Once More, with Clarity

The Narrator: [narrating] I think this is about where we came in.
Tyler: Any last words?
The Narrator: I still can't think of anything.
Tyler: Ah. Flash-back humor.

— Fight Club

In a work, a specific scene is shown twice. The first time the audience experiences it, the scene seems to mean one thing. When the scene occurs again, it is shown to have a different meaning entirely.

Sometimes the scene is shown again the exact same way as it was shown the first time, with the only difference being the audience's new understanding of what it meant. Other times, it’s a quick series of scenes to show how much each of those moments meant to the character. Sometimes the scene is extended or re-shot from a different perspective to show the newly-revealed meaning. A frequent variation of this happens during a reveal that a character's perception of an event has been altered by a hallucination or Fake Memories: the first appearance of the scene is from the character's point of view, but once the audience discovers that's not what really happened, the scenes are shown again, but replaced with the truth.

See Chekhov's Gun and its related tropes for the seemingly-unimportant details that are shown to be important the second time around. Also see Fridge Brilliance and Rewatch Bonus, the times you see these important points upon reviewing prior scenes without the author's help. If the reinterpretation is made immediately (by changing the camera field), it's a Reveal Shot.

Used clumsily, this will be seen as obvious and unnecessary. The gun she's using is the one her father was killed with? Yeah, considering its unique look, we gathered as much when we saw it for the first time in both scenes. Now could we please end the flashback and get on with the story?

This trope can overlap with How We Got Here, but the emphasis is slightly different. How We Got Here usually starts the entire story with a single dramatic situation (like the heroes pointing handguns at each other) and then explains how things got to that point. Once More With Clarity often repeats more than one scene, and they can be superficially unremarkable at first, until they are imbued with more meaning or emotion once the viewer understands what they mean. It can also overlap with In Medias Res, but only if the first showing of the scene is the opening scene, and the content of the scene remains the same in all showings.

Not to be confused with "Rashomon"-Style, which is multiple tellings of one story from various (warped) perspectives, or Cliffhanger Copout, in which the established facts are changed rather than reinterpreted. Again, compare with Rewatch Bonus, in which the same scenes have a different meaning on a second viewing of the work, perhaps because the Twist Ending changed your perception of earlier events. Can overlap with Flashback-Montage Realization and Necro Cam. If you thought that this trope was about characters repeating exposition in a straighter way, see To Make a Long Story Short and Let Me Get This Straight... instead. In mystery stories this tends to crop up during The Summation.

Given the nature of this trope usually ends up being The Reveal, beware of spoilers.

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Example subpage:

• Live-Action TV

Other examples

Anime & Manga

• Arachnid:
  • Kuramoto once tells Alice about how the student council president Sara has been treating her like a sex slave, but a later flashback shows them in reversed roles, as Kuramoto herself was the abusive one with brainwashing powers who date-raped Sara.
  • Yoriko has an inner monologue about how she's been alone for a long time that is later expanded upon by a flashback. However, the second scene is a glaring plot hole as it features reversed dialogue between her and the man she was talking to within her memories in the first scene even though it makes no sense for her to be an Unreliable Narrator to herself. Furthermore, the added context makes the part of the monologue about how Yoriko wanted to respect Alice beyond her orphaned status completely sociopathic since it was her who ruined Alice's family in the first place.
• Assassination Classroom: When Akari/Kayano first saw Koro-sensei, she only saw a monster apparently playing with her dead sister's blood. When we see what happened from Koro-sensei's perspective, he was actually swearing an oath on her blood to watch over Class 3-E in her place.
• The first episode of Baccano! contains a collection of several scenes that make no sense. In the final episodes those scenes are played again and it's then clear that they show what happened to the characters at the end of their arcs. Except for one scene, which is from a book that wasn't even adapted.
• Black Clover:
  • At the start of the Royal Knights Tournament, Zora is introduced by attacking the Vice Captain of the Purple Orcas for no apparent reason and showing a deep unexplained hatred for Magic Knights. When his Dark and Troubled Past is revealed, as well as the fact that he is a Vigilante Man, that scene is played again from a few minutes prior, the Vice Captain was about to attack and possibly kill an old lady who bothered him by begging for help to find her missing granddaughter. Zora defended the old lady attacking the Vice Captain.
  • In the flashback to the Elf Massacre, Patolli is shown witnessing the royals of Clover Kingdom massacring them with their prince (hidden from view) attacking them with his light magic, with Licht falling into despair and activating the reincarnation spell in vengeance against the humans. Several episodes later and in the perspective of Secre, Lemiel (the said prince) and Licht, it's revealed that Zagred put a spell on the Clover Kingdom royals to kill them, while restraining Lemiel and stealing his magic tool to complete the frame-up. Once Secre frees Lemiel, they arrive at the moment Patolli is killed, where it's shown that Licht was actually transforming into a dark elf and Lemiel's arrival stopped the spell as he became convinced it was a trap from a devil instead of Lemiel betraying them.
• Throughout the first two seasons of Black Lagoon, the only glimpse of Revy's Dark and Troubled Past we receive is a brief, recurring flashback of feathers fluttering through the air outside an apartment complex. The opening for those seasons also contains a shot of Revy with feathers fluttering around her. It's not until the final episode of the Roberta's Blood Trail OVA that we learn the significance of the feathers: they're from the pillow Revy used as a makeshift silencer when she murdered her abusive father.
• Black★★Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall:
  • Strength has three separate flashbacks to her time with Black Rock Shooter before they became Hemiteos Units. The first two cut off after Black Rock Shooter notes, "It's hard to live forever", as Strength's memory corruption kicks in. The third time, Strength has recovered enough to remember the full statement: "It's hard to live forever, but it means we can keep on meeting new friends."
  • Lunatic's victory over Black Rock Shooter twenty years prior is shown four separate times, with the first two cutting off after Lunatic's Breaking Speech, implying it worked. The third time, however, shows Black Rock Shooter's defiant response — "I'm going to kill you. I won't give up" — and the fourth reveals that her twenty-year stasis (and Strength and Dead Master's amnesia) was the result of her overclocking herself to save them from Lunatic's torture, rather than anything Lunatic did to her.
• In El Cazador de la Bruja, the first flashback of Dr. Schneider's death is framed in such a way as to imply that Ellis' powers went out of control and killed him (which is what she believes). The full flashback, however, reveals that he was actually shot by the Big Bad, Rosenberg, while Ellis was trying to control her Power Incontinence.
• Coffin Princess Chaika:
  • The very first scene of the anime is what appears to be a shocked-looking Chaika Trabant conversing with a strange being. In Episode 11, we see the scene again, revealing it was Layla/Blue Chaika instead, and that the scene was in fact her Start of Darkness, as she learned from the creature that the Chaikas were mere tools to gather Emperor Gaz's remains.
  • The final shots of Avenging Battle's ending sequence are of a cherry tree with two blurry figures visible in the distance, and then a small country house. These shots seem unconnected to the main plot, but in the final episode, the first shot is unblurred to reveal that it carries on from the show's final scene, with Toru and the recovering Chaika making their way back from the tree towards the house in the second shot, which the viewer now knows is where they, Akari, Fredrica and Red Chaika live Happily Ever After.
• For most of Cowboy Bebop, the backstory of main character Spike is shrouded in mystery, with the audience only getting hints of what happened through disjointed flashbacks and trying to ponder the implications of those hints and flashbacks. Towards the end of the show as we start getting more pieces of the puzzle, both from the episodes and certain special ending sequences, the hints and flashbacks from earlier in the show start taking on more meaning and becoming clearer, although it may take a second or third watching for some of it to sink in.
• In Death Note when Ryuk talks with Light, telling him that humans who use the Death Note do not go to Heaven or Hell, and that Light will find out when he dies. Light, right before his death near the end of the series, correctly guesses that Ryuk said that because all humans, whether they used the Death Note or not, simply experience Cessation of Existence upon the end of their lives. This is averted in the manga, where Light says it in response instantly.
• Destroy All Humankind. They Can't Be Regenerated. opens with Hajime and Emi watching the sunset from a bridge while discussing the Nostradamus doomsday prophecy. Emi asks Hajime for a favor, but we don't find out what she asks for until the scene repeats itself in the next chapter. She asks Hajime to be with her when the world ends...as a joke.
• The last scene in Fate/Zero is a scene from Fate/stay night where Kiritsugu tells his son, Shirou, that he wanted to be a hero when he was a child. Seeing it in flashback reveals quite a bit about Shriou's motivation but seeing it at the end of Fate/Zero with a different soundtrack after discovering Kiritsugu's back story turns it from simple characterization to one of the most heart warming and hopeful scenes in the entire series (even with Kiritsugu basically dying at the same time).
• Final Fantasy: Unlimited: At times, Kaze flashes back to his last encounter with an unknown woman. It is revealed to be his sister, Aura, who sacrificed her body to provide Soil against Chaos.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Used to great effect when Mustang kills Maria Ross. The audience is treated to a short scene in which Mustang appears and speaks briefly before snapping his fingers - then the actual explosion is shown from a distance. The scene is shown again later in an extended format, and shows Mustang bringing out the fake corpse he created with alchemy, burning it, and rescuing Ross instead.
  • Also used in the 2003 anime while dealing with two young Ishbalans who lost their mother when Amestris attacked. The first flashback shows their dead mother looking at them, then running away, at which point the room she ran into explodes. The second flashback, after Rio learns that their mother was practically blind, shows that she was looking for them, and only ran away because she couldn't see them in front of her.
• The opening thirty seconds of Future Diary make no sense upon first viewing, especially since the poor lighting makes it impossible to tell who anyone is. When the scenes are shown again during The Reveal, the lighting and camera angles are changed and the scenes are now revealed to depict World 1 Yukkii and Yuno's failed Suicide Pact, which left Yuno as the winner of that world's survival game, and World 1 Yuno killing World 2 Yuno in order to assume her identity.
• The flashback scenes in Giant Robo: The Animation are chock full of this trope. By the end of the film, they've completely rewritten who the villain is.
• In Episode 8 of The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!, while Jahy is in the bathhouse, Saurva can be seen in the background of several shots, unnoticed by anyone. Episode 9 shows the events at the bathhouse from Saurva's perspective and reveals that, among other things, the shampoo that Jahy thought was "complementary" (and which she used about half the bottle of) was actually Saurva's. The original manga version, in Chapters 26 and 27, doesn't feature Saurva in Jahy's side of the story, so switching perspectives only reveals the origin of the shampoo.
• In Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE episode one, we see Hiroto, Kazami, May and Parviz finding a mysterious dialogue box and agree to its conditions after the person on the other side, Freddie, begs for their help. In episode 14, we see what would drive Freddie to bring them over.
• The first two episodes of Gunslinger Girl mainly cover the same events, except one focuses on the point-of-view of Jose, while the next episode has Henrietta's point-of-view adding a further nuance to her actions.
• Higurashi: When They Cry: This happens several times during the series; the biggest example would be Meakashi-hen, which is an earlier arc, replayed from the perspective of the villain (however, it should be noted that this arc's timeline is completely separate from that of Watanagashi-hen, rather the set up and events are nearly identical). This also happens during the arc after this, when Keiichi remembers killing Mion and Rena during Onikakushi-hen, and that it wasn't a syringe, but a marker, and that Rena begged for him to trust her up until he landed the final blow. This also happens to Satoko during Minagoroshi-hen when she remembers pushing her parents over the cliff herself, an incident that had previously been shown as an accident, with Satoko well out of the way.
• In the anime adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, DIO's Stand reveal is treated this way. While in the manga his time stopping ability is clearly shown for the first time against Kakyoin, the anime keeps it a secret by showing the fight from the point of view of the heroes, in real time. That's until Joseph deduces his ability by a clue left by the dying Kakyoin, after which the fight is seen again from DIO's point of view in stopped time.
• In K, a montage of this sort is shown when Shiro's true identity and the Colorless King's abilities are revealed.
• Kagerou Project:
  • The series' whole anime adaptation counts as one of these, as it puts major events from the songs, novels and manga into order, shows things that had only been hinted at before, and gives a conclusive ending. It's even lampshaded in the first scene when Ayano/The Retaining Eyes Snake in disguise tells a confused Shintaro that "Everyone's going through this, realising it bit by bit" and proceeds to tell him "The story once again, of how we met".
  • Early on in the series, Shintaro is caught up in some sort of heist at a shopping mall, only for the criminals to get mysteriously picked off one by one before the Mekakushi-dan reveal themselves. The scene is later shown again from the Mekakushi-dan's perspective, showing exactly how they did it.
  • This also happens on a smaller scale with the PVs for Children Record and Days. The former shows a scene of Azami, smiling against a dark background, implying she will play a villainous role. The Days PV shows the scene again, only this time it's against a bright background, and the context makes it clear that she's smiling because her granddaughter and her friends finally broke the cycle and ended everyone's suffering.
• Near the end of the third season of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, (even inside a spoiler tag one should know this is a huge spoiler), protagonist Yang Wen-Li dies leaving his foster son, Julian, as his successor to carry on the battle against Kaiser Reinhard. Throughout this season the ending theme showed Yang and all his friends enjoying a quiet life while Julian watched a video with a solemn expression. However in the last episode of the season after everyone comes to terms with Yang's death, the ending sequence changes to the one that was used in the first season. The first season's ending theme ends with Yang moving out of focus leaving Julian to share the screen with Reinhard. Why Julian and Reinhard shared this imagery no doubt confused viewers during the first season as Julian was a relatively minor character but when shown again over eighty episodes after it is first used, it perfectly set the tone for the rest of the series.
• In Episode 15 of Log Horizon, Isuzu tries to add Rudy to her friends list, but it doesn't work. After Rudy is killed during the goblin invasion, the scene is shown again, but this time with the revelation that Rudy is a Person of the Land (i.e. an NPC), hence why the friend request didn't work. There's also a flashback of Rudy training in the forest, as we now realize that he had to work that hard in order to overcome the limitations of being an NPC.
• Similarly, Madlax gradually expands Margaret and Madlax's flashbacks of what really happened between them twelve years ago, eventually revealing that the former is the latter's Literal Split Personality.
• Emotional example in Marginal #4 - the show begins with the titular idol unit's debut, with them preparing right before they go on stage. Episode 9 is mostly a flashback to when they first formed - they didn't get along at first, and the flashback shows how they learned to use their differences as a strength instead of a weakness, and become incredibly close friends. The end of episode 9 shows the same scene from the beginning (but with different music) and the emotion is completely different once you've seen the work that led up to it.
• The scene where Kobayashi and Tohru meet in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is shown three times. The first time in chapter 2 only shows Tohru in dragon form and with only the loosest amount of details (since Kobayashi is still suffering from a hangover while remembering it). The second time in chapter 32 shows it in much greater detail, such as why Kobayashi got so drunk, the sword wound on Tohru's back, and the full scope of the conversation that went down while Tohru is in human form. Then it's visited a third time in chapter 58 when the reader finally sees the circumstances behind how and why Tohru was wounded.
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam:
  • The Neo-Japanese government shows Domon (and the audience) how his brother Kyoji had a Face–Heel Turn, stole the Devil Gundam and killed their mother during his escape. Late in the series it's revealed that the entire thing was a lie: the government was trying to steal the Gundam, Kyoji jumped into the cockpit to keep it out of their hands (and was subsequently brainwashed by its programming), and their mother was killed trying to protect him.
  • Andrew Graham, The Neo-Canadian Fighter, hates Argo because he apparently attacked Graham's space station and tossed his wife Norma into the void. When they fight during the finals, we learn that Argo's pirate ship accidentally crashed into Andrew's, and Argo was trying to save Norma, but she lost her grip before he could get to her, which left Argo stricken with guilt ever since.
• In Monster, we see repeatedly in Nina's memories an image of Franz Bonaparta reaching towards her saying menacingly, "Humans can become anything." We later see that it was Bonaparta reaching out to Nina telling her that she and Johan must not become monsters.
• In one of the earliest chapters of Naruto, Sasuke explains that his life ambition is to kill a certain person (out of revenge) and we see a distinctive, shadowed picture of said person's face. Hundreds of chapters later, we see the face (in the exact same angle) again, as Sasuke remembers that fateful night with new clarity, and realizes that Itachi was crying out of remorse, because he massacred the Uchiha Clan (except his brother) to preserve peace and prevent a world war, and decided to take the blame for it all.
• In Noir, the flashback of Mireille's parents being murdered is expanded little by little as the heroines piece together the Ancient Conspiracy plot and discover that the killer was Kirika herself.
• One Piece:
  • We first see Ace joining Whitebeard's crew as a battered and worn down Ace is approached by Whitebeard and offered a place in his crew. This, combined with Ace's fierce loyalty to his captain suggests that Whitebeard found and took in a down-on-his-luck Ace. When we see the flashback again, we see that Ace was a successful enough pirate to be considered for the Seven Warlords of the Sea, and his beating came from Whitebeard kicking his ass when he sought out said Yonkou to kick his ass in order to claim the title of "Pirate King".
  • In chapter 721, we are shown Rebecca's Dark and Troubled Past with the Toy Soldier. We are shown Kyros's past in chapter 742, with many of the scenes in Rebecca's past altered to include him in them. The reason why he doesn't show up in Rebecca's memories is because Kyros was turned into the Toy Soldier, and the side effect is that everyone who ever knew him (or even knew of him) forgot his existence entirely. As a result of this, Rebecca is unaware that the Toy Soldier is really her father, and was never told because doing so would cause him to be tossed into the scrap heap and leave her without protection.
  • Initially, it was shown that at Roger's execution, Buggy refused to join Shanks' crew when he offered it, making it seem like Buggy was too prideful to become an underling of a former brother-in-arms. However, several hundred chapters later, the flashback is shown with more context, revealing that Buggy actually was willing to team up with Shanks, until Shanks said he didn't want to go for the One Piece. This made Buggy think Shanks was spitting on Roger's legacy, and he rescinded the offer.
• PandoraHearts has used this many, many times, to the point where we still aren't sure what really happened in many cases.
• In Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, it's eventually revealed that Melina's spirit was controlling Janice's body for most of the movie. After this reveal, flashbacks to previous scenes in the movie are shown with Melina in Janice's place.
• Done several times in The Promised Neverland, but perhaps most effectively at the climax of the Grace Field House arc. Ray reveals to Emma his plan to let the kids escape the house: He plans to set both himself and the house on fire to distract Mom while they escape, and at the same time deny the demons his prized brain. He douses himself in lighter fluid, strikes a match, and drops it as Emma screams... and the room bursts into flames. In the next chapter, after Mom frantically tries to deal with the aftermath and slowly starts to realize some things aren't adding up, we flash back to the same scene... And see that Emma actually caught the match before it fell. She knew what his plan was all along, and had prepared for it. There was a twenty minute gap in between Ray dropping the match and the room actually catching on fire, during which Emma implemented the real plan, saving Ray's life in the process.
• Madoka's dream at the beginning of Puella Magi Madoka Magica is shown again in episode 10, where we find out it's actually the events immediately preceding this timeline.
• In Persona 4: The Animation, two episodes taking place over the summer break document Yu's misadventures during that period. The first one, taking place in Nanako's perspective, seems like that Yu is dating three older women at once, one of which is a mother with a child and another is an elderly lady. Plus, Teddie takes the bus. The second episode has Yu explaining to Nanako about what he was really doing: Gathering money to pay for a new umbrella for her by taking odd jobs at the hospital, day care and tutoring. He also happened to meet said three women who became his Social Links, had to pay for a toy that wasn't broken in the first place and borrowed Teddie's costume for the day care.
• In Rakuin No Monshou the queen Marilène is first seen being cursed at by her bedridden father-in-law. The rest of the volume shows Marilène willingly married first a noble and then a mercenary who both usurped the throne from the rightful heir. All indications are she only wants to maintain her status as queen and the father-in-law was furious at her for this. The end of the volume reveals Marilène loved the kingdom and her dead husband; she wed the two men in order to act as a moderating influence and reduce the damage the people suffered. Her father-in-law was furious that his beloved daughter had chosen such a path knowing it would lead to her own execution.
• The first chapter of Suki × Suki shows Touka wishing she could just disappear after having a difficult time talking to Ryoutarou, the boy she likes, because she keeps going Tsundere around him. The next morning, she wakes up invisible and, upon realizing nobody can see or hear her, gleefully exploits the Power Perversion Potential and uses her invisibility to be close to Ryoutarou without his awareness. The second chapter shows the first chapter from Ryoutarou's viewpoint, which includes the fact that he alone can see everything Touka does while invisible.
• The first chapter of Summer Time Rendering opens with Shinpei dreaming of Ushio, who gives him an unknown gift before telling him to protect Mio. The second-to-last chapter reveals this was actually the future Shadow Ushio invoking a Stable Time Loop by giving Shinpei Haine's eye, the item needed for Shinpei to be able to erase Hiruko before she ultimately disappears.
• Tenchi Muyo! did this very interestingly - in the final episode, Tenchi finally demands to know how his mom died. Katsuhito tells an elaborate story about how his mom tended to him when he was ill and everything. As the story grows more and more elaborate, he stops himself and reveals the truth: Tenchi's mom was a horrible prankster who made even her death one big joke and even wrote a script that was to be read about her passing. Tenchi... didn't take it well.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • Inverted with the opening sequence, which actually makes less sense on a repeated viewing (since it looks like a How We Got Here opening, but doesn't actually happen in the series.)
  • Early on, Simon recounts a story where he, Kamina, and some group mates fall victim to a cave-in. Simon explains that, though everyone was panicked, Kamina’s perseverance and can-do attitude is what gave Simon the strength to dig everyone a way out. Later on, after Kamina dies, Yoko recalls the same story as Kamina told it: Kamina had all but given up on their chances of making it out of the cave, and was only able to fake his confidence because he saw Simon's resolve to keep digging.
• Bam's first test in Tower of God. At first, it defined his character and explained a whole lot about the Tower, which was climbing to find Rachel. Later on we find out that Rachel was standing mere 30 meters away from him, but completely blocked off, desperately begging him not to advance, even though he couldn't hear her. That is shown from her perspective.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V shows two different events multiple times over the course of the series, each time with more information added, and they're played entirely for Nightmare Fuel.
  • Heartland Invasion:
    • Episode 18: From Yuto's POV, he is dueling a guy on a D-Wheel in a ruined city that looks suspiciously like Heartland.
    • Episode 34: From Kurosaki's POV, we see what appears to be a city in flames, and Sora refers to the event as a "hunting game".
    • Episode 36: Once again from Yuto's POV, it's confirmed that it is Heartland, and this time we see the invaders themselves - Academia student-soldiers - and still shots of people turned into cards.
    • Episode 47: The same scene happens from Yugo's POV, revealing that he was present during the invasion, added with showing on-screen the entire carding process.
    • Episode 50: Yuto's POV, same scene, but the Academia students are laughing.
    • Episode 74: The Academia students used Antique Gear Chaos Giants to wreck the city, forcing the survivors to sneak around the ruins.
    • Episode 100: We see exactly how the invasion started, with the students carding a young couple and their infant child.
  • Ruri's kidnapping:
    • In the same flashback as episode 18, after Yugo cuts off the duel and drives off, Kurosaki shows up and asks Yuto where Ruri is, to which he shakes his head.
    • Episode 36: Yuto blames Yugo for Ruri's kidnapping, but Yugo then accuses Yuto that "he took something precious from him".
    • Episode 48: The real kidnapper was a guy named Yuri, and along with Ruri he took a girl named Rin.
    • Episode 54: We see the same flashback from Yugo's POV - not only we see Rin's kidnapping in detail, but we also see that Yugo saw Yuri - which explains how he confused him for Yuto, as they're Identical Strangers - and then Clear Wing teleported him to Heartland. Then we see Yuri hiding behind some building while Yuto and Yugo were duking it out.
    • Episode 74: We see the kidnapping from Dennis's POV; he approached Ruri before the invasion, revealed that him finding her was the signal for green-lighting it in the first place, he pointed Yuri to Ruri, and the Yuri cornered Ruri in an alley and dueled her.
    • Episode 105: We see the scene above again from Sayaka's POV, revealing that she saw the kidnapping but was too terrified to help.
• Zombie Land Saga starts with protagonist Sakura excitedly rushing off to apply to become an idol, only to be hit by a truck, killed, and resurrected as a zombie. For a while, Sakura's only pre-mortem memory is of seeing Ai in concert, but then in Episode 11 she regains her memories and we learn that Sakura had spent her life failing at everything she tried due to twists of bad luck, and had fallen into depression until seeing Ai on TV inspired her to become an idol. The clip of her rushing off is played again, this time with Sakura declaring "I'll give it one last try!" Back in the present, remembering how that "one last try" ended for her is enough to push Sakura beyond the Despair Event Horizon and convince her that anything she does will end in failure.

