"...Oh, sorry. I keep saying crazy-sounding stuff, don't I? Hey, remember me, okay? This is probably the last time I'll be able to drink freely like this... If I ever see you again, I'll tell you more of my story. ...Of course, it'll probably have nothing to do with your problems."
When something said or appearing in a work Foreshadows another work that would be produced by the same people later.
If this happens in the same continuity as the work they appeared in, it's an Early-Bird Cameo. If it happens in another work that has already been made, but you haven't seen it because it hasn't been localized, then Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros."
When this happens the other way around, it's a Production Throwback or a Company Cross References.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Attack on Titan Season 2's ED contains a scene of Ymir Fritz's daughters eating her remains, the context of which wouldn't be revealed in the manga until chapter 122, over two years later.
- The epilogue of season 1 episode 32 of the children's anime Azuki-chan shows the happy-ending conclusion of the main heroine and her lover's adolescent saga that was released later in the original manga.
- One episode of Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid features Sōsuke getting a haircut. During a bit in a barber shop in which Sōsuke makes a scene, the shot cuts to several characters outside the shop taking notice.
Each character is from Death Note. Kyoto Animation, who animated that season of FMP, had intended to animate the anime adaptation of Death Note, but the contract ultimately went to Madhouse instead.
- At one point in Air, Ayu, Nayuki and Makoto from Kanon appear as Mizuzu's classmates, and later on Kyoto Animation would go on to animate that series, as well as several other Key/Visual Arts properties, of which Air was the first.
- The last of the Tribute Comics included in the pamphlet for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie2nd As had Movie Comics Continuity Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate talking about the various timelines and Alternate Continuities of the series, ending with Hayate wondering "if there's a world where we all live as normal elementary schoolers"? Around one year later, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT was released, an Alternate Universe where all of the Nanoha cast are normal earthlings.
- There's an episode of the Doraemon TV series where Suneo boasts about getting the brand-new video game, titled "Legend of the Sun King" to Nobita and his friends. And then comes another Big Damn Movie from the franchise, Doraemon: Nobita's the Legend of the Sun King
- The main cast of Ooyasan wa Shishunki! appear in the crowd when the fireworks are going off in episode 8 of Komori-san Can't Decline!. The two series were released only one season apart. Ooyasan wa Shishunki! returns the favor in its seventh episode, when Shuri and co. appear in the crowd of students having soup.
- Some of the Dragon Ball movies have glimpses of things that wouldn't happen in the manga until sometime later.
- In Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might, Yamcha's gi had King Kai's symbol on it, but Yamcha wouldn't be wished back with the Dragon Balls until a year after the movie came out.
- The opening scene of Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler has Dende on Kami's lookout wearing his symbol. The movie first premiered in Japan on March 7th, 1992, and Dende didn't become Kami in the manga until October of that same year.
- In the final chapter of Love Hina, Naru's little sister Mei can be seen wearing a Mahora Academy uniform a good two years before Negima! Magister Negi Magi began. It also implies that she and Mei Sakura from Negima are the same character.
- A running theme in Studio TRIGGER works after Space Patrol Luluco:
- Luluco ends with a Stinger of Luluco high-fiving Akko Kagari, with the phrase "See you next Trigger Animation" appearing shortly after.
- In Little Witch Academia (2017), "SSSS.Next" appears on a billboard. Following a co-production with A-1 Pictures a year later, SSSS.GRIDMAN would be released.
- The final scene of SSSS.GRIDMAN has a poster for Promare in Akane's room.
- A poster for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (which comes after a co-production with Disney) can be seen during the finale of SSSS.DYNɅZENON.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- In Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea which was in the Ruby and Sapphire era, a Running Gag involving Jessie and James mentioning "diamonds and pearls" has Meowth first note that it would be a "good name for a game", and then he says that they have to get through the current season first, as the next season at the time would be the Sinnoh arc.
- At the time of the Japanese airing of "Bright Lights, Big Changes!", one of the final scenes features the only overseas episode of "Alolan Detective Laki" set in a very obvious pastiche of London. This would later be implied to be the England-inspired Galar Region.
- In Naruto the gates of the Leaf Village display the hiragana characters "あ" and "ん" which when read together form "Ann"; which is the name of Hachimaru's "Fated Princess" in Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, Masashi Kishimoto's next work.
- Pretty Cure:
- The characters in HeartCatch Pretty Cure! used musical terms like "Fortissimo" and "Orchestra" in their attacks. The next season was the music-themed Suite Pretty Cure ♪.
- In Suite Pretty Cure, endcards showing the Suite and Smile teams together were seen on some of the last episodes.
- In Smile Pretty Cure!'s first ending theme, the line "Itsudatte, wakuwaku! Doki Doki Pretty Cure!" is used twice.
- One of the Cures in HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! is Cure Princess.
- In episode 37 of Go! Princess Pretty Cure, Kirara plays a witch in the academy's play.
- Starting with Maho Girls Pretty Cure!, every season of the show has a cameo from the next seasons leading Cure in the final episode. Also, the name of the second ending theme for that season is "Mahou A La Domo".
Asian Animation
- Happy Heroes: In Season 9 episode 1, Miss Peach interviews the producer of a new show called Careful S. and Kalo, a rumored spin-off of Happy Heroes that was confirmed to be in development in 2014 (this episode premiered in 2015). The 2018 mini-season Happy Heroes and the City of Mystery likely evolved from this spin-off, given that it stars Careful S. and Kalo in a prominent role.
Comic Books
- Gravity Falls: Lost Legends features some references to the then-upcoming show The Owl House, such as a partly-obscured entry in one of the Journals on The Boiling Isles (the show's setting) and a "Wanted!" Poster of one of the show's major characters, Eda the Owl Lady.
