Foreshadowing when done right can leave us baffled for days, even months. It makes us watch the movie, again and again, scavenging for details that lead to the ultimate ending and then wondering why we didn’t notice it sooner. Some of the most
ingenious foreshadowing moments even disguised themselves as what we thought were careless mistakes.
Only people with a keen eye can spot these moments and see them as foreshadowing. Are you one of them? Let’s see which of these details you noticed at first glance and which completely flew over your head.
Due to all the explanations in this article, there will be a MAJOR SPOILER ALERT! If you’re cool with that, buckle up.
1. Spider-Man: Far From Home
Movies foreshadowing examples in movies" />Source: Jay-Maidment / © Columbia Pictures / © Marvel Studios/ Courtesy Everett Collection
To many MCU fans, Nick Fury in Spider-Man: Far From Home just seemed odd. He was still mean like any other
MCU movie, but it seemed edgy and weird, not as clever as usual. It was like they nerfed his personality down due to lazy writing. Turns out his personality was weird because it wasn’t him, it was Talos posing as him the whole time.
2. Knives Out
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If you have watched Knives Out, you might notice that Harlan didn’t look like he was poisoned at the beginning of the film. He had none of the symptoms Marta was describing. People just think it’s because the film doesn’t want us to know what happens next, or another case of lazy writing. Nope. Turns out it’s a carefully planned detail all along.
3. Us
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Most viewers won’t notice anything wrong with the scene where Lupita Nyong'o has no rhythm snapping along in the car. But if you know a little bit about music, then you will find this kinda strange. The real version of her was a ballet dancer as a kid, so she should surely have rhythm if she was the same person. We should have known that this was the first sign of the big twist.
4. Squid Game
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Not a movie, but Squid Game is certainly a brilliant series and it deserves a spot on this list. Many people noticed that player 001 was not taken out in the red light green light game. He was an old person so it could be his age that made him unable to stop at the right time. Nope. The old man got us fooled all along.
5. Fight Club
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Fight Club is a cult classic with an amazing twist. If you have a keen eye then you might have noticed all the hints the film throws at you, like when the Narrator beat himself up in front of his boss and was reminded of his first fight with Tyler. Another moment that can be mistaken as careless screenwriting is when Tyler got out of the car from the passenger side while he was the one who was driving it before it crashed.
6. Shutter Island
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There is no doubt that Shutter Island is one of the movies with the greatest twist of all time. After all that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character has gone through, everything was just an elaborate setup of the mental institution and he was in fact an inmate of the asylum. But one small detail that many people thought was an error actually was a clue for the ending: the water glass.
When Leonardo DiCaprio was interviewing people, the woman drinking water showed up, and the water glass disappeared. Another clue is when Aule fumbled with his weapon, betraying for an instant that he was clearly not a member of law enforcement.
7. A Beautiful Mind
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Most pigeons in the park will fly away as soon as you walk near them, but the little girl in A Beautiful Mind is just a special case. She even tries to get them to fly by running around them, but none of them fly away. Turns out she isn't real.
8. The Sixth Sense
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In the scene with the play, a parent is filming the stage from behind Bruce Willis’ head. His head should completely cover the camera, but by some miracle, it doesn’t stop the parent. This seemingly careless error turns out to be a clue pointing to the ultimate twist of the film as Willis’s character was just a ghost.
9. Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi
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It’s so weird that in the scene where Luke is fighting on a powdery surface, he doesn't leave footprints. That’s impossible! This must be a mistake caused by crappy CGI right? No, it was a foreshadowing moment, and you will know why if you have watched the film.
10. The Village
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At the beginning of the movie, people with keen eyes can spot a guy wearing jeans among the villagers. Many of us viewers just think it’s a costume mistake, but the twist says otherwise. The village is only a setup, and outside of its border is the modern world.
11. Seven
Source: Arnold Kopelson Productions
The ending of Seven is one of the most well-known and disturbing twists in cinema. The final scene reveals Tracy’s decapitated head in a FedEx box. Her fate can be predicted if you pay close attention to her scenes. Paltrow is always shot from the neck upwards – a symbolic decapitation by the camera. We never once saw the character except for her shoulders and up, heavily hinting at her morbid end.
12. Doctor Who Season 4: The Unicorn and the Wasp
Source: BBC
In the episode when one of the many posh characters was asked where they were at a certain time, they said "I went to the toilet." Well, a posh person at that time period would have said lavatory. We should have seen this as a clue this character wasn't who she said she was instead of an error in the script.
13. Van Helsing
Source: Universal / ©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection
In the masquerade ball scene, Dracula was dancing with the princess and showed her he didn't have a reflection in the mirrors. He was not the only one. All the other guests at the party had no reflections either. The audience might think this was a mistake by the production because the focus was on Dracula. It's later revealed all the guests are vampires, too.
14. The Prestige
Source: Touchstone Pictures / ©Touchstone Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Prestige’s ultimate twist is the revelation that magician Alfred Borden (
Christian Bale) is in fact a set of two twin brothers. However, this was hinted at earlier in the film, when a boy witnessed a trick featuring a collapsing bird cage. When the magician appeared to bring the squashed bird back the boy asked, “Where’s his brother?” The secret behind the trick was that the magician actually killed the bird and replaced it with another.
Later in the film, the twin took the fall for the real Borden when he was sentenced to death. His brother died so he could live, just like that one bird that was killed.
15. Jurassic Park 1993
Source: Universal Pictures
Who would have thought that when Dr. Alan Grant improvises his seat belt during the helicopter ride to Isla Nublar, he was actually giving us hints for events that would later happen in the show? The character fixed his problem by tying two "female" buckles together, which was foreshadowing that the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park, despite all being female, had learned to mate and reproduce by changing their sex thanks to the frog DNA in their bodies.