Doki Doki Literature Club! / Foreshadowing

"Stagnant air is often foreshadowing that something bad is going to happen."

With the nature of the game and The Reveal, there's a ton of Foreshadowing done with the game.

Due to the nature of foreshadowing, all spoilers below are unmarked.

The game's website introduces it as though Monika were speaking. This, especially its final sentence, gets brought up by Monika herself in Act Three.
- For that matter, after the happy fuzzy description on both the website and the Steam store entry, you have the jarring disclaimer: This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.
The game's title symbol. Both instances of "Doki" are placed extremely close together. which merges the two letter Os together, turning them into the infinity symbol.
- Also on the title is a standing pen that casts a notable shadow, which makes the pen take on a rather unsettling shape. And given what Yuri claims to have done with your dropped pen late in the game...
  - Speaking of the pen, Yuri says that her imagination has been hyperactive, so she decided to take it out on the pen she took from you. Then, she realises what she just said and stumbles in attempting to clarify. This could be taken to foreshadow what Yuri says she does with your pen later in the game.
Team Salvato has the game's soundtrack uploaded on their official Youtube account. Some songs, such as "Sayo-nara" and "Just Monika," have characters removed from the image, hinting at their eventual removal within the game.
There's Monika's fourth-wall-breaking comments in Act 1 (like a Japanese pun being Lost in Translation or a tip about saving the game), and her comment about feeling like she and the player character are the only people in the club, which the player is likely to dismiss as cute little jokes but is actually the very cause of the game's conflict. Notably, her comment about constantly saving and loading is a key hint to getting the Golden Ending.
- On the first day, Monika mentions she's had an epiphany that has been influencing her poems. That epiphany is the realization that her world is a game.
- Not helped by the fact that Monika is the only one of the four girls whose sprites have her directly face the screen looking at the MC/the player, unlike Sayori, Yuri, and Natsuki's sprites, which are faced at an angle. The same applies to all the cutscenes; even when Yuri has her face seemingly turned directly at the main character in the towel scene, the scene isn't quite in first-person view, so she's not quite looking at the screen, although that one could be open to interpretation. Once Monika finally gets her own scene, she's definitely looking through the screen.
  - This almost applies in DDLC+ as well, except for Natsuki facing (but not looking at) the screen in the side-story "Self-Love". Also, Monika is not Medium Aware in these stories, and she doesn't face the screen either (well her sprites do since they're the old ones, but not in any of the new pictures), except in the very last CGI, which also features all the others not doing it. Could be seen as foreshadowing that after these prequel events (that is, in the game proper) things are going to be different, even though they're really in a different timeline from the game, and side-story-Monika is just looking at her own in-universe camera.
- Monika also has subtle design choices when compared to the other club members, such as wearing red-tipped shoes as opposed to blue-tipped ones, black, Grade B stockings as opposed to shorter white ones, and being the odd name out of the four (being a western name ending in -a, instead of a more obvious eastern name ending in -i).
- She's aware that the pun about her name will be Lost in Translation even though the game is in Japanese In-Universe.
- There's even a minor one with the trailer of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus where at the end, all of the character's cutscene photos are shown, with Monika's new cutscene photo of her playing the piano. She's the only one of the four who moves by opening her eyes.
- Speaking of DDLC Plus, looking at the box art, she's the only one on the front of the box. This foreshadows the events of the game, where she only has eyes for you.
If you choose to focus on one of the girls, during your lone time with them in the third day, Monika will suddenly come out of nowhere to kill the mood: while it looks like she happens to be in the classroom in Sayori's route, she (comically) comes out of nowhere in Natsuki's. Concerning Yuri, both of you are in the middle of a romantic moment, tension is at maximum, and... the game passes from Yuri's picture to Monika's dialogue sprite. This particular moment shows that she can interrupt the game whenever she feels to, but also that she may be jealous of the other girls for having their own routes with the player while she's condemned to remain a background character.
Pay close attention to the poems. At first glance, they seem normal, but many of them allude to the girls' issues. Sayori's poems hint at her depression and desire to make others happy despite being miserable. Natsuki's have a theme of not measuring up and being judged, likely inspired by her abusive father and her classmates. At least one of Yuri's is heavily implied to be about her self-harm. Monika's poems all are based on her awareness of her state as an in-game character, her attempts to connect with the player, and the And I Must Scream state she endures while the game is switched off.