- The Vertigo Comic Book Nevada was an expansion of a throwaway gag in Marvel Comics' Howard the Duck, which mentioned "a mandatory fight scene between a Las Vegas chorus girl, an ostrich, and a standing lamp". Both were written by Steve Gerber.
- In What's New? with Phil and Dixie, Agatha and Krosp appear here
in the background, a full two years before Girl Genius started. In fact, Krosp was an occasional recurring character
in the Duelist days, about a decade before Girl Genius started! The Professors Foglio were working on this for a long time.
- In January 2019, Tom King tweeted
that Heroes in Crisis #5 contains a hint to his spiritual follow up to The Vision (2015) and Mister Miracle (2017). What King was referring to was two sequential panels
focusing on Adam Strange and Mister Terrific, who are the main characters of said project, Strange Adventures (2020).
- Occasionally Marvel Comics will use clairvoyance or time travel as an excuse to show a splash page collage of various future events.
- Transformers vs. G.I. Joe featured the Joes derogatoringly referring to the Autobots as "GoBots" in reference to the Transformers franchise's lesser-known competitor that is now under the same ownership due to Hasbro buying out GoBots owner Tonka, which in retrospect comes off as alluding to writer and illustrator Tom Scioli's GoBots miniseries.
Fan Works
- In Chapter 19 of Arc Royale, Raven tells her brother that she did receive an iteration of Jaune to fight in the fic's death game, but he quickly killed himself to return to his own reality after learning the details, muttering about "anomalies" the entire time. A few weeks later, the fic's author began uploading their next story, Arc Corp, which features that particular Jaune as a member of a family-run SCP Foundation-esque organization.
- In A Very Potter Sequel, a group of characters summon Patronuses, which take the form of Green Lantern, the Genie from Aladdin, and Boba Fett from Star Wars. In years to come, Team Starkid would create a DC Comics musical, an Aladdin musical, and a Star Wars musical.
Films Animation
- Pixar has been doing this a fair deal since 1999:
- The first one was rather subtle: in Toy Story 2, repairman Geri has the detachable eyeballs of scarer Ted Pauley.
- In Monsters, Inc. (pictured above), one of Boo's toys is Nemo from Finding Nemo. Additionally, there is a model of Nemo in the trailer Randall is banished into, and there is a clownfish mural at Harryhausen's.
- In Finding Nemo, a boy in the dentist's waiting room is reading a comic book of The Incredibles, as well as a car resembling Luigi from Cars briefly passing outside the window.
- In The Incredibles, a scene features a Hudson Hornet resembling Doc Hudson from Cars in the background.
- In Ratatouille, whilst working his way up to the rooftops of Paris, Remy is chased by a dog (seen only in silhouette) bearing a striking resemblance to Dug from Up. Another scene has the cockroach from WALLE appear in Linguini's house.
- Also from Up, Carl's cane is seen in WALLE.
- In a DVD bonus short for Ratatouille, WALLE makes a brief cameo as a Mars rover operator. Parodied on WALLE's website, which shows him hiding in every single past Pixar movie.
- In Up, when Carl's balloon-house goes past a little girl's bedroom, a teddy bear is in the far left corner of the screen. This is Lotso, who is an important character in Toy Story 3.
- In Toy Story 3, one of the posters in Andy's room features Finn McMissile from Cars 2.
- On the same movie, Andy also has a "Newt Crossing" sticker next to his computer; and in Brave, the Witch uses a Newt as an ingredient for her magic potion. Newt was a Pixar film that was cancelled in development.
- Cars 2 has car-versions of the royal family of Brave pictured on a tapestry in the British pub.
- In Brave, there is a bas-relief of Sulley in the Witch's hut, for Monsters University.
- An example of foreshadowing that took quite a while to get payoff (and may be a coincidence): Toy Story (from 1995) includes a gas station with the name "Dinoco"
, whose logo is a green Apatosaurus. Not only is Dinoco a company that plays a major role in Cars, but The Good Dinosaur, released in 2015, stars... a green Apatosaurus!
- In that regard, Monsters University has dinosaur toys strewn about at points (one of them is Arlo), and a dinosaur using a walker appears outside of the OK Dorm.
- Inside Out also alludes to The Good Dinosaur. If you look closely when Riley thinks about how she and her family stopped by to look at some dinosaur sculptures (and inadvertently damaged their car) on the way to San Francisco, you can see that the two statues that appear are of Forrest Woodbrush and (presumably; his head is not seen) Arlo.
- Hank the octopus from Finding Dory makes a background cameo in The Good Dinosaur when Arlo learns to swim.
- A driver in Finding Dory's climax has a Lightning McQueen bandage on his right hand, for Cars 3.
- Cars 3 has a car who loses his focus on the treadmill because he's nostalgic for his home town, Santa Cecilia. This is the town featured in the next movie, Coco, and an image of Santa Cecilia looks like an image shown in the Coco trailer attached to Cars 3.
- In Coco, when Miguel and Hector are making their way to the battle of the bands, one can spot a skeletized The Incredibles poster on the side, for Incredibles 2.
- In Incredibles 2, Jack-Jack has a Duke Caboom from Toy Story 4 in his crib.
- During Toy Story 4's credits, a bouncy castle can be spotted with the pegicorn design seen on Barley's van in Onward.
- Onward has a brief shot of a Dorothea Williams record on a shelf in the Lightwood house. Williams would be a central figure in the story of Soul.
- In a background shot of Soul, a travel advertisement for an Italian town called Portorosso can be seen, the setting of the next Pixar movie, Luca.
- Luca: On a shelf in Giulia's room is a record labeled "4*Villaggi", a reference to 4*Town, the boy band group central to the plot of Turning Red.
- In Turning Red, Mei has the Star Command logo on her skateboard, foreshadowing Lightyear. A promotional poster for the film also features a sticker of Sox.
- In Lightyear, during the scene where Mo Morrison gets snacks for the crew from the vending machine, the bottom of the vending machine has bottles of Wade Water, which features the currently upcoming Elemental's main character.
