Call Forward

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"Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me?" —Obi-Wan Kenobi to Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars: Episode II

It is common for long-running series to feature Call Backs, in which characters make a quick Shout-Out to an event that happened earlier in the series. This provides a nice reference for long term fans to pick up on and helps establish a sense of continuity - after all, the characters should remember the things that they've done in the past.

The inversion of this is a Call Forward, when a character in a prequel makes an offhand comment about something that viewers know will happen in the future, but the character him or herself is unaware of. Usually this takes the form of a derisive statement like "X? That's the Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard", where X is a major theme in the series. Done well, this can be a good inside joke in the same sense as a Call Back or even provide an explanation for why something happens in the future, but done badly it can seem bizarre that the character would say something like that.

If the predictive statement appears in a work released before the event it predicts, this is Foreshadowing or a Funny Aneurysm Moment. If the story is set in the past and the prediction is of a real-life event, then this often overlaps with It Will Never Catch On. Flashback to Catchphrase can be related, especially if it's preceded by "I'm only going say this once..." or "I can't believe I'm saying this, but..."

Examples of Call Forward include:

Anime and Manga

• The first chapter of Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium World is set before the original Yu-Gi-Oh. Sugoroku Muto (Yugi's grandpa) is a skilled gamer that says that if he ever loses a game, he'll trade his suit and fedora for a pair of overalls and a bandanna, and will open a game store. Apparently he lost.
• Due to Anachronic Order, the anime version of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has this. Even if watched in chronological order, there are still a few of these, mostly because the light novels the series was adapting was already completed at the time, so the producers knew exactly what was coming.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Movie First the Comics, a later retelling of the movie of the first season, added a scene where Fate talks about barrier-piercing strategies with Linith. One of the tactics brought up by Fate was the idea of creating a massive blade of concentrated magic that she could use to slice through her opponent's barrier, something Linith says wasn't a good idea for the still-small Fate, but would be a great technique for Fate in the future when she's grown enough to wield it effectively. This was a reference to an attack Fate acquired at the end of the second season, but didn't master enough to use frequently until the third season when she was already an adult.
• In the Saint Beast OVAs, young Kira and Maya are searching around the treasury and find the twins of Saint Beast weapons that will eventually be used to Brainwash Goh, Shin, Rey, and Gai to betray their friends.

Comic Books

• In JLA: Year One, the League's security system is made by Kord Industries. "Screw taking over the family business," says young Ted Kord to himself when the JLA come to pick it up, "I want to be one of those guys!"
• In World's Finest: Seventh Year (published 1999, but set shortly after Action Comics #643 from July 1989), Batman and Superman discuss situations in which they'd be tempted to kill. Bruce asks Clark what he'd do if a being of pure destruction was destroying Metropolis. The image of this hypothetical beast is shadowed, but unmistakably Doomsday.
  • Ninth Year has a gang of crooks take advantage of the confusion following The Death of Superman by posing as even more claimants during Reign of the Supermen. One of them, claiming to have "evolved to the next life-stage of Kryptonian development", has energy powers and a blue-and-white costume with a lightning-bolt "S". It doesn't look exactly like the Superman-Blue outfit, but it looks similar enough to make the point.
  • And Tenth Year ends with Clark warning Bruce "Don't expect Superman to look away again if Gotham needs help, just because Batman declares it's off limits", and Bruce responding "And don't expect Batman to stand aside the next time Superman decides he's the only one who can solve the world's problems." At the time of publication the Bat Family Crossover Batman No Mans Land (in which not Batman but the US Government declares Gothan off limits) was ongoing, and the Super Family Crossover Superman Rex (in which Superman seemingly takes over the world for its own good) had recently finished.
• In Batman: Lovers & Madmen, one of the Joker's many origins, "Jack" gets inspired to go from bored hitman to Mad Artist after a conversation with a blonde waitress who wants to be a psychiatrist. When the Joker anonymously pays her tuition, she turns out, of course, to be Harleen Quinzel.Later on in the story, Batman asks for help from a Dr.Jonathan Crane for help with figuring out how to beat "Jack".
• In the X-Men First Class oneshot Iceman & Angel, Bobby discusses how totally cool it would be if Warren's wings were made of knives.