- Sayori's first poem, Dear Sunshine, is about a loved one getting her out of bed, mentioning that "If it wasn't for you, I could sleep forever". Her inability to wake up early is a symptom of her depression, and her major coping mechanism is her friendship with the protagonist. The day he doesn't wait for her when walking to school is the day she kills herself. Her second poem, Bottles, is even more overt talking about how she's lost all of her happy thoughts, and hinting at Monika's Mind Rape.
- Yuri's second poem, The Raccoon is about Yuri's unusual hobbies and depicts a woman who feeds hand-sliced bread to a raccoon, despite knowing that it will always come back for more. She eventually takes a dark thrill in feeding the raccoon, being prepared to feed it wherever she goes. Throughout the poem, Yuri is unusually fixated on the knife she uses to slice the bread, describing the raccoon's hunger and her desire to feed it in terms of an addiction, and even mentioning a "rush of blood" in the final stanza. All of this takes on a sinister light when her propensity for self-harm is revealed in Act 2.
- Monika's poems mostly deal with themes of discovery and awareness, glimpsing into a broader world of knowledge and being unsatisfied (or even scarred) by the answer. Her most telling poem, however, is Save Me, which features heavy technological imagery: waveforms, RGB lighting, random noise, and mathematical terminology, ending with a final plea of "Load Me". Its actual meaning isn't clear until Monika describes where she goes when the game isn't loaded...
  - If the player reads Save Me in Act II, they will notice a lot of letters missing from many words, and some words that are still intact are capitalized for emphasis, and when the player scrolls down to the last line, instead of "Load Me", it now says, "Delete Her", a fine clue as to how Monika deletes her friends and a very fine foreshadowing on how to get rid of her in Act III.
- Natsuki's second poem is Amy Likes Spiders, which is about the narrator judging someone she otherwise admires because she, well, likes spiders, ending on "And I'm going to tell everyone." It's also shown on the same day as the aforementioned Raccoon poem, which the MC points out. While in context the poem is about people who judge others for their harmless interests, it gets a dark echo in Act 2. Natsuki is forced to watch Yuri, someone who she had argued with over differing tastes but otherwise admired, undergo Sanity Slippage (including Self-Harm, which The Raccoon is heavily implied to be about). She is then compelled to tell someone, namely the player character, what's happening to her.
Monika notes at one point that it would be bad for everyone if something unfortunate were to happen to Sayori. Such an event is what leads to Act Two.
- Also, while the point at which Monika starts actively screwing with her friends’ personalities is up for debate, when Sayori is having a particularly bad day Monika makes a point of taking her aside and talking to her in a corner (the player doesn’t get to hear their words). At the time one might assume that she’s just trying to cheer Sayori up, but with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard not to wonder just what she said or did so soon before Sayori’s mental breakdown...
  - We don't know what exactly was said, but in a later conversation where Sayori is downright suicidal, she adds "Maybe what Monika said was right." Sayori doesn't reveal what that was, but it was clearly something extremely negative.
Yuri likes knives to the point of collecting them. She's revealed to have a bad cutting habit and later commits suicide by stabbing herself.
In the first act, Monika has a habit of walking in on the player having a moment with one of the girls. It's almost as if she doesn't want you to progress romantically with any of them.
- Not to mention the unusually condescending way Monika describes the protagonist spending time with other girls, saying that he only pretends to enjoy Natsuki's manga or calling Yuri's novel "edgy".
There are all kinds of "barely noticeable the first time around" foreshadowing on the first and second days about characters discussing the horror genre and Yuri's book seeming innocent at first but then taking a surprisingly dark turn.
Some of the girls' preferred words hint at the various issues they're revealed to have:
- Some of the depressing word choices like "death", "hopeless", "defeat", and "alone" impress Sayori, of all characters, which gives away her chronic depression and suicidal tendencies. In the second act, these same words count as points toward Yuri, as her unraveling is the focus of that act.
- Yuri also has words like "pleasure," "lust," "climax," "desire," "covet," "breathe," "anxiety," "unstable," and "suicide".
- Much of Natsuki's has something to do with food, which makes sense if you remember she likes to cook. However, she also has words like "papa," "anger," and "jumpy." All this gets ominous after knowing that her father is abusive and doesn't give her a lot to eat.
