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Foreshadowing / Webcomics

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Webcomics with their own pages

  • Strip 434 of 8-Bit Theater drew much, much especulation from the moment it was posted. Five years later... (and it's impressive that it wasn't Fauxshadowing, considering how the author loves anticlimactic jokes)
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja:
    • In this comic King Radical is introduced as "the most radical man in the radical land". Later, it is revealed that there is a radical land.
    • The Future Trading arc has had elements foreshadowed since October 2009. See here. Also these. Notice the hairy octopus?
  • Angel Moxie: When the second seal is broken, non-magical entities are affected by time slowing down. At this point Alex is the only awakened magical girl, so Miya can't figure out why her "normal friend" Riley is unaffected.
  • Aurora has an example here, where Erin mentions how his family had dealings with a sect of monks who specialize in manipulating spirit energy, including "people with congenital soul conditions, like malformed or incomplete magical links". It turns out that this was the exact problem his adopted sister Tess had when she was younger, which is revealed when she meets up with Erin and the others.
  • The redone first chapter of Bittersweet Candy Bowl has a picture of the primary couple in the comic get knocked down and broken on the very first page, putting a crack between Mike and Lucy.
  • Books Don't Work Here:
    • Every one of Robin's shirts has been exactly what she's asked for. although usually not how she meant it.
    • When Robin changes her mind about her roommate being her girlfriend (while bringing her into existence) she says that she is not friends with her in any way, and we will never know how much easier her life could have been otherwise.
    • This page has a good bit of foreshadowing in it, but then again it also kind of takes place in the future. It's a quasi jump forward in time referring to and before a redoing of a previous serious of events the readers haven't seen yet. with out time travel.
  • Darths & Droids
  • Daughter of the Lilies:
    • Way back in Chapter One, there's a good reason Thistle gets so upset over the death of the cave elves.
    • Also regarding Thistle, the cover page of Chapter 1 - Brethren is likely a reference to Thistle's brethren.
    • And another one in the last frame on this page, with a Hidden in Plain Sight sign.
  • Debugging Destiny has the prophet Baleyg who has given us several predictions - so far one of them has come true. The two Narrators also have made comments that are either this of In-Universe Wild Mass Guessing.
  • Demonseed Redux: Multiple characters think Chico was unusual even before being turned into half-incubus. Turns out Chico was really Born of Heaven and Hell.
  • DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything:
    • When Mooyoung first physically appears, Taebin goes missing. Then Mooyung messages someone and Eunju recieves a message from Taebin. X also find people trusting Taebin hilarious. Turns out they are Sharing a Body.
    • Che-Hyun asks X why he kills the Dicers in the deadline. X responds that it's technically a Forced Transformation into inanimate objects, with which Dongtae later deduces that as Game Master, X has to follow Thou Shalt Not Kill to some degree and uses it against him.
    • At one point Dongtae has a nightmare of X playing hide and seek with him. He picks it as the final formal challenge against X, which is related to both his childhood and becomes his downfall.
  • Fans!: When Hilda Ramirez and Feddyg meet face-to-face for the first time, he mockingly compliments her as "almost Death Note smart." He then proceeds to kidnap her, keeping her alive just long enough for a very Death Note-like The Plan.
  • In Get Medieval strip #731, Sir Gerard says: "I'd return via the Moon if that could avoid it." Guess what, 70 strips later and he's on the Moon.
  • Jan's appearance in Gifts of Wandering Ice. It's foreshadowed on page 175 of the comic (where Rita hesitantly speaks of an outcast who is a shame to her tribe) and Jan himself appears only on page 290.
  • Girl Genius:
    • This strip — it takes some conscious effort to put a mad science related heart exactly there, and if you're thinking coincidence you might have missed the fact the heart was "hit" twice and the first time Agatha was saying love. Or the piece of heart region clothing Gil loses, as if to expose his heart. Agatha touching a heart with seemingly no fear of being mangled by the combat klank, as some sort of symbol of her touching Gil's exposed heart despite Gil's antics. Gil grabbing Agatha is a distinct foreshadowing of the wedding proposal that comes before she leaves the airship. Plus 15 or so threads of you know what I mean about in the forums if you want more esoteric symbols mad love, or Agatha's love of the mad science involved.
    • Agatha's comment about her "parents" hating the Heterodyne Boys Stories portraying Punch and Judy as stupid foreshadows the reveal that they themselves are none other than Punch and Judy - they feel insulted.