Comic Books

• Captain America: Issues #153-156 used this trope to recanonize, explain, and deconstruct the "Commie Smasher" run. If Cap was a Human Popsicle at the time and Bucky was presumed dead, then how were they running around fighting Dirty Communists in The '50s? A Captain America Loony Fan named William Burnside injected him and Jack Monroe, a kid who shared his obsession with Cap, with a recreated Super Serum. Why was he so out-of-character? Again, because he isn't the real Steve Rogers, and doesn't share or understand the real Steve's values. The Black-and-White Morality of these comics? The serum they used was dangerously flawed and caused them to go insane and view anyone who wasn't a flag waving 'Murican nationalist as a commie. Those stories where the "villains" were civil rights protesters? These were racist violence; the Sanity Slippage caused by the crappy serum exacerbated racist viewpoints, leading to them attacking innocent Hispanics and African-Americans.
• Green Lantern: In a comic book tie-in to Green Lantern (2011), the Green Lantern Corps decide to read an unconscious Hal Jordan's memories to see what kind of man he is. The first memory they see shows him punch out his superior officer and roar that he quits. Sinestro is disgusted and "pauses" the "footage", saying Hal is obviously unfit to be a Green Lantern before storming out of the room. Tomar Re has a little more faith and plays the memory again. It turns out that the superior officer was sexually harassing a girl. Hal stopped him and quit because he could not possibly work for such a scumbag.
• Jupiter Jet: Chapter 1 begins with a scene of Jacky bursting into a blimp piloted by a mobster, disarming him with a ball (complete with witty remarks), and casually walking out with the briefcase of money in hand. Then we find out that, in reality, she was holding onto the door frame for dear life to avoid getting sucked out of the blimp, and jumped to grab the briefcase full of money when it fell out.
• New Avengers (2015): Issue 3 has a scene where Songbird visits Sunspot, and informs him about a tracking device she has that she could barely notice even with her powers, only for them to pause awkwardly when S.H.I.E.L.D.'s "secret" spy Hawkeye enters the room. Issue 15 reveals she and Roberto already knew about the devices, which they were going to use to spy on S.H.I.E.L.D., and the whole conversation was filled with double meaning, until Hawkeye's appearance required them to make stuff up.
• Nightwing: The 2022 Nightwing (Infinite Frontier) annual opens with the death of the Flying Graysons, and a first person narrator saying he'd never forget the look on the boy's face as they fell. We then flash further back to establish that this narrator is Gerald Chamberlain, the butler to a rich couple and the confident of their withdrawn son, Shelton Lyle, who is a sadistic monster. We then flash back further than that to establish he's actually a murderous identity thief, who gets on with Shelton because he shares his sadism. All of which leads back to the death of the Graysons, with Chamberlain and Shelton in the audience. And Chamberlain means he'll never forget the look on Shelton's face, which is one of sheer delight at seeing two people die and their son's life ruined, and which encourages him to help Shelton explore his sadism even further.
• Paperinik New Adventures:
  • The very first issue opens with the Evrons invading Xerba, the sequence ending with an unidentified shadowed Xerbian crying a Big "NO!". Issue 0/3, titled Xadhoom, shows the final panel with more clarity: it was Xadhoom herself, who had just discovered what the treaty she had signed with the Evrons had allowed to happen while she got her powers. The entire invasion, from the signing of the treaty to what happened immediately before the Big "NO!", was later shown in a special issue.
  • The Xerbians gave us this kind of scene again: issue 19 has a derelict Xerbian ship in the rings of Saturn and a recorded message from her captain, saying of how they were trying to warn Earth of the impending Evron threat but had been intercepted by an Evron cruiser. The special dedicated to the invasion shows how it happened, making clear they hadn't been found by the Evron fleet preparing to invade Earth but by a pursuing ship from Xerba, and the captain actually recording the message.
• The Transformers (IDW): The series often uses this, with flashbacks or events from previous issues being replayed but from different perspectives. The most significant example is when Onyx Prime is revealed to actually be a time-displaced Shockwave; the next issue is a Whole Episode Flashback recapping the backstory of the series, only this time we see it all from Shockwave’s perspective in the Stable Time Loop, causing numerous events to take on new meaning.
• X-Men:
  • A major part of Bishop's backstory is discovering a garbled tape of Jean Grey talking about a traitor within the X-Men's ranks. As a result of it being garbled, Bishop had assumed that Professor X was among the first to die and Jean was saying that the team shouldn't have trusted one of their own (Bishop suspected Gambit as a man called the Witness, who was the last person to see the X-Men alive, resembled and acted like him). The crossover, Onslaught, incorporated this into the Onslaught: X-Men one-shot that kicked off the crossover, revealing that Jean was really talking about Xavier's dark side becoming the titular villain, that she suspected Juggernaut had died in Onslaught's rampage (he hadn't), that they should have realized that Xavier's mindwipe of Magneto in the Fatal Attractions crossover might come back to haunt them (which it did, given it gave way to Onslaught), and that Jean wasn't actually killed when the tape ended.
  • An issue of Astonishing X-Men shows the team reacting to Cyclops' plan to sacrifice himself covering the team's escape. In the next issue, we see that scene again, but this time we get to see the secret telepathic discussion they were having at the same time, and what the real plan was.
  • Powers of X #1 opened with a sequence taking place a decade ago, in which Professor X has his first meeting with Moira MacTaggert, culminating with what Marvel hyped up as "the most important scene in the history of the X-Men". In the book, Xavier had never met Moira before, but Moira clearly knows all about him and invites him to read her mind. The true significance of the scene, however, wasn't apparent until House of X #2 was released the following week, which revealed that Moira, previously thought to be an ordinary human, was actually a mutant all along, having lived nine previous lives through Born-Again Immortality by this point. At the end of the issue, the last two pages of Powers of X #1's opening were rerun, the reader now having new context from what came before.

