Fauxshadow

Sometimes an author will spend a lot of time blatantly Foreshadowing something, only to play with the audience's heads. When The Reveal comes, the promised (implied, really) development never occurs. Which, by the way, is Irony. May be the result of an Aborted Arc. If what was foreshadowed seems to the audience to have been a lot more interesting than what ended up happening, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.

Here there be spoilers.

See also The Untwist, Bait and Switch, Red Herring.

General

 * Any and all subversions of Chekhov's Gun. See that page for examples.

Anime and Manga

 * Pokémon: It looks like Ash is going to battle the Elite 4 of Sinnoh. HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT.
 * Despite all the hints through the series as to the real identity of Marin as Seiya's sister in Saint Seiya, she doesn't end up being his sister at all, the real sister is somewhere else.
 * The very first scene of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which appears to be a Flash Forward, but never actually happens.
 * The introduction of  in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha made it appear that he was the Mysterious Protector of the Wolkenritter in the second season, especially since the Mysterious Protector looked like  and acted like he was familiar with . Nope, he was eventually revealed to be  . Rewatching the season after knowing The Reveal shows that the writers foreshadowed that one too, but the popularity of the   trope allowed the Fauxshadowing to hide the actual Foreshadowing in plain sight.
 * StrikerS had the foreshadowing-that-wasn't of.
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's foreshadowed that the Big Bad Z-one was Yusei from a Bad Future. He turned out to be
 * Project A-ko shows us A-ko a Person of Mass Destruction capable of feats of incredible speed and strength. Space aliens are searching for their long lost princess they left behind on Earth. Obviously the aliens have come to take A-ko away. Oh wait, no they're not. They're here for C-ko.

Film

 * The original Star Wars trilogy features several:
 * Han Solo getting the feeling he's never going to see the Millenium Falcon again; probably a holdover from an earlier draft of the script, where he didn't see it again.
 * Yoda proclaiming that Luke was not their last hope, implying that he would fail and that the "other" he was talking about would have to take his place. An Infinities arc was later written that demonstrated this possibility.
 * The "love triangle" of Luke/Leia/Han. Han and Leia end up together, but only after Luke and Leia have shared a few kisses that are never re-visited.
 * The whole film Sleepaway Camp seems to be setting up a reveal that
 * Wes Craven said on the commentary track of Wes Craven's New Nightmare that he had deliberately made two characters seem, very subtly, to be possible villains in disguise. He did this by introducing them with "was it really a false alarm or just foreshadowing?" moments, and by making their performances seem suspicious. One is a babysitter (who in the original draft of the screenplay was in league with Uber Freddy) and the other is a slimy chauffeur. Neither of them turns out to be either a villain or a threat: the babysitter  and the chauffeur is never seen again after his one introductory scene.
 * Unstoppable has an excellent example in the form of
 * Steven Spielberg has stated that upon seeing Forbidden Planet as a child, he was very disappointed that the movie never revealed what the Krell actually looked like, after the line about a characteristic triangular door shape throughout their compound being the only clue to their physical appearance.
 * While everyone who knows about Audition (or catches sight of its DVD cover) knows just what's up with the enigmatic Asami, watching it in the mindset of someone unaware of the twist makes it apparent that the first half of the film set up many indicators of Asami being a ghost: her ethereal white-dressed beauty, Aoyama's friend commenting that something seems off about her and that none of the references she gave exist, and her sudden and mysterious disappearance one day that baffles Aoyama—all of which would make The Reveal even more shocking to an unknowing viewer who was expecting a quiet, romantic story.

