Imminent Danger Clue

Lochley: Some alien weapons use a hell of a lot of energy to build up right before they fire. Smells like ozone.
Gideon: You don't have a gun on you, do you? I had to check mine at customs.
Lochley: No. I never needed one down here until you came along.
Gideon: What makes you think this has anything to do with—
Both: —ozone.
[Both duck as an alien weapon fires at them]

— Crusade

To an unaware observer, everything appears perfectly normal. Either no one's around, or everyone's going about their business as expected. There's no reason to think there's any danger nearby or that anything is out of the ordinary.

But there's one tiny little detail that suggests otherwise. Something out of place. Something... amiss. It could be a moved piece of furniture, an insistent background noise, or a bit of speech or behaviour that is vaguely wrong. Whatever it is, it's so innocuous that our hero doesn't think much of it at first.

But at some point, the character has a sudden realization: that detail is a sign of imminent danger. And sure enough, that danger will manifest itself within seconds. The character will either be captured or killed, or will survive through fighting, escaping, or ducking that giant log right before it smashes into the wall.

To qualify for this trope, the detail must be unremarkable outside of story context, and must signal an imminent threat. Due to the Theory of Narrative Causality, that threat will not materialize until the character has made the link — even if the hidden ninja assassin could have sliced his head off as soon as he walked into the room.

Sometimes preceded by It's Quiet… Too Quiet. See also The Anticipator and Five-Second Foreshadowing. If the danger in question is a bomb, expect a Pre-Explosion Buildup. Compare A Glitch in the Matrix, Out-of-Character Alert, That's No Moon, Bad Vibrations, *Drool* Hello. Contrast Cat Scare, in which an apparent obvious danger sign turns out to be nothing, and Spider-Sense, for characters who don't need even subtle outward warning signs.

The Laser Sight and Crosshair Aware tropes are almost invariably used to provide characters with an imminent danger clue, even when there is no in-universe rationale for their use, so much so that listing each example here would be redundant. It's the reason that the majority of fictional snipers use laser sights, for example, despite how counterproductive it is. Otherwise the only way to give the characters warning enough to survive a sniper attack would be a missed first shot, which undermines the threat somewhat.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Done twice in Japan Sinks. Both times with Ayumu noticing the danger just before another character falls victim to it. First, she notices a sign covered by yam vines that says that digging for yams is prohibited because of unexploded ordnance from World War II. Just as she turns to warn her father, who is digging for yams, he hits a bomb and is killed. Second, when Ayumu and Nanami go down a hill to use the bathroom, Ayumu notices a bunch of dead birds. One second later, Nanami collapses. Ayumu tries to go to her, but is warned away by KITE who was motorgliding above them. He explains that Nanami died instantly due to a build up of poison gas.

Comic Books

• In Jonah Hex #53 (original series), Jonah is tracking a pair of kidnappers. He finds the shack they used as a hideout, and the boy they abducted inside, but no sign of the outlaws. As he is looking around, he glances in the still burning stove and sees wrappers from dynamite in the flames. Realising what is happening, Jonah grabs the boy and dives out through a window mere moments before the shack blows up.

Fan Works

• Gordon Freeman realizes something is horribly wrong in Between Minds when he notices spilled water isn't flowing down the tilted floor, but swirling around the group's ankles.
• In Child of the Storm, the smell of wood-smoke, particularly when there's no wood fire anywhere in sight, is a sign that the Dark Phoenix is imminent and that you would be well-advised to run. Preferably to another galaxy.