Fan Works

• Always Visible: If you read act zero AFTER the main three, it turns out that the episode when Delia reads a fairy tale at apartment of Jo's friend is repeated twice in the work, only if in the second act a brief synopsis is given, then in act zero it is told in detail about this.
• Chapter 10 of Calvin and Hobbes: The Movie revisits some early moments in the story, revealing that the aliens were manipulating things all along.
• Cutie Mark Crusaders 10k: Twilight grabbing Pinkie Pie with a greatly-extended arm after letting her library get broken into initially shows up in Lulamoon. The Lost revisits the scene after elaborating on Twilight's order to leave her stuff alone and what she was doing when she found out her books were taken, down to showing Scootaloo watching the grab happen in the distance again.
• In Mass Effect 2 AU Lanius, after "beating" its take on Lair of the Shadow Broker, "new content" is "unlocked", showing certain scenes in a new light. The author advises readers to reread the story with the new content in mind.
• In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, during the climax, Harry is trapped in a graveyard surrounded by Death Eaters, calmly looking around at the wizards who are waiting for the kill order. In the next chapter, we learn that the only reason he was looking at them was so he could wrap an infinitely thin metal thread around their necks and pull. Due to time travel, several of these happen across the story. The only one we don't get this for is the one where Harry tries to make his future self solve a math problem and send the solution back to him.
• Chapter 32 of Son of the Sannin begins with a flashforward to the end of the arc that shows Naruto and Sasuke fighting, this time as actual enemies, with a strong implication that the latter has pulled a Face–Heel Turn. When the story reaches that moment in Chapter 39, it's shown that Naruto had been Kotoamatsukami-brainwashed by Obito, and Sasuke is trying to dispel the mind control.
• The Danganronpa fanfic Fractured Fates begins with the protagonist, Hana, being woken up by one of her classmates after having passed out in a hallway. The reason she passed out is unknown, but it is implied to have something to do with her having found something in a nearby room with blood on the floor. Later, this scene is revealed to have been a flashforward to the beginning of Chapter 1's Deadly Life. The scene is repeated word-for-word, only now with the context of Hana having just discovered the body of Mikio Nakamura and passing out in the hallway due to the shock and horror.
• Quizzical: Sunflower and Quizzical have a meeting first in "I'll Take That One.", and published later, is Sunflower's titular chapter of Wonderful, which expands on that meeting.
• The original Fear Effect opens with an FMV depicting funeral procession, with numerus hooded mourners being led by a young girl, before a mysterious, one-armed person in the shadows suddenly kills the girl from behind via Slashed Throat. The game then starts and you later find out the young girl is Wee Ming, the daughter of a powerful triad boss you're supposed to abduct, only for the game's later events to reveal Wee Ming to be an Apocalypse Maiden. Also, the one-armed assailant turns out to be Royce Glas, one of your player heroes, trying to stop Wee Ming from completing a ritual by murdering her, and that the hooded mourners are actually demons from hell.
• In the Five Nights at Freddy's fanfic, Something Always Remains, Bonnie Wickes' death is shown twice: the first time, we see it in the Puppet's perspective, where it looks like an accident that the Smiling Man took advantage of. The second time, it's in Spring Bonnie's perspective, with the additional information that the suit had been tampered with the night before, and Bonnie's death was deliberate.
• King (MHA): Katsuki starts out being haunted by fleeting flashes of the torched wick of a torso; however, the incident traumatized him so badly that he's unable to focus enough to fully recall what happened. It's not until after Fujimori has finished helping him that we get a full Flashback revealing more of what happened.
• For the Glory of Irk:
  • Chapter 33 revisits most of the Syndicate's infiltration of the Massive, from earlier in the story, from CB's point of view, showing what he was up to while separated from the rest of the group.
  • Chapter 62 does something similar, revisiting the previous two chapters from CB's POV, thereby fully exploring the events surrounding his Fake Defector gambit.

Films — Animated

• Brother Bear: The film's plot kicks off when Kenai is transformed into a bear after he kills the one he blames for his brother Sitka's death. Much later, Kenai listens to Koda's story about how he got separated from his mother, and he soon realizes that she and the bear he killed were one and the same.
• Done twice in The Bad Guys (2022):
  • When Marmalade calls Mr. Wolf "such a good boy", Mr. Wolf flashes back to everything leading up to the Charity Gala event, and pieces together Marmalade's true intention to steal the meteorite and have the gang take the fall. An alternate angle of the old lady is shown, revealing her to be Marmalade in disguise.
  • When Chief Luggins points out that the "meteorite" is actually a lamp, Mr. Snake's actions in the third act are shown in a flashback, this time from his perspective and revealing his real intentions to sabotage Marmalade's plot from within.
• The Emperor's New Groove: The opening shot is Kuzco-as-llama sobbing in the rain, with Kuzco-as-human promising to explain How We Got Here. While he initially looks pathetic and victimized, all his jerkassery comes to light over the course of the film, leading Llama Kuzco to cut off his voiceover self when we arrive back at the present, because he's realized he deserved everything he's gone through.
• Encanto:
  • At the beginning, Abuela Alma tells Mirabel the story of how the Encanto came to be, portraying it as a miracle born out of tragedy but keeping vague about many details. After the climax, when Alma is reconciling with Mirabel after their argument, she retells the story in all its heartbreaking detail, revealing how much of the tragedy hadn't been included before.
  • The movie starts with the young Mirabel at her ceremony as she steps forward to her glowing door, ready to receive her gift, but the screen whites out right when she touches the knob. During Antionio's ceremony a while later, the same scene is shown as a flashback, but continues from the point Mirabel touches the knob; instead of receiving her gift, the door mysteriously disappears out of existence, resulting in her being the only Madrigal child with no magic.
• Hoodwinked! does this to great effect, between the four characters' overlapping stories. In a sense, it's an Invoked Trope, as Detective Nicky Flippers is questioning them in order to get to the bottom of how the four of them ended up in the situation they were found in.
• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: When Emmet describes his nightmare at the beginning of the movie, Wyldstyle is screaming Emmet's name, apparently in distress and crying out for Emmet to save her. Then when the nightmare becomes true, we realize that the Wyldstyle from Emmet's dream was actually screaming Emmet's name in horror, because it was Emmet himself who caused Armamageddon.
• In Loving Vincent, several scenes are repeated and made more clear from another's perspective. For instance, some in Auvers assume Vincent and Dr. Gachet quarreled over Vincent's friendship with Marguerite - but the doctor later reveals the fight was over his own artistic pretensions.
• In Meet the Robinsons, the opening scene shows baby Lewis being left on the doorstep of an orphanage. At one point the mother hears somebody behind her, but turns to see nobody there; then we cut to the inside of the orphanage as somebody is knocking on the door. Near the end of the movie we learn that the person the mother heard, and the one who knocked, is a Time Traveling twelve-year-old Lewis, ultimately deciding not to confront his birth mother and change history.
• A variant happens in Pooh's Grand Adventure. Near the end of the film it is revealed that the characters' and audience's perception was distorted to make everything seem bigger and scarier than it really was. As the characters travel back home, the audience then gets to see what many of the places they had gone through actually looked like. For example, a dark forest of giant thorns and carnivorous plants was actually a beautiful rose garden, and a seemingly bottomless gorge had a bottom that was so close to the top that falling would have had very few lasting consequences.
  Christopher Robin: Well, things can seem that way when we're alone, or afraid. Or so I'm told.
• Puss in Boots (2011) has a humorous version of this, with The Reveal of the Big Bad's identity being accompanied by several shots of previous scenes, revealing that he was present in each one to increasingly absurd degrees.
  Humpty: You never knew it, Puss, but I was always there there there there.
• Thomas & Friends: Blue Mountain Mystery: Luke's flashback showing the reason why he's in hiding: He accidentally knocked the yellow engine on the barge with him into the ocean when being loaded onto the tracks. When Thomas visits Victor who reveals he was the yellow engine, the same flashback was told from Victor's perspective, but shows more detail on what really happened — specifically the shackles holding him in place were old and rusted, and it wasn't technically Luke's fault for knocking him off.
• In Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast, an encounter between Tink and Gruff is shown twice, first from Fawn's POV, and then Tink's, which adds important context.
• In Zootopia, when Judy overhears one of the Big Bad's Mooks talking about how he had shot Emmitt Otterton with the serum, the audience is treated to Reveal Shots showing how both Emmitt and Manchas were targeted; the latter is a quintessential example of the trope, since it shows something the audience was deliberately kept from seeing the first time (the panther getting shot through the window, previously blocked by the closed door).

