Working title: Flashback Cold Open
Laconic: A Flashback that plays before the opening credits.
Often, the Flashback is so important to the show that directors decide to put it at the show's beginning. And this is a flashback cold open.
Subtrope of Flashback and The Teaser. Often accompanies with Time Skip, if the flashback is further in the past.
Anime and Manga
- The Animated Adaptation of Asteroid in Love starts with a flashback about how The Promise comes about.
- The beginning of episode 9 of Is the Order a Rabbit? shows Chino's grandfather while he was still human sitting on a park bench with his pet rabbit Tippy. He then sees a young Cocoa who sits next to him while hugging Tippy, and her older sister Mocha can be seen as she leaves the bench a short while later.
Comic Cooks
- ElfQuest uses a flashback right at the beginning to show the reader some of the elves' Origin Story, which goes a long way toward explaining the current events which we return to following the flashback.
Film
- Both the second and third The Lord of the Rings film runs the main title immediately following the Vanity Plate, but the instalment title follows a prologue, both of which refers to an epic battle scene in the first part.
- Ditto with The Hobbit's first installment, with an epic backstory opening.
- In Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, the whole beginning is a flashback to the first movie even though there is no way that Ricky could've remembered any of the events depicted except for the last one because he was either a baby or wasn't present.
Live Action TV
- Every single episode of the series two of Being Human begins with a flashback.
- Seasons 3, 4 and 5 of Breaking Bad, among others, frequently featured flashbacks that feature a dead character to add depth to the series' world and shed light on certain themes of that episode.
- Jessica Jones (2015) has one at the beginning of AKA WWJD?, of her now dead family leaving for vacation from her childhood home...right when she's going back to her childhood home with her stalker/former rapist (mental and physical) in order to both hopefully record a confession and stop him from hurting and killing people around her.
- Person of Interest starts this way, showing John Reese relaxing in bed with Jessica, then cutting to John as a homeless alcoholic with a Beard of Sorrow. Later flashbacks show this was the moment before 9/11, when John said he was going to leave the military and marry Jessica. Until he turns on the television.
- Every single episode of Psych begins with a flashback to Shawn's childhood, usually vaguely related to the plot in some way.
