Quotes / Foregone Conclusion

Comic Strips

Pig: Hey, Goat... whatcha reading?
Goat: This biography of Abe Lincoln.
Pig: Does it explain very much about his assassination or—oops.
Goat: What?
Pig: Spoiler alert.

— Pearls Before Swine, June 27, 2013

Film - Animated

"In every other universe, Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-Man. And in every other universe… it doesn't end well."

— Gwen, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Literature

This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it. It is a story of love and loss, brotherhood and betrayal, courage and sacrifice and the death of dreams. It is a story of the blurred line between our best and our worst. It is the story of the end of an age. A strange thing about stories—though this all happened so long ago and so far away that words cannot describe the time or the distance, it is also happening right now. Right here. It is happening as you read these words. This is how twenty-five millennia come to a close.

— Revenge of the Sith

This is the story of three girls who went into the woods together, and the two girls who came out the other side. I tell you this so that you will know, even from the beginning, that to become overly attached is only to do yourself a profound and primeval harm.

— Opening of "Juice Like Wounds" by Seanan McGuire, Wayward Children

Live-Action TV

Phoebe: I thought I was gonna see a film about, y'know, Yankee pride! And then — boom! — the guy gets Lou Gehrig's disease.
Richard: Uh... the guy was Lou Gehrig. Didn't you kinda see it coming?

— Friends

"And just like that, one of these four couples would break up that very next day!
Okay, it wasn't Lily and Marshall. One of these three couples would break up the very next day!"

— Future Ted, How I Met Your Mother, "The Pre-Nup"

"Of course, you already know how this one ends."

— Narrator, Jane the Virgin

Magazines

"Shhh. Haven't seen it yet. Don't. Ruin. The. Ending."

— Brad Shoup on Titanic (1997), Stylus Magazine

Music

Nick: What? I can get you maybe a dozen! You can't promise seats to everyone and their cousin! What did you do? How'd you get in this mess?
Aaron: I was talkin' to this girl—
Nick: Hold your breath, I know the rest.

— Aaron Carter, "Oh Aaron" ft. Nick Carter and No Secrets

Theatre

In little room confining mighty men,
Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
Small time, but in that small most greatly lived.
This star of England: Fortune made his sword;
By which the world's best garden be achieved,
And of it left his son imperial lord.
Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
Of France and England, did this king succeed;
Whose state so many had the managing,
That they lost France and made his England bleed

—Chorus , Henry V

"From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife"

— Lines 5-8 of the prologue to Romeo and Juliet

Video Games

"From the beginning, you know the end."

— Halo: Reach

Webcomics

"Have you seen The Passion yet? Here's a spoiler for you: Jesus dies."

— Gabe from Penny Arcade (Hilariously, he's wrong.)

Gary: It also sounds like we took the long route to a foregone conclusion.
Grace: Eh. The fewer vestiges of self-esteem you have left, the farther you'll go to protect them.

— The Word Weary, #208

Party Leader: [in a Flashback] For the sake of everyone on the continent, we cannot fail!
Tarquin: Spoiler alert: They failed.

— The Order of the Stick

Web Original

"So the kids enter the sewer to fight the clown. This is really suspenseful because I have no idea who's going to make it out alive except for all of them."

— The Nostalgia Critic discussing a flashback in Stephen King's It

"Oh, come on! This isn't a spoiler! The very first image in the game is a brief flash-forward depicting your character's helmet lying discarded in the dust and battle-scarred terrain; what the fuck do you think happens at the end? Your character thrillingly and climatically gets a little bit hot?"

— Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation discussing Halo: Reach

"I've got to admit, I totally saw that coming."

— RiffTrax on Titanic (1997)

Wolverine: I've already had three X-Men films, and now I'm gettin' a prequel.
Comedian: Oh, I can't wait to see what happens! Wait, I know: you live to make three X-Men movies.

— I'm a Marvel... And I'm a DC

"Even if you know how the story ends, that doesn't make it any less fun to watch."

— Cinder Fall, RWBY

Mr Selfridge may have lacked dramatic tension for me because last week I was in Selfridges. So, like, I knew he got to open it.

—Dara Ó Briain, on Twitter

Western Animation

"My fellow Americans... I think we all know where this is going, so let's just skip to the end."

— Gumball, The Amazing World of Gumball

Real Life

"Any movie about Christ is gonna end the same way. Jesus is gonna hit the iceberg."

— Kevin Smith

"But the main problem is that because it's based on a real shop, opened by a real man, there's not much real jeopardy. So the opening episode was a nail-biting tale of 'Will he or won't he open the shop?' when you know he did, then we had 'Will he or won't he open a perfume counter?' which you also know he did. And recently we had 'Is he or isn't he dead?' when you know he won't be. It's a bit like a whodunnit called 'Colin is Guilty."

— Charlie Brooker, reviewing Mr Selfridge

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