Films — Live-Action

• This is a staple of Christopher Nolan films:
  • Memento pretty much runs on this trope due to its reverse chronology: the end of each scene establishes the context of the previous scene. The most notable use of this is when Natalie walks in bruised, and tells Leonard she was attacked by a man named Dodd. She'd actually goaded Leonard into hitting her, then walked out, waited for him to forget what had happened, and walked back in again.
  • The opening scene of Inception makes no sense the first time you see it. It's played again later in the film, at which point all becomes perfectly clear. (Or as clear as this film ever makes anything, anyway; it's that kind of film). Fairly early on in the film, there is a scene of Cobb and Mal walking through Limbo together, holding hands. It's shown once more near the ending, during Cobb's final confrontation with Mal's shade. When she reminds him that he promised they'd grow old together, he simply says "But we did, don't you remember?" The scene from the beginning then plays again... with the Cobb and Mal we're familiar with replaced by significantly older versions.
  • The Dark Knight Rises has the story of Bane's escape from a nightmarish prison he grew up in, helped by a protector who fought off other prisoners so Bane could attempt an escape. Very close to the end of the movie Batman finally learns that it wasn't Bane who escaped, it was Talia Al Ghul, and Bane was the protector. The child shown in the flashback has no discernible gender, so it's easy to just assume it's a boy.
  • The early parts of Interstellar are spliced in with interviews with elderly people, supposedly on how life was during the Clutch Plague and 1930s Dust Bowl. The ending scenes reveal that those interviews were part of a museum exhibit on a space station about the early parts of the film, which are set in the future.
  • The chronologically later parts of Oppenheimer hinge on a conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein. When first seen from Strauss' observer perspective, Strauss bitterly notes that Einstein gave him the stink-eye afterwards and concludes that Oppenheimer is turning scientists against him. Near the end, when the conversation is shown from Oppenheimer's perspective, it's shown that they were actually discussing the impact of Oppenheimer's research and the latter's public image.
• Adrift (2018): Several of the scenes of Tami taking care of Richard are shown again after it's shown she was hallucinating him the entire time, showing her talking to an empty bed.
• This happens four times in Anna, with the film flashing back to show earlier scenes in a brand-new context. The first occurs after Anna shoots Oleg, revealing how she came to be a KGB agent and just how long she's been planning Oleg's assassination; the second occurs after Anna shoots Vassiliev, revealing that she was recruited by the CIA during one of her missions; the third occurs during the climax, showing how and when Anna procured data from both agencies that she's holding as a Dead Man's Switch; and the fourth occurs after Olga seemingly kills her, revealing she knew about the plot to kill Vassiliev, let it happen so she could obtain a Klingon Promotion, and faked Anna's death out of gratitude.
• During the celebration at the end of The Art of the Steal after Nicky has been arrested, Crunch explains to a confused Francie how The Con really went down, along with flashbacks showing what Francie thought he saw and what really happened.
• Happens frequently in Atonement to show Briony's misinterpretation of the events that occur.
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Each short film in the anthology is preceding by an illustration and caption of something that happens in the story. Once the moment comes in the story, the viewer has all the context, and the illustration makes sense.
• Barbie (2023): When Barbie is plagued by negative thoughts that are coming from the unhappy child who is playing with her in the real world, she decides to go there in hopes of finding her and cheering her up. In one scene, she meditates and has a vision of a girl named Sasha going from a bright and playful little girl to a sullen pre-teen who ignores her mother (shown as The Faceless). A little later, Barbie finds out that the one who needs her is actually Sasha's mother Gloria, a Mattel designer who copes with her unhappiness by drawing depressed Barbie dolls; the vision montage replays, now framed differently to show Gloria (now with her face shown) growing sad as her daughter drifts away from her.
• In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, the eponymous time-travellers meet their one-day-older selves and have a brief conversation. Later in the film, we see the same conversation again from the older versions' point of view. The characters even comment that it made a lot more sense the second time.
• The opening scene of Carlito's Way is repeated at the end, and you realize that the first scene means almost exactly the opposite of what you thought. The opening scene shows Carlito getting shot, but he seems determined and confident that he'll survive and be just fine. The ending shows that after a brief period of either defiance or denial (or both) Carlito accepts that he's actually dying, and takes a minute to think over his life and wish his girlfriend well as the end approaches.
• Cate Blanchett lampshades this while talking in the behind-the-scenes features for Carol. The first scene is actually near the end of the timeline of the movie. As seen from a minor character's view, it's a relatively benign, if chilly, dinner between two gal pals. When you see it again, knowing the depth and intensity of Carol and Therese's affair, the awkwardness becomes tension charging the air like a lightning rod.
• Clue devotes the entire last half of the movie to a protracted rehashing of the first half. It's still awesome.
• Colour of the Truth, a Hong Kong crime-thriller film, starts with a flashback of what appears to be the protagonist's father, a cop, being betrayed and killed alongside another cop by his superintendent, who gets away with a promotion due to lack of proof. But when the grown-up protagonist, becoming a cop himself, works under the superintendent and forms a team to mutually take down their common enemy, it's then revealed what actually happened; his father is another corrupt cop himself, who tried killing the partner and the superintendent, only to be shot himself in the process.
• In The Conversation, a surveillance expert investigates a recorded conversation between two suspects. The meaning of the conversation changes radically as he discovers more information. Specifically, the difference between "He'd kill us if he got the chance" and "He'd kill us if he got the chance".
• Cyborg has several short flashbacks throughout the film, showing how Gibson met his love interest and briefly retired from his life as a mercenary who fights bandits and pirates. Each one of these flashbacks, however, ends on an ominous note, hinting at the events that Fender, the leader of arguably the most vicious and evil pirate gang plaguing the world After the End, did to Gibson that caused him to go after Fender in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. When Gibson is in the middle of his Darkest Hour, the prior flashbacks get played again, all together this time to form a narrative instead of disjointed hints and implications, and we finally get to see exactly what Fender did.
• Death Note: In the epilogue, Light is in a hospital bed having just woken up from a coma. He explains to his father how he used the Death Note to save himself, cause Mia's death, absolve his name, retrieve the Death Note and get two more criminals killed along the way.
• The Decalogue: Short Film About Love combines this with Bookends. The opening scene shows someone's bandaged wrist, a hand reaching out to touch it, and third hand stopping it, but you have to watch the entire movie to find out why.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: The introductory scenes show Joel and Clementine meeting aboard a train for the first time. When the film shows their relationship degrading, it's assumed that this scene was simply the start of the relationship possibly several years earlier. The scene is replayed later once both have had their memories wiped but realizing they had made a mistake and wanted to stay together, and so we can realize why they are on the train, why Clementine is being so extroverted and flirtatious with Joel, and why Joel doesn't understand the Huckleberry Hound reference.
• In Ex Machina, during one scene Caleb witnesses Nathan tearing up one of Ava's drawings on the security feed. Towards the climax of the film, Nathan shows Caleb the same footage again, but this time reveals that he'd torn the drawing up not out of genuine malice, but to subtly nudge Ava and Caleb towards plotting an escape, this being the true test of Ava's AI. Not only that, he had also surreptitiously installed a battery-proof camera into the room, allowing him to record what happens during the blackouts, something neither Ava, Caleb, nor indeed the audience had noticed the first time round.
• The seemingly Bittersweet Ending of The Fifth Commandment implies that Chance's mentor, Jazzman, had shown up in the last minute to shoot his pupil/surrogate son dead to Leave No Witnesses, but after a Time Skip near the end where Angel is shown to be a successful singer, comes a quick flashback to the night three years earlier; as it turns out, Jazzman did point his gun at Chance, but the gunshots are Jazzman shooting Z, the Big Bad, before he can sneak upon Chance. He then allows Chance to leave while surrendering himself to the police outside.
• Fight Club: During the reveal that the two main characters are the same person, there is a series of flashbacks, some taking on new meaning, while others play out differently, showing how they really went down now that the viewer knows the secret.
• The first half of The Handmaiden shows Sookee working together with Fujiwara to con Lady Hideko into marrying the latter. Then the second half of the film shows the events from Hideko's perspective and we learn that not only was Sookee actually the one being conned by Fujiwara and Hideko, but she and Hideko eventually teamed up together to con Fujiwara.
• The plot of Hero revolves around this, retelling the same story three times, the first being Nameless' fake story, the second being the Emperor's take on what really happened, and the third finally revealing what actually happened. They even include a visual cue by having the characters wear different color-coded clothes in each retelling.
• In The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Bilbo Baggins is trying to fetch the Arkenstone, which is hidden amongst the golden hoard guarded by Smaug the dragon. When Smaug gets bored toying with Bilbo, he tries to kill him, and Bilbo books it; in the next movie The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, a flashback to the encounter reveals that he did indeed manage to snatch the Arkenstone as he was running.
• Hot Fuzz gets to do this more than once. Once with Sergeant Angel's proposed reasoning behind Simon Skinner being behind the murders and then again with the actual reasoning as explained by the real murderers, the entire Neighborhood Watch.
• Identity: Once the killer's identity is revealed, we get a montage of them committing (directly or not) their murders, culminating in an Unflinching Walk.
• The Illusionist depicts Inspector Uhl's concluding "Eureka!" Moment this way, with a montage of flashbacks to key moments from the investigation, intercut with shots of Uhl's amazement, awe, and eventual applause for what a feat of deception Eisenheim and Sophie pulled off.
• Incendies: An early scene from Jeanne's point of view has her discover her mother, sitting catatonic on a lounge chair beside a pool. At the end of the film, we get the scene from the mother's point of view, revealing what happened just beforehand that left her in that state.
• A partial example in Judas Kiss, in that the scenes had not actually been shown but had been alluded to by the characters. However, when the hideout is invaded by Senator Hornbeck's thugs, Coco has flashbacks to her actual conversations with Junior in planning the kidnapping. With the benefit of hindsight (and with the audience hearing the actual discussion for the first time), she realises that Junior had been manipulating her the entire time to place her in a position where she would be forced to shoot Becky.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, Arthur invites Eggsy for a drink after Harry's death, and Eggsy asks a question about one of the paintings in the room, prompting Arthur to glance at over at and provide a short answer. Soon afterward a brief flash of the scene is shown again, but this time Eggsy is shown switching out their drinks while Arthur is distracted by the paintings.
  • Savvy viewers would have realised, that's what Eggsy was doing in the first place.
• Knives Out and its sequel:
  • In Knives Out we see most of the flashbacks from multiple perspectives, gradually building an increasingly ugly picture of both the Thrombeys as a group and the last night of Harlan's life. One notable moment is a shot of Marta being beckoned over to the Thrombeys, used to set up the idea of her being like one of the family; later, we cut back to it in context and see that they were calling her over because they were having a political argument, and her status as an immigrant was convenient for point-scoring.
  • Glass Onion may have set some kind of record. The twist recontextualises the entire first half of the movie, and we see a lot of scenes from Helen's perspective with the information she's gathering being added to the context.
    • When Andi first arrives on the boat, she stands by the railing staring out to sea with a cold expression, which makes everyone wonder why she even came along - she even twists her hand on the railing, seemingly out of rage. The second time around, we know that Helen gets seasick and is trying not to throw up while not breaking character.
    • Immediately after the boat gets to Miles' island, Andi tells Blanc he has something on his shoe, making him stop to fix it. When we see it again, it's Helen holding him back so they can talk one more time before their plan begins.
    • Shortly before dinner, Andi goes on a furious tirade against everyone present, pointing out that the only thing that unites all of them is that they're traitors who are sucking up to Miles for personal gain. When we see it from Helen's perspective, we learn that the reason she got so furious was that she was drunk off her ass.
    • The second time we see a furious Duke watch his girlfriend sleep with Miles, we know that he's not mad that she's cheating; he's pushing her into the relationship and is mad that she hasn't managed to get him the Alpha News anchor slot he wanted.
    • After dinner, Andi furiously provokes the other Disruptors into confessing why they lied, prompting Duke to give her a furious "The Reason You Suck" Speech calling her a loser and prompting her to leave the room. Helen's perspective reveals that she intentionally picked a fight so that she would lose, meaning no one would follow her when she left the room to search the building for evidence.
    • Just before his death, Duke calls Miles over to show him the results from his latest video, saying that it changes everything and should make him Alpha News material; Miles agrees, and they hug it out. Later on, we see the scene again and see that Duke's phone actually had a news article about Andi's death; Duke had figured out that Miles killed her and was blackmailing him without tipping off everyone else.
    • A double subverted example during the murder scene; the first time we see it, we see Miles hand Duke the drink that will kill him, but when Miles supposedly sees the empty glass Duke drank from, we see a fake version of the scene showing Miles put the glass down before Duke picks it up, implying that Miles was the intended target. During The Summation, we see the interaction a third time and clearly see that Miles handed him the poisoned drink, just like we saw it the first time if you pay attention.
    • Near the end of the movie, Blanc tells Helen there's nothing he can do to get Miles arrested now that he's destroyed the evidence, and all she can do is remember why Andi wanted to leave him in the first place. A few minutes later, we see that as he said this, he handed her the piece of Klear that Miles gave him earlier, which gives her the idea to blow the entire building up and destroy the Mona Lisa.
• In Last Christmas, after Kate finds out that Tom is a ghost, we see a montage of previous events and how they looked from an outsider's perspective.
• Near the climax of the 2016 film Lavender, the protagonist realizes that a number of her interactions throughout the film have involved hallucinations (possibly created by the ghosts of her family), and the movie quickly runs through a montage of them to show what really happened. For example, in an earlier scene, she entered an antique store with a clerk who looked exactly like her mother and saw a preserved newspaper with the headline story being about the murders of her family, but it turns out that those images were hallucinations that she saw in place of what was really in front of her; when she recalls the scene as it actually happened, the viewer sees that the real clerk looked nothing like her mother and the article was about something else entirely.
• Looper does this in an interesting, roundabout way, befitting a movie all about the Timey-Wimey Ball. First, we see Joe preparing to close his loop, only for his future self to appear unbound and escape, after which Joe returns to his apartment and is knocked out. The "loop closing" scene plays again, only this time Joe shoots his future self, and we see the timeline play out like it was supposed to, with Joe retiring and spending 30 years in China before he’s captured to be sent back in time. Then, we see the moment Old Joe decides to Screw Destiny by fighting off his kidnappers and going back himself. At that point, the "loop closing" scene plays yet again, this time from Old Joe’s perspective, showing how he changed the past and made his way to Young Joe's apartment.
• Lucky Number Slevin:
  • The opening of the movie where the bookies and Nick are killed. It turns out Slevin killed the bookies to find the common denominator between both The Boss and The Rabbi, and Nick is killed for the alibi, and he was an Asshole Victim.
  • The story Goodkat says to Nick in the beginning is the crux of the whole movie.
• Done frequently in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), to show off how Solo pulls off his various tricks. Also done when Gaby sells him and Illya out to the villains: we don't see what she's saying at first, nor do we see why Illya is suddenly running from a pack of dogs.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man, when Tony is taken captive, we see members of the Ten Rings recording a video with Tony. Pepper later finds the video among Stane's files and translates the speech, revealing that Stane was the intended recipient, with the Ten Rings angry at not being told their target was Tony himself and demanding a higher price for killing him.
  • A scene that is shown in The Stinger of Iron Man 2 is actually a scene taken directly from the movie Thor, which was released a year after Iron Man 2.
  • Captain America: The First Avenger's stinger of Steve Rogers working out his frustrations on punching bags and meeting up with Nick Fury is revisited in The Avengers.
  • And again, the stinger of Ant-Man is revealed to be a scene from Captain America: Civil War, although the rough context of the scene was pretty easy to guess.
  • The opening scene of Captain America: Civil War shows the Winter Soldier on a mission in 1991 to cause a car accident and grab some important looking blood bags. It is expanded on throughout the film and becomes a critical plot point, firstly with the revelation that the blood bags contained the Super Soldier serum and were used to create other Winter Soldiers and then with the bigger revelation that the people in the car were Howard and Maria Stark, and the Winter Soldier murdered them.
  • The post-credits scene for Doctor Strange (2016) sees Strange meeting with Thor and agreeing to help find Odin as long as the Asgardians leave Earth immediately afterwards. As before, this is a scene straight out of Thor: Ragnarok, with Thor and Loki coming to Earth to retrieve Odin (whom Loki had hidden on Earth so he could rule Asgard in his place). Strange gets their attention by dropping Loki through a portal and leaving a business card for Thor.
  • The Cold Open in Black Panther (2018) begins with a flashback in Oakland, 1992 where N'Jobu and his partner James are working in a hotel room, while a group of kids are playing basketball outside. King T'Chaka confronts his brother N'Jobu for betraying Wakanda by helping Ulysses Klaue steal their Vibranium, and also reveals that "James" is really a spy named Zuri he sent after him. Halfway during the movie, Zuri tells T'Challa the full version of what happened that night: N'Jobu took an undercover job in Oakland and had a son named Erik, who happens to be one of the kids playing outside. He betrayed Wakanda because he hated their country's isolation and wanted the outside world to have Vibranium too. After hearing he'll be arrested for his crimes, N'Jobu draws his gun to kill Zuri forcing T'Chaka to kill his own brother in self-defence. T'Chaka and Zuri then return to Wakanda, abandoning Erik to fend for himself in the streets of Oakland. Needless to say, T'Challa is understandably horrified at what his father had done.
  • Captain Marvel (2019) opens with Vers, the Amnesiac Hero, having a strange dream: she's crashed in an unknown landscape with a woman she doesn't recognize, and a mysterious male figure is threatening them. Gradually, she learns this is how her Alien Abduction went down. The older woman is Mar-Vell, her mentor, who was killed right after by the threatening man, Yon-Rogg. In the fight, she tried to destroy the MacGuffin so her mentor's killer wouldn't get access to it, but instead she became imbued with its power. Realizing what had happened, Yon-Rogg and his crew took her back to their home planet, stole her memories, and conditioned her into being a soldier in their war. Needless to say, she isn't happy when she learns the whole truth.
• Minutemen: The opening scene shows Derek being somewhat regretful over Charlie and Virgil's humiliation. When Virgil travels back in time, we (and Virgil) see that Derek actually encouraged the humiliation instead of merely not lifting a finger.
• In Mirage, while Amnesiac Hero David Stillwell is being chased all over New York City by assassins, he occasionally flashes back to a scene of two men standing in a park under a tree. It's only at his second visit to psychiatrist Dr. Broden that he grasps the full context. It was himself and his deceased mentor Charles Calvin discussing the impact of his radiation-neutralizing formula (the film's MacGuffin) in front of his working place, the radiation lab in California.
• In Mulholland Dr., the phone call chain early on that ends in an unknown dark room lid by a red lampshade. Later we learn that this is Diane's place as we see her she answer the call.
• Russian two-parter Ne Budite Spyashchuyu Sobaku ("Don't wake up a sleeping dog") is built on that trope: first part is a fairly straightforward story about a petty criminal trying to avoid being investigated; he finally succeeds by reaching very high and bribing (with almost everything he has) a minister's personal assistant. Second part reveals that nothing is what it seems: he was specifically targeted by that "personal assistant", who wanted to extort a bribe from him. And that guy faked all signs of the ongoing investigation. And he is not a personal assistant, but a hardened criminal. And the minister is actually a hired actor. And both the victim's mistress and his best friend actually work for the "personal assistant". And...
• Ocean's Eleven does this to show how the crew pulled off the robbery, though not without a major plot hole. There is no explanation for how the fliers, that were used to simulate the money, got into the vault. It's not as if a casino would actually store those inside its vault in the amount required for that diversion.
• One Cut of the Dead might as well be called Once More, with Clarity!: the Movie. The film opens with the filming of a low-budget zombie movie in an abandoned water treatment facility, which is then interrupted by an actual Zombie Apocalypse, but the crazed director demands that they keep shooting the film. This is then revealed to be a Show Within a Show filmed and broadcast live, and the final act of behind-the-scenes footage shows how all the horror scenes are executed and how in some cases, a lot of improvisation was needed. Fittingly, the horror movie is in found footage form and the behind the scenes is shot as a conventional film.
• In Paycheck, Michael agrees to work for James Rethrick, an old college roommate and the CEO of a successful company, for a period of two years, at which point his memory would be wiped, and he'd be able to retire on the money Rethrick paid him. He then awakens in Rethrick's office, with James tellin him, "Michael, you're done". Michael, of course, assumes he's talking about the 2-year job, which he no longer remembers. Later on, though, when he realizes Rethrick wants him dead, he flashbacks to that scene, and now "you're done" sounds much more sinister.
• In the 1994 Clint Eastwood movie A Perfect World, the first scene has an idyllic image of Kevin Costner lying on his back in a field in a sunny day. The last scene is the same — but with the addition of one or two important details that the first scene left out...
• In The Perfection, Charlotte and Lizzie are on a trip to China together when Lizzie develops a mysterious illness that causes bugs to crawl around inside her arm - Lizzie hands her a meat cleaver to cut her hand off, ruining her budding career as a violinist. The film then literally rewinds to the beginning of the sequence, from Charlotte's point of view. She drugged Lizzie (giving her her mother's old medication instead of ibuprofen) and encouraged her hallucinations, getting her to hurt herself.
• A couple of scenes in Predestination are shown a second time from a different perspective which changes the meaning of the scene.
  • The opening Bomb Disposal sequence is revisited later, when we see that the Barkeeper was the mysterious man pushing the violin case towards the man on the ground who turns out to be John.
  • Both the kidnapping of baby Jane and the following Doorstop Baby dropping scenes are shown twice. The second time it is revealed that the Mysterious Stranger who snatched the baby was the Barkeeper.
  • The park bench scene where Jane's lover disappears from her life is shown again later where we learn that the mysterious lover was John who then vanishes via time travel device.
• The Red Violin repeatedly shows the same scene of an auction over the titular item, interspersed with flashbacks about its history. Each time we come back we see the auction get a little farther along, but now with new context about why the various bidders want it. The end of the movie reveals who won it, as well as the fact that it's a MockGuffin, Morritz having stolen the original for himself.
• In The Ring, Rachel watches an interview of Samara Morgan recorded at the mental institution she was placed in. Then, after Noah's death, Rachel remembers the video with a less than minor change in tone...
  Psychiatrist: You don't want to hurt anyone.
  Samara: But I do [hurt people], and I'm sorry... it won't stop.
  
