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Production Foreshadowing

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/production_foreshadowing_60.png
In retrospect, this is quite fishy.
note 

"...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."
— Vincent Brooks, Persona 3 Portable
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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.

Super-Trope to Sequel Hook.

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Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

    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 
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    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • Pixar has been doing this a fair deal since 2003:
    • In Monsters, Inc. (pictured above), one of Boo's toys is Nemo from Finding Nemo.
    • In Finding Nemo, a boy in the dentist's waiting room is reading a comic book of The Incredibles.
    • 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.
    • Also from Up, Carl's cane is seen in WALL•E.
    • In a DVD bonus short for Ratatouille, WALL•E makes a brief cameo as a Mars rover operator. Parodied on WALL•E's website, which shows him hiding in every single past Pixar movie.
    • 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(-Huggin' Bear), 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 Sully 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 is confirmed to include a reference to Turning Red, but according to the director, it's too spoilery to explain what it is.
  • Pinocchio has books of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan propped in the background during the Storybook Opening.
  • Aladdin:
  • 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:

    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 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". Director 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. Director 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.

    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 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.

    Live-Action TV 

    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.
  • 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 

    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.
    • 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 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 for the cameos of a few masks to the Nintendo Gallery in Wind Waker HD, and 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.:
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Blaz Blue Centralfiction 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?
  • 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?"

    Webcomics 
  • Platypus Comix has two comics foreshadowing the debut of Free Spirit:
    • 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 

    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).

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