Film — Live-Action

• In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve initially doesn't notice anything when SHIELD agents (including Rumlow) board the small elevator he's in. It's only when he realizes that the elevator is filled exclusively with large men, some of whom are giving him cautious stares, and sees the agent standing in front of him with a bead of sweat running down his neck that he understands something's wrong.
  • Played for laughs in Avengers: Endgame where the scene is nearly identical to invoke this... only this time Cap enters the elevator and everyone is immediately suspicious of his request... Until Cap says the magic words, averting the fight.
• In The Debt, Rachel realizes that the ostensibly unconscious, Bound and Gagged villain in the next room may be escaping when the sound of raindrops hitting pots goes from a three-beat pattern to two (meaning the pot next the the villain's leg has been moved). She goes to check it out, sees the flipped-over pot, starts to creep closer, and promptly gets attacked by the villain, who was hiding just outside the doorway.
• In Die Hard with a Vengeance, McClane (Bruce Willis) gets on an elevator with some fake cops. Because he was earlier in the film with some real NYPD cops who mentioned they always play their badge number in the lottery, he realizes at the last second that the fake cop next to him has the same badge number as the real cop. After confirming his suspicion by nonchalantly asking whether any of the supposed cops knew last night's lottery drawing (none of them respond), it's enough for McClane to get the jump on them before they kill him.
• In The Godfather Michael realizes there is a bomb in his car when he sees his bodyguard Fabrizio sneaking away. Sadly, he is too late to save Apollonia, who had just gotten into said car.
• In The Godfather Part II, Michael anticipates his assassination attempt seconds before it happens because the bedroom curtains have been left open.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, as Eggsy and Arthur are about to toast the fallen Harry, Eggsy notices a surgical scar beneath Arthur's ear and realizes that he's had one of Valentine's loyalty chips implanted in him and is in on Valentine's plan. The realization gives Eggsy just enough time to pull a Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo on Arthur.
• In The Pelican Brief, Darby's teacher/lover was killed by a car bomb intended for her. She had refused to get in his car with him since he was drunk, and while walking away she heard the car's starter make an unusual noise seconds before it blew up. Later, when she and Gray are in his car looking over some recently acquired evidence of The Conspiracy, he turns the key and the starter makes the same noise. She catches it just in time to stop him from setting off the bomb, and they get out of the car and run from the assassins who planted it.
• The Predators cause one of these every now and then:
  • They often subvert the common Laser Sight use. Rather than their targeting laser serving as a warning to the target, they either aim and shoot from an angle the target can't see it from, or they shoot before or just as the target notices, giving them no time to react.
  • In the second movie, King Willie starts to suspect he's being watched when a brick tumbles off the top of a nearby building, and the Predator soon jumps down to the same spot.
  • In the same movie it gets turned around on the Predator when it hears the wooden stairs in the slaughterhouse creaking as if under the weight of someone walking on them, despite having seen no one with its thermal vision.
  • In the Expanded Universe, it's not uncommon for the distortion effect of the Predators' cloak or the sound they make when they breath to function as this; a character who doesn't know about them will at least realize something is amiss. A character who does know about them will immediately realize they have a very serious problem.
• In Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jameson notices that something is amiss when a cigar he threw out the window is thrown back through the window. Seconds later, the Green Goblin attacks the Daily Bugle.
• In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Chekov finds a buckle that says "Botany Bay" and instantly realizes they're on Khan's ship seconds before they're captured.
• Star Wars:
  • In A New Hope, the first indication the crew and passengers on the Falcon have of the Death Star's nearby presence is Obi-wan's observation that the small TIE Fighter harassing them does not have hyperspace capabilities and thus could have neither followed them nor been separated from a convoy; it has to be based nearby and Alderaan didn't have any Imperial bases.
  • Return of the Jedi:
    • Wicket senses an unusual scent in the air seconds before a stormtrooper begins shooting at him and Leia.
    • When Lando realizes that the Imperials are jamming their sensors, despite the fact that the attack should be a complete surprise, he immediately concludes that the shield is still up, allowing the fleet to narrowly avoid crashing headlong into it.
• In Terminator Salvation, the Mysterious Waif appears able to sense when the machines are about to attack. Since she's also a Cute Mute, her intuitions tend to be useless unless someone is looking at her at the right moment to notice her panic attack.
• In the original Total Recall (1990), Quaid realizes that the Recall doctor's explanation of the trouble he's in is a lie (and that they're about to kill him) from the fact that the doctor is sweating.