Film

• The Star Wars prequel trilogy is loaded with these, especially Episode III. In addition to the page quote:
  • C-3PO tells R2-D2 "I can assure you they will never get me onto one of those dreadful starships."
  • Obi-Wan escapes Jango Fett by cutting his engines and hiding on an asteroid. When Han Solo attempts a similar trick in The Empire Strikes Back Jango's son Boba Fett uses the same trick, which allows him to pursue Han Solo when he uses the trick.
  • The murder by Force Lightning that happens before and after Anakin's Face Heel Turn. These give Force Lightning a big emotional weight on him, which may have helped Darth Vader's Heel Face Turn in Return of the Jedi.
  • And then there's the deleted scene from The Phantom Menace in which Greedo is warned he'll meet a sticky end...
  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe has this down to an art form. The books about Obi-Wan's own Padawan years have a particular cruel example with a planet that is turned into a Stalinist nightmare because their leaders had visions of "Darkness covering the galaxy" coming from the Jedi and the Republic. After considering this ridiculous Qui-Gon himself then has a vision of Obi-Wan as an old man living on a backwater planet with "only his sad memories as company". Nice.
  • The appearance of the young Uncle Owen (who happens to be Anakin's stepbrother, and who completed C-3PO) and Aunt Beru in Attack of the Clones.
  • The Fate of the Jedi books are getting into this, with regard to Star Wars Legacy. Example: In Outcast, Jag recommends that Jaina train a Jedi organization for The Remnant (it turns out that Tahiri founds the Imperial Knights, instead of her).
• Scooby-Doo! the Mystery Begins is full of these, the least of which being Velma referencing the first ever episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? at the end by suggesting they check out some "strange happenings at the museum."
• In Quiz Show, a network executive who's being Hauled Before a Senate Subcommittee for rigging TV quizzes makes a great show of not being the least bit worried about the impact it will have on the industry even if they are exposed, because people will tune in anyway just to watch the drama unfold. He also suggests that if they can't give the contestants the answers anymore, they can achieve the same results by just making the questions easier.
• X-Men: First Class has a few. For instance, not long after becoming a cripple, Xavier makes a remark akin to "Next thing you know, I'll go bald."
• Almost Famous has Jimmy Fallon's slimy agent character telling the guys from Stillwater to get themselves paid:

Dennis Hope: "If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there trying to be a rock star at age fifty, then you are sadly, sadly mistaken."

• The Marvel Cinematic Universe is all about this, especially in the post-credits stingers.
  • In Iron Man, War Machine is foreshadowed blatantly.
  • In Iron Man 2, Tony props up a laser with something that looks suspiciously like Captain America's shield.
  • There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of the Infinity Gauntlet in Thor. In Thor: Ragnarok, Hela knocks it over, derisively declaring it a fake (which it is).

