In the live action short by Hideaki Anno, the Warrior God uses its bright purple laser cannon on the city of Tokyo, obliterating most of it in a few minutes. Flash forward four years, and Anno is working on a new film, with another giant monster who can use a purple beam that's similar to a laser. Who is this monster? It's Shin Godzilla!
The flashback of a younger Nausicaa wanting to keep a baby Ohmu as a pet, on first viewing, doesn't really seem to have much significance to the plot. However, if you think about it, Nausicaa's flashback - in which a baby Ohmu is depicted as harmless and helpless - encourages the audience to feel sympathy for a member of a species shown through earlier parts of the film to be dangerous. What happens in a later scene? A baby Ohmu is used as bait for the rest of its species. If the horrifyingway the Ohmu is used doesn't encourage the audience to feel bad for it, the earlier flashback scene - even on a subconscious level - does. In short, the film uses a seemingly random flashback to manipulate the emotions of the audience in preparation for the climax. Well played, Miyazaki-san.
Near the end of the movie, Nausicaa wears a red dress. Moments later, after stopping the stampeding Ohmu, her dress is blue. What else is red and blue? The Ohmu's eyes, of course! And the timing is just right, too.
After Nausicaa manages to calm an angry Toxic Jungle beast non-violently, her actions are witnesses by a gigantic Ohmu, who seems to be identifying her. It comes back after she's killed, as you can bet the Ohmu recognized her corpse as the same Friend to All Living Things girl he'd watched earlier.