- Disney Animated Canon:
- Pinocchio has books of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan propped in the background during the Storybook Opening.
- Aladdin:
- A statue of a cherub appears in "A Whole New World", which would later show up in Hercules's "I Won't Say I'm In Love".
- During the same number, the magic carpet is seen flying past the Temple of Zeus, and the scene immediately afterward has Aladdin and Jasmine at the Palace of the Emperor of China.
- In Walt Disney's introduction to a 1954 TV broadcast of
Alice in Wonderland, Walt discusses a Christmastime tradition that people living in England have of performing pantomimes of classic stories. The stories that Walt gave as examples include Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, which Disney had previously planned to adapt into animated movies — though decades of Development Hell meant that Walt, unfortunately, wouldn't live to see these plans fulfilled.
- Zootopia:
- Duke Weaselton runs a stand selling pirated movies. He not only has animal versions of recent Disney animated hits but also of films that were not done yet at the time of the film's release, such as Meowana and Floatzen 2. One bootleg, Giraffic, referenced a film that was ultimately canceled the next year called Gigantic.
- An image of Maui's fishhook can be seen on the side of Finnick's van.
- Illumination Entertainment:
- In Despicable Me, the Lorax is visible on Margo's shirt, as is the Grinch in Despicable Me 3. Despicable Me 2's end credits blatantly features the minions Stuart, Kevin, and Bob auditioning for their own film.
- There is an advertisement for Sing on the back of the bus that that Max and Snowball steal in The Secret Life of Pets.
Films Live-Action
- Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie explicitly references Jules and Jim, directed by his fellow at time François Truffaut, but it wasn't released yet.
- Quentin Tarantino:
- In True Romance, Leo Donowitz is filming a World War II movie. Tarantino's later WWII movie Inglourious Basterds features a Donny Donowitz.
- In Pulp Fiction, Mia talks about filming a pilot episode about an all-women assassin squad. This was intended to be a reference to the later Kill Bill movies (the KB plot changed a bit in the meantime).
- In Reservoir Dogs, Pam Grier is one of the subjects of a Seinfeldian Conversation. She'd be the star of Jackie Brown a few years later.
- In the 2003 movie The Singing Detective, Robert Downey Jr.'s character describes his memory of watching his mother have sex with a stranger, with the onomatopoeias "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang".
- In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, they walk past a movie set where Daredevil is fighting some ninjas. The scene was probably put in because Kevin Smith was supposed to have directed (or written) the Daredevil movie - Ben Affleck appearing in both was probably just a coincidence.
- This exchange from Titanic (1997) uses the term "I see you" in the exact manner as it would later be used in Avatar, which was already written.
Rose: You have a gift, Jack. You do. You see people.Jack: I see you.
- Sabrina: Linus orders a pair of ticket for the play The Seven Year Itch. Billy Wilder followed up Sabrina with a film adaptation of that play, saying it interviews that the seemingly throwaway line was a preview of things to come.
- M. Night Shyamalan 's The Happening featured a scene at the end with a little girl wearing an Avatar: The Last Airbender backpack, foreshadowing Shyamalan's live action feature film of the series a few years later.
- Pufnstuf, the film version of the Sid and Marty Krofft TV series H.R. Pufnstuf, features a number of bits that foreshadow the Kroffts' follow-up series, The Bugaloos. For starters, not only is Martha Raye (who plays the main villain in The Bugaloos, Benita Bizarre) is playing the role of Boss Witch, but also, her henchman, Heinrich, is basically an Expy of one of Benita's henchmen, Funky Rat. Also, in one scene, Witchiepoo steals Freddy the Flute while disguised as a hippie dance instructor named Betsy Bugaloo.
- In Star Trek: First Contact, after Picard discovers the Borg from the 24th century are attempting to contact 21st century Borg, Dr. Crusher says "But in the 21st century, the Borg are still in the Delta Quadrant..." Within the film, this is just exposition. But when it was released, it was a reminder that as Star Trek: Voyager was set in the Delta Quadrant, sooner or later the ship would hit Borg space something which came to pass several months later.
- Blade II features a character named Scud who wears a B.P.R.D. t-shirt. Guillermo del Toro had already signed on to direct and produce Hellboy.
- The Phantom of the Opera (2004) foreshadows Love Never Dies - a brief snippet of "Beneath a Moonless Sky" can be heard during "Journey to the Cemetery."
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) foreshadows Wonder Woman (2017). The most obvious is that the photo of Wonder Woman that's a plot point in BvS actually gets taken in Wonder Woman, but there's subtler moments, too. For example, the deeply sympathetic look Diana gives Lois Lane after Superman sacrifices himself for the greater good and her later comment that people only know how to honor him as a soldier foreshadows Steve Trevor's death and its aftermath in Wonder Woman.
- In Pacific Rim: Uprising, Amara's escape pod lands at the foot of the 1/1 Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn statue. Legendary Pictures is now producing a Live-Action Adaptation of the original Mobile Suit Gundam.
- Ready Player One features Mechagodzilla as the attack vehicle of the Big Bad, among the film's many crossover elements, complete with a brief remix of Godzilla's iconic theme (which is notable because Toho is very stringent with its character rights). Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), released the following year, would have more remixes of the iconic theme for the first time in an American Godzilla movie, and, three years later, Godzilla vs. Kong would introduce the newest incarnation of Mechagodzilla.
- In When Harry Met Sally..., Harry is seen reading Misery. This would be Rob Reiner's next film.
- In Repo Man, a girl at a party wears a Sid Vicious t-shirt. Alex Cox's next film would be Sid & Nancy.
- In Psycho, there are a lot of bird motifs (like a major character whose last name is Crane). Alfred Hitchcock's next film was The Birds.
- In Anatomy of a Murder, a hotel desk clerk is shown reading Exodus by Leon Uris, which would be the basis of Otto Preminger's next film, Exodus (1960).