Literature

• While watching an orc gladiator called Thrall fight in Durnholde Keep, the titular character in Arthas: Rise of the Lich King worries that if the orc escapes, he could teach his considerable tactical and strategical skills to other orcs, triggering the orcs' resurgence as a major faction in Azeroth. Another Warcraft Expanded Universe novel, Warcraft: Lord of the Clans, features Thrall doing exactly that.
  • The two books are written by the same woman, Christie Golden, and the reference is a rare not-very-disruptive tidbit of Author Appeal.
• The Provost's Dog series by Tamora Pierce is set two hundred years before current Tortall continuity. The second book in particular, Bloodhound, is rife with references to locations, nations and noble families that feature heavily in the other Tortall books. One notable example is Sir Lionel of Trebond, presumably the ancestor of the heroine of the first ever Tortall series, Song of the Lioness. They even have magic that manifests in the same colour. Luckily she doesn't inherit his personality, though.
• Quite a few in Terry Pratchett's Night Watch, such as when a time-travelling Vimes inadvertently gives CMOT Dibbler the idea for his trademark Catch Phrase.
• Michael A Stackpole loved doing these in the X Wing Series, mostly to Timothy Zahn's (written earlier but set chronologically later) The Thrawn Trilogy. Just a few of them:
  • The lost Katana fleet being mentioned in a 'might as well wish for the moon' phrase.
  • Talon Karrde appears, along with his right-hand man Quelev Tapper (who suffered Death by Origin Story in his first written appearance, set after Stackpole's books)
  • Brief mentions of Thrawn being out in the Rim by Ysanne Isard and Kirtan Loor.
  • Thanks to The Force making him very lucky, Corran finds a hold-out blaster hidden in a datacard box in an Imperial library; in The Thrawn Trilogy Mara mentions, while taking one from a different library, that keeping hold-out blasters in the "Corvis Minor" box is standard procedure.
  • Ch'hala trees are mentioned; Corran wonders if they're passive weapon scanners.
• Zahn makes references too. In Allegiance, Disra has connections to criminals, Vader is suspected of snooping through records related to Prince Xizor, and Leia mentions in the narration that her father taught her to breathe deeply and deliberately to calm herself. Though that last might not have been deliberate.
• In the foreword of Agatha Christie's short story collection The Labours of Hercules (1947), Hercule Poirot expresses a desire to retire to the country and grow vegetable marrows - exactly how he's spending his retirement in The Murder of Roger Akroyd (1926).
• In Robert E. Howard's "Black Colossus" Conan the Barbarian is told that his new harness makes him look better than many kings, and the narrator explicitly tells us he will remember that years later.
• Warhammer 40,000 has the Horus Heresy series of novels, which details the titular event about 10,000 years before the "current day" of the game that permanently crippled the Imperium, and lead to the current state of the setting. All throughout the series, this trope occurs many, many times.
  • The very first chapter, beside being a sort of framing device for the series, was essentially a giant You Should Know This Already moment.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: Enterprise did this a lot:
  • On finding out that the Borg have adapted to their phase pistols, one character remarks that "we might as well have been firing holographic bullets".
    • To clarify, a holographic gun was how Picard killed two drones in First Contact.
    • At the end of that episode, Archer finds out that the Borg managed to send a subspace transmission to the Delta Quadrant. He estimates that it'll take about 200 years for it to reach its destination. Two centuries later, Picard makes First Contact with the Borg (even though TNG never said the Borg were on their way to the Alpha Quadrant).
  • One episode had Malcolm Reed working on an automatic tactical alert procedure. Trip refers to it as "Reed Alert".
  • In one episode the crew find a colony in which only two people are real, the rest are holographic representations of dead people. Archer tries to encourage them to leave by arguing "What will you do if one of you gets sick? Create a holographic doctor?"
  • An Organian secretly observing the crew predicts they'll have barely 5000 years to prepare for First Contact with humanity, the joke being that we know it'll happen a lot sooner (TOS "Errand of Mercy").
  • T'Les' criticisms of her daughter T'Pol's relationship with Trip Tucker are particularly poignant, knowing what we do about Spock's troubles regarding his own mixed parentage.

"Do you really believe that a human and a Vulcan can have a future together? Imagine the shame your children would endure, assuming that the two of you could have children."

• In the Lost episode "Meet Kevin Johnson," Sayid becomes violently angry at Michael because he is working for Ben. Of course, we learned five episodes earlier that in the future Sayid himself will be working for Ben.
• Smallville. Constantly. Yes, we get it, he's going to be Superman.
  • They're probably compensating for being unable to actually use the S-word due to copyright limitations.
  • One of the most chilling examples was in a Happy Ending where both Clark and Lex tell each other how much they treasure their friendship, hoping nothing ever drives them apart.
• A flashback in Friends has Ross proudly tell his parents that his new girlfriend is really athletic; she's on the lacrosse team and the golf team. Yes, Carol "plays for both teams"...
  • ...but it's stated numerous times that she's a lesbian.
    • True, but it's implied that Carol and Susan begin dating while she is still with Ross, so there may have been a period of bisexuality.
    • Plus Carol kissed Ross when Susan had to work on Valentine's Day.
  • Friends has loads, especially in their first flashback episode: Phoebe mentions that "cute naked guy" was starting to put on some weight, Ross is excited about Carol befriending "a Susan something" and encourages her to have a "girl's night", Chandler says he doesn't wanna have a roommate handsome enough to relegate him (Chandler) as "the funny one", Monica runs into Rachel and then bets she's never gonna see her again, the gang (then consisting of four of the six main characters) comment on how the bar is closing and wonder where are they going to hang out...
  • In "The One With All The Thanksgivings", there's a flashback where a teenage Monica has a crush on Chandler and makes him som mac'n'cheese for Thanksgiving dinner. Afterward she asks if he liked it, and he somewhat sarcastically remarks, "Yeah, it was great. You should be a chef." Monica giggles and says, "Okay!"
• A flashback to WWII in the Angel episode "Why We Fight" contained the following dialogue (they were stuck on a submarine at the time):