Literature

• In A Clash of Kings, a character narrowly avoids being murdered by an "ally" on the battlefield in a subversion of Take My Hand!:
  "It was only at the very last, as their fingers brushed across the gap, that something niggled at him . . . Ser Mandon was holding out his left hand, why . . ."
• In the Discworld novels, hoses and ropes getting tangled for no reason are a sign of Auditors approaching. (This might seem a bit odd, given that the Auditors are "the cold dead rules", and inexplicable tangling would seem to be chaos rather than order, but it symbolises the inanimate becoming malignant towards the living. And, of course, one of the rules the Auditors represent is entropy...)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: In the extremely creepy scene where a silent Bathilda Bagshot leads Harry and Hermione into her filthy house, Harry observes that Bathilda smells bad and later specifically catches the scent of "meat gone bad". This is followed very soon after by the horrifying moment where Nagini bursts out of a Bathilda Bagshot meat suit.
• In Masques, Aralorn notices that a person her beloved is talking to lacks a shadow.
• In a Nancy Drew Files book, Nancy and a friend are setting out on a picnic when the friend points out a flock of birds that take off at the first sight of people. Later, as she and her friend are enjoying their picnic, the birds take off again. Nancy remembers what her friend said and realizes that someone's lurking in the bushes. She pushes her friend to the ground and dives for cover herself a second before shots ring out.
• In the opening scene of Two Little Girls in Blue, Trish the babysitter goes to check on the twins after she thinks she hears one of them cry out. She realizes something is off because the door to the twins' bedroom is closed and she's sure she left it open to listen out for them in case they woke up. Then Trish realizes that if the door was always closed, how would she have heard the twins crying while she was downstairs? Trish begins to panic at this point; seconds later she hears and smells someone right behind her...

