Foreshadowing/Western Animation

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Examples of Foreshadowing in Western Animation include:

  • The Venture Bros uses this a lot. A throwaway line about The Monarch's Henchmen stealing equipment from Sgt Hatred becomes the reason the later decides to become Dr. Venture's Arch Enemy. The boys being clones is hinted through several times during the first season, most notably when Dr. Venture mentions it could have saved Dean from Testicular Torsion by eliminating it during the "prototype phase".
    • A rule of thumb for viewers: Any line uttered at any given point can become useful to the plot. Any. Or at least the subject of a Brick Joke.
    • Similarly, the name of Brock's assignment "Operation Rusty's Blanket" comes into play at the end of the third season.
    • Possibly an accident, but the first season finale has the main cast dressed at the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, including Dean as Riff-Raff. The in the third episode of season four it turns out Rusty threw out a malformed Dean clone, who survived and looks quite a bit like Riff-Raff.
    • In the season one finale The Monarch tells his minions to send Wonder Boy's charred remains to Captain Sunshine, three seasons later and entire episode revolves around this event.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender has a lot of examples of this as well.
    • Schematics for the drill from the middle of the second season appear during "The Northern Air Temple" in the first.
    • And the captured balloon from that episode was seen in the middle of the third season, with improvements.
    • Katara's overall waterbending potential is alluded to early in the first episode when she rips an iceberg apart (and frees Aang) without even realizing it as she blew her stack over her brother's sexism.
    • Another is when we see attacking/blaming Appa is Aang's Berserk Button in "The Chase", and when Appa is gone, he goes for the full Heroic BSOD.
    • Another bit is Azula's brief appearance during Zuko's Agni-Kai vs. Ozai. We had no idea who she was at that point.
    • White lotus tiles sure do come up often. Especially around old men.
    • In "The Boiling Rock, Part 1", the Warden says he'd rather fall into the boiling lake surrounding the titular prison rather than let its record be blemished. In Part 2, he proves he's not just blowing steam.
    • A portrait of the lion turtle appears in Won Shi Tong's library. And the music (complete with Buddhist chanting) which plays when Aang meets the turtle also plays when he is briefly possessed by Roku at the Fire Temple, setting up the connection between the turtle, the Avatar, and the Spirit World.
    • In "The Blue Spirit," Aang says to Zuko, "If we knew each other back then, do you think we could have been friends too?" Guess what happens by the end of the series.
      • Not only do they become friends, but in a sense they did know one another back then as Avatar Roku and Fire Lord Sozin were friends for a long time.
    • "The Southern Raiders" has two instances of foreshadowing, both for the near final. The first is towards the beginning of the episode when Katara is about to be crushed by falling rocks and Zuko dives to save her, to which she reacts with anger and he basically responds 'your welcome' in a sarcastic tone. In the final, he saves her once more from Azula's lightening attack, only to be nearly killed himself. The difference here is the warm thank yous exchanged between them afterwards. The second is Katara's refrain from killing Yan Rah, who everyone expected her to kill. This forshadows how Aang refuses to kill Ozai, who, again, everyone expects him to.
    • When searching Hama's house in "The Puppetmaster" the Gaang stumbles upon a closet full of marionettes. This foreshadows Hama's bloodbending ability, with which she controls peoples limbs, jerking them around like puppets. The episode title also foreshadows this.
    • In "Siege of the North Pt 1" before the fire nation attack, the northern Chief gives a speech calling his family knowing that "some faces will disappear from their tribe" we have a quick focus of Yue, Master Pakku and Hahn. In Siege of the North Pt2 Yue, sacrifices herself to revive the moon, Hahn is thrown off a platform after his failed attempt of attacking Zhao and Master Pakku leaves to the Southern water tribe at the end.
    • At the end of "The Beach," Azula gets the Mood Whiplash/Crowning Moment of Funny line of "My own mother... thought I was a monster. She was right, of course, but it still hurt." During the finale, the thing that finally sends her over the edge of madness is a hallucination of her mother.
  • Gargoyles having been planned out to a degree would foreshadow many upcoming stories.
    • The "City of Stone" 4 parter and the following episode "High Noon" set up the 3 part episode "Avalon" as The Weird Sisters take control of Demona & Macbeth, as well as securing the three talismans (The Grimorum Arcanorum, The Phoenix Gate and The Eye of Odin).
    • A noticable example is "Future Tense". While largely being a dream that wouldn't come to pass, several events have occured in later stories and were planned.