Angel: I'm not getting trapped at the bottom of the sea! Spike: And I'm not getting experimented on by the government!

• • This becomes even more awesome if you've paid attention. Angel was drafted by the then-new Initiative, who does the aforementioned experimenting on Spike in 1999 or 2000 and the experiment is hinted to be based off the Nazi research the US was trying to get off that ship, which Spike torched. Spike also wears the Nazi uniform because he likes the jacket, a call forward to the history of his famous leather duster, which was also taken from the corpse of an enemy. Also, weights are used to sink Angel to the bottom of the sea, much like what his son Conner would do to him almost 60 years later. Spike being forced to rush for cover before sunrise before he gets burned up is a call forward to the running gag of him running through Sunnydale, on fire, to get places during daylight on the parent show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
  • In his first appearance, Giles mentions that Spike got his nickname by driving railroad spikes through his victims' heads. Three seasons later, "Fool For Love" reveals that, before he became a vampire, Spike was a fop best known for his atrocious poetry; one of his "critics" claims that he'd rather have a railroad spike driven through his head than listen to it. Apparently, he got his wish.
• A staple of Mad Men, with respect to Real Life historical events. The unfortunate scheduling of Roger Sterling's daughter's wedding for November 23, 1963 (the day after John F. Kennedy's assassination) is merely the most blatant.
• In the Doctor Who episode "Flesh and Stone, River Song unwittingly references her own death in her future from last season.
  • And it happened again in "The Impossible Astronaut." Rather more poignantly this time around.
  • River Song is prone to these, due to the extremely timey-wimey nature of her time-line. Like how in "The Wedding of River Song", where the Doctor is (apparently) about to die; River says that 'Time can be rewritten', with the Doctor responding "Don't you dare," the same thing she said at her death. And the way that she knocked the Doctor out and hand-cuffed him to take his place in a Heroic Sacrifice was exactly the same thing her mum, Amy did, in "The Eleventh Hour".
• Done in an episode of Breaking Bad, and rather fiendishly. Jane, via flashback: "That was so sweet, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little..." Jane died by asphyxiating on her own vomit
• Poirot, at the end of "The Blue Train"; one of the characters expresses a desire to travel, and remarks that she's booked passage on the Orient Express. She inquires whether Poirot has ridden that train; Poirot replies that he hasn't but he must get around to it some day. We all know that he will, and what will happen when he does...
• An episode of Little House on the Prairie, set in the late 1800s, has a serious example. A Jewish man tells his son, Percival, that their people have to make sure keep their culture alive because for centuries people have tried to destroy their people. Percival dismisses this by saying that "People are more educated now. That kind of craziness won't happen again." He was wrong. What makes this even more notable is the fact that Percival is probably the most intelligent and sensible character in the episode, maybe the entire series.
• The Tudors
  • In season one, Henry VIII says to Anne Boleyn, "Your neck. I love your neck." Everyone who knows the history - or Googles Anne Boleyn - knows that in season two he'll be paying a French swordsman to sever that neck.
  • On meeting Catherine Howard, Henry asks her if she can write. She tells him "enough to write a letter". It is her love letter to Culpepper that eventually gets her killed.
• The NCIS episode "Baltimore" has flashbacks to how Gibbs and DiNozzo met when DiNozzo was a Baltimore detective. The episode is littered with Call Forwards.

Tony DiNozzo: Be a Navy cop? I'd rather have the plague.