    • When a jagermonster claims Agatha smells "really goot" in book one, Gil (and the reader) assume he's just being lecherous and disgusting. It later becomes apparent that jagers can smell that Agatha is a Heterodyne.
    • The identity of "The Other" as Lucrezia Mongfish, Agatha's mother is foreshadowed multiple times:
      • Vol. 4 has Agatha recitin her lines to play Lucrezia in a show, when two ghost-looking ladies walk by. They talk in a language we can't understand but it's pretty evident that they expected someone else (i.e. Lucrezia), but were instead given "actors". When they walk away, Lars explains that they are called Geisterdamen and that they are rumored to be the ones who create slaver wasps.
      • Agatha has the command voice over Von Pinn, who later explains it is because of Agatha's parentage that she unthinkingly obeyed. In the same volume the latter happened, Agatha yells at a man shown to be a Revenant, who then explains that he thinks she's the Other.
      • Another instance with the wasps: Agatha screams "LET US GO" to some slaver wasps, who promptly let them go and refuse to even keep fighting.
    • One that still hasn't officially been revealed in-comic: People keep calling Gil a "chump", which is the name his father used during his Skifanderian exile. Similarly, Tarvek jokes at one point that a young Gil, before learning Klaus was his father, hoped he was a " Martian Prince" or something. At least half of that title is going to prove to be true..
  • El Goonish Shive:
    • These two comics have the characters read a note Tedd's dad left for him. While he reads it normally, each other person who reads it reads something related to the future: Justin, Nanase, Sarah and Tedd
    • Most of the Sleepy Time storyline was a serious take on it though. All the dreams are this and/or Character Development. Proof? This foreshadows Elliot gaining a superhero spell and This foreshadows Nanase getting into a relationship with Ellen.
    • What's seen here translated with this. "Death. It Is Time For The End Of Man. This Master of Fire Shall Inherit The Earth. My Very Presence Eats Away At Your Flesh" Other than the two bizarre words in the end, it's pretty creepy.
    • Susan's sword (5th December, 2002) and "tattoo" Venus (5th October, 2005) were good hints that she isn't as simple as she looks, but were proven to be plot points and not throwaway gags only in much later flashback (26th May, 2010).
    • This arc cover is full of foreshadowing (and one Red Herring). It foreshadows the appearance of Abraham and Nanase's angel form.
    • This sketchbook comic, from January 2011, where Dan notes that "Catalina and Rhoda have never met in canon, but I do think of them as being connected in a strange way". They meet in October of the same year (with the sketch linked as "Foreshadowing or goofy sketchbook? YOU DECIDE!") and are now a couple.
  • Hero Oh Hero: In the Level 4 Dungeon, Tobi's group came across a puzzle room with three different Odd Organ Up Top monsters on pedestals. They didn't bother solving the puzzle, and naturally this came back to bite them later. The puzzle was that these monsters are Invincible Minor Minions unless you Go for the Eye which only one of them has.
  • Housepets!:
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • The Order of the Stick also parodies foreshadowing.
    • The party wanders into a cave looking for an item for a Fetch Quest and discover that it's inhabited by a dragon. During the fight, the dragon mentions its mom, who thought it important to study other cultures and thus taught him to speak lizard. Later, the party wizard deduces that the Fetch Quest item they were after must have been brought there by a much older dragon. However, no character (and, surprisingly, not a single fan) thinks anything of it. Until the dragon's mom shows up over 400 strips later bent on bloody revenge.
    • V's, er, thorough and pragmatic approach to problem-solving is hinted at earlier.
      • This very same comic mentioning "villians fighting each other to thin the heard" might be foreshadowing for Nale's ultimate fate.
    • The IFCC (Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission) first appears as part of a one-panel joke in #380. They then appear as an important part of the plot in #632 (spoilers).
    • The police chief of Cliffport jokes that the mayor will put his head on a pike for allowing such a ruckus in his town. Turns out that Nale did the mayor's work for him.
    • When the different parts of Haley's mind show up in her head, one ("the part that is sick of all this emo crap and wants to get back to comedy") has short hair, and very much resembles her after her Important Haircut some 300 strips later.
    • The MitD's remark in the first panel there comes into a whole new light with the eleventh panel here.