Literature

 * David Farland's The Runelords draws heavily upon Mormon theology, philosophy and symbolism, and one of the clearest examples is the wizard Binnesman, based on a Book of Mormon prophet named Abinadi. His confrontation and continual opposition to the evil king Raj Ahten make the comparisons clear almost from the first encounter between the two. Raj Ahten's ever-growing affinity for fire only serves to heighten the foreshadowing: Binnesman is clearly going to end up being burned to death by Raj Ahten, or at his command, which was the fate of Abinadi. Except... in the end, Raj Ahten is defeated and Binnesman is still alive, preserved by the author to meet an even stranger fate in the books that follow.
 * Some people were very disappointed while reading The Shining. Early in the book, a character mentions a large picture window, how expensive it was to install, and to take care that it doesn't get broken. It doesn't get broken.
 * In the beginning of the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery The Nine Tailors, the bumbling vicar explains how his dear old clock is going a bit slow these days. He always sets it an hour early when he winds it on Sunday morning - but if you can only remember that it is before time on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, accurate on Wednesday, and late on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, why, it's a very excellent clock indeed! The Genre Savvy mystery reader expects a tricky alibi problem, but it never happens. The clock is only mentioned once more in the book. Lord Peter's manservant and the vicar's maid has an argument about cleaning it.
 * The Discworld novel Maskerade, which is heavily inspired by the various versions of The Phantom of the Opera, has several characters remark that the giant chandelier in the middle of the Opera House is an accident waiting to happen. At the end of the book, it still hasn't fallen,.
 * In Hero of Ages, the third book of Mistborn, a character,  is under mind-control from  . He has enough Heroic Willpower to resist once, and his thoughts in his POV sections make it clear he intends to use this to kill himself at a key point, depriving   of his services..

Live Action TV

 * Heroes season 2, probably as a side effect of the Writers' Strike cutting the season short, had three main plots: 1. slowly-building storyline about a character with the uncontrolled power to produce a deadly virus and her antigen-producing brother, 2. major plot about a future deadly apocalyptic virus outbreak and 3. Hiro gets set back in time to meet his ancient Japanese samurai hero. The brother is offed by Sylar and the sister arrives in New York just in time to not be involved in destroying the virus at all, and the ancient samurai hero ends up being a foreign Immortal who tries to release the virus.
 * There's also the Isaac Mendez comic of St. Joan which is supposed to be Monica. Also, a kriss bladed dagger appears in the vault at the end of Season 2. As we all know, the Monica arc doesn't go anywhere.
 * Also, just about anything in the vault.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Giles the untouchable. The Big Bad of Buffy's last arc could take the form of anyone who had died, but only as a non-solid illusion. There was a scene that suggested Giles may have died, and his later appearances had him never directly interacting with anything, hinting that he may be aforementioned Big Bad in disguise. The characters themselves eventually pick up on this and panic, especially as Giles just went off to mentor the very group of teenage girls the Big Bad has been trying to kill. When they finally catch up with him and find that he is indeed still a living, tangible person, he gets a great line about how "they thought he was evil because he wasn't touching underage girls?".
 * Lost:
 * Locke's special destiny is foreshadowed for about five seasons.
 * Caesar for season five. Prior to the premiere, they heavily hyped him up with bits and pieces of information. When it airs, the hype grows as questions are asked: why is he on the plane? Why does he seem to already know about the Island? Why is hiding a gun and other items from what appears to be his lancer, Ilana (who comparatively seems boring, just some bounty hunter who escorted Sayid onto the plane)? What is his agenda? Surely he'll be a important player in the show's endgame...
 * In the pilot episode of Dollhouse, Topher explains that he deliberately worsened Echo's vision in her hostage negotiator imprint hence her wearing glasses, because that was the case in one of the people the imprint was built on, and to get a a copy of such a person great in their field you need the entire package and their flaws along with their strengths (hence also giving her asthma, which comes into play later.) However this does not appear in any later episodes. The only one where a doll is given a deliberate flaw is a later episode where Echo is made blind, and this is only because her eyes are basically serving as cameras making direct vision for her impossible.
 * In Doctor Who, Amy and the Doctor getting together and/or being together off-screen seemed like this. In series 5, Amy was especially flirtatious with him, even attempted to have sex with him on her wedding night. In "Amy's Choice" she chooses her fiancé Rory, but it's revealed that the Doctor had been battling with his attraction to her. Eventually the couple do get married, but they keep the tension up; when kidnapped Amy keeps up a constant monologue, saying she loves a man, "even though you think it should be him," without specifying which 'him' it is, only that he has a 'stupid face'. It's Rory. Later, when  He actually meant the cot.