Literature
- In Diana Wynne Jones' Deep Secret, the characters mention a demon designed by Nick's father, who is blue, has three legs, smells of ozone and feels acidic. A demon fitting this description is a character in Dark Lord of Derkholm which was published a year later.
- Books in The Magic School Bus series often did this. On one of the final pages, Ms. Frizzle would wear a dress related to the topic of the next book. (For instance, her dress would have pictures of bees on it, and the next book would be about bees)
- In The Night Mayor by Kim Newman, the protagonist is an author best known for a tropetastic spy thriller starring an implausibly glamorous redheaded secret agent named Vanessa Vail. Newman's later Diogenes Club series (which is deliberately somewhat tropetastic) stars an implausibly glamorous redheaded secret agent named Vanessa. (Just Vanessa — part of her implausible glamor is that she has only one name — but she does use 'Vanessa Vail' as an alias in one of her earliest published appearances.)
- In The Battle of the Labyrinth, the fourth book of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, a crowd of monsters resembling humans with various animal heads makes an appearance as background characters in an arena. In The Kane Chronicles, demons resembling humans with various animal heads are the favored Mooks of the primary antagonist.
- The Baton Rouge-class cruiser
appeared in the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology
(a 1980 licensed reference book that documented human space technology from Sputnik I to Star Trek: The Motion Picture) as one of the starships used just before the timeframe of the original series. Apart from the external deflector dish on the secondary hull, it bears a striking resemblance to the Enterprise-D of Star Trek: The Next Generation (not coincidentally, both were designed by Rich Sternbach). Also, some illustrations from the book were used as computer displays (the eponymous "Okudagrams").
- The Discworld books often did this, not just by using Sequel Hooks but also by often taking statements and segments during the book and expanding them into their own works later on. The most egregious example from this may be the book The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, which was first mentioned in Reaper Man. There are ten years and 15 other Discworld novels in between these works.
- The Fifth Elephant: The description Gaspode gives of the wolves' howling is very reminiscent of the Trolls Long Call in The Long Earth series of books written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter.
- The second two books in Gordon Korman's Everest series feature several references to scuba diving. Korman's next adventure trilogy, Dive, had scuba as a central focus.
- Ellen and Otis: One chapter of Otis Spofford has the titular character doing a favor for an older boy from Zachary Taylor High School, and mentions his team will be playing Benjamin Harrison High School. Eleven years later, Cleary would release Ribsy, the final Henry Huggins book, in which Ribsy ends up at a football game between these same two schools.
- Lizard Music: One of the B-movies Victor watches is titled Invasion of the Fat Men, which is about millions of fat men falling from space and eating all of the planet's junk food. This is the same premise as Pinkwater's book Fat Men From Space, which was published a year later.
Live-Action TV
- The Boy Meets World episode "Seven the Hard Way" did foreshadow a number of things in the Sequel Series Girl Meets World including Shawn being a writer and he and Angela not ending up together, Cory and Topanga's first child being a girl (though her name was Beverly in the episode instead of Riley), Eric donning his "Play With Squirrels" persona, and Jack becoming a corporate businessman.
- The Colbert Report was originally a fake commercial. Stephen Colbert had mentioned how much better his own show would be on The Daily Show long before The Colbert Report.
- In August 2014, while discussing the protests in Ferguson, MO, Stephen hinted at the Daily Show spinoff The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, which premiered in January 2015.
- Doctor Who has a few cases, also shading into You Look Familiar:
- Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones) previously played Martha's cousin in "Army of Ghosts".
- Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) was a one-off companion just before Martha, then returned as a full-time companion after Martha left.
- Bernard Cribbins appeared as a newspaper seller in "Voyage of the Damned". Next season he was revealed/repurposed as Wilf Mott, Donna's grandfather, and eventually became a one-shot companion.
- Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) previously played one of the prophets in "The Fires of Pompeii".
- Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald) showed up early in the same season, first in "Asylum of the Daleks" as Oswin Oswald (who died), then in the Christmas special "The Snowmen" as Clara Oswin (who also died), before finally appearing as Clara Oswald in "The Bells of Saint John". The first two were later revealed to be echoes of Clara Oswald, who splintered herself through time and space to stop the Great Intelligence.
- And then there's Peter Capaldi, the Twelfth Doctor, who played Caecilius alongside Karen Gillan in "The Fires of Pompeii".
- In later episodes of Drake & Josh one of the marquees at The Premiere theater reads Now She's Carly (referring to Miranda Cosgrove, who played Megan on that show and goes on to play Carly in iCarly).
- In one episode of Spaced, after a day of being high and playing Resident Evil 2, Tim starts hallucinating that he is surrounded by zombies. The production of this episode is where everybody on the show realized how familiar they all were with classic zombie horror, which led to the later film Shaun of the Dead.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: The two-part episode "Unification" features Leonard Nimoy as Spock, and makes several references to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which was still a month away.
- In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", when Sisko tells the Temporal Investigators that he'd encountered the Enterprise during the events of TOS' "The Trouble with Tribbles", one investigator says "Be more specific, there have been five vessels named Enterprise...", making the other investigator correct him by saying "Six.", referring to the Enterprise-E, which was about to debut in Star Trek: First Contact.
- The Grand Finale of Supernatural has a little nod towards star Jared Padalecki's next starring vehicle, Walker, which also airs on The CW.
- The very first episode of Scrubs opens with a scene where the main character J.D. is wearing a Clone High t-shirt. Scrubs debuted in 2001 whereas Clone High would first air in 2002, with Bill Lawrence being the series creator of the former and a co-creator of the latter.
Music
- Of Montreal: "Faberge Falls For Shuggie" from the album Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? ends with the chant "Skeletal lamping, the controller sphere, false priest". These would turn out to be the titles of the next three releases.
