It's Called ForeshadowingHindsight is 20/20, and "Easter eggs" are inside jokes and references hidden for observant audiences, but there's a different name for the hints writers give at what's to come later in the story.
Vote up the most genius bits of fatal foreshadowing in films.
A word of warning: Spoilers abound. Not in this first paragraph, though, never fear. But afterward, proceed with caution!
Today, we're talking about some expertly crafted death foreshadowing moments in movies that hint at big character demises in clever, covert ways. Dive in, and vote up the moments that worked most effectively for you!
By now, we all know what was in the box. And really, maybe we should have known all along, given how director David Fincher made a point to lay in some heavy foreshadowing with his coverage choices for Detective David Mills's (Brad Pitt) doomed wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) in the scenes leading up to her beheading.
Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher, and their other behind-the-scenes collaborators weaved in a lot of intricate elements like this one to reward rewatches of this depraved and magnificent thriller.
She dies, you guys. Judi Dench's M perishes during the Home Alone-channeling finale of Skyfall.
James Bond movies never were celebrated for their subtlety (or their progressive sexual politics), but man, oh man, they were laying it on thick at the start of this puppy, the franchise's top box-office grosser.
Over the course of The Departed, a whole heck of a lot of characters bite the big one. When you sit and rewatch the Academy Award-winning film, you realize director Martin Scorsese tactfully clued you in to all these ends with some very subtle iconography: an X somewhere in the frame indicating a doomed character.
According to Scorsese, this effect was made as a tribute to the same effect in 1932's Howard Hawks-helmed Scarface.
After Shaun (Simon Pegg) is dumped by Liz (Kate Ashfield) - but before London is overtaken by a zombie epidemic - Ed (Nick Frost) lays out a plan for the duo to drown their sorrows. “We’ll have a Bloody Mary first thing, have a bite at the King’s Head, couple at the Little Princess, stagger back here. Bang! Back at the bar for shots.”
Ed has more or less forecast the exact course of action awaiting them once the city is overrun by zombies in Edgar Wright's immortal zombie horror-comedy. This was one of several clever touches Wright layered into this modern masterpiece.
The third remake of A Star Is Born is rife with clever touches that reward rewatches. On the fateful night he meets his future wife Ally (Lady Gaga), Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) bemoans the fact that he doesn't want to head home for the night.
Seconds before he spots her bar Bleu Bleu, he is driven past a suicide prevention billboard. He really should have given them a call.
To be fair, from the second that rising Gotham DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) delivered this infamous line - "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" - in the film's trailer, everyone knew he was about to do the very thing he was forecasting and become the doomed homicidal psycho crook Two-Face. Of course, he only just barely lives long enough to do that, as his vicious reign is quickly quelled, and he sees himself vanquished by Batman (Christian Bale).
In a strange bit of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, Batman asks Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) to pin Dent's misdeeds on the Caped Crusader so that Dent can be remembered as a hero and not something... a bit more complicated.