Video Games

 * At the beginning of Ace Attorney Investigations, a shadowy figure holds up Edgeworth in his office.
 * In Metal Gear Solid 2, whenever Snake's name is brought up in front of the Colonel, he dodges the subject, only referring to him as "that man", eagerly accusing the terrorist of being Solid Snake as if desperate to kill even a lookalike to get some closure, and getting irrationally angry whenever anything is mentioned about Snake's competence, prowess, or heroism. However, Snake and the Colonel parted in the previous game as close friends. Raiden explicitly asks the Colonel if Snake did something terrible to him, and he doesn't give a straight answer - every implication is that Snake somehow betrayed the Colonel or hurt him on a very personal level, and the absence of Snake's love interest from the previous game, Campbell's daughter, adds to this suspicion. As personal secrets come out, The Reveal is actually that Snake  and that.
 * In Tales of Symphonia, a game full of betrayal as is, it was heavily suggested that Genis Sage would . In fact, there is one scene where he openly states that  When it all comes out, Genis
 * The Infocom game Wishbringer: Throughout the feelies and prologue, repeated mention is made of the threat of the dragon Thermofax, who doesn't play any role in the game whatsoever. Naturally, there are a number of fake-clues in the hint book about dealing with him.
 * Mega Man X 4 foreshadows for the Sequel Series Mega Man Zero. (Un)fortunately, because the series continued on after the creator's planned ending, that plot twist never comes to be.
 * Prototype: The only surviving child born in Hope, Idaho, was taken into government custody and codenamed PARIAH. According to the few people who know about him, it would be "extraordinarily bad" if he and protagonist Alex Mercer were ever to meet one another. Fortunately, they don't.
 * Portal: G La DOS very specifically tells you that the Companion Cube is unable to speak and will definitely not try to stab you. And then... it doesn't speak, and it doesn't try to stab you. Thanks for messing with our heads, G La DOS.
 * In Mass Effect 2, Shepard rescues Tali from the geth on Heastrom. Before being attacked, she was researching the planet's star. It turns out the star is dying, but is nowhere near old enough to actually be in the stage of decay it's at. Later, she hypothesizes that dark energy is decreasing the star's mass and killing it, noting that if it's not just an isolated, freak phenomenon, it could be very bad for galactic civilization. This plot point is never brought up in Mass Effect 3; supposedly, stopping it from becoming widespread was originally the true goal of the series' villains, but this was discarded early in the third game's development.

Web Comics

 * MS Paint Adventures is built on this trope... (and most of the other ones). The overall plot is planned ahead of time, but the actual details of the story are mostly ad-libbed, making foreshadowing difficult. The author's solution? Foreshadow everything, and decide which ones were red herrings later, shortly before the reveal.

Western Animation

 * The second season finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender: This was then doubly subverted
 * Winx Club, season 3 (you decide if this was intentional or not): An episode has Stella saying, "I hope I don't have to save Chimera", of having to save someone from her own realm to earn her Enchantix. You know what that means, right? Well, wrong. When Chimera and her mom and her dad come under attack at a party later, Chimera's mom takes her daughter and escapes, leaving just Stella's father for Stella to save. One thing's for certain: going with the apparent Foreshadowing would have made for a better story.
 * Executive Meddling has an example of executives putting the Faux in Fauxshadow (the Exo Squad entry).
 * The final episode of Futurama, "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings", has a scene where Fry makes a deal with the Robot Devil to replace his clumsy human hands with those of a "random" robot chosen by a giant Wheel of Fortune with the name of every robot featured in the series. The scene drops numerous blatant hints that the Robot Devil has rigged the wheel to stop at Bender's name... and when the wheel spins,
 * The last season of Justice League Unlimited seems to be building up to the resurrection of, with Lex Luthor bent on that singular goal. However, this is twisted in the second-to-last episode when.