    • Durkula loses his Funetik Aksent whenever he's in grave danger. Hmm...
    • Malack's health condition that necessitates a special diet, as well as the references to his late children and the possibility of having more.
    • When Elan first duels Tarquin, he's shocked that his opponent can counteract the punning ability from his Dashing Swordsman prestige class. Much later we learn Tarquin is a recurring foe of Julio Scoundrel, who taught Elan the prestige class.
    • Short duration foreshadowing, but the canny reader would suspect something is not quite right with the last panel of this strip. It's a running gag that Xykon never remembers Roy.
  • Sidekicks: Lamia's nightmare of a masked Theo killing her counts as double foreshadowing. In the season 1 finale, the Big Bad ends up usurping control over Theo's body and then tries to kill her. Then in season 2, Lamia has become the superhero Nightmare.
  • It gradually becomes evident to the reader that all of the major events in Narbonic have been planned long in advance. The Little Nemo in Slumberland-inspired Sunday strips, especially, hint in beautiful, complicated, cryptic ways at events to come.
    • In the middle of the series, Dave is lost in time and twenty years later meets a pre-recorded 'future Dave' who tells him a fundamental piece of information: "remember to fill the swimming pool." Years later near the end of the webcomic, this becomes the thing which saves the lives of Artie and Helen, and completely alters the future.
  • Toward the beginning of Sam & Fuzzy's "Noosehead" arc, Malcolm says some things that most would dismiss at first as being the ravings of a paranoid nutcase who's been breathing too many fumes, but in fact they reference key elements of the coming arc. A guest comic after the arc's completion calls attention to this.
  • Lampshaded with extreme prejudice in Ansem Retort:
    Ansem: This is foreshadowing! Pay attention to this, this will be important later on! ...FORESHADOWING!
  • Homestuck and the rest of the MS Paint Adventures, being written on the fly, regularly turns gags or details into Call Backs; this is known in-fandom as "retroactive foreshadowing".
    • Given Homestuck's penchant for increasingly complex storylines told in Anachronic Order, as well as some mercilessly hardline Time Travel rules, things can become foreshadowing that were not even noticed at first by the fans beforehand.
    • Calliope and Caliborn sharing a body was so heavily foreshadowed, a sizeable portion of the fanbase was convinced that this wasn't going to be the case because, well, it's Hussie. When it's confirmed that they share a body, the narration lampshades how this isn't a shocking twist at all.
  • Wapsi Square:
    • Tina's nickname for Monica foreshadowed the role she played in the fixing of the calendar machine. Monica's response to Phix's riddle did the same.
    • The very second strip shows Monica receiving an ancient Peruvian doll which Amanda says looks like a voodoo doll of Shelly. In the next strip Amanda grabs the doll's foot, and elsewhere the real Shelly feels it. In isolation this looks like a one-off gag, but actually it's a foreshadowing of all the supernatural shenanigans that would later become the strip's main focus. In the strip after that Monica tells Shelly she makes decisions using a committee in her head but it doesn't have a chairperson - a possible foreshadowing of Tina, who is a literal committee of inner demons sharing one body after its "chairperson" (the original Tina) died.
  • Sluggy Freelance:
    • Way back in October of 1999, we saw Oasis get furious at someone, and shortly afterwards the building she was in went up in a fiery explosion. It wasn't until June of 2009, over nine years and 3000 strips later, that we found out that, when Oasis gets mad, she can start fires with her mind. There was loads of other foreshadowing between those two strips, but, if the strip's official forum is anything to go by, that revelation was still entirely unanticipated by the readership.
    • Bert warns Torg about having a premonition of him flying through space on a crotch ship. This would seem like just another example of Bert's obsession with crotches, but the climax of the GOFOTRON arc involves Torg's group inadvertently stealing the crotch part of a Combining Mecha.
    • When Schlock, the Big Bad, expresses guilt at getting "those kids" entangled in his plans for Oasis, Kusari, his greatest assassin, asks if he is referring to the Torg, Zoë, Riff, and herself, which he confirms. She is eventually revealed to have been The Mole in the gang in her false identity as "Sasha".
    • A really subtle one: When Sasha is first seen, she's a masked woman in a generic superhero costume at a Halloween party where Zoë refused to attend. Torg expresses suspicion that the woman is Zoë by humorously misusing the line that he has never seen Zoë and the woman in the costume at the same time.note  When the costumed and masked Kusari is first introduced, she is seen at the same time as Sasha, thus establishing that they can't be the same character. But they are — she has multiple bodies.