  Psychiatrist: You don't want to hurt anyone.
  Samara: But I do [want to hurt people]... and I'm sorry... it won't stop.
• As well as some flashbacks that build up on previously-seen events, the Saw series does this at just about the end of every film, usually to detail how Jigsaw or another villain has put one over on their opponents. When the "Hello Zepp" Leitmotif starts playing, you know things are going From Bad to Worse.
• The Shawshank Redemption features a scene in which Andy leaves the warden's office and returns to his cell. Someone seeing it for the first time is likely to believe that Andy is planning to kill himself. Only a few minutes later, the sequence is shown again with a few more details showing how he was putting his escape plan into action.
• Shazam starts with a scene where young Billy Batson gets separated from his mother at a carnival, which leads to him being put into foster care since the police can't locate her. Toward the end of the movie, we see the scene again, without five-year-old Billy's rose-colored glasses. His mother was very frazzled and grumpy, whereas he saw her as patient and almost angelic. Most importantly, while he was hyperfocused on the compass he'd dropped, leading him to assume she simply hadn't noticed him wander off, she'd actually noticed very quickly and was frantically calling for him... until she saw him being comforted by a police officer and realized he was in better hands.
• Done in Sherlock Holmes as Sherlock explains how Lord Blackwood, a serial killer and attempted assassin of Parliament who was posing as an Evil Sorcerer, actually did his "magic", including faking his own death and resurrection.
• Sheroes: After it's revealed that Ezra had impersonated Koon, the film flashes back to reveal how they managed to kidnap him.
• During The Reveal in Shrooms, all of the murders and other supernatural encounters are shown again with the mushroom-induced hallucinations stripped away: showing what really happened.
• In The Sixth Sense, there's a montage of flashbacks after Bruce Willis' character learns that he's been Dead All Along that puts the entire movie into a new perspective. Particularly heart-rending is a scene that switches from a woman callously refusing to forgive her husband for being late — going even so far as to not respond to anything he says, and snatching the check just as he's trying to grab it — to a bereaved widow holding the anniversary dinner for her late husband, not realizing he's actually at the table with her.
• Son of a Gun: After Lynch discovers the gold bars have been swapped for lead weights, a series of quick flashbacks show how Jr and Natasha pulled this off.
• Spider-Man 3 depicts the flashbacks to the night that Uncle Ben was killed. As Peter imagines it, Flint Marko ordered Uncle Ben out of the car and forced him to the ground. Dennis Carradine ran out of the bank, got into the car and yelled at Flint to get in, but Flint ignored him and shot Uncle Ben in cold blood, leaving Carradine to drive away alone. At the end of the film, Flint reveals the truth: he did get Uncle Ben out of the car, but Uncle Ben tried to talk him down. Carradine ran over and shook Flint's arm, causing him to shoot Uncle Ben by accident.
• Star Wars: In The Last Jedi it takes three iterations to get the story right. First Luke Skywalker tells Rey how his student Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren, turned on him (in a flashback we see Luke trying to reason with Ben, and Ben attacking him). Then Kylo gets to tell his version of the story — Luke tried to murder him, and he only defended himself (a flashback of the batshit insane-looking Skywalker swinging a lightsaber at the sleeping Ben, who lashes out in return). Finally Luke comes clean — he did consider killing Ben, but only for a fleeting moment, terrified of the growing darkness he sensed in his student. As the bad luck would have it, Ben woke up at that very moment, saw his master standing over him with an ignited lightsaber, panicked, and the rest was history.
• Summerland (2020): Alice, after seeing Frank's photos of Vera and realizing that he's her son, recalls little things about them which they have in common, including the particular way they both smile.
• Sweet Country: Brief flashbacks and flashforwards are scattered through the film. It's not always clear on first viewing which are which (or even sometimes that they are flashes, since they're not marked out by any cinematic effects or sonic cues), and many of the flashforwards lack context that only becomes apparent when the action of the film catches up to them. For instance, early in the film, after Sam's niece is threatened by March, there's a brief flashforward of her sitting in shock, covered in blood; it's not until nearly the end of the film that we learn whose. In another case, while Sam is awaiting the outcome of his trial, there's a series of flashes of men building a wooden framework and hauling something heavy up on the end of a rope, with the context implying that they're building a gallows. At the end of the film, the construction is shown more clearly, and it turns out they're building a church under the direction of Sam's friend Fred.
• Trainspotting opens In Medias Res with a scene of Renton, Spud, and Sick Boy running from the police, set to "Lust for Life" by Iggy Pop, giving it a jaunty, madcap tone. Later on, the same scene is shown again, in correct chronological order, in the wake of Sick Boy's baby's death, this time set to "Sing" by Blur. The changed circumstances and music suggest the increasingly unhappy and desperate group of friends is starting to break down. The second time around also reveals that Renton was tackled and arrested by the second policeman chasing him.
• In Triangle, the opening scene shows several brief snippets of Jess' morning. We see this scene again toward the end of the film, and it becomes clear that the parts that were skipped over were Jess verbally and physically abusing her son. Not only that, but the whole scene shows the big Tomato Surprise - between these short snippets, Jess was killed and replaced by an Ax-Crazy version of herself from the future. It is also heavily implied that the murderous version of Jess was created out of a Temporal Paradox, and that she's been travelling back to that morning in the past countless times to replace her regular mean version, just for the repeated deaths of her son to make her travel again in time, thus getting herself stuck in an endless time loop.
• In Unfriended, the film starts by showing the embarrassing footage of Laura that ultimately led to her suicide. At the end, the same footage is shown again... but this time with an extra bit at the end that reveals that Blaire, Laura's former friend and the supposed Final Girl, had shot it.
• In Unknown, the hero often has flashbacks of having a picture taken with his wife while on their honeymoon. Later, it is revealed that this was a posed studio shoot and that Martin and his "wife" are merely terrorist agents.
• Kujan's last view of the bulletin board in The Usual Suspects has voice-over flashbacks of various statements Kint has made, which take on new meaning.
• A quite literal example in Wonder Woman, with Steve Trevor's final words to Diana before his Heroic Sacrifice. When he first says them, Diana's ears are ringing from an explosion and she can't hear him, but a few minutes later, she's able to recall exactly what he said, giving her a Heroic Second Wind.
• The first scene of the original X-Men, where a young Magneto uses his powers to warp a concentration camp gate, is re-visited eleven years later in X-Men: First Class. Shortly following his outburst Erik is confronted by Sebastian Shaw, who forces him into a Die or Fly situation for his mother's life.
• Zombieland: When Tallahassee claims his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the zombies is due to them killing his dog, Columbus is confused, and has an Imagine Spot of the try-hard badass cooing over a little puppy. Later though, when Tallahassee is willing to elaborate, Columbus returns to the Imagine Spot and realizes that replacing the cute dog with an infant son makes more sense.

Literature

• The ending of the Alex Rider prequel Russian Roulette is the ending of the first book in the series, Stormbreaker, but this time from Yassen's point of view instead of Alex's, revealing that Yassen was lying when he said he had been sent to kill Herod Sayle (the Big Bad of Stormbreaker); he had been sent to kill Alex instead, but decided not to because of the debt he owed to Alex's late father.
• Animorphs:
  • At the start of The Capture, Jake talks to Tom over breakfast while thinking about how the latter is being controlled by a Yeerk. Much later, we see the same scene from Tom's perspective; he's mentally begging his Yeerk to not make Jake a Controller.
  • The Ellimist Chronicles begins with a Flash Forward, as the Ellimist tells his life story to an unnamed Animorph just before his/her death. It's only in the final book that we replay the scene from the perspective of the doomed character, Rachel.
• The Belgariad/Malloreon series by David Eddings:
  • Belgarath and Polgara, the two prequel support novels do this with a few events. In other cases it's more "Rashomon"-Style.
  • The Mallorean Gospels do this for the seers of Kell. Their job is to choose which of the two prophecies will win, but they do not know which is good and which is evil. In the main plot this makes them seem almost aggressively Stupid Neutral, but the Gospels make their perspective a lot more reasonable and explains their behaviour, showing that they view the conflict as less Black-and-White Morality and more Order Versus Chaos. It also points out that since the Orb and Torak were both responsible for cracking the world, it would be impossible for someone viewing from the sidelines to tell which is truly good or evil. It's telling that the gospels don't refer to the prophecies as "Light" or "Dark", but only "First" and "Second".
• Lord Loss, the first book in Darren Shan's The Demonata series, opens with a poem about the eponymous demon. At first, the poem just seems to be simple character exposition... until the penultimate chapter of the final book in the series, nine stories later, which repeats the poem after some startling new developments. Appropriately enough, the chapter is titled Once More With Feeling.
• Discworld: At the beginning of Soul Music, a carriage crashes, killing whomever was inside. And then Death says, Yes, I could have done something. Much later on, Susan goes back in time on Binky to the point her parents died and actually enters that same scene- Just time for the carriage to crash. Death's remark was actually directed at Susan, answering her unasked question.
• Severus Snape's memories, given to Harry Potter at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows give new meaning to several scenes from the previous books. Within the memories, "Snape's Worst Memory" is revisited, and we realize now the real reason it's his worst. It also causes one to reinterpret just about everything Snape said or did in the entire series, whether or not you thought Snape was a good guy or a bad guy.^note For example, Fridge Logic sets in when you realize that the real reason Snape could never stand to look Harry in the eyes was because Harry had the same eyes as his mother, whom Snape was in love with. Also why he said "Look at me" right before he died.
• Harley Quinn: Reckoning: Early in the novel, there is a sequence where college student Harleen spends an evening discussing her theories with her favorite professor, describing it in the narration as one of the best days of her life. Later, after she's forced to confront the fact that he's a creep with inappropriate designs on her body of work and her actual body, the evening is narrated again, this time including all the red flags she was overlooking the first time.
• Isaac Asimov
  • "The Bicentennial Man": In chapter 1, Andrew is visiting a surgeon to request an operation be done on him. Then the rest of the story happens, and between chapters 20 and 21 is "1. (reprise)", where we see Andrew with the same surgeon, continuing the original scene.
  • "In a Good Cause—": The short stroy opens and closes with a description of the biggest statue in the United Worlds plaza. The first time, it is simply a static description of the statue. The second time, the reader has knowledge that the idealistic guy whose statue it was did not truly deserve it (at least, not in his own eyes), and the person who did will never have credit.
• Mistborn: Mistborn: Secret History does this for The Original Trilogy, specifically the ending of The Well of Ascension and much of The Hero of Ages. How it does so, however, is extremely spoilery.
• Early in Moonlight Becomes You, Neil mentions in his narration that he once saw Maggie sobbing in a movie theatre, due to the movie being about a young widow. Knowing that Maggie is a widow, Neil wonders if he should comfort her but decides against it and never mentions the incident, which he later regrets. It initially seems to just be a simple anecdote to establish how deeply Neil cares for Maggie and wants to be there for her, but it's later revealed to have more significance via Maggie's POV; Maggie knew Neil was there and that he had seen her crying. When he didn't so much as approach her about it she believed he didn't reciprocate her feelings and has been emotionally distant towards him ever since.
• In Rain of the Ghosts, Rain begins to have dreams about the supernatural creatures she's encountering, including the backstory of how the evil Aycayia was defeated by the wise woman Guanayoa. Eventually it's revealed that Aycayia is good, and the evil Guanayoa/"Julia" is sending the dreams. Maq then sends Rain another dream that retells the story from this angle.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Volume 10 sheds light on a number of earlier events that had only been partially shown or took place in various characters' memories and backstories.
  • That gag from volume 6 about nobody wanting Tim Linton as Student Council President because of that time he gassed the dining hall? Not so funny: Tim reveals it was an attempted mass Murder-Suicide caused by a nasty case of Parental Abuse-induced PTSD.
  • The final chapter revisits several previous Backstory scenes and adds a number of new ones, mainly from the prologue and Oliver's childhood memories, through the Framing Device of Demitrio Aristides reading his mind during their battle. We see the entirety of Chloe Halford's torture at the hands of her killers (including the revelation that Esmeralda is part-vampire), and we learn that the Sherwood clan leadership was just as rotten as most of the other mage families we've seen: the woman Oliver had healed through pregnancy was his cousin Shannon Sherwood and he was involuntarily the father, and we learn that the clan leaders didn't care whether Oliver lived or died, only if he could make a breakthrough with the family's research into Merger of Souls.
• Two subsequent books in Koji Suzuki's Ring series, Spiral and Loop, end with the same scene, but from the point of view of two different characters, and with a second backstory established that changes how we perceive what's really going on.
• Rules For Vanishing: Sara's memories are tampered with by Vanessa's Echo and Dahut, and the untrue memories are shown in her written testimony. The book then describes video footage of the events, showing what actually happened.
• The life of the Redeemer in Seekers of the Sky is recalled in more and more detail throughout the duology, eventually revealing the crucial differences between him and Jesus (whom he replaced in this Alternate History).
• The Stormlight Archive: The Prologue to each of the four books so far released has covered the same time period (the night Gavilar Kholin signed a treaty with the Parshendi and they sent an assassin to kill him) from a different perspective, and each successive retelling completely recontextualizes the events of that night.
• In the Star Trek Expanded Universe novel Q-Squared, the scene with Q entering another plane of existence very forcefully happened twice: The second time after Q spent a literal eternity trying to get out of a Trelane-induced suspended animation (which included causing Gary Mitchell's megalomaniacal madness and powers in the pilot of Star Trek: The Original Series).

Podcasts

• The Adventure Zone: Balance: at the end of The Stolen Century, certain clips of Lucretia interacting with the boys (welcoming them to the Bureau, eating Taako's macaroon, and at the spa day with Merle) are replayed. They serve as exposition or are Played for Laughs the first time around; after the reveal that she's been friends with them for decades, and erased their memories of her in order to preserve their happiness and try to rectify what they'd done to the world, it's rather heartbreaking.

Theatre

• Hamilton:
  • We see Hamilton and Eliza meeting for the first time at a ball, falling in love and becoming happily married ("Helpless"). The next song ("Satisfied") shows the meeting from Angelica's point of view, revealing that Alexander had met Angelica first, and that she had fallen hard, but that she had chosen her sister's happiness over her own by introducing them, despite knowing that neither she nor Alexander would ever be entirely satisfied.
  • The duel between Hamilton and Burr is first seen from the latter's POV. Burr was convinced Hamilton was going to kill him so he shoots first. After that we hear Hamilton's last thoughts before he raises his gun to the sky but Burr is too late from firing the fatal shot.
  • In the cut song, "Ten Things, One Thing", this trope is also used- this time we learn what Hamilton was thinking in his actions which Burr was describing just moments ago.
• The Real Inspector Hound performs a bizarre twist of this in its second act. Within the first act of the show on stage, there are several non-sequitur lines by the characters. In the second act, when critic Birdboot, and later fellow critic Moon join the cast onstage, these events are replayed again with expanded dialog that alternately makes more sense and comes off as even more non-sequitur.
• Parade: Near the beginning of the show, we see the last known interaction Mary Phagan had before her death - going to Leo Frank's office to collect her paycheck. The first time we see the scene, as she goes to leave, she turns around to ask him one more thing before the scene abruptly ends; she's murdered that day, and Leo is sent to prison for it. After Leo is lynched, we see the scene again past the point where it cut off before and see that all she did was wish him a happy Memorial Day before leaving unharmed, confirming once and for all that he didn't kill her.
• In Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, when Bessie Bighead first appears she is putting flowers on the grave of Gomer Owen who "kissed her once by the pigsty when she wasn't looking, and never kissed her again, although she was looking all the time." That line gets a laugh. Later on in the play, when we've learned more about Bessie—that she has what today we'd call Down Syndrome, and that Gomer only kissed her because he was dared by his buddies—there is almost always a gasp from the audience when they realize what they had previously laughed at.