      • According to the Word of God, Elisa's boss Chavez does have a daughter.
      • Brooklyn claims that Thailog died in Clone Wars. "The Reckoning" would have Thailog apparently meeting his death during a fight between his clan and Goliath's clan. Though he would resurface in the comic as of Gargoyles #3.
      • An adult Alex Xanatos is introduced in the dream, with the next episode showing the birth of Alex, who like his dream counterpart has the middle name Fox.
      • The clocktower was destroyed by either Xanatos or Lexington using The Xanatos Program. "Hunter's Moon, Part 3" would see the Canmores (specifically Robyn) destroying the clocktower.
      • Lexington's Halloween costume in Gargoyles #4-5 is identical to Cyber Lex.
        • Furthermore, when Brentwood choses to join Thailog, Lexington's only objection is "You're making me look bad".
        • Additionally, Lexington will eventually go into business with Xanatos.
      • Much like Future Tense Brooklyn and Demona, their clones Malibu and Delilah look to have an interest in each other in Gargoyles #5.
      • Upon returning from his 40 year (the same amount of time that it took Goliath to return home to Manhattan in the dream), Brooklyn resembles his Future Tense counterpart with some differences (including an eyepatch on his left eye) as seen in Gargoyles Clan Building Volume 2.
      • Much like in "Future Tense", an Ultra-Pack will eventually appear.
      • Much like in they did in "Future Tense", Brooklyn and Demona would become allies in Gargoyles 2198.
      • In parallel to Cyber Lex, Gargoyles 2198 would introduce robots modeled after Lexington called LXM (Lexington Xanatos Matrix).
  • Justice League has had multiple foreshadows that ironically were largely unintended by the producers. The second season episode A Better World ended up being the start of the primary Arc story of Cadmus. And Brainiac's appearance at the climax of that story arc was a very old (7+ years) discarded story plot in Superman: The Animated Series that was never added to.
    • On the other hand, the foreshadowing leading up to the Season 2 finale, "Starcrossed", was deliberate—and deliberately misleading. For example, in "The Terror Beyond", Hawkgirl realizes that Dr. Fate is using Thanagarian runes, and demands that he tell what he knows about Thanagar. This is because Hawkgirl is afraid that Dr. Fate may have blown her cover and discovered the Thanagarians' invasion plan. But, given Hawkgirl's cover story, the audience is led to interpret her reaction as her being antsy to return to her homeworld, and thinking that Fate might have information that could help.
      • In another episode, Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl are flying through Brainiac's data banks, J'onn suggest that they could find information about Hawkgirl's homeworld, only to have Hawkgirl insist that they don't have time for that (cause they have to help Superman). In another episode, J'onn also discovers he cannot enter her mind, something that becomes a plot point in Starcrossed.
  • Also in the DCAU, the episode "Zeta" of Batman Beyond opens with a lecture debating free will vs. genetic predisposition at Terry's school. Considering "Epilogue" was written years later, the foreshadowing may have been unintentional, but it was certainly there nevertheless.
    • While the above mentioned episode was debatable, the end of "The Call part 2" which features a team up with Superman has Terry note that not joining the JLU is one of the things he and Bruce have in common. Superman's response and the final line of dialog for the episode is "More than you know." A more subtle one takes place in the "The Call part 1" where, when Bruce mentions DNA, Superman mentions Bruce will out live him because he's two stubborn to die. Terry's intial misgivings in "Epilogue" was that Bruce had a hand in the revelation out of a fear of dying. Finally, "Epilog" was very much foreshadowed in "Out of the Past", when a scene switch featuring a deaged Bruce's face to Terry's highlights some similarities between the two.
  • WITCH is famous for its constant foreshadowing of many of its main plot points and plot twists.
    • Elyon being the princess is eluded to many episodes before it is revealed.
    • The mystery surrounding the Mage's identity is also hinted and prodded at many episodes before the big reveal. Also, there are various scenes where we see Julian and the Mage exchange glances of longing for each other, especially after Caleb or Julian mentions their family, foreshadowing that the Mage is Caleb's mother.
    • Will states "Victory at any cost is no victory at all; not if you lose yourself in the process." In the final episode, in order to defeat the Big Bad (former Dragon Cedric), the Guardians connect with their true elements, becoming living manifestations of their powers. This also strips away their humanity, leaving them mindless, and vulnerable to control by Nerissa. Fortunately, that doesn't happen, and their friends and family manage to bring them back to themselves.
  • Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law:

