Buffy the Vampire Slayer is laced with foreshadowing, due to Joss Whedon's long-term planning.
- In season six episode 6, Xander looks at Anya and Dawn and say's i'm going to marry that girl. Buffy gasps and scolds him for Dawn being 15 at the time, but he means Anya... Xander and Dawn end up married in the comic books that take place later in the timeline
- In season six episode 2, Bargaining, Buffy asks Dawn if "this is hell," if they are in hell, foreshadowing the following episode where she tells Spike she thinks she was in heaven
- In a truly epic bit of foreshadowing in the Season 3 premiere "Anne", Lily (from "Lie To Me") tells Buffy about how she used to follow around this "loser preacher." Could she mean Caleb in Season 7?
- "I'm so evil and skanky. And I think I'm kinda gay." — Willow Rosenberg about her vampire Doppelgänger, a year before she did come out — and three before she almost destroyed the world. It results in something of a terrifying echo, especially if you watch the second season again after knowing what happens. When Willow first utters "Bored now" as a vampire, it actually gives you chills.
- This example is particularly hit home by the exchange that takes place immediately after.Buffy: Willow, just remember—a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the person it was.
Angel: (who is a vampire) Well, actually... (Buffy gives him a Death Glare) ...that's a good point!
- This example is particularly hit home by the exchange that takes place immediately after.
- Word of God says they hadn't planned to make Willow gay as of "The Wish" let alone even earlier in "Phases", but then there's this exchange:Buffy: What guy could resist your Willow charms?
Willow: At last count? All of them, maybe more. - Similarly, Dawn Summers' arrival was foreshadowed by dream dialogue in two different episodes in Season 4: In "This Year's Girl", Faith and Buffy are making a bed in Dawn's future room when they have this exchange:Faith: Little sis coming. I know.
Buffy: So much to do before she gets here.- And in the season finale "Restless", one episode before Dawn's appearance, Tara urged Buffy to "be back before Dawn."
- There's also a remark somewhere about "trying on big sister's clothes".
- Faith's mention of counting down from "seven-three-oh" foreshadows the fifth season finale, exactly 730 days later. The end of Season 4 also makes reference to the scene with Faith while foreshadowing Season 5, and mentions that a clock showing 7.30 is now "way out".
- Want to get even creepier? Faith steals Buffy's credit card and reads out the expiration date as May 2001. Now watch "The Gift", airing May 23rd 2001.
- Xander dresses as a pirate in the Season 6 episode, and then in the seventh season he loses an eye and has to wear an eye patch.
- There's a very subtle one during the first season where Buffy is hanging out with her friends and she says bite me. Cue Angel looking all weird at Buffy.
- At the end of "The Harvest" Angel appears to be standing next to a sign saying WATCH YOU — appropriate enough for his Mysterious Watcher role. But when he walks away we see the sign actually reads WATCH YOUR STEP, foretelling his Face–Heel Turn into Angelus. Similarly at the end of "After Life" Buffy's other vampire Love Interest, Spike, is standing next to a discarded door with a BEWARE OF DOG sign, hinting at the Destructive Romance to follow.
- A very subtle, blink-and-you'll-miss-it example from the fourth season premier, foreshadowing Buffy's mother's death: Buffy tells Willow, "I can't wait until my mom gets the bill for these textbooks; I hope it's a funny aneurysm."
- In Season 5's "Crush", while Buffy and Xander are investigating the train massacre, Buffy sits down in one of the seats which has the chalk outline of a body drawn around it, foreshadowing her death in the Season 5 finale.
- Word of God is that they originally considered making Xander gay, in which case his meetings with Larry in Phases and Earshot would have been this.
- Any dream Buffy has involving Little Miss Muffet.
- Anytime Little Miss Muffet is referenced, at all.
- In the Season 7 episode "Sleeper", Aimee Mann sings a song called "Pavlov's Bell." During the next episode "Never Leave Me" the Scooby Gang discusses the possibility that Spike is being controlled by means of Pavlovian conditioning.
- In Season 7, when we first see Amanda, she mentions having confusing feelings for a boy that bullies her, and the fact that she retaliates quite physical and effectively. Next episode we see her we find out she is a potential slayer, which is fitting considering the obvious parallels with Spuffy and the natural physical prowess of slayers.
- In the Season 9 comics there is "Where's Willow?" on the cover of "Apart (Of Me)" part III. Later, she shows up at Giles' house.
- The depths of Warren's misogyny were alluded to from his first appearance, where he specifically programmed April to feel pain whenever the two of them weren't together, and then ultimately proceeded to ditch her anyway.
- In the episode of Warren's death, Rack tells him that Buffy is the last thing he needs to worry about (Willow being the first), Warren quips "Yeah, let's talk about my skin troubles!" And we all know what happens to him later.
- Before the Wishverse, Buffy and Willow discuss how in different circumstances she might have become Faith. Later Wishverse Buffy shows up (who is who Buffy would have been had she not been loved). Turns out without her friends, she's even worse.
- Wishverse!Buffy is foreshadowing for Spike's Breaking Speech in "Fool for Love", where he tells Buffy that without her connections to the world (family and friends) she'd be a Death Seeker.
- One of Faith's first scenes is with a poster prominently displayed warning about rape. Depending on how you count them she has at least three rape victims to her name.
- Giles' conversation with Willow after the latter resurrects Buffy has Willow displaying both a very cavalier attitude towards seriously dark magic as well as arrogance that "only she could do it". She brushes off Giles' warning that plenty of others could do it but "you wouldn't want to meet them" as the others being "the bad guys", and ends the conversation with threatening Giles not to piss her off. All of which foreshadows that she'll be the eventual Big Bad of the series.