Live-Action TV

• In Alias, Sydney sits down with Francie and offers her a taste of cappuccino-flavored ice cream, which she gladly accepts. Sydney realizes immediately that something's wrong, because Francie hates coffee. Battle ensues.
• On Babylon 5, during any standoff with a warship, the shooting is usually immediately preceeded by a one of the Bridge Bunnies shouting, "We're picking up an energy spike!" Usually they aren't surprised in this case, as starships are usually pretty easy to see, but this is the announcement that the standoff phase of the encounter is over.
• Boardwalk Empire, in the episode "Two Imposters": Nucky tells Eddie to call Eli, Chalky, and Mickey Doyle. When Eddie tells Nucky the line is dead, he realizes Gyp Rosetti and his men cut the switchboard and are coming to kill him;. As a result, Nucky manages to fight off the first wave of Rosetti's men and escape to Chalky's place.
• In the Community episode "Modern Warfare", Abed notices a single line of paint trickling down a bathroom wall, steps back, sees the human-shaped bare patches above each urinal, and has time to say "Um, guys?" right before the female characters spring out of the stalls (and garbage can) behind them.
• In Crusade, Gideon and Lochley identify that an alien is about to shoot because the alien weapon produces a smell of ozone when it is being charged.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Girl in the Fireplace": The Doctor realizes something is amiss in a little girl's room when he realizes that the ticking sound he hears cannot originate from the room's one clock, which is broken.
  • "The Time of Angels": The ancient ruins they're in were from a culture where the population had two heads, but nobody notices for a while that all the "statues" have only one head each.
  • "The Day of the Doctor": A UNIT scientific team are standing in the middle of a statue gallery where every installation is covered by a large sheet when they realise the mysterious dust covering the floor is... the remains of the statues.
• Game of Thrones:
  • The very first scene of the series establishes that, whenever characters are beyond the Wall, a sudden sharp drop in what are already very cold temperatures indicates a White Walker or Walkers are nearby.
  • A vast fleet of Stannis Baratheon's ships bear down on King's Landing in Season 2's Battle of the Blackwater to put him on the Iron Throne he believes should rightfully be his following his brother Robert's death. The defending Lannisters launch but a single unmanned ship towards them. When it gets close, Ser Davos Seaworth sees a luminous green trail leaking out from behind it. He realizes that the ships are sailing into a vast death trap and jumps ship just before arrows from the mainland ignite an explosion of wildfire, killing hundreds of troops on the ships before they even land.^note However, it doesn't kill enough, and The Cavalry has to come at the last minute to save the city.
  • In the final scene of "The Rains of Castamere", Catelyn Stark notices three of these just before the Red Wedding goes down. First, someone has barred the doors. Second, the musicians begin playing a song whose key and content are inappropriate for the setting — none other than the episode-naming song, a Lannister song which only Catelyn recognizes. The final, threat-confirming clue is the reveal that Lord Roose Bolton is wearing chainmail under his clothes. Sadly, by the time Catelyn pieces all of this together and realizes that she and her family have been Lured into a Trap, it is far, far too late.
  • In "The Winds of Winter", the Season 6 finale, almost all of the major characters in the King's Landing arc at that point in the series are gathered in the Sept of Baelor for the trial of Cersei Lannister for her incestuous relationship with her cousin Lancel. After a while, Queen Margaery realizes that neither Cersei nor her son, Margaery's husband King Tommen, are present^note earlier, in fact, we had seen his guards preventing him from leaving his rooms. She tells the presiding High Sparrow that, since everyone knows that Cersei is not going to be acquitted and she knows that Cersei does not run from a fight, something is up and that they should leave the sept. However, the guards prevent her from leaving, and we see that a seriously wounded Lancel has found candles almost burnt down into huge pools of wildfire in the catacombs beneath the sept. He is unable to prevent them from igniting, and the resulting explosion not only kills everyone in the sept but drives Tommen to jump to his death shortly afterwards.
• Get Smart: In "Die, Spy", CONTROL and KAOS have a temporary truce for the funereal of double agent. The Chief and Siegfried are about to share a limo back from the funeral when Max notices two leaves wedged together on the windscreen of the car. As the odds of two falling leaves landing in exactly the same spot are millions to one, he realises the leaves must have been pushed together when someone opened the bonnet; probably to plant a car bomb. He stops Siegfried and the Chief from entering the car, and while they are arguing, the car blows up.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • In "0-8-4", Ward's first sign that something is wrong comes when he realizes that the military squad on the Bus still have not touched their drinks even after several hours had passed, implying that there was something they planned to do that they needed to be sober for.
    • In "Nothing Personal", while Hill complains about her obvious tails over the phone, she suddenly notices that they've disappeared or have been incapacitated. She immediately ends the phone call. However, the "danger" was just Agent May, who needed to chat privately with Hill so she could ask for her help.
  • Daredevil (2015): Karen realizes Colonel Schoonover is the Blacksmith when she looks at a photograph and recognizes one of the soldiers he's posing with is a body she just saw getting zipped up at the docks.
  • The Punisher (2017): In the season 1 finale, Billy Russo visits Curtis and tries to make him betray Frank. He accepts Curtis's offer of coffee, following Curtis around as he opens up the blinds in his living room/kitchen. Just as he's about to reach for the coffee mug Curtis is holding out to him, Russo puts together he's being moved to be taken out by Frank with a sniper rifle, and dives for cover just as Frank fires his first round through the window. In a matter of seconds, Russo also gets out his own gun and begins shooting at Curtis.
    Billy Russo: YOU PEG LEG BASTARD!
• NCIS: New Orleans. Pride notices that a murder victim's body has been dragged over to the window from where she actually died, then instantly warns everyone to get down as he realizes that the killer was setting the team up. Indeed, gunfire erupts not a second after he yells for everyone to take cover.
• Sherlock: In "The Final Problem", John notices that the voice in the security footage of Eurus's psych evaluation belongs to the now ex-warden of Sherrinford, meaning he's under her control, as is the entire prison, and Sherlock, Mycroft, and John are trapped. When John voices this realization, he and Mycroft are immediately taken prisoner.
• In the Torchwood serial Children of Earth, a character realizes she and her son are in danger when a neighbourhood dog stops barking.
• Warehouse 13: The smell of fudge where there is no fudge indicates the presence of chameleon bombs.
• The Wire: A moving shadow on a nearby wall in the alley where the undercover Kima and Orlando are parked tips her off that the supposed drug buy is not what it seems; moments later he is killed and she seriously injured by two gunmen.
  • D'Angelo turns out to be Wrong Genre Savvy, after having told another person that being told you'll be picked up to go somewhere is a sign you're about to be whacked, is picked up by Wee-Bay to go to a dark, isolated house... that has Wee-Bay's prized fish collection he wants D to take care of while he's away.
  • When Bodie and Poot kill Wallace, the first sign something isn't right is Wallace's squatted vacant being empty of the many kids that usually spend the night there.
  • Michael rightly gets suspicious when Snoop tells him to come to a hit without a gun, so instead he comes early and with a gun and gets the drop on her.