Phil Ken Sebben: I was wrong. Dead wrong. Ha! Ha! Foreshadowing. About being dead, not the being wrong part.

  • In the first episode of Season 1 of Transformers Animated, when Decepticons are bearing down on his ship, Optimus Prime orders Teletraan 1: "Emergency Defense Program, Codename: Omega". Nothing happens, and the show goes on, where in the last episode of Season 2, the ship transforms into Omega Supreme.
    • Also the revelation that Sari is part-robot is foreshadowed so many times in the first two seasons that it might as well be a drinking game!
    • "You must never sacrifice a piece of the future to restore the past. When your time comes, you will understand." Prowl sure did and the fandom wept.
  • In the Futurama episode "The Lucky of the Fryrish," Fry's father tells Yancy, Fry's brother, that his name was passed on from his father's grandfather, to his grandfather, to him, then down to Yancy. He leaves out his father, or Yancy and Fry's grandfather. This is because in the next season episode "Roswell that Ends Well," it's revealed that Fry becomes his own grandfather.
    • From the very first episode: Nibbler's shadow is clearly visible at several points when Fry is goofing off in the cryogenics room, a seasons-long foreshadowing that Nibbler was present at, and in fact was directly responsible for, Fry being frozen for a thousand years. Here's a picture. [1]
    • Also from the first season: Leela's cycloptic parents can be seen among the sewer mutants when Fry and pals end up in their city. It's not until the final season that Leela learns about this.
  • In the Duckman episode "Room With a Bellevue", Cornfed has to break Duckman out of an insane asylum, and so flips through his large collection of previously-prepared contingency plans to find the appropriate one. One of the other plans is labeled 'Duckman becomes dictator of a South American country.' Two episodes later..
  • In The Simpsons, this sequence from the first of the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" episodes foreshadows Burns's later attempt at stealing a lollipop from Maggie.

Burns: [Stealing oil from Springfield Elementary] will be like taking candy from a baby.
(Burns looks through the binoculars and sees a baby with some candy.)
Burns: Say, that sounds like a larf. Let's try it right now.
Smithers: Er, um, there's some candy right here, sir. Why don't we eat this instead of stealing?
Burns: Oh, very well.

    • In the episode "Crepes Of Wrath", Bart is sent away to France. While Bart does not know French, Principal Skinner assures them that by interacting with the French he could learn their language. He does.
  • Happens a lot in Rollbots, most notably with Vertex collecting parts of the Dymex Key and with references to a lost tribe.
    • Crontab trouble starts with Spin sleep-talking "Zuuuuuuuuuushiiiiiiiiiiin".
      • The same episode, and later R.O.S.E. hint at a relationship between Pounder and Vertex.
    • Spin's comm messages also count.
    • In Teacher's Pet, Ms. Appie accidentally says that Pikea is the Last of His Kind.
    • Every appearance of Daso or the En has involved foreshadowing somehow.
  • The series Transformers Prime confirmed Dark Energon to be the blood of Unicron. A behind the scenes video shows Frank Welker as Megatron stating that "Unicron...grows even stronger" meaning he will soon appear in some form.
    • In another Transformers show, Beast Wars, the episode where Rhinox is brainwashed into a Predacon actually forshadows his eventual transformation into Tankor in Beast Machines.
  • One episode of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, "The Masters of Evil," begins with a taxi driver reading a newspaper with a headline promoting a Baxter tenant's recollections of the time he got replaced by an alien. At first, this seems like just another of several Mythology Gags featured in the paper (which also contained references to The Punisher and the X-Men), but it later turns out that the second season of the show contains a Secret Invasion adaptation.
    • "The Private War of Dr. Doom" gives a hint of one person who will become revealed as a Skrull in the end: When Tony Stark calls out Reed Richards on ignoring Sue, Reed tells him that Sue's also been ignoring him lately; she seems distracted with something he can't figure out.
    • Hank Pym has a private fit of rage in "To Steal an Ant-Man." The camera cuts to a yellowjacket wasp afterward, in reference to the fact Hank will soon assume another superhero identity, Yellowjacket.
  • In the first episode of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Twilight Sparkle says "All of the ponies in this town are crazy!" Every single one of the main characters has some sort of breakdown in the first season.
    • In the exact same episode, when the camera captures a bust "passing" behind a piece of glass, the pilot's main antagonist appears in its place. When the two objects don't overlap any longer, the image is gone. This was parodied in the Abridged Series My Little Pony: Camaraderie Is Supernatural, which featured a zoom-in, a dramatic musical sting, and a caption reading "FORESHADOWING" during this scene.
  • In Young Justice episode "Failsafe", the first clue that the team wasn't in the real world was that there was no time and date stamp in the beginning of the episode. Also, the team's reaction to the deaths of the Justice League.
  • Adventure Time: In The Eyes, where a horse spies Finn and Jake all night, at the beginning Finn remembers all the adventures they have in that week, one of them is rescuing yet another princess from the Ice King, and he screaming: I only want to be happy. The end of the episode shows The Ice King disguised as the horse spying Finn and Jake to learn how to be happy.
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