- Origami Angel:
- In Somewhere City, "666 Flags" mentions the singer's plans to "build a Gami Gang theme park". The next album is called GAMI GANG.
- The remix album Origami Angel Broke Minecraft includes "Greenbelt Station" as its only fully original track. This song was later released (although slightly different) the next year, on GAMI GANG.
- Yes: "The Remembering (High the Memory)" from Tales From Topographic Oceans has the word "Relayer" repeated in the middle of the song. It would be the title of their following album.
Pinball
- The sides of the soccer field in Flipper Football include billboards for several other Capcom games, including the unreleased Kingpin and Big Bang Bar tables.
Tabletop Games
- The Future Sight set of Magic: The Gathering contained several themes (and cards) that would make their "proper" debuts in later sets. It was the third set of the Time Spiral block, whose previous two sets contained Production Throwback and What Could Have Been.
- Magic has done quite a bit of this of late to create a feeling of mechanical continuity between sets with unrelated stories. The most popular tournament format, Standard, consists of cards printed in the current block, the previous two blocks, and any standalone sets released between that time. A set will often be seeded with individual cards or a sub-theme that will be expounded on in a later set or block (or tie in with the previous block) to keep the Standard environment interesting as blocks rotate in and outnote .
- Wizards did this twice with the Eldrazi, though in different ways.
- In the original Zendikar block, the card Eye of Ugin
was printed in the Worldwake set, and has an ability that reduces the cost of colorless Eldrazi spells. The Eldrazi wouldn't make their appearance until the last set of the block, fittingly named Rise of the Eldrazi.
- In the first set of the return block, Battle for Zendikar, the card Kozilek's Channeler
was printed, which makes two colorless mana and references an Eldrazi named Kozilek. Kozilek got a new card in the next set, Kozilek, the Great Distortion
which has a mana cost that requires that at least two colorless mana be spent to cast it. Exactly what the Channeler was made for.
- In the original Zendikar block, the card Eye of Ugin
- And again for Amonkhet. A card called Dark Intimations referenced casting a Bolas planeswalker. No Bolas planeswalkers were permitted in standard at the time the card released (Aether Revolt). In the next block (Amonkhet), two Bolas planeswalkers were released: Nicol Bolas, God-Pharoah and Nicol Bolas, the Deceiver.
- Before either of these, the set Darksteel has a card called Shield of Kaldra. Shield of Kaldra make three specific cards indestructible: itself; Sword of Kaldra, which came out the previous set Mirrodin; ...and Helm of Kaldra, which wouldn't come out until the next set Fifth Dawn.
- When Warhammer 40,000 released its 5th Edition in 2008, the section containing pictures and background material for its armies had very little to say about the Dark Eldar, which combined with the fact that the army's codex was a decade and two editions old led to fears that the Dark Eldar would be discontinued. But what the core rulebook did contain was a piece of artwork with drastically redesigned Dark Eldar infantry and vehicles, as well as an in-universe chart graphing Eldar pirate raids that showed a ten-year lull in activity followed by a massive spike. Sure enough, the Dark Eldar got a new codex and new models in 2010, which were regarded as some of the best in the franchise's history.
- In a lesser form, the December 2010 issue of White Dwarf featured, as one of the contendents in a battle report, a Necron army (which back then was the other army with a dated codex, one month after Dark Eldar got their update) led by a Lord called Imotekh the Stormlord. What back then could have been just a random name given to a generic HQ unit became something more one year later, when Necrons got updated with a new Codex which included new units and named characters, such as - you guessed it - Imotekh the Stormlord.
Video Games
- In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2, Excellen Browning notices that all the Humongous Mecha produced by Isurugi Industries have names ending in -lion & makes a joke something along the lines of "Does that mean they made Go-" before being interrupted. Two years later Super Robot Wars W was released featuring GoLion's SRW debut.
- The same game had a gag where, in response to Sanger Zonvolt naming his Super Robot after himselfnote , Ryusei Date suggests renaming the SRX "Dairyusei"; when his teammate Rai Braunstein complains, Ryusei suggests "Dairaioh" instead. A few months later, Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 was released, and one of the selectable characters' robots is named Raioh, later being upgraded into Dairaioh.
- Super Robot Wars Original Generations, an Updated Re-release, added a couple of these in. At one point, Lemon Browning reminds Axel Almer that his rival Beowulf is far from the only person to call himself a wolf. The Mission-Pack Sequel, Original Generations Gaiden, introduces the Cry Wolves Team from Super Robot Wars MX.
- The first Super Robot Wars Z contains a scene where the Big Bad, wearing a black costume with a full-face mask and a High Collar of Doom, remarks that some refer to the orange-haired protagonist Rand Travis as "Orange". Fans joked that this was foreshadowing for Code Geass's eventual involvement in SRW...and they were exactly right, since Geass made its debut in Z2.
- The 3DO version of Policenauts was preceded by a supplemental database disc known as the Pilot Disk which featured information on the game's production and plot. The database disc was later ported to the PlayStation as Policenauts: Private Collection. Both versions of the disc feature a glossary of the game's terminology. If you look for the definition of FOXHOUND on the glossary, you will find early concept art for Metal Gear 3, which ultimately became Metal Gear Solid, drawn by none other than Yoji Shinkawa himself.
- Attempted in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater with "Guy Savage", a minigame using an engine that was to be used in Zone of the Enders 3. The game got cancelled, though. Due to the game's cancellation, the minigame was not included on the HD version of MGS3.
- In Persona 3: Portable, there's a NPC at a bar who mentions girlfriend problems and strange dreams, but tells the protagonist it's not something s/he will have to worry about now. This character is Vincent Brooks, the protagonist of the then-upcoming Atlus game Catherine.