Video Games

• Fallen London:
  • One moment during the Bag a Legend ambition has you chatting with Sinning Jenny, only to notice the mirror behind her, instead of reflecting her back, is showing a reflection facing her back instead. This is shortly after finding out your biggest quarry, the Vake, is a Mirror Monster and thus impersonating someone's reflection isn't outside its capabilities. Realizing this in time with a Watchful check lets you save yourselves from a brutal ambush once it erupts from the mirror.
  • Like any cold ocean, icebergs are a risk in the Northern reaches of the Unterzee; they're known for moving erratically, but by themselves they're mostly just inert and inanimate ice... if you smell ammonia in the air, though? That means that's not an iceberg, and the gigantic piece of hostile geography you just ran into is going to murder you if you don't turn your ship around fast.
• God of War (PS4): In a scene where Atreus is trying to teach Kratos to read Norse runes, Kratos suddenly cuts him off because he smells rain... indoors. Three seconds later, Modi Thorson attacks.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The fight with Dark Link in the Water Temple starts like this. Link enters a strange room that looks like an endless, ankle-deep expanse of water. In the middle of the room sits a small island with a dead tree. As soon as Link passes the island, his reflection is no longer visible in the water...
• 2010 reboot of Medal of Honor:
  • The first mission features a bomb rigged to a cell phone, which the men of AFO Neptune barely avoid at the last moment when they hear the phone ring.
  • A Ranger squad is preparing to secure a small hut bordering on a potential landing zone for their helicopters. They don't quite make the connection, but they know something's wrong when they hear a phone right just before they are about to kick in the door.^note  Fortunately, they were all wearing ballistic body armor, which barely saved them.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, your partner notices that the air seems to be growing colder. Unfortunately, Hydreigon is only able to confirm the fact before Kyurem ambushes them. It doesn't end well for the latter (Or the hero for that matter).
• The survivors in Dead by Daylight are alerted to a killer's presence via Heartbeat Soundtrack, with the heart rate increasing whenever they draw closer. If a killer is directly behind them, they'll also be lit up by a red light.
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End: Nate, Sam and Sully have just beaten Shoreline to an important location in the hunt for Henry Avery's treasure and are inspecting the site when Sam discovers a spent cigarette butt on the ground. After he and Sully confirm that it wasn't any of theirs, they have just enough time to collectively realize that they didn't beat Shoreline there at all before the mercenaries spring their ambush.

Web Original

• In places where there are no nearby rosebushes or flower shops, rose petals and/or the scent of roses heralds the arrival of Sexual-Offenderman. [1]

Western Animation

• Steven Universe: Blue Diamond has the ability to make Gems cry uncontrollably simply by being near her. Normally, this is jarring and out-of-place enough that Blue Diamond's presence is recognized almost immediately. But in "Reunited", Steven thinks it's just tears of joy over Garnet's wedding, and doesn't realize that something's wrong until it dawns on him that he can't stop crying... whereupon Blue and Yellow Diamond's ships both show up.

Real Life

• If you ever happen to be walking in the woods (or in the suburbs, in some areas) and notice a bear cub that appears to be on its own, freeze. Do not run. Do not get any closer. Start talking in a high, clear voice (the topic doesn't matter), and slowly move away, checking for movement in all directions. Because where there's a cub, its mother is likely to be nearby, and you do not want to take her by surprise.^note In areas with a lot of shrubs or weedy growth, cubs may be more likely to come out into the open than adult bears; one common scenario is for a cub to climb a tree when a human approaches, while the mother stays on the ground to defend it.

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