    • Parodied in this strip. Kiki says that in retrospect, Miley Mouse being crushed by a piano in the latest book was set up as far back as the third book, titled, "Miley Mouse Gets Squished By A Piano In A Later Book." This is in reference to Sluggy's own foreshadowing where Gwynn saw a vision of Zoë burning years ago, before, well...
  • The author of Roommates loves to do this, and is actually good in it. Like: Why on earth is the Erlkönig on the monitors of Heaven and Hell together with Jareth and Jadis? They are family. Or This highly literal example.
  • Off-White: The cover for "Chapter VI – Fangs of Steel" is of a wolf skull being pierced by broken sword blades, two of which are going through the eye sockets. It's probably not a coincidence that a important character loses a eye in this chapter.
  • In Knights of Buena Vista, the Game Master said he was only going to fix one goof Adriana makes, no more. As this is a Campaign Comic covering Frozen (2013), and Adriana is playing Elsa, this shows how the game's plot is going to intersect with the movie's.
  • MegaTokyo:
    • Miho, her identity, her nature, and her relationship with the boys:
      • Early on, one of the sketches in the book Piro lost has the same ribbon as Miho, foreshadowing the fact that he's seen her before.
      • Shortly after the sketchbook example, Miho recognizes Piro's name, despite never being told. She also continues to speak to him in an overly familiar tone before he even knows her name. She was actually close friends with both him and Largo in the Endgames MMO; her character and Piro's even became lovers, a relationship that extended into cybersex.
      • When pulling Ping out of the arcade, Largo recognizes Miho's tactics, though he can't remember from where. Shortly after, he has a flashback to a fight in a fantasy world with a man with Miho's hairstyle, and tries to tell Piro about it (too bad he wasn't listening). It was Endgames, a unique fantasy MMO that he and Piro played. "Moh" was their friend and ally, until he destroyed the game world. And Largo is right, he was Miho.
      • In the arcade strip, she muses that she knows both of them, but apparently never met in person before. Again, Endgames.
      • During her time in the nurse's office, Miho dreams of fighting someone who looks like a female Piro. Endgames again, when Pirogeth confronted Moh.
      • After bringing Ping back, Miho mentions that "maybe we can all play again sometime." Piro misses the most important part of that phrase (the "again") to wonder if Ping has a multiplayer mode. More Endgames.
      • The first time we see Miho, she references knowing Piro and Largo, but again not in person.
    • Erika:
      • Ed and Dom freak out when they see her (Ed's threat detector goes crazy), even more so than when they ran into Junpei. Dom even mentions "That stance...I've seen it before." This hints at the fact that as a badass weapons-grade retired idol, the government treats her as a walking nuke.
      • The fact that she constantly gives Kimiko advice on voice acting is a clear hint that she was one herself.
    • Kimiko:
      • When she talks down one of Erika's fans, Largo is in awe of her "raw power." It seems like Largo just being crazy, but idols like Kimiko really are valued for their ability to do that sort of thing.
  • In Schlock Mercenary, the aquatic, tentacled Schuul being behind the civil war plot is hinted at by the personality-overwriting "hack" being used: this strip shows the hack as water, when its previous use had manifested as someone "moving in", and this one has an interesting shape while melting.
  • Godslave:
    • Before Anpu is introduced, the story focuses on a moment on Anubis' mural in the museum.
    • If you know what ba looks like, you can guess what Anpu does to Edith before he tells her.
    • It remains to be seen whether it's just a Red Herring or not, but it's heavily hinted that "Anpu" is, in fact, Set pretending to be his fellow deity. Among the hints: red glow of his magic, ambiguous shape of supposed fennec fox, the fact that his tail has two prongs sometimes (a mark of Set's Animal), Heru's animosity towards him and of course the red image of Set's Animal adorning webcomic's page's banner.
  • Diamond in the Rough (Aladdin), which starts out with seemingly unknown protagonists, throws in clues to who they might be through the character's clothes and items, such as a staff with the head of a bird, or a patterned purple cloak, or a breastplate with a roaring tiger.
  • Mario & Luigi: Cleanup Crew: Luigi and Mario briefly appear in the beginning of "A Mess in the Making", but the bulk of the chapter is Toad's recollection of the events leading to the current crisis.