• In an early episode of Merlin whilst watching Arthur and Lancelot share a drink together, Merlin jokingly invites Guinevere to play a game of "Who Would You Rather?" She laughs and states that she'll never have to chose between them. Only the audience knows that one day she'll have to do exactly this, and that the entire future of Camelot may rise or fall on her choice.
• Murdoch Mysteries used to throw these in once in a while in relation to future Real Life events, but the writers are getting pretty heavy-handed in Season 5 to the point where it's happening at least Once an Episode. And they're not being very subtle either. In a recent episode Detective Murdoch and Constable Crabtree are pondering the possible uses of a sonically-activated switch used to execute the Murder of the Week which actually turns out to be an elaborate suicide:
  • Crabtree: Perhaps one day you could turn lights on and off by clapping your hands.

Music

• Lupe Fiasco's The Die (A prequel to The Cool) combines this with Continuity Nod—Michael Young History's unnamed friend says "And if them niggas do kill you in the next few minutes, just remember my nigga, it's a heaven for a G," a reference to "The Cool" (Michael Young History)'s line "Hustler for death, no Heaven for a gangster" in the first CD.

Tabletop Games

• The New World of Darkness sourcebook for New Orleans includes a sidebar about how a catastrophic hurricane could be a plot point. The book was written before Hurricane Katrina struck. One could consider this an inevitability, however, since it was common knowledge that the city was hideously vulnerable to a powerful storm years before Katrina finally hit.

Theatre

• Wicked has some straight mythology gags like Elphaba's line "I'll be so happy I could melt," but also a less comedic instance: her vision of "a celebration throughout Oz that's all to do with me."

Nessarose: What's in the punch? Boq: Lemons and melons and pears- Nessarose: Oh my.

• Peter and the Starcatcher (a prequel to Peter Pan) has a gag with the boys, when they're lost:

Boys: We're lost! Molly: (scolding them for their outburst) Boys! Boys: We're lost! Molly: Boys!

