What Is Foreshadowing – Examples in 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 all the now-obvious clues had been there all along, quietly undermining the story? 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 story can create a sense of anticipation and keep your audience engaged right up to the end.

Foreshadowing

When used well, foreshadowing can be extremely effective at drawing in an audience. If the foreshadowing is too obvious, the audience may lose interest. If it’s too subtle, they may miss it completely.

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 very effective tool for building curiosity, intrigue, suspense, or even a sense of narrative harmony by the time the film or novel reaches its conclusion. Writers often use foreshadowing early in a story to set up later events. “Hinting” and “predicting” can both be considered synonyms of foreshadowing. While you can categorize different types of foreshadowing by how subtle or direct they are, its main function is to capture the audience’s attention.

• Creating suspense
• Dramatic buildup
• Building anticipation

Two Types of Foreshadowing

Now that you know the definition of foreshadowing, you might immediately think of examples from books or films that come to mind. All of these fall into one of two broad types of foreshadowing.

Direct foreshadowing is when an element in the story explicitly suggests an upcoming event. 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 uses the three witches to clearly state Macbeth’s fate — that he “shalt be king hereafter” — while Banquo will be the father of future kings.

This is a clever use of direct foreshadowing because it gives us information while also making both us and the characters in the play want to know more. Why will Macbeth become king, yet Banquo’s line ultimately take the throne?

Indirect foreshadowing is when story elements hint at future events by leaving subtle clues about what is to come. These hints are not so obvious and are only fully understood once the event they foreshadow has occurred.

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 there may be two main ways of defining foreshadowing, both can effectively achieve the same goal when used properly. Capturing the audience’s attention is at the heart of using this technique.

Foreshadowing and Other Devices

Foreshadowing is often confused with, or used to refer to, several other literary devices. Let’s look at some terms that are commonly associated with foreshadowing.

Chekhov’s gun is a very famous form of foreshadowing. The device, drawn from Anton Chekhov’s work, can be summed up as: if a gun is shown in the first act, it must be fired by the last act.

The point of the rule is that details emphasized early in the story should pay off 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 it’s 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 a story element designed to lead us in one direction so that we’ll be surprised later.

Foreshadowing hints at the future; a flashforward shows it to us. But a flashforward can be vague enough that it also functions as a hint. For example, we see a close-up of someone pulling a gun from under a pillow, but we don’t know who it is or why they’re doing it, and then we cut back to events before that reveal. That’s still foreshadowing.

Examples of Foreshadowing in Literature

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

In William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet, there are several instances of foreshadowing. Romeo says, “Come, death, and welcome. Juliet wills it so,” which (quite obviously) hints at the fate awaiting him and his beloved.

Juliet also dreams of Romeo dead at the bottom of a tomb. This too foreshadows that things are not going to end well.

The ending of The Monkey’s Paw is also quite grim, and not without warning. The previous owner of the magical 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 back in the fire again.”

Most readers, upon seeing this, will be on high alert, expecting things to go very wrong.

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

Examples of Foreshadowing in Film

Although there are two main types of foreshadowing, filmmakers have found ways to use nearly every tool of cinema to foreshadow story events, from the film’s title to a character’s wardrobe. Analyzing and breaking down some of these examples can help you spot foreshadowing opportunities in your own stories that you might never have noticed before.

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

The title, taken from the work of author and screenwriter Cormac McCarthy, implies that Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is out of his depth in confronting a new generation of crime.

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

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

If you’ve seen The Departed, you know the film is full of twists and that nearly every main 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 whenever a character who will die appears on screen.

This classic “whodunit” keeps viewers guessing and engaged right up until the last moment. How? The Usual Suspects skillfully balances subtle, indirect foreshadowing spread across the film with quick, direct foreshadowing moments that tie the plot together. The result is a twist that still ranks among the best more than twenty years later.

The now-legendary final scene has been copied and parodied for years, largely because of how effectively it gathers all the foreshadowing threads to bring the story to a close.

The Prestige is a great example of including enough foreshadowing to hook the audience without giving away the major twists. One of the film’s best scenes shows Alfred performing the birdcage trick, in which he kills a bird and then seemingly brings it back to life.

Foreshadowing is one of the most effective tools filmmakers use to spark curiosity and hold the audience’s attention. However, it’s important to understand how much foreshadowing your story needs, and what kind. Too much foreshadowing can make a story predictable and cause the audience to lose interest. Too little can make it dull or confusing — and lose them anyway.

Try identifying a few moments in your story where you can use some foreshadowing techniques, and see which ones work best for you.