- A Sonic the Hedgehog air freshener can be seen hanging hanging from the player's rear-view mirror in the Sega racing game Rad Mobile, which was released for the arcades two months before the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Nintendo 3DS remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has several rooms with (not so) hidden artwork from the then-upcoming Skyward Sword for the Wii. Twilight Princess HD continued this tradition by including screenshots from the Breath of the Wild teaser trailer framed in Chudley's shop in Castle Town before Malo buys it.
- Nintendo announced that a 3D remake of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask in the vein of Ocarina of Time would be under consideration, but not until an original 3DS installment of the series had been officially published. This, presumably, is the reason why Link has Majora's Mask hanging on his wall in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (the aforementioned 3DS game).
- Grand Theft Auto 2 has an automobile repair shop called Max Paynt, a pun on the title of Rockstar Games' future release, Max Payne.
- The English pub scene in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception features a newspaper with a headline about deadly fungus, which is a reference to Naughty Dog's then-upcoming The Last of Us. Although according to Word of God, it was a company in-joke that wasn't meant to be in the final version of the game, and almost ruined Naughty Dog's surprise reveal.
- The trailer for the Nintendo 3DS that Nintendo used for its 2010 E3 Press Conference featured what turned out to be an early rendition of the final boss fight against Bowser from Super Mario 3D Land.
- Super Smash Bros.:
- Super Smash Bros. Melee had previews to future titles Cubivore and Animal Crossing, as well as on to the (then) future installment in the Fire Emblem series in Roy.
- Brawl serves as one for Kid Icarus: Uprising, albeit somewhat retroactively (Uprising was originally a completely unrelated game until the dev team thought that Pit & co. would be a perfect fit for their concepts). Pit and Palutena's updated looks are used in Uprising, as well as Pit's bow-twin swords weapon. His Fallen Angel Palette Swap from the game, on the other hand, became an actual character that even became a Smash fighter himself.
It should be noted that Masahiro Sakurai of Kirby fame helms both the Super Smash Bros. series and Kid Icarus Uprising.
- To promote 3DS/Wii U, Sakurai ran a "Pic of the Day" feature on Miiverse to discuss certain features of the game. In a post discussing a trophy of a stage, Sakurai ended the post by saying, "I wish I could have a figurine like this in real life." The following E3, Nintendo unveiled their amiibo toyline, and the first amiibo are for the Smash games (though they are only of the fighters, not stages).
- The Wii U version features a stage and music from Yoshi's Woolly World, which would not be released until spring 2015 (whereas Smash came out in holiday 2014). In a Miiverse post revealing the stage, Sakurai noted that it had been added late in development.
- Ultimate had the reveal trailer for Simon Belmont feature Luigi exploring Dracula's Castle, using a new model of Poltergust that can shoot plungers as a projectile weapon. A month later, Luigi's Mansion 3 was officially announced, showcasing the green plumber using the tool.
- The reveal trailer for Isabelle doubled as Five-Second Foreshadowing, as immediately after, it cuts to Tom Nook watching the end of said announcement trailer before turning to the audience and confirming that a new mainline Animal Crossing game would be releasing the following year.
- In the Team Fortress 2 official comic "A Smissmas Story", Balloonicorn (who would later appear in Meet the Pyro) made its first appearance as a Christmas ornament.
- Mega Man ZX Advent features the 8-bit styled bonus game Mega Man a, with graphics reminiscent of the classic NES series. Guess which game Inti Creates worked on next.
- Mega Man 9 itself had a blueprint of Bass shown in Dr. Wily's lab during the ending. Needless to say, he wound up having a playable DLC appearance in the following sequel.
- In Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, one particular artwork in the concept art gallery was said to come from Mega Man 8, but looked out of place
. Later on, during that year's Tokyo Game Show, a Nendoroid figure of Roll was announced in commendoration of the franchise's 30th anniversary, with a new character design never seen before
. By December 4th, 2017, Capcom broadcasted a livestream on Twitch, and it soon became apparent that both the MMLC2 artwork and the Roll figure were actually foreshadowing Mega Man 11.
- Halo 3: ODST was the second-to-last Halo game Bungie made before turning over the series to 343 Industries. However, this hidden poster
◊ alluded to their next big work: Destiny.
- There is also this poster
◊ from Halo: Reach.
- There is also this poster
- In a cutscene from Hitman: Blood Money, the camera briefly lingers on a copy of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
, which would be much more important to the plot of Eidos' next big game in development at that time, Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
- In MadWorld, there's an ad for The Gates of Hell in the subway. The Gates of Hell is the bar from Bayonetta, which was still in development at the time of MadWorld's release. Also becomes Hilarious in Hindsight once you realize that while MadWorld was a Wii exclusive, the first Bayonetta was released solely on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3...only for future games in the franchise to become Nintendo exclusives.
- In Anarchy Reigns, there is a scene where Max (the antagonist) strangles the Blacker Baron's hoe, Mathilda. Baron's response to this is, "No one said you could touch, mother fucker!" In the E3 trailer for Bayonetta 2, Bayonetta says this same line, minus the "mother fucker" part.
- The fifth game in the Dark Parables series, The Final Cinderella, includes a sketch of the Crooked Man and the Crooked Cat, from the nursery rhyme. Blue Tea Games later revealed on their Facebook page that this was a piece of Production Foreshadowing for their new series, Cursery, a dark take on classic nursery rhymes.
- One reference to a future game was intended in Final Fantasy VII, but was botched by a mistranslation. In a scene where Cloud is incoherently babbling, one of his utterances is "Zeno....gias." He was actually supposed to say was "Xenogears."
- In The Secret of Monkey Island, one of the patrons in the SCUMM Bar is wearing a button that says "Ask me about LOOM" (Lucasfilm Games' then-upcoming production), and if you talk to him, he'll launch into a sales pitch for the game.
- Called back to in The Curse of Monkey Island with a dead undead customer in Blondbeard's chicken shop that bears a striking resemblance to Manny from Grim Fandango and wears a button that says "Ask me about Grim Fandango." He has nothing to say when you try to talk to him.