Video Games

• Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's story begins "at the end," Sequence 9, Ezio Auditore tells his nemesis Cesare Borgia that "Mario Auditore led me to you!" However, when the story is rewound to almost eight years before at the Siege of Monteriggioni, Mario Auditore is killed and Cesare seizes the Apple of Eden — which Ezio later takes back and uses to track Cesare down. When Sequence 9 is reached in "proper order," the same scene occurs but with Ezio saying "The Apple [of Eden] you stole from Mario Auditore led me to you!"
• Baldur's Gate III:
  • Shadowheart is missing most of her memories, but what she does know is that she's an orphan adopted by the Temple of Shar. She can show the player a psychic flashback: she's a child alone in the woods at night, cornered by a growling wolf, when a comforting hand appears behind her, and a group of Sharrists advance on the wolf with spears. Later, Dame Aylin can reveal some crucial details: the wolf transforming into a man lying on the ground, desperately reaching towards Shadowheart. The wolf was her father, and he was threatening the stranger behind her. Shadowheart wasn't abandoned; this was a Selunite rite of passage where children try to find their way home in the woods.
  • The rogue illithid called the Emperor will psychically reveal his backstory to the player and show him working as a hidden ally of Duke Stelmane, one of the few aware of his true nature, who he speaks very fondly of. But if they later harshly reject his advances, he shows the true version of events, revealing that his "partnership" with Duke Stelmane was achieved by turning her into his mind-controlled thrall.
• In the climax of Batman: Arkham City, Talia kills Joker and reveals that she had the cure to his TITAN poisoning on her. As Batman refuses to believe Joker could die that easily, he flashes back to several incidents over the course of the game, such as Harley Quinn stealing Freeze's cure and a scene that originally seemed to feature Joker staring at a mirror; he realizes just a moment too late to save Talia that Joker actually had a Body Double.
• A brief one in BioShock, during the "Would You Kindly?" sequence, where a Fully Automatic Clipshow shows how Atlas has been manipulating you through mind control the entire game.
• BioShock Infinite:
  • The Playable Epilogue functions as this, where Booker finally retrieves his true memories: "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt" wasn't an order to save Elizabeth from Columbia, but to sell his daughter Anna to Comstock. The exchange between the Luteces in the boat wasn't referring to an inability to row on Booker's part, but the fact that no matter what happens, no version of Booker ever offers to row. Even the baptism Booker flees from in the epilogue itself is given new meaning: it's the baptism where Booker made an unintentional choice to "become" Comstock or stay as Booker.
  • There's a scene in Burial at Sea where Elizabeth discovers that the Luteces convinced Daisy to threaten a child (an action seen in the main game from Elizabeth and Booker's perspective). While she initially refuses, they soon convince her it's for the greater good, as they need to kickstart Elizabeth's Character Development by having her kill for the first time. Another scene in the same episode shows exactly why Suchong was attacked and killed by a Big Daddy after hitting a Little Sister, even after reporting his failure on getting them to imprint: Elizabeth had previously developed the secret to getting the Sisters to imprint on the Big Daddies, and the Sister he hit was the one who helped the Daddy who killed him. We also get to see it in glorious detail.
• In Braid, this occurs in the last level. The first time through, the princess appears to be running from a knight, with you helping her to escape. Then it goes into reverse and you realize that all along, she's been running from YOU. Or, if you've completed some very specific requirements, you catch up to her and she explodes, revealing her to be a metaphor for the atomic bomb.
• Call of Duty:
  • In Call of Duty: Black Ops, during Revelations when Mason is finished hallucinating, Hudson reveals that Reznov has been dead since the second mission, and every appearance of him was in your head. All of his actions were either hallucinated or performed by Mason, and it shows several scenes from earlier in the game both as you saw them and with Reznov removed. As some foreshadowing to this, something similar occurs in "Rebirth"; when we first see Steiner die, Reznov does it, but when we see it from Hudson's perspective, Mason identifies himself as "Viktor Reznov" and kills him instead.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II:
    • In the mission "Payback" from the first game, Woods appears to die when he tackles Kravchenko out of a window while he's wearing a grenade belt. The first mission of the second game shows the cutscene from Woods's perspective and reveals that in fact, Woods managed to get the belt off while they were falling, and while he wasn't killed as a result, Kravchenko sent him to the Hanoi Hilton.
    • In "Time and Fate", the player first controls Raul Menendez as he makes his way back to his home to rescue his sister, only to be delayed by someone outside her room just long enough for a grenade to kill her. After this, it flashes to Mason's perspective, where he first sees Raul entering a barn that the player previously fought through, then he, Woods, and Hudson confront Menendez at the end, where Woods, in a fury for his past capture at Menendez's hands, throws the grenade that kills Josephina.
    • Throughout the game, Section gets flashes to an incident in his childhood where he found his father dead. Woods told him some nut job did it, but as the flashes slowly reveal, Menendez had kidnapped him around the same time, meaning that Menendez likely did it. It's not until "Suffer With Me" that we see the full events of the kidnapping and learn what happened: Menendez kidnapped David to force Hudson to play a scheme, he tricked Woods into (potentially) killing Mason, and David came out of his drug-fueled sleep right as Menendez left the room. Notably, if the player doesn't kill Mason, he can actually be seen breathing this time.
• In Devotion, at one point early in the game, you see a ripped medical report about Mei Shin's symptoms, which cuts off right at the recommended treatment. Later in the game, you see the whole report, and find out that the hospital recommended psychiatric treatment. Mei Shin was never ill, just suffering from anxiety because of home problems. Feng Yu is incensed that the doctors would dare label his daughter "a lunatic" and turns to the Cigu Guanyin cult to treat Mei Shin's imaginary problems, which would eventually result in her death.
• Dragon Age II begins with Varric describing how incredibly well endowed Bethany is and how incredibly powerful she and Hawke are. Cassandra tolerates it until he suggests Flemeth saves them as a dragon before making him tell the story properly: with the exception of Bethany now being more reasonably proportioned it turns out that save a few details Varric was telling the truth.
• The main storyline of Eastern Exorcist begins with Lu Yun-chuan's failed mission, where his brothers are ambushed by the Mandrill King's minions while he deal with the first boss, the White Ape. Two of his brothers died, and his last brother, Zhang Huai-zhou, near-mortally injured, narrates how they're defeated after being betrayed by a hulijing Lu Yun-chuan spared, with a flashback cutscene showing the Mandrill King overpowering the three brothers. Lu, after helping the injured Zhang back to the city, was expelled from the Cangshan Sect because of his actions and must complete his mission solo. Near the end of the game after Lu defeats the Mandrill King, he's granted a vision of the truth: the same flashback from the start replays, with Lu's brothers struggling against the Mandrill King, only this time Zhang suddenly breaks attack formation and stabs the two brothers In the Back, revealing that Zhang is an Evil Former Friend working for the demons the whole time, helping them take over China in exchange for power.
• The finale of Ether One leads the protagonist through parts of previous levels, which have gained more meaning after the reveal.
• In Fable III, the protagonist's guide, Theresa, shows them a vision of their brother, the tyrannical King Logan, proclaiming that Albion will burn unless it follows his rule and bows before him. Later, they encounter an Eldritch Abomination called The Crawler that Logan had also encountered somehow. His speech about Albion burning was about The Crawler coming to attack, and how he was desperate to try and save Albion by any means necessary.
• In Final Fantasy VII, this happens twice. First, a replay of the destruction of Nibelheim from Sephiroth's point of view reveals that Cloud was never there and his memories are fake; a guy called Zack was there in his place. The second time, we see the incident from Cloud's point of view with his real memories restored, and find out he was there after all: he was the masked guard who followed Zack and Sephiroth around and barely said a word.
• Final Fantasy X begins with a How We Got Here scene of Tidus and crew at a campsite. Melancholy music is playing, and the group looks worn down. When you finally get to that scene, two thirds of the way through the game, you find out that they're reacting to Tidus discovering what the rest of them knew: that the plan was to sacrifice Yuna to buy a handful of time free of Sin.
• The final cinematic of the original version of Final Fantasy XIV, played just before its shutdown, ended with Louisoix sending the adventurers five years into the future to save them from The End of the World as We Know It. The trailer for the relaunched version, A Realm Reborn, showed a continuation of that scene from the perspective of the adventurers, finding themselves in a surprisingly intact world that nonetheless bears the scars of that climactic battle. Questing through A Realm Reborn establishes that nobody remembers what exactly happened after the adventurers were teleported away, nor does anyone know where the gigantic uber-dragon Bahamut went. It is only at the end of the Binding Coils of Bahamut raid that the players see the continuation of that scene from Louisoix's perspective. And, well... Louisoix becomes empowered by the Twelve and absorbs the Aether, turning into a Primal that manages to defeat Bahamut before disintergrating into aether and returning to the land. Unfortunately, Bahamut turned out to be Not Quite Dead and managed to ensnare him into Bahamut's Thrall.
• Subverted in Fire Emblem: Awakening, where the very first map is a Flash Forward to the final confrontation with Validar, the cutscene after which shows the Avatar suddenly being overtaken by something and killing Chrom. While we learn why this happened (the Avatar was forced to do it under Demonic Possession from Grima), this is played ambiguously in the actual order of events, because it's left unclear if this scene is flashing forward to the events of the game as you the player see them, where the Avatar knows what's coming and holds back to avoid killing Chrom, or to the Bad Future Lucina came from where the Avatar was completely taken over and Chrom actually did die.
• The Story Mode of Genital Jousting has a nightmare sequence where John, the protagonist, flashes back to his high school days, including confessing to his crush Harmonia and getting turned down with "Nobody will ever love you." After the high school reunion brawl, Harmonia helps up an injured John, which prompts him to ask why she said those dreadful words to him. Harmonia urges him to remember what really went down — he did confess to her, she did turn him down, but he attacked her out of rage.
• In Ghost Trick, you see a Wham Shot (or Wham Video, rather) of Lynne shooting the man in red in the junkyard at 7 PM in Cabanela's boss's office. Later on, that same scene is played again, only this time the player is told that Lynne was being mentally manipulated by Yomiel, meaning she didn't mean to shoot. And then, the scene gets its final, full meaning at the very end of the game when it's revealed that Sissel was the cat in Yomiel's bag, and that he was accidentally shot dead by Lynne (so she did kill Sissel after all); then she shot Yomiel's corpse as he wanted. As well, that day in the park ten years ago is shown a number of times, each revealing another layer of meaning.
• The opening of Goodbye Volcano High depicts the central characters gathered around a bonfire while the player character, Fang, has to decide whether or not to drop a school yearbook into the bonfire. It's not until the very end of episode 7 that the scene comes back into play, with the full clarity of context: the world is ending because of an asteroid in a few days, the yearbook was the one thing Naomi was able to accomplish during the school year before Apocalypse Anarchy closed the school, and its burning is part of Fang's band's pre-show ritual, but also symbolizes two things: Naomi finally coming to terms with the apocalypse, and the friends' commitment to going out together with the few days they have left.
• The opening of Grandia II shows us some world-building backstory about the battle between Granas (God) and Valmar (The Devil). Late in the game Pope Zera expands upon the scene. If you thought it odd that in the opening movie the darkness seemed to be engulfing the light, well, there's a reason for that...
• In Hotline Miami, playing as the Biker and killing Jacket in the "Prank Call" chapter can be viewed as one of these.
• In Jade Empire, the first time the sacking of Dirge is seen, Master Li identifies the three central figures as himself, his brother the Emperor, and Death's Hand. When it's seen again later, it's revealed the armored figure is not Death's Hand but Li himself, and the man who appeared to be Li is a Spirit Monk, who Li followed and killed in order to take the infant player character, abandoning his armor, which allowed the Emperor to create Death's Hand..
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts II: There is a scene where Xemnas and Roxas are speaking to each other on a dark beach, both wearing Organization XIII coats, that is shown a few times over the course of the Kingdom Hearts series. As we learn more about the world and the characters, the scene's conversation takes on new meanings that the audience didn't realize before.
  • Kingdom Hearts III contains a boss battle against Xigbar and Dark Repliku in which Riku joins Sora as a Guest-Star Party Member. In the [Remind] DLC, you get to redo the battle, but this time, from Riku's point of view, and with him and Sora swapping party positions.
• The Legend of Dragoon: Neet's destruction is shown multiple times with each new showing filling in more information. Notably the first cinematic and the final one are exactly the same but the former contains no dialogue while the latter does. The final cinematic explains that the Black Monster was there to kill Princess Louvia who they believed to be the Moon Child, but the Princess was already on a boat out to sea, and that Dart's parents went back after escaping, not to rescue others, but to fight the Black Monster directly.
• In the Wii and PlayStation 3 version of The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest, the very first level begins at Aragorn's final battle at the Black Gate where he leads the Gondorian army to distract Sauron. The battle begins immediately after his speech, but then shortly after a few waves of enemies, a Balrog unexpectedly appears and we see that this was not part of the actual story. Once the player gets to the last level, it begins with Aragorn's speech like in the prologue, but then the level starts with a boss fight against the Mouth of Sauron before the actual waves of enemies begin appearing.
• Marvel's Avengers: Early in the story, Kamala Khan uncovers incomplete surveilance footage showing Captain America being sealed inside the Helicarrier's reactor room by a pre-M.O.D.O.K. George Tarleton before it exploded, suggesting he murdered Cap. When more of the footage is deciphered, audio from the cameras reveal that Cap had voluntarily allowed himself to be sealed in the reactor room before destroying the reactor, himself: the revelation of Cap purposely causing the loss of millions of lives nearly causes the Avengers to collapse. After Cap is found alive and rescued from AIM's clutches, he clarifies that he destroyed the reactor because the Terrigen powering it was reacting with something in the ocean that was threatening to set off a catastrophic earthquake: destroying the reactor saved countless more lives that might've otherwise been lost.
• The bonus content from arc V of Master of the Wind, coming immediately after The Reveal about who the Sparrow is, is a replay of several scenes from another perspective along with some new scenes from that perspective to show what was happening behind the scenes during this time. A few parts aren't changed at all though, except from the new knowledge.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code: Upon finding the present-day victim in Chapter 1, Yuma and Shinigami have an argument as to whether or not this is an abnormal occurrence. After The Reveal in Chapter 5, this scene is flashed back to, it's shown that what Yuma was actually alarmed about is the fact the victim's blood is pink.
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: The true ending does this with the prologue mission, replacing some of the Mind Screw-y scenes in the hospital with The Reveal that you haven't been playing as Big Boss, but rather his Body Double the whole time, and that the true Big Boss was Ishmael, the NPC who guided you throughout the mission.
• Mr. Saitou: The opening of the game is a montage of Mr. Saitou's day before he collapses from exhaustion at the train station. At the end of the game the montage repeats, but the final scene is a shot of Mr. Saitou standing too close to the tracks as a train approaches the station, implying that this was the real reason he ended up at the hospital.
• NieR uses this in conjunction with New Game Plus, with the second gameplay route to Ending B expanding on several elements of the story, including Kainé's backstory and the fact that the boss Shades you fought are not simply mindless monsters, but human souls who are lonely and scared, of dying, and of you.
• One of the major differences in NieR: Automata between Routes A and B (aside from the Perspective Flip to 9S) is a ton of extra scenes added in that explain things like the backstories to certain bosses, the history of the Forest Kingdom, what Adam and Eve get up to in-between their boss appearances, and finally, the revelation that humankind has been extinct all along.
• The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye DLC has you collecting slide reels to learn the history of the Stranger and its unnamed inhabitants, but the first ones you find have all had slides selectively burned out of them. Much later, you're able to find pristine copies of the reels you've already seen that tell the whole story. One reel shows the aliens building the Stranger, but neglects to mention how they reduced their homeworld to a Polluted Wasteland in the process. Another shows the aliens' hostile reaction to a vision from the Eye of the Universe, but leaves out that they went so far as to construct a satellite to block the Eye's signal so no one else could find it. A third shows the aliens testing various artifacts, one of which is a dud, and the third of which works - the second's results aren't shown, but can be implied from the fact that the test chamber has a hull breach in it.
• Palette revolves around B.D. trying to recover her memories, so this appears often. The biggest example is the scenes that Book End the process: the first memory she finds herself in is a highly spotty, vague Scene 46: Red of Beginning. Upon finding the final Memory Shard, 'Final Scene: Palette' kicks off with a restored version of 'Red of Beginning' and everything that followed.
• Persona 5:
  • The game begins In Medias Res with Joker escaping from a casino, with the other Phantom Thieves' names and portraits obscured to hide their identities. Once the story catches up with itself, you replay the scene with the knowledge of what you're doing there and why the police are waiting for you, and your allies' names and portraits are shown normally.
  • After Sae's interrogation reaches her own Palace, Joker starts having difficulty fighting off the various drugs he's been injected with, and his recollection whites out on multiple occasions. Once the game's story catches up with itself, he manages to remember the missing pieces: they reveal that Akechi was the traitor, Joker and the other Thieves knew the whole time, and they've set up an elaborate plan to Out Gambit him.
• The ending credits montage of Pikmin 3 concludes with a scene where the Pikmin see something falling into the atmosphere of their planet and running off to investigate. The "Olimar's Comeback" side story in Pikmin 3 Deluxe opens with Olimar and Louie returning to PNF-404 to retrive their ship, with the pod they're riding in burning up as they enter the planet's atmosphere. The last scene of the credits then replays.
• In Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the Prince runs into the Sand Wraith a few times. It does things reminiscent of the usual Evil Twin, like chucking an axe at the Prince's head or tossing him around a bit. Then when you get the mask of the wraith, it turns out the whole time the sandwraith was you. And most of the threatening things he did (that you're doing now) saved Prince's life. For instance, that axe from earlier flew past to hit a monster behind him that was about to shank him.
• Throughout various points in RiME, you'll come across a cutscene where the Boy is on a boat in the middle of a storm and trying to make his way to a mysterious figure in a red cloak at the other end, but ultimately failing to keep them from falling overboard. Towards the end of the game, the cutscene plays one more time... but now the Boy is the one who falls overboard and it's the Boy's father trying to save him.
• Shadow Ops: Red Mercury ends the first level with the Red Mercury detonating and your unit being forced to withdraw, with the subsequent explosion destroying a small Syrian town and a US Navy Aircraft Carrier. Cue the second level and flashbacks, before the game catches up again with the explosion revealing your handler and supposed liaison, Kate being the actual mastermind behind it's theft and that she's working for the terrorists behind your back the whole time.
• A variant in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, which begins with a home video of Harry and Cheryl at the amusement park and loops right back to the beginning when it gets to a certain point. All four endings (excluding the UFO ending) show the footage that follows directly on the tape. All four of them revealing the true nature of Harry and Dahlia's relationship and Cheryl's life before Harry's death, revealing the footage from the amusement park to largely be a small window of normalcy in an otherwise mostly unhappy life, while Cheryl focused solely on that and convinced herself that that's what her whole life was like. Also Harry is a ghost or something.
• The opening scene of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves features most of the team as silhouettes, with the bulk of the game taking place as a How We Got Here flashback as your life flashes before your eyes, up until the opening scene is played again, the mystery team members being revealed.
• Soma Union has a rare example that shows a flashback from the previous installment, Soma Spirits. The first game opens with a flashback showing Form and Dissonance about to fight the tyrannical Sun King, who arrogantly declares himself ruler of all Soma and a god, to free Soma from his tyranny. The second game shows what happened up to that point, where we see that the Sun King Bright was actually a Nice Guy in over his head while Form and Dissonance were the aggressors who pit people against each other, and had just killed Bright's two best friends- who were children- so they could steal the power of Absolution for themselves. Bright fought them to stop their evil. When the scene happens again, it becomes clear who the real hero and villains were in that scenario.
• In Sonic Adventure 2, the first flashback we see of Shadow's final moments with Maria has her plead with Shadow: "For all the people on that planet". Shadow initially believes this to be Maria asking him to avenge her death and bring about earth's destruction. The same flashback is shown in the last story: this time, however, Maria is asking for Shadow to "give them a chance to be happy" and "let them live for their dreams". Upon realizing this, Shadow pulls a Heel–Face Turn and fights with Sonic against the Biolizard.
• At the beginning of South Park: The Fractured but Whole, after you choose your first superhero class, Cartman goes over the Player Character's origin story, which involves him fighting off home invaders and witnessing his parents having sex. Each time you unlock a new class, Cartman revisits this basic origin and adds an increasingly ridiculous embellishment to it. Finally, towards the end of the game, the player and Cartman end up travelling through time to the night said origin story took place, where it is discovered that the home invaders were actually the player's old social media followers visiting him in person, and the parents were actually indulging in their usual self-destructive habits rather than having sex.
• Spec Ops: The Line: Used in The Reveal to show us just how much of an Unreliable Narrator Walker is. Earlier in the game, the squad first makes contact with Col. John Konrad through a radio transceiver that's seemingly been planted there for them to find, but, when shown from another angle, the transceiver is clearly broken and inoperable, meaning "Konrad" has just been a voice in Walker's head and Walker has been talking to himself the whole time. Afterwards, Konrad presents Walker with a Sadistic Choice, forcing him to choose between executing a man who stole water, or the soldier who tracked him down but killed his whole family in the process. However, at the end it's revealed that both those men were already dead and rotting, and what Walker was actually doing was blankly staring at two corpses while his concerned squadmates tried to get him to snap out of it.
• Star Wars Legends: During The Reveal in Knights of the Old Republic, character lines from earlier are called back, with new meaning, such as "What greater weapon is there than to turn an enemy to your cause? To use their own knowledge against them?"
• In the opening of The Swapper, you hear fragments of a conversation over your radio. Much later, you find the security records, which have a video of the whole thing.
• Unavowed starts with you going through an ordinary day when a demon possesses you, murders several people, and goes on to steal your body for their own plans, until the titular organization tracks them down and exorcises the wicked spirit. Much later, you find out that the demon was never exorcized; the 'wicked spirit' that got cast out was the human, and you've been playing a very amnesiac demon since. You then get treated to a replay of the start, but seen through a sociopathically cynical person's eyes; it turns out they orchestrated the possession intentionally in order to take advantage of the demon's considerable knowledge of supernatural powers, and committed the murders as part of the ritual (and For the Evulz). The only reason you didn't remember is because you rewrote your own memories to help cope with the horror.
• Done by the end of the white chamber, where after Sarah enters the titular White Chamber, the wreckage of the space station reverts back to how it was and Sarah traverses the area as she recalls all the people she killed.
• Wild ARMs: Million Memories opens with Filgaia being destroyed by the Yggdrasil System and the reveal that Rudy has betrayed your party leading to these events. The scene replays at the end of the penultimate chapter. Turns out it's Siegfried behind Rudy's betrayal. This is later subverted. Siegfried pushed him to betray everyone in exchange for a team up against Mother and returning the Tear Drop, knowing the Memory Maze can be used to bring the world back.
• Done three times with the same event in The World Ends with You: Neku starts having flashbacks about his death that flip in meaning each time. First, he sees his dead body in Joshua's mind, and thinks that he's the one who found his body. Then, he sees Joshua pointing a gun and firing at him, and thinks he killed him. Then, he sees Joshua firing at Sho Minamimoto who was standing behind him, and Sho firing back supposedly killing Neku. At last, he sees the full picture, including Joshua stopping Sho's bullets and eventually killing Neku.
• Xolga and Mr. Toko: The game and its sequel "Again" have two different sets of quotes that pop up in the beginning of every episode, and seemingly make no sense at fist, until the second-to-last episode of each series which explain everything: those from the first series are what the cursed pendant said to Xolga, while those from the second are Mr. Toko's thought when he was in a hospital.