Video Games

• Deus Ex Human Revolution does this a lot. But just to name one for this page, the drug Neuropozene is needed for augmented people to prevent the parts from being rejected by their bodies. The company that produces the drug? Versalife.
• Due to Kojima's love for breaking the fourth wall, and the fact that the game is set in the past by a few decades, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is rife with this.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Naked Snake and Para-Medic discuss Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Snake dismisses human cloning as 'sci-fi nonsense'.
  • Snake is also astounded at the idea of "a movie where you control the characters".
  • Naked Snake says 'I've never been interested in anyone else's life,' inadvertently quoting his son from the first Metal Gear Solid.
  • The phrase, 'in the 21st century' means an awkward attempt at a Real Life version of this will occur.
  • During a codec call with Para-Medic discussing James Bond films. Major Zero interjects and declares "I wouldn't be surprised if they made 20 more of those movies."
• In Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, the first case is a prequel, and it features normally-bald prosecutor Winston Payne with hair and a tougher attitude: he loses both when you win and becomes more like himself from the previous games.
  • Also, if you present your badge often enough to some characters in the third game you're told you might lose it one day, suggesting hints towards Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Doesn't help Apollo nearly beat being out in the USA before Phoenix Wright 3, and actually beat it by several months in Europe.
  • There's an interesting example of this in the third case of Investigations: Examining the stage area after it's been reconstructed by Little Thief will show a Gavinner's symbol (the stylized "G"), and examining the sign next to the stage advertises not only the concert, but also a "battle of magic" between Max Galactica and Troupe Gramarye. The first is especially interesting, because in the flashback case in Apollo Justice, Klavier mentions that his band recently got popular.
  • The fourth case of Investigations is practically made of this, due to being a flashback to four years before the beginning of the series. References range from Miles commenting on the fire extinguisher used to clonk Phoenix over the head in 2-1 to more serious matters such as the crimes and execution of Manfred von Karma. It turns to Tear Jerker when Franziska mentions that she can't imagine what she'd do if her father died.
  • The DS remake of the first game added a fifth case, which included references to the Phoenix Wright games that had been released by then. For example, if you checked around the evidence storage room, you'd find the bug sweeper that Phoenix would eventually use in Justice for All, complete with Gumshoe noting that it might become useful in the future.
• Anastasia in Shadow Hearts: Covenant notes that there might be trouble if her parents don't improve their relationship with their people. The Anastasia in question is Princess Anastasia Romanov. Covenant takes place in 1915. The only saving grace is that history in the Shadow Hearts universe is vastly different from ours, giving her at least a chance at not getting put against the wall in 1917...
  • Considering the Anastasia of Shadow Hearts is someone who's gone up against Eldritch Abominations and survived (even bullying one into submission in a Bonus Dungeon) it's tough to see her going out like that.
• Fire Emblem: The Sword of Flame is a prequel to the previous game, Fire Emblem: The Sword of Seal, and feature a few foreshadowing moments. Since The Sword of Flame was the first game to be released in the west, while The Sword of Seal was never released, western players who weren't researching the previous game were a little confused. One major example is that Prince Zephiel, a character the heroes must protect in The Sword of Flame, grows up to become the antagonist of The Sword of Seal.
  • Another big example is the appearance of Sophia near the end of The Sword of Flame; without knowing that she's a major character in The Sword of Seal and important to the story, western players generally take her for a random cute girl that gives the hero an item after some mysterious dialog.
    • Another one is the appearance of the Manakete Fa in chapter 22. She's in the NPC house, and Hawkeye says her name if he goes in there.
• Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2 is chock full of these, not the least of which being Axel telling Roxas about summer vacation, to which Roxas replies that he couldn't handle more than a week. Kingdom Hearts II begins with Roxas and a group of kids (who appear in 358 as a couple of Call Forwards themselves) during their last week of summer vacation.
  • What's our boss' name?"
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep has some too, most notably Ven saying "My friends are my power!" and Xehanort reciting word-for-word his "Darkness is the heart's true essence" speech.
    • Bonus points for the latter : he recites the speech after his Grand Theft Me on Terra, so it's the same person (the would-be apprentice Xehanort/Ansem seeker of darkness) reciting the same speech. Of course, he himself doesn't remember it due to Laser-Guided Amnesia.
• Several in Knights of the Old Republic, as might be expected. For instance, Kreia's prediction that the Mandalorians will eventually be reduced to "a shell of a man, too easily slain by Jedi", i.e. Jango Fett. (Although this technically stops neither the Mandalorians nor the Fett bloodline. Kreia is like that sometimes.)
  • More likely refers to Boba, since he would have been the last Mandalorian and suffered an even more ignoble death by a Jedi. Although in the EU novels Boba Fett is alive and well, with children and grandchildren!
    • If you're referring to Return of the Jedi, pretty sure Han's no Jedi.
    • Well, every Clone Trooper ever made is a Mandalorian From a Certain Point of View. And they all are very easily slain.
    • And they were essentially a slave army to the Republic. Now, about Carth and Canderous's little "warriors vs soldiers" squabble...
  • Since Mandalorians are a culture, not a single species, there's no reason why someone can't call himself a Mandalorian and follow this way of life. EU has plenty of non-human Mandalorians.
  • Some of the names are also references to famous characters from the primary era. For instance, the Republic leader in the first game, Admiral Dodonna, is a nod to the Rebel general of the same name in A New Hope. The Old Republic keeps up this grand tradition, most notably on Alderaan, which is famous for its feuding noble houses—Organa and Thul. (One quest mentions a particular affinity between the Thuls and the Killik aliens, a tip to the Swarm War trilogy.)
• Final Fantasy XII's Bestiary gives a brief mention of the beginnings of Final Fantasy Tactics's dominant Church of Glabados and its false prophet/demonic founder, Saint Ajora. This mention causes a bit of a translation plot hole, as Ajora is a woman in the Japanese version and a man in English. FFT itself had a bit of trouble with Ajora's gender as well.
  • Other plot holes exist here as well. FFXII takes place too far in the past for Ajora to have existed yet, the 13 Espers have not yet become the 12 (+1) Lucavi that Ajora used to cause the events she would eventually be worshipped for....
• In Devil May Cry 3