- Freeware game Pause Ahead has several words and phrases that appear on the Pause Screen. In levels where the screen mentions anagrams, one of the repeating phrases is "Ozuak", calling forward to the Strategy RPG Police Team Kazuo.
- If you make your way to the attic in Fleuret Blanc, Squeaker can tell you two additional stories that are not fairytale retellings like the stories he tells in the main plot. These stories still relate to Fleuret Blanc's Central Theme of materialism, but the story about a stone that confers the power to kill with a word also contains parallels to the developer's later game Last Word.
- According to Word of God, the "Just So" Story about the introduction of hunger to humanity was also intended to be Production Foreshadowing for a later project, but said project was canned, leaving it as a loose end.
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon X and Y has an item called the Strange Souvenir - a tiki statue noted as being from a region far from Kalos, and the man it is obtained from mentions it's not from any past regions. Three years later, Pokémon Sun and Moon, games set in the Hawaiian-based Alola region, were revealed. Sure enough, the Strange Souvenir is available to buy freely in those games, indicating that that's where they come from.
- Generation VII itself appears to allude to Pokémon Sword and Shield in some places, all within Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon:
- In the Developer Room there are posters on the wall featuring Gigantamax Toxtricity (something which is not that obvious in-game, due to the low resolution, unless you rip the textures).
- There is a tourist trainer on Poni Island who asks the player if the area she is standing in looks like a power spot, then expresses disappointment that her Pokémon "didn't get infused with power" when she loses, alluding to Power Spots and the Dynamax phenomenon itself.
- There is also an NPC in one of the ferry terminals who wonders aloud if Rotom might decide to inhabit PCs next and laughing off the notion, which is exactly what happens in Sword and Shield.
- In Pokémon Sword and Shield, there is a hiker who said to came from another region and can speak Spanish. Guess which game will be next after Legends: Arceus?
- In Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, there is an extra book added to Canalave City library detailing a human who went to meet a sea prince with Mantyke, Buizel, and a Qwilfish with large spikes. Not only did this last oddly specific point turn out to hint at Qwilfish getting an evolutionnote (as well as a regional form) in Pokémon Legends: Arceus two months later- the entire book is really instructions on how to find Manaphy in the later released game.
- In the Pokémon Masters event tying into the release of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, Cynthia gets a new variant where her partner Pokemon is Giratina, whom she teamed up with to stop Cyrus. Come Legends: Arceus Cynthia's Hisuian counterpart, Volo, is revealed to be in league with Giratina, albeit in a much more sinister capacity.
- Ratchet & Clank's The Plumber has made a habit of doing his as he says farewell to the titular heroes, with varying degrees of accuracy due to Insomniac Games' one-entry-at-a-time strategy:
- In Going Commando, he tells them that he'll "see them in a year or so", puzzling Clank.
- In Up Your Arsenal, he departs saying "Well I'll be seein' ya! ...one of these days!". Coincidentally he wouldn't appear again for three years.
- In Ratchet & Clank (2016) he left the duo with "See you in the next reboot!".
- The fan-made game Sonic: After the Sequel had, of all things, Kirby-based powerups for Sonic and Tails to use. More specifically, they were the powers represented by harlequin hats. Sonic Chrono Adventure then gave Sonic various powerups for close-range combat that changed his appearance and mobility options. Four years later, LakeFeperd released his own original action game, Spark the Electric Jester, which has slope physics and powerups that act much like the ones in Kirby games.
- In Suikoden, you can find some lore books describing the origins of the world, making special mention to a conflict between the True Sword Rune and the True Shield Rune. Said runes would appear in the next game, and the conflict between their wielders would be a focus for the story.
- If you investigate Georg Prime in Suikoden II, it's mentioned that he was a Royal Knight in Falena, but cannot return due to the fact that he is charged with murdering the Queen. The fifth game is set in Falena, and even depicts the event in question, even showing that while he is guilty of the crime, said crime was sanctioned by the Queens' husband, and was done as a Mercy Kill to the Queen, who was being driven insane by her True Rune.
- In October of 2016, Nintendo released a preview video called "First Look at
Nintendo Switch". In demonstrating the versatility of the system, people were shown playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and NBA 2K17, as well as the then unannounced Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Odyssey, and Splatoon 2. At the time, Nintendo claimed that while Breath of the Wild is indeed coming to Switch, the other games were just tech demos and preexisting games used to demonstrate the power of the system. Much later on, it was confirmed that yes, all of the games shown in the preview video are actual Switch games.
- In a September 2016 trailer for 20XX Tournament Edition, a Super Smash Bros. Melee Game Mod, there's a chiptune song which isn't from any of the featured games. In February of the following year, the mod's lead developer Dan Salvato said vaguely he was doing some work for a literature club. The music is one of the background tunes for Doki Doki Literature Club!, which he'd been developing the entire time.
- For the third anniversary of the Five Nights at Freddy's series in 2017, Scott Cawthon released several behind-the-scenes images of the games, including a few renders of the animatronics in goofy poses. However, the images of Springtrap
◊, Circus Baby
◊, and Funtime Freddy
◊ feature obscured parts that don't correspond to their renders... but do to their warped designsnote in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, which was released later that year.
- Postal 2: Paradise Lost, released in April 2015, features an errand wherein the player goes to a newly-established arcade to set up new arcade machines made by the game's developers Running With Scissors. The games in question turn out to be Postal Redux, a game which RWS later announced for real and then released about a year later.
- In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, two mannequins on the left side of Tsumugi Shirogane's research lab feature the costumes of Sachika Hirasaka and Yuma Mashiro from the then-upcoming game Zanki Zero: Last Beginning, also by Spike Chunsoft.