Visual Novels

• This happens in a lot of Ace Attorney cases. The initial animation will show a scene that, when it's not pure flavor or straight-up showing you the culprit (which usually happens in first cases), is taken out of context and often seems to incriminate your client, but by the end of the case you'll learn its true relation to the crime.
  • In Ace Attorney Investigations the opening scene of the fifth case makes use of this. The first showing seems to depict Edgeworth blaming Kay for setting the building on fire, while a later viewing shows that he is worried that she's trapped in the building.
  • Case 1-4 has two unidentified people talking, with the first saying that they "suffered" and the other finding the idea to be odd. There is a gunshot, and then an image of Edgeworth holding a gun while looking surprised. When you talk to Edgeworth about it, he says that the other person shot at him but missed, and in his confused state he picked up the gun himself, though he notes that this is probably not going to make for the best defense in court. Edgeworth was being framed for the death of Amoral Attorney Roger Hammond by Yanni Yogi, who blamed both of them for a Trauma Conga Line he suffered after DL-6 (in brief, Hammond ruined his life by forcing him to plead insanity, and he thought Edgeworth might have actually committed the crime he was accused of). Yogi had lured both Hammond and Edgeworth to the lake, killed Hammond, and impersonated him on the boat (which was why Edgeworth was confused about the statement that he "suffered", because Hammond didn't suffer anything), then shot twice into the water, threw himself overboard, and swam to shore, where he made it look like Hammond's corpse had washed up after being killed on the boat. And the person who planned it all was the prosecutor for the case, Manfred von Karma.
  • Case 2-2 shows a woman looking at a burning car, which at first seems to have no connection to the case, but you learn is a representation of Mimi Miney (the dead girl Maya is channeling) dying in a car accident while her sister Ini barely escaped, which turns out to be Mimi's potential motive for lashing out against the victim (who had been forcing her to work through sleep deprivation, resulting in her crashing the car through Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy). And then you find that Ini died in the car wreck and Mimi was the onlooker; Mimi had assumed her sister's identity afterwards and pretended to be her own channeled spirit to kill the victim so he couldn't expose the swap.
• In CROSS†CHANNEL, during Kiri's week, one of the questions he asks her after Shinkawa's suicide is whether he was happy or not. She says no, and he drops the issue. Later, the same scene is repeated and he reveals that he had been willing to forgive Shinkawa if he wasn't happy. However, whenever he had seen Shinkawa they had gotten along, so he HAD seemed so. Basically, he was hoping for him to be miserable and when he wasn't, he was happy about indifferent to Shinkawa's death.
• In both Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, the final case replays a previous one that had been solved incorrectly and shows what really happened. In THH, everything the cast discussed about case 5 was a red herring, because the whole thing was a setup and the victim had actually died way back in chapter 1. In v3, the very first case is re-visited with knowledge of a secret passage from the girls' bathroom to the library, and it's revealed that Kaede's death-trap that was central to the first trial had completely missed; the true killer was Tsumugi, who clobbered Rantaro over the head with another shot put ball and escaped through the passage. The only reason the game didn't end right then and there is because Tsumugi was the mastermind and wanted to start the game, not end it.
• No Case Should Remain Unsolved: The plot revolves around piecing together the protagonist's faulty memories. She remembers snippets of conversations, but she often doesn't remember who she was talking to and when exactly it happened. Putting those memories in context slowly but steadily clarifies the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot.
• In Shining Song Starnova, Nemu Akimoto experiences a sudden flashback to a repressed childhood memory of her birth mother, Sena, being hit by a car that was driven by Haruna, the spiteful wife of Nemu’s father. This memory turns out to be false, and she suddenly remembers what really happened near the end of her route: Sena, who had lost her mind and was allowing Nemu to starve from neglect, tried to run over Haruna to stop her from taking Nemu away.
• In one of Spirit Hunter: NG's Bad Ends, Akira has a conversation with Kaoru over the phone, where she says that she's injured but he doesn't need to pick her up. Akira goes to her location anyway, but can't find her. Using his psychometry, he's able to see the same phone call from Kaoru's perspective - she had just been decapitated by Kubitarou, and her words to Akira over the phone were her last.

Webcomics

• In Darths & Droids, the first version of Vader's introduction leaves out some crucial dialogue.
• In chapter 7 of Daughter of the Lilies, we see the events of chapter 1 again, this time through Thistle's eyes. The cave elf wasn't running away from Thistle because he was horrified by her appearance, but because he was horrified to know he had almost eaten one of his own people, and a woman at that.
• There are two instances in Decrypting Rita regarding certain chapters:
  • The first iteration of Chapter 23 is corrupted and its checksum fails. All we see is Kim-1, Barrett-1 and another person speaking in unison as they greet Rita-1. Once it is repaired, it reveals that not only has Barrett's Assimilation Plot begun, it has also taken in Carol. Who was willingly part of the ploy.
  • Chapter 14 requires two sweeps of repairs before it can be read. The first and second times only show Mattie offering a sort of software to Rita, who voices her concerns. Only on the final iteration do we also find out it's an upgrade and the Vespuline hive wants to stop the Sunrise hive as the latter is forcibly taking over solitary minds, something the Vespulines cannot tolerate.
• In El Goonish Shive, Rhoda's encounter with the boar is shown twice. The first time is at the beginning of the storyline and the second is at the end. The first time her arms are shown outstretched but her hands are off-panel. The second time her arms and hands are shown in a panel by themselves and the latter are seen to be glowing. The panel before that reveals she has a magic mark. The subsequent panels show the progression of the boar's growth as Rhoda's hands continue to glow until the boar reaches her. The third strip in the storyline is the first time we see the boar. It can be seen to appear to be shaking but it is actually finishing growing.
• In Everyday Heroes, Jane's description of her previous life as a villain includes a few scenes where Wrecking Paul loudly smashes something offstage while the team is trying to be stealthy; this is Played for Laughs. We later learn that he is a serial killer, and see different views of each scene showing the corpses of the women he murdered.
• Gunnerkrigg Court:
  • Annie and Kat's first meeting is shown from Annie's perspective in chapter 2, and it doesn't seem a very big deal at the time. Subsequently, the girls become close friends and the readers learn that neither girl had any friends at the school before, that both girls' parents had been friends years prior, and that Kat's mum — knowing that Annie was the daughter of her old friend — had encouraged Kat to befriend her. So the scene of their first meeting has a bit more weight when it's revisited from Kat's perspective in chapter 18.
  • Annie, Kat and Mort visit the Realm of the Dead, which to Kat looks like a cheap carnival and to Annie and Mort like an Eldritch Location. We get to rewatch this scene from their perspective.
• Near the end of Hitmen for Destiny, we see a a montage of various scenes we'd already seen, but now with the knowledge that the Triceratops at the restaurant, Inatario's girlfriend, and Lostclock's ghost were all actually Jymre, the shapeshifter.
• Due to the nature of time in Homestuck, this happens a lot.
  • We see the beginning of Dave's entry here, but we don't see what actually happened until the Act 4 closer. (Warning: MASSIVE SPOILERS!)
  • For another, even bigger example, we know through Act 5 that Jack has been wreaking havoc all over the place, but because of the anarchic timeline (both in terms of us being presented with events out of order and in terms of the Medium facilitating time travel and cross-timeline confusion) it's difficult to put anything in order, and up until Cascade we still have no idea what caused Jack's bloody hand. In that flash, we finally see what caused it, and then re-watch the scenes we'd seen of him fucking shit up, in chronological order (from his POV) this time.
• In I Love Yoo, Alyssa and Shin-Ae's past is first seen in a flashback through Maya's POV, before another flashback shown in Shin-Ae's POV.
• In Shortpacked!, the first time we see Galasso burn the Drama Tag, there's very little explanation and it goes unexplained for years. After, Leslie, and the reader, learn about the origin and purpose of the Drama Tag, the end of the arc shows the same scene, and it becomes heartbreaking in context.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • In Chapter 59 ("bROKEN"), we are shown a scene twice. The first time, we are seeing the scene the way Torg remembers it. Later, we learn that Torg is suppressing memories, and we see the scene the way it really happened (major spoilers, of course). The scene is foreshadowed throughout the story as Torg keeps seeing different women sitting in front of him in a certain position, which he later figures are distorted memories hinting at the ones he's suppressing.
  • Done again in Chapter 67, where scenes are revisited and expanded showing what the elves are really doing while Bun-Bun is setting up his new casino.
• In Weak Hero, Rowan's claim that a pretty girl tore up his backpack for no reason seems ludicrous at first. The next chapter flashbacks to the event in question to provide some context. Later on, the scene is flashed back to again to elaborate more on the girl's motivation, and how it ties into the main plot.

Web Originals

• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • The Cold Open of the Super Android 13 movie begins with replaying Dr. Gero's death at the hands of Androids 17 and 18 from the end of Episode 38 before showing how his consciousness transferred to his supercomputer immediately afterwards.
  • In Episode 43 with Cell's introduction to the plot, a brief flashback plays of his killing of an alternate Trunks to steal his time machine, though he only cryptically tells Piccolo "(he) found a way" when asked how he came to the past. Come Episode 53, now in Perfect form and facing down Ultra Saiyan Trunks, the flashback plays again, except now more detailed with Cell giving a very clear explanation over how he came here thanks to Trunks all just as part of his intent to break Trunk's spirit before defeating him.
• The Olde English Comedy sketch "Photo Booth" plays with this, giving us repeated very-recent flashbacks to a couple in line for a photo booth. On the second use of the scene, we realize the couple, seemingly longtime lovers, met in the line. Then the trope is subverted when further flashbacks are actually different from what we'd seen.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • The sixteenth episode does this when it reveals that Church is the Alpha by revisiting not only clips from previous episodes of the series, but even one clip from the end of Blood Gulch Chronicles.
  • It happens again in season 12 episode 10 when Felix reveals his collaboration with Locus: a number of scenes from Season 11 and earlier in Season 12 are elaborated on, detailing exactly how the two have been cooperating the entire time.
• In DEATH BATTLE!, Kenshiro at one point bombards Jotaro's Star Platinum with illusion clones to try and get a hit in on Jotaro, only to be thrown away by Star Platinum before he could land anything meaningful. A flashback near the end of the fight then shows that Kenshiro did manage to tag Jotaro with one small poke to the chest, which then proceeds to blow Jotaro up shortly after.
• In this Achievement Hunter video, Gavin Free starts the video by discussing how the team was recruited to distract someone so a group of Rooster Teeth members could snatch a microwave after months of waiting for one. At the end of the video, the team is celebrating when Chad, the one who recruited the group, busts in and asks where his [REDACTED] is. We then rewind the video to the beginning to find out that Gavin had an ulterior motive for agreeing to the plan...

