came From All That Space", Zim recalls a flashback of being demoted to fry cook under fry lord Sizz-Lorr, and then escaping. After Zim escapes, it shows Sizz-Lorr alone, shouting at the top of his lungs:
Sizz-Lorr: I will find you Zim, so help me, I will search the entire universe, and I! WILL! FIND YOOOOOOOOU!
(Cut back to present time with Zim and Sizz-Lorr)
Sizz-Lorr: How did you remember what I said if you weren't there?
Zim: *shrugs*
- Passage to Marseille was a move in which a reporter comes to an air base to interview a Free French officer who starts telling the story of one of his men (Humphrey Bogart). Flashback to the man being recovered at sea by a ship along with four others. It is revealed that they are escaped prisoners. Flashback to them planning to escape in order to join the fight against the Germans and saying why they absolutely
- Psych beigns every single episode with a flashback to Shawn's childhood, usually vaguely related to the plot in some way.
- In The Middle Man, there's a Flash Back, sometimes combined with an Imagine Spot, used to explain what happened between scenes.
- Citizen Kane is told almost entirely in Flashbacks, as a reporter tracks down the meaning of Kane's dying word, "Rosebud". It Was His Sled.
- Airplane!: Ted and Elaine (meeting in the bar, in the Peace Corps, in the hospital, rolling on the beach), Ted's war memories.
- Used many times in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, may it be to reveal the Anti Villains Start Of Darkness or to simply show what drives the characters. Played with in regards to Fate, who had a Flash Back of her days when her mother loved her to show why she's such a Love Martyr, only for her to eventually realize that those memories were not hers.
- The IT Crowd does this a couple of times in one episode regarding how one character became a Goth and subsequently losing his high up position and being forced to work in a room in the basement. Contains a lot of Flashback Stares.
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