- BlazBlue: Central Fiction has an unintentional version: Four of the game's female fighters have alternate color palettes inspired by Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang, which was presumably the work of creator Toshimichi Mori, who's on the record as being a fan of RWBY. After he did an interview where he said he'd love to make a fighting game based off of the show, Rooster Teeth got in touch with Arc System Works, and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle was born.
- In Paper Mario 64, reading Luigi's diary reveals that he's afraid of ghosts and that he wishes that he could be in his own game. Guess what Mario game came out a few months later?
- Then in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, if you talk to the gamer Toad kid in Pedalburg, he talks about playing the new Paper Mario game and how he's "on the fence" about it but that Luigi fans shouldn't miss it. Three years later, the divisive Super Paper Mario would be released on the Nintendo Wii, and Luigi would play a big role in the game's plot.
- Fallout 3 has a questline called "The Replicated Man", wherein a Ridiculously Human Robot has escaped from the Commonwealth and two opposing factions beseech the Lone Wanderer for aid: the "Railroad" who helped the android escape and want to protect his freedom, and his creators at the Institute who see him as their property and want him back. Fallout 4 draws heavily from this specific quest: it's set in the Boston area, the Railroad and Institute are major factions, and the existence of Synths is an important plotline that spans the entirety of the main story.
- In Ace Attorney Investigations 2, the rival character Yumihiko Ichiyanagi/Sebastian Debeste wears a blue school uniform, and it revealed in the fourth case that his father rigged his grades to make Sebatian seem better than he actually was, much to the son's dismay. The high school Sebastian went to was Themis Legal Academy, the setting of the third case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Dual Destinies, and sure enough, the academy is still facing corruption and forged grades even eight years later, with defense attorney Hugh O'Conner being another such victim.
- Undertale has a lot of dialogue and hidden content hinting that Sans came from somewhere he cannot return to and about a Dr. Gaster whose experiments got him shattered across time and space. As the game received updates and ports, more ominous easter eggs paved the way to the release of a demo for a new game called Deltarune, which Toby Fox had been planning long before Undertale was released.
- In the Counter-Strike: Source rendition of cs_office, look closely at computer desktops and you'll see a Counter-Strike styled icon labeled "Shortcut to terror.exe". This would be a link to play Terror-Strike, the game that would eventually become Left 4 Dead.
- In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's final expansion, Bloodmoon, there's a small fetch quest that, once completed, rewards you with a fortune telling. If you haven't yet finished Bloodmoon's main story then this fortune will pertain to its finale. If you have finished the story, however, then you will recieve a more cryptic fortune that turns out to be a primer for the plot of the next game, Oblivion:
"When the dragon dies, the Empire dies. Where is the lost dragon's blood, the Empire's sire? And from the womb of the void, who shall stem the blood tide?"
- The BioShock 2 remaster included a new Easter Egg that wasn't present in the original version. At the end of the Minerva's Den DLC, check the desk behind The Thinker's Code Printer. You can see some punch cards laying around the desk, but one punch card in particular, which wasn't included in the original 2010 release, can be seen laying against one of the desks on the floor, with the description "STATUS UPDATE: THERE'S ALWAYS A LIGHTHOUSE" written on it, as well as some punch holes disguised as Morse code. Deciphering the Morse code leads to a website with a black starred background and a header that only says "staytuned". The next game in the BioShock series started its development in 2017 and was announced in 2019.
- Aside from the Sequel Hook cutscene that's unlocked after beating the game at 106%, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time includes another Easter Egg hinting at... something. Going back to the first stage after completing the game and spinning on the TV five times causes a brief image of a Wumpa Fruit surrounded by orange and blue swirls to appear for a split second after the Crash 4 logo. As of 2021, Activision has been teasing fans with a new game titled Wumpa League, which is heavily implied to be an online multiplayer spin-off.
- Madou Monogatari I's Mega Drive port features two new enemies, Billy Burn and Mrs. Eve, who are related to characters from another Compile series, JUMP HERO. A few months later, JUMP HERO Gaiden would release on Disc Station Vol. 11, and would feature them as prominent characters.
- After Pac-Man Museum+ was released, players started to notice that some of Pac-Man's idle animations were taken straight from the first Pac-Man World. One month after Museum+ was released, Namco announced a remake of Pac-Man World titled Pac-Man World Re-PAC, set to be released on August 2022 on all major platforms.
Webcomics
- Platypus Comix has two comics foreshadowing the debut of Free Spirit (2014):
- Heroine Winnie Goodwin made a guest appearance in the Electric Wonderland comic "Into Thin Aerynn
" months before Peter Paltridge officially decided to give Winnie her own webcomic.
- The Keiki story "Haole Berry" has a scene
where Beefer throws rocks at three of the main characters: Winnie, Gene Harper, and Gene's older sister Jessie. He admits to Keiki that he doesn't know who any of them are, but has an inexplicable hatred for them.note
- Heroine Winnie Goodwin made a guest appearance in the Electric Wonderland comic "Into Thin Aerynn
Western Animation
- The Pound Puppies (2010) episode "Lucky Gets Adopted" uses the instrumental version of "Love Is In Bloom", a song that would appear a few months later in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Canterlot Wedding". The two shows shared the same composer, who may have done it as an in-joke due to both episodes being Season Finales.
- In The Simpsons episode "Mayored to the Mob", Uter is seen wearing a Futurama t-shirt 3 months before Futurama actually premiered.
- While on the subject of Futurama, in "Treehouse of Horror IX", David S. Cohen is credited as "David 'Watch Futurama' Cohen", which was 5 months away from premiering at the time of the episode's original broadcast.
- In "Treehouse of Horror XVII", producer Al Jean is credited as "Al 'July 27, 2007' Jean", referring to the release date of The Simpsons Movie, which was in production at the time.
- The Barney Bear short Barney's Hungry Cousin had Barney going to picnic at Jellystone Park, five years before it became the residence of Yogi Bear (Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were directors at MGM during that time).