Monika makes a mention about "cheating" after you're trying to impress one of the girls, with the player character not having any idea on what she's talking about. She is presumably talking about the player literally cheating at the poetry game, by Save Scumming to make sure they always get a reaction from the girl they want or by just looking up which words correspond to which girl.^note
Monika talks about practicing piano and hopes to play something that'll impress the player. The credits theme is played and sung by her.
- Monika's "Okay, Everyone!" is a solo piano piece. If you listen closely and compare hers to the other themes, you can hear the pianist make mistakes. They hit a note that's too high and fumble 9 seconds in. The pianist fumbles a little 35 seconds in, too. Hers is the only one that uses only one instrument and due to that, lacks the tinkling sounds the others all have (where the tinkling sound is in the other 4 themes, it is played on the higher registers of the piano). The piano in the main "Okay Everyone!" theme is also omnipresent. When you factor in that you can hear the cellos from Yuri's theme in it, but do not hear anything unique to Natsuki or Sayori's themes, it alludes to the second act of the game, where you are forced onto Yuri's route despite Monika's intense meddling. The piano you are hearing in both her own theme (as she would not have one of her own originally) and the main theme (where she likely replaces Sayori and Natsuki's parts) is Monika playing the piano.
Yuri's habit of keeping arms behind her back could be a subconscious attempt to hide the cuts in her arms.
- Monika drops another hint when she mentions that "[Yuri's] books aren't a total escape from reality, they're just a bandage." Well, what do you use bandages for again?
If you decide to help Yuri with the festival preparations, the scene where she's over at your house foreshadows a lot of her Sanity Slippage in Act 2. Aside from establishing that Yuri owns knives by having her bring an elaborate one along when it's not needed, there's a brief mention of Yuri tugging her sleeve down when the player character walks back into the room. She's likely hiding her cutting habit. The way she describes the effects of aromatherapy also seems similar to how she describes what's it's like being around the player as she becomes more obsessed. During the preparations, you and Yuri paint a gradient of colors representing the passage of the day. (Morning lighting, day lighting, sunset lighting, night lighting, etc.) You eventually have to watch Yuri's corpse rot for three days straight as the passage of the days changes the lighting of the scene over and over again.
If you managed to come across Monika's real Twitter account before playing the game, you'd assume it's just a cute in-character blog to add some hype. However, the fact that she has Twitter at all is a sign that she has some awareness beyond the game. She even plugs it in Act 3. For bonus points: her first few posts were on February 14th, also known as Valentine's Day. A lot of what she posts also are clear references to The Reveal.
- An example is the Virtual Hug. It gets jammed loading, and she stops waiting, physically forcing the bar to 'Complete' before hugging to the point she smooches against the screen.
- Monika posts several images of the club members leading up to Valentine's Day 2018. Her own picture is much more detailed and elaborate (with the other girls relegated to the background) and posted on February 14 to boot.
  - Valentine's Day 2019 got three more pictures — Sayori looking at a cookie, Yuri and Natsuki sitting back-to-back looking at poems, and Monika holding a "You're mine"-heart and looking at you.
There is a very conspicuous lack of any mentions and namedropping of real-life (or fictional for that matter) authors and literary works for what supposedly is a literature club of well-read people. The observant player will notice that the only character who actually does this a couple of times is Monika.
Sayori mentions that one of her biggest desires was for everyone to be happy. In fact, it's a major coping mechanism for her depression; she acts like a Genki Girl so she wouldn't be unhappy knowing everyone else was having fun. Aside from establishing characterization, this is actually also a hint towards how to get the Golden Ending. You get it by Save Scumming and going through all the girls' routes before the end of Act 1 (when Sayori commits suicide). When she returns and gains meta-awareness in Act 4, instead of devolving into Monika v2 she'll be genuinely thankful the player spent as much time with each of the girls as possible, noting that it's all she really ever wanted in the end.
The fact that Monika ends up being the game's unique character is dropped by subtle (but many) hints early and midway into the game:
- At the end of Act 1 where the game's programming now contains visual glitches and encrypted text, Sayori's art in the main menu gets messed up with an amalgamation of the remaining girls, but one would easily notice that a large portion of the face closely resembles Monika's.
- The glitched-out sprite of Sayori appears early when the protagonist is welcomed by an unknown character (labelled "???") only to be replaced by Monika when the dialogue proceeds.
- When the protagonist is supposed to be greeted in the morning by Sayori, she is replaced by a distorted sprite alternating between Monika and Yuri before the scene resets to remove Sayori altogether. The sprite pauses on Monika just before it disappears.
- There are certain lines of text in Act 2 where she overlays herself on top of the text dialogue, behind the other girls on-screen.
  - Furthermore, when she does this to tell the player to step outside after Yuri and Natsuki's fight, unlike other times she steps in front of the dialogue box, the text doesn't just run beside her - instead, her dialogue automatically has multiple line-breaks that make her whole line visible, fitting to the left of her sprite.
- The very first poems of Natsuki and Yuri end up being similar or unchanged for the first two Acts. Except for Monika, whose Act 2 poem appears to be a continuation of the poem from the first Act.
- During the first instance where the player is shown an altered, heavily-outline font style, the highlighted word is her name followed by a long trail of lowercase M's.
Natsuki needing the protagonist's help to re-organize her girly manga after Monika's messed it up. She's the only one of the characters that Monika doesn't have to directly tamper with. The only time she does, it's because Monika has messed Yuri up, and is reaching out to the protagonist to help because she feels like Yuri is out of her reach. Extra bonus points for "Yuri" being both a girl's name and a reference to the actual Yuri Genre.
When Sayori mistakenly states that Monika has a boyfriend, Monika quizzically glances at the protagonist. While you can't figure out her exact thoughts on the matter, this clearly has something to do with how the protagonist is the avatar of the only person she wants to date, and even how she's aware of the Minimalist Cast of the game meaning there isn't anyone else available anyway.
At the end of the third poetry session in Act I, Monika comments that "Humans aren't two-dimensional creatures. I'd think you'd know that better than anyone." When the main character asks her if she meant "one-dimensional", she quickly corrects herself, but it's a hint to the fact that Monika is actually speaking to the only person around - the player - that isn't a two-dimensional sprite.
On the final day of Act I, Monika says about Sayori: "You kind of left her hanging this morning, you know?", referencing how the protagonist left Sayori literally hanging in her room when, at the start of the day, he decided not to enter her house.
- This is further confirmed by the fact that Monika knew what Sayori had done, as it is later revealed that she was the one who manipulated her into suicide in the first place.
- Right after the player leaves the classroom to see Sayori, Monika also bids him goodbye with a "Don't strain yourself~", literally referencing the fact that Sayori died with strain on her neck.
Angered by Monika placing her manga on the top shelf, which causes her to fall out of a swivel chair trying to get it, Natsuki angrily says "Are you trying to kill your club members or something?"
- Similarly, after Yuri hesitantly agrees to do the poem performance during the school festival, she dejectedly says, "This club is seriously going to be the death of me..." to which Monika replies that Yuri would be fine while averting her eyes.
The protagonist advises Sayori to think about herself more often, warning her that she might get hurt if she doesn't.
When Yuri first shows a poem to the protagonist, she apologizes for her messy handwriting, only to be reassured that hers is lovely. This foreshadows a later scare that involves Yuri making the player read a poem that is not only barely legible but covered in suspicious red and yellow stains.
At the end of the third day of Act 1, if you spend enough time with Yuri or Natsuki, Monika will allude to the flaws they possess, particularly the ones that are exaggerated in Act 2.
- If the player spends more time with Yuri than the other members, Monika will warn the protagonist that Yuri has a hard time opening up to others and that she could accidentally hurt herself. In Act 2, Yuri stabs herself to death after confessing her love to the protagonist. This goes even further as Monika will explain that Yuri can sometimes get "overexcited". If the player accepts Yuri's heinously creepy proposal in Act 2, she stabs herself to death because she gets overexcited and can't handle the fact that you like her.
- If the player spends more time with Natsuki than the other members, Monika will warn the protagonist that Natsuki is unpredictable and has a hard time expressing how she feels and what she wants. In Act 2, Natsuki's attempt to convince the player to help Yuri is halted when Monika yet again screws with the game's code.
Near the beginning of the first act, when Yuri says she's into horror, Monika says that's surprising given her personality. In the same place in the second act, she says it's unsurprising. Also in the second act, Monika is taking the gloves off in messing with Yuri's personality and making her even more of a Nightmare Fetishist, besides simply being more willing to speak ill of the other girls than before.
During the heated verbal argument between Natsuki and Yuri in Act 2 due to the tampering of the game's script, Monika reassures the protagonist and Yuri that their friend will forget all about the incident by tomorrow, with an emphasis on the word "Completely". The next day, Natsuki literally has no memory of what happened previously.
Yuri mentions that her tastes in literature involve sympathetic characters who act evil not because they want to, but because of their own goals, philosophies, or circumstances. This foreshadows the fact that, despite this being a horror game, there are no truly evil characters. Yuri herself only becomes frightening as a result of Mind Rape-induced Sanity Slippage, and is clearly horrified by her actions. Natsuki becomes more verbally abusive, but only because she's also been tampered with; she's even still in there enough to beg the player to help Yuri. Even Monika is a sympathetic figure, since she's an ordinary teenage girl who's learned the Awful Truth about her artificiality and is coping with it in an extremely unhealthy way. The same goes for Sayori if you get the normal ending. Plus introduces their creators, Team Salavto, as the Greater-Scope Villain, but even Paula Miner, the leader, started out as just a troubled college student and still has a genuinely deep friendship with Ive Laster, who in turn expresses concern with the ethicality of their actions, and the other employees are largely just doing their jobs.
When Sayori leaves the class in a funk (the same day that it's revealed she has depression), the club has an awkward moment capped off by Yuri commenting that "Stagnant air is common foreshadowing that something bad is going to happen." She later repeats this line in the second loop, on the same day that she stabs herself to death.
When questioned about knowing about the player's private conversation with Sayori, Monika smiles & says "Of course I do. I'm the club president", which seems like another of her hand waves until you learn that being club president gives people psychic abilities.
A few times, Sayori will mention an unnamed, unspecified "her" or "she" that says some things that seriously upset Sayori, such as "Get out of my head before I listen to everything she said to me" (from her final poem, %). It isn't clear at first who this "she" is, but it's abundantly clear it is Monika by the end of Act 2.
After sharing Bottles, a poem that is itself foreshadowing, Sayori cheerfully exclaims that she'll write poems until the day she dies. This is a hint towards Sayori's depression and suicidal thoughts. Her suicide note is also, of course, a poem.
- Right after Sayori says that she'll keep writing until the day she dies, the MC expresses doubt, predicting that she'll stick with it for about a week before getting bored. He never gets proven wrong or right.
Both Yuri's book and Natsuki's manga foreshadow the plot of the game:
- After Yuri describes the plot of The Portrait of Markov, the PC notes that she made it sound like it was going to be a nice story at first until it took a dark turn. This, of course, foreshadows the Disguised Horror Story that comes later.
- Parfait Girls, Natsuki's manga, has four girls in animated poses on the cover, much like the game's title screen. She describes it as starting as a comedy with a chapter about the girls obsessing over a boy in an ice cream shop, before turning to the dramatic later on once it delves into the characters' backstories. She also mentions a character named Minori, who is "unlucky" but still likable, that apparently goes through something bad. This seems to reference the events of Act 1, the reveal of Sayori's depression, and her ultimate fate by the end of the Act.
During the first club meeting, the game makes a point of mentioning how there are two empty seats, one next to Sayori, and one next to Monika. It appears to be setting up a choice, but the main character automatically sits next to Sayori. As it turns out, the game won't let you choose Monika.
Portrait of Markov is a reference to Das Portrait Meines Doppelgängers by Georgi Markov. The book is allegedly about a poker game the main characters are playing. The poker game turns out to be a framing device, with the actual story being about three of the players attempting to completely ruin the life of the last and about the hidden depths and baggage of the characters—much like the game itself.
The manual has a section about "Deleting Save Data & Accessing Files", including the line "In some cases, you may want to delete your save data to start the game completely over." This seemingly neutral, technical, and non-plot-related point foreshadows the fact that after a certain point, you literally can't start the game again normally without doing so. And accessing and deleting individual files, character files specifically, is something Monika will eventually do to the other characters, and what you have to do to her.

Foreshadowing / Doki Doki Literature Club!

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