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: Played for Laughs in "The One". We're treated to a montage of Tobias killing and absorbing all his classmates' "magic powers" a la Highlander in a deranged attempt to become Gumball's best and only friend. We're later treated to a montage of what actually happened: Tobias publicly humiliating himself, screaming a lot and waving a plastic tube around, with what was shown before in the episode only being from his questionable perspective.
• Played for Laughs in American Dad! In the afterlife, Stan is on trial for a second chance at life, and his lawyer plays a memory to prove his worth: Stan listening to Steve's advice to empathize with, and ultimately donate a kidney to, a homeless man. While the courtroom is moved, the prosecutor asks to play the rest of that clip, which reveals that the whole incident was a dream, and upon waking up Stan marched into Steve's room, yelled at him for it and then broke one of his models as he stormed out.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • An episode begins with Katara turning Toph over to the Fire Nation authorities and angrily saying that Toph left her no other choice. Later on, however, we learn that this is actually a ploy to cheat the authorities out of a bounty that had been put on Toph's head.
  • Similarly, when we see the war-council meeting in "Nightmares and Daydreams" end, a meeting which Zuko was looking for, he returns from the council dejected and depressed, and notes while he was his father's son, he truly wasn't himself. Cut to nine episodes later, after Zuko betrays Ozai and the Fire Nation and joins Team Avatar to teach Aang Firebending, Zuko narrates the events of the war-council meeting: when asked for suggestion regarding the rebellions in Earth Kingdom, Zuko says that they will never give up as long as they have hope, to which Azula adds that they need to burn that hope along with the kingdom itself, which Ozai adopts as their official plan to exterminate the Earth Kingdom on the day of Sozin's Comet, an event Zuko was ashamed of because he was afraid to speak out against the plan, prompting his Heel–Face Turn in the "Day of the Black Sun".
• Played for Laughs in Bojack Horseman after BoJack finally sobers up on Princess Carolyn's lawn after a two-week drinking bender. He can't remember at all what he did so Princess Carolyn relays his embarrassing behaviour; he turned up repeatedly with a hobo he insisted was John Stamos, which is told through a series of flashbacks. BoJack doesn't think that's so bad until she tells him that he was also naked and he didn't show up at her house, but at her office while she was at work, with the flashbacks changing accordingly.
• Central Park: In "Celeste We Forget", when Owen brings up the Manhattanhenge incident, Birdie explains that when Owen was a kid, he and his mother almost missed it because Celeste started a sing-along on the bus. Birdie mentions that there's more to the story, but he's leaving it out for dramatic effect. When Owen brings up the incident to his mother, he reveals they weren't even supposed to see the Manhattanhenge. They were actually in Manhattan to buy him the Micro Street Sweeper toy, but they lost out on the opportunity to buy it because Celeste wasted their time watching the Manhattanhenge.
• Played for Laughs in the Clone High episode "Sleep of Faith: La Rue D'Awakening", in which Gandhi realizes that the mysterious trucker who has been mentoring him all episode is a ghost or hallucination. He has a flashback montage of events from the episode... which, among other things, reveals him floating down the highway four feet above the pavement because the truck he was riding in never existed.
• The Dragon Prince: The opening narration in the first episode shows the first human mage to utilize Dark Magic absorbing power from magical birds using a magic tornado, and this event is presented as something evil. In the first episode of season 3, "Sol Regem", we see this scene again but with new context. The mage only created Dark Magic so humans could protect themselves from the elves and dragons, and the tornado spell was done so he could conjure enough power to attack Sol Regem, who was planning on burning a city of thousands to the ground.
  • Later, in season three, Aaravos tells Khessa (inaudibly) how Queen Aditi died, before shoving Khessa off of a tower. In the last episode of season five, Janai has a nightmare of the same scene, and hears what he said.
  Aaravos: Would you like to learn the truth of her fate before you face yours? I swallowed her.
• DuckTales (2017): In "The Last Crash of the Sunchaser!", Scrooge reveals that the triplets' Missing Mom Della disappeared when she stole a rocketship he was planning to surprise her with, only to get lost after entering a dangerous space storm. The family calls him out on this, accusing him of not doing anything about it and caring only about himself, not knowing what happened after that: that Scrooge nearly emptied his money bin trying to find and rescue her, only to be forced to give up by Bradford Buzzard (who was secretly behind Della's disappearance, as it later turned out) when the search grew too expensive and futile.
• Family Guy: In "From Russia With Love", Lois recounts in a flashback how her junior high school bully Stephanie once pushed her into a pool at a pool party after mockingly warning her that her shoes were untied. Later in the episode, after Stephanie reveals that she'd never bullied Lois in the first place, it cuts to that same flashback where Lois falls into the pool. This time, however, Stephanie doesn't push her and she's genuinely warning her that her shoes are untied.
• Futurama:
  • The first episode has Nibbler's shadow visible on the floor of the cryotube room as Fry falls out of his chair and is frozen. Nibbler himself doesn't appear until the fourth episode, and the reason why his shadow was on the floor isn't explained until the third season.
  • In the episode where Nibbler's shadow is explained, Fry's shadow is visible on the floor, and that's explained still later.
  • In "Lethal Inspection", Bender brings Hermes on an unsuccessful search for the product inspector who'd stamped him "Approved" at the factory, despite a faulty download-circuit. This trope is used at the end to reveal that Hermes was sabotaging Bender's pursuit all along, because he was the one who inspected baby Bender and didn't have the heart to scrap him because of this flaw.
• Gravity Falls: In "A Tale Of Two Stans", during Ford’s explanation of his Portal project, the visuals and his narration suggest that he came up with it on his own before recruiting his friend Fiddleford for help. But two episodes later in "The Last Mabelcorn", he reveals the full story: Bill Cipher was the one who gave Ford the idea for the Portal to give him answers to the origins of Gravity Falls’s weirdness. They worked together to the point where Ford let Bill possess him. Furthermore, in that episode, after Fiddleford accidentally gets sucked into the portal and comes out spouting gibberish, Ford seems to brush him off. However, "The Last Mabelcorn" also reveals that after that incident, he confronted Bill, who revealed his true intentions to him.
• The Great North: In "Slide & Wet-Judice Adventure," Wolf initially refuses to join his family on a trip to the water park as he believes he's cursed to always lose his trunks, as shown in three quick flashbacks of a young Wolf losing them on a waterslide, in a wave pool, and at the concession stand. Later, when Wolf is discussing poor decision-making with a trucker he's met, he realizes that his own poor decision-making is what really caused him to always lose his trunks: he went down the waterslide headfirst (after being warned not to), he went into the wave pool when the wave power was on max (again, after being warned not to), and he wore a T-shirt that said "Pants me, I dare you!" at the concession stand.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In the episode "Wrath of the Spider Queen", we see Grim's flashbacks to how he was elected to be Reaper in middle school. The flashback seems to end with Velma catching him rigging the ballots, not knowing that Boogey was the one really trying to cheat. But at the climax of the episode, Velma, along with the audience, is shown that flashback again, and we get the Wham Shot: all the ballots she had seen Grim put in had her name on them. And then we see how Grim really won the Reaper Election after Velma had run off in tears; Boogey indirectly costing him his friendship with Velma was his Rage Breaking Point, and he uses the prototype scythe on Boogey in front of the entire school.
• In the first episode of Harley Quinn (2019) we see a flashback of Harley dancing with The Joker as violinists play a romantic song, with the Joker presenting a ring to Harley saying "Till death do us part". Later in the episode, we see this scene play out again, only this time the violinists are the Joker's henchmen, the ring is from a grenade, and Joker wasn't saying "till death do us part" to Harley, he was saying it to Batman, and used Harley as a distraction to get away.
• Mocked in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, when a flashback contains various additions like Peanut somehow snorkelling through the office in mid-air.
• Infinity Train: In "The Cat's Car", Tulip is tricked into watching a tape which contains her own memories. First we see a fantastic day at a Marine Park with performing dolphins and everything. Then Tulip sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to watch TV, but this is where things start getting weird: the infomercial on the TV features Atticus and One-One, friends Tulip had made on the Infinity Train, and for a split second she sees that the blanket on the couch seems to be shaped like a person is laying under it. Then she remembers her parents sitting her down at the kitchen table to announce all her dreams coming true. This... clearly never happened. She goes back and remembers the previous memories properly. The Marine Park was run down, the dolphin show had one lethargic dolphin (and an implication that the second one had just died), Tulip couldn't see the show anyway because she was starting to need glasses, and her parents had spent the day fighting. She didn't sneak down to watch TV, she had heard the TV on because her father was spending the night there, and her parents had sat her down at the kitchen table to tell her that they were getting a divorce. She tries to remember it as her parents turning into demons and cackling at her misery as the house bursts into flames around her, but this isn't true either, so she forces herself to relive the very awkward and tense conversation that actually happened so she can start to come to grips with it.
• The Moral Orel episode "Help" starts with pictures from a wedding: the bride and groom preparing to sip champagne while their arms are entwined, the cake cutting, removing the garter, and the 'Just Married' getaway car. The end shows those pictures zoomed out to make it clear just how doomed Clay and Bloberta's marriage was from the start: Clay's too busy downing whiskey to drink his champagne, Bloberta has to cut the cake by herself because Clay's too drunk to do it, Clay's actually putting the garter on another woman while Bloberta seethes in anger, and Clay is being arrested for driving the getaway car drunk while Bloberta sobs in humiliation.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In an episode, Twilight Sparkle gets a message from her future self. Future! keeps trying to warn Present! about some disaster, but keeps getting interrupted so she can't finish the message ("Whatever you do, don't—" [vanishes]). Twilight freaks out because she doesn't know what the warning was about. She goes crazy until she realizes what the message her future self was trying to tell her: Don't worry about the future. There was no real danger or disaster beyond Twilight's own obsession over it. Future! was just going back in time to tell Past! to not freak out, but since she couldn't finish telling her, Past! freaked out.
  • Another example occurs across two Synchronous Episodes. In the first episode, Spike goes on a madcap adventure trying to look after his friends' pets while they're away until he winds up on the same train as his friends. Not knowing Spike is there, Twilight makes a comment that Spike should be doing a great job as long as he stays calm and collected, inadvertently teaching him a lesson in leadership and responsibility. When that scene plays again from Twilight's perspective at the end of the second episode, it turns out to be a summation of a lesson Princess Cadance taught her on remaining calm under pressure instead of freaking out like she normally would.
  • In "For Whom the Sweetie Bell Toils", the flashback of Sweetie Belle's fifth birthday shows Rarity giving out party favors to the guests and seemingly basking in her praise, ignoring Sweetie all together. Luna then shows Sweetie what happened before she came downstairs: Rarity was giving out the favors to stop the guests from leaving because Sweetie had not arrived yet, and she didn't accept their praise for the sake of wanting it to be about her sister.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: "Big Reveal" shows "Let's Take a Moment" from the perspective of Laserblast, including how he faked his death and ultimately became Professor Venomous.
• Rick and Morty: "Rickmurai Jack" does this to Rick's fabricated flashback from "The Rickshank Redemption". While the flashback indeed played out as it was supposed to, it didn't exactly happen as Rick had shown the Federation. In the version he showed the Federation agent, he was acting laid-back and indifferent when he rejected Rick Prime's offer; in reality, Rick acted openly annoyed and stand-offish towards Rick Prime and gave him a much more firm and emphatic refusal. Then, rather than figuring out the portal gun equation instantly after his wife and daughter's deaths, Rick had gone into a deep depression for an unknown amount of time before eventually figuring out how to make the gun and going off in search of the Rick who had murdered his family.
• The Simpsons:
  • The episode "Trilogy of Error" shows how the actions of Homer, Bart, and Lisa on one day affected those of the other two. During "Lisa's Day", Chief Wiggum unwittingly lets Fat Tony know there's someone with a bug to record his conversation. Afterwards, Wiggum, Lisa and the viewers hear gunshots from Fat Tony's side. "Bart's Day" reveals to the viewers the noise to be some fireworks lit by Bart to cause a distraction while he and Milhouse escape. "Lisa's Day" also serves to explain why Marge left Homer at Moe's^note Lisa asked her to take her to school, and Marge overheard Homer going off on the Blue Man Group again and how Cletus' truck got stolen during "Homer's Day"^note Lisa and Marge, having snuck into the back, stole it because the car Marge was using ran out of gas. Meanwhile, "Bart's Day" serves to explain how Lisa's bike went missing^note Milhouse took it and why Bart popped out of a sewer manhole^note he and Milhouse were escaping from the mobsters at the end of "Lisa's Day", and how Dr. Nick's clinic burned down^note a failed attempt at making Milhouse's bike be firework powered and Linguo exploded at the end of "Homer's Day"^note it was overloaded by the mobsters' dialect, and the resulting sparks set off the fireworks it was sitting next to.
  • In the episode "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" Homer wakes up with no memory of the preceding 24 hours, only flashbacks that suggested that Marge was having an affair with Duffman and he beat her for it. Out of guilt he jumps off a bridge, and when his life flashes before his eyes he sees the real meaning of the flashbacks which involved a surprise party and a champagne cork.
• Star Wars Rebels: "A World Between Worlds" does this for the end of "Twilight of the Apprentice". When Ezra enters the world between worlds, he discovers a portal where he sees the end of Ahsoka and Vader's duel, which he didn't see in "Twilight of the Apprentice" because she Force-pushed him out before the temple wall closed. It's shown that she's on the defensive the entire time, and ends up breaking the floor to make Vader fall through before Ezra pulls her through the portal to save her life. Later, after Ahsoka and Ezra have returned to Malachor and Lothal respectively, Ahsoka is seen heading deeper into the Sith ruins, just like at the end of "Twilight of the Apprentice". Only now, we know that she's going there to look for a portal back to the world between worlds so she can find Ezra again.
• Steven Universe: In season five's "Now We're Only Falling Apart", several flashback scenes from previous episodes ("The Answer" [now sans Art Shift], "Your Mother and Mine", and "Can't Go Back") are shown from Pearl's perspective, who's now free to elaborate on Rose Quartz's true identity as Pink Diamond. One of the bigger examples is a moment from "Your Mother and Mine" where Garnet depicts Rose begging Pink to spare the Earth. Pearl reveals it was actually Pink Diamond pleading with Blue Diamond, with that conversation resulting in the creation of the Human Zoo seen in the fourth season.
• Supa Strikas: In Perfect Match, at the end of the episode, Shakes's suspicions about Invincible United's new star striker "Max Power" are revealed to be true: they're actually twin players wearing the same jersey number, one for each half of every Invincible United game! Soon enough, previous scenes from the episode are shown in which the twins exchange places out of sight of everyone except United's coach, Vince.
• "Young Justice": Being a covert spy thriller set in a DC universe, this trope is utilized extensively in the first three seasons. In the season 1 penultimate episode, "Auld Acquaintances" The three members of the team suspected as being moles, Artemis, Conner, and M'Gann all end up on Santa Prisca to join the Light and their respective handler/mentor who have dirt or influence on them, only for it to be revealed that they had come clean about these dealings to their team as a counterplay to the Light. In Season 2, the death of Artemis is shown at the beginning of the episode but then recapitulated later on as a ploy by Nightwing and Kaldur to facilitate her infiltration into Manta's troops with the same scenes showed at different angles.

Other

• The "Invisible Gorilla" experiment. The viewers of a video featuring people passing a basketball to each other is shown, and the experimenter (or teacher, as many psychology teachers also do this in class) tells the participants to pay attention to and count the number of passes. The first time watching the video viewers are distracted enough they don't usually notice it, but there is a random person in a gorilla suit who is visible on screen for a few seconds. ^note  This works usually because the people are dressed in brightly colored uniforms which contrast the dark gorilla suit, and the watcher's eye generally focuses on those bright colors to the exclusion of all else — until later, when you know what to look for. A similar video was used in a Public Service Announcement about being cautious of cyclists, to great effect.
• An PSA titled Evan by Sandy Hook Promise has a story of two students in school communicating via writing on a desk, continuing to do so until they meet in real life and share a romantically charged moment...right as an armed student enters abruptly and cocks a rifle. The ad then shows how he was in the background of every previous scene, either being bullied or exhibiting signs of violent tendencies, ending with the message to always be alert to try and prevent gun violence.

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