What Is Foreshadowing — With Examples from Film and Literature

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book where a plot twist completely shocked you, but when you revisited it, you realized that all the now-obvious clues had been quietly undermining the story all along? You’re not alone. These clues are a form of foreshadowing, a powerful storytelling technique that helps make an ending—no matter how wild—feel earned. Using foreshadowing in your own stories can create anticipation and keep your audience engaged until the very end.

Foreshadowing

When used well, foreshadowing can be incredibly effective at pulling an audience in. If it’s too obvious, the audience may lose interest. If it’s too subtle, they might miss it entirely.

Before we look at examples of foreshadowing in film, we first need to define what it is and what it does. What is foreshadowing, fundamentally? How does it help you tell your story?

What Is Foreshadowing?

Foreshadowing is a literary device used to hint at or suggest future events in a story. It can be a highly effective tool for building curiosity, intrigue, suspense, and even a sense of narrative harmony by the time a film or novel reaches its conclusion. Writers often use foreshadowing early in a story to set up later events. “Hint” and “prediction” are both near-synonyms for foreshadowing. While you can categorize types of foreshadowing by how subtle or direct they are, its primary function is to capture and hold the audience’s attention.

• Creating suspense
• Dramatic buildup
• Building anticipation

Two Types of Foreshadowing

Now that you understand the definition of foreshadowing, you may already be thinking of examples from books or films that spring immediately to mind. All of these examples fall into one of two main types of foreshadowing.

Direct foreshadowing is when an element in the story explicitly hints at events that are going to happen. This can be done through dialogue, a narrator, or a prophecy within the story.

An example of direct foreshadowing can be found in Macbeth.

In the opening, Shakespeare has the three witches clearly state Macbeth’s fate: that he “shalt be king hereafter,” but that Banquo will be the father of future kings.

This is a clever use of direct foreshadowing because, while it gives us information, it also makes us—and the characters—want to know more. Why will Macbeth become king if Banquo’s line is destined to take the throne?

Indirect foreshadowing is when story elements plant subtle clues about what is going to happen. These hints aren’t obvious and can only be fully understood once the events they anticipate actually occur.

Of Mice and Men is a great example.

Throughout the book, there are references to Lennie accidentally killing things when he pets them. This sets up the climactic moment between Lennie and Curley’s wife.

Although we can distinguish foreshadowing in these two ways, both approaches can be equally effective when used well. Grabbing the audience’s attention is at the heart of using this technique.

Foreshadowing and Related Devices

Foreshadowing is sometimes confused with, or used to refer to, a number of other literary devices. Let’s look at a few terms that are often associated with it.

Chekhov’s gun is a very famous form of foreshadowing. The device comes from the work of Anton Chekhov and, put simply, it says that if a gun appears at the beginning of a story, it must be fired by the end.

The point of the rule is that details highlighted early in the story should come back into play later on. Sound familiar? That’s foreshadowing.

A red herring uses the audience’s familiarity with foreshadowing against them. Suppose we see a gun hidden under a pillow in the first act—we assume this is foreshadowing that the gun will be used later. If the gun turns out to be fake, or is never used at all, that’s a red herring. A red herring is an element of the story deliberately meant to point us in one direction so that we’ll be surprised later.

Foreshadowing hints at the future; a flash-forward shows us the future. But flash-forwards can be vague enough that they function as hints. For example, we see a close-up of someone pulling a gun from under a pillow, but we don’t know who they are or why they’re doing it, and then we cut back to events before this moment is explained. That, too, is foreshadowing.

Examples of Foreshadowing in Literature

Foreshadowing appeared in books long before it appeared in movies. Writers in any genre can learn from the following examples.

In one of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, there are several instances of foreshadowing. Romeo says, “Then love-devouring death do what he dare, / It is enough I may but call her mine.” This (rather obviously) hints at the fate awaiting Romeo and his beloved.

Juliet also dreams of seeing Romeo dead at the bottom of a tomb. This, too, foreshadows the grim events to come.

The ending of The Monkey’s Paw is also quite bleak—and not without warning. The previous owner of the magic talisman warns Mr. White: “I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. Like a sensible man, throw it on the fire again.”

Most readers, after seeing this, become wary and expect things to take a turn for the worse.

Here’s another grim story. In his classic Of Mice and Men (spoiler alert), John Steinbeck hints at Lennie’s fate. In the book, one character explains in detail that animals too weak to survive in a harsh world should be killed for their own good. As the story progresses, George starts to believe that Lennie may fit this description as well.

Examples of Foreshadowing in Film

While there are mainly two types of foreshadowing, filmmakers have found ways to use almost every tool of cinema to foreshadow story developments—from the film’s title to character costumes. Analyzing some of these examples can help you discover opportunities for foreshadowing in your own stories that you might otherwise overlook.

Sometimes the title of a movie itself foreshadows its plot. This method must be vague enough to spark curiosity before the audience watches the film, yet clear enough to make sense after the end credits roll. The Coen brothers did this perfectly in their 2007 film No Country for Old Men.

The title, taken from writer-screenwriter Cormac McCarthy, hints that Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones) is not suited to the new generation of criminals he’s facing.

“When you can’t sleep, nothing seems real.”

Fight Club is one of the most famous plot-twist films in recent years. If you’ve seen it a second or even a third time, you may notice subtle clues throughout the movie foreshadowing that Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) isn’t real, including this line of voice-over.

If you’ve seen The Departed, you know it’s full of twists and that almost every major character dies. But did you know director Martin Scorsese left very clear clues about which characters would die? Borrowing from the 1932 film Scarface, Scorsese places an “X” in the frame with every character who’s going to be killed.

This classic “whodunit” style movie keeps audiences curious and engaged until the very last moment. How? The Usual Suspects skillfully balances subtle, indirect foreshadowing throughout with quick, direct foreshadowing in certain scenes to tie everything together. The result is a plot twist that still ranks among the best more than twenty years later.

The film’s incredible final scene has been copied and parodied for years after its release, largely because of how effectively it weaves together all of the foreshadowing clues to bring the story to a close.

The Prestige is another great example, packing in enough foreshadowing to engage the audience without giving away its major twists. One of the film’s best scenes shows Alfred performing a birdcage trick in which he kills a bird and then makes it “come back to life.”

Foreshadowing is one of the most effective tools filmmakers have for sparking audience curiosity and holding their attention. But it’s important to understand how much foreshadowing a story needs, and what kind. Too much can make the story predictable and cause the audience to lose interest. Too little can make it dull or confusing—with the same result.

Try looking for moments in your own stories where you can experiment with foreshadowing techniques, and see which approaches work best for you.