  • In Rain, Maria's comments here and here make a lot more sense when you learn that Emily is pansexual and used to date Maria.
  • Sleepless Domain:
  • Tower of God
    • Reportedly, Word of God states that the murals on the walls of the first floor of the Tower foreshadow the whole story of the comic. How, that's another matter.
    • After Bam leaves Headon's floor, Headon turns to talk to someone unseen. It turns out Rachel was still there all along — leading to the irony that Bam, ascending the Tower only to catch Rachel, actually passed her along the way.
    • In "Underwater Hunt", Bam notices a strange power at the bottom of the Wine Glass lake while he and Rachel are floating inside, but it goes unexplained until quite a bit later when it's explained a piece of the Thorn was hidden in there.
    • Khun's team and Team Sweet and Sour encounter each other for the first time in a place called the Hand of Arlene — an arm that's all that's left of an enormous statue. While the focus of the scene is on their encounter, it later turns out Arlene was someone very important in the Back Story, a Walking Spoiler erased from history by King Jahad himself.
    • In "Deng Deng", when Khun meets Deng Deng and Louie for the first time, he walks over to Louie and asks whether he's Deng Deng. When it turns out he was wrong, he muses he's never got anyone's name wrong before. (Why he'd have such an ability isn't explained.) Anyhow, it's later revealed that Louie has Deng Deng's real heart in his chest because Deng Deng is being used as a vessel for holding someone else's.
  • Unsounded:
    • In chapter 14 page 49, there is a statue of a man preaching to seven children, but one of the statues is broken in half. Later in the chapter, Jon — the seventh of Duane's Plat soldiers — is killed by a pymaric attack that cuts him in half.
    • In the final panel of chapter 16 page 59, Sara and Ilya's heads are obscured by the axe of the approaching soldier. Both of them die later in the chapter.
    • The reveal that Mikaila is alive and well at present day is heavily foreshadowed. When Bastion recounts to Rahm his involvement in Duane's assassination, he notes he was nearly killed by an Aldelier who wasn't Duane, and visually we see him being caught in some sort of explosion. One might assume Lemuel was the culprit, but such an attack wouldn't really be his style (aside from his lack of pymaric ability). And chapter 16 is chocked full of hints that one of Lemuel's young co-pilots is in fact Mikaila, which is revealed to be true when she attempts to use pymary on Duane, not realizing who he is, and the pymary is colored green just like Duane's.
    • Elka says the only way to somewhat contain an allepakh detonation and prevent it from turning everything in a quarter mile molten would be to have it go off wrapped in First Materials. This is impractical and nigh impossible but Uaid is made partially out of First Materials, its what allows his AI to function, and his non-First Materials parts can be made to replicate the properties of First Materials using his field spreader. When the bomb gets dropped Uaid eats it, killing himself but saving a lot of other lives.
    • Several chapters before Duane’s soul is injured it was shown super-imposed over his physical remains with the bandages creating lines right where he’d later be clawed open.
  • Weak Hero:
    • Episode 29 shows Stephen wearing a shirt with COMA printed on it, a subtle but dire hint to what awaits him in the future.
    • At the end of Season 2, Alex randomly messes up a standard pool shot. The start of the next season would reveal that Alex is left-handed, and has been incorrectly using his non-dominant hand for the whole series.
    • Gerard's boss offers him the business card to a casting agency, which he declines with the reasoning that not only has he just restarted singing, but that not all employees are as kind as his boss. Later on it's revealed that Gerard stopped singing in part because his band's agency scammed them, leading them to disband.
    • On the rare occasions that Gerard's hair doesn't get in the way of his eyes, only his right eye is shown. His backstory flashback reveals that he has scarring over his left eye as a result of being caught in an explosion. There's one exception to this, at the end of Episode 20◊. His scarring can just be seen on the sliver of skin above his eye.
  • Zebra Girl:
  • It's Walky! twice uses arrows to indicate something about a character, long before actually revealing it.
    • In this comic, Alan stands in front of a diagram of an Alien such that the arrows on the diagram all appear to be pointing at him. It later turns out that Alan is actually an Alien in a human suit.
    • In this one, Joe is telling Danny and Billie about the girl he's been flirting with online. Right next to his head is a magazine called Her, with an arrow pointing in the direction of the cashier, who unbeknownst to anyone present is the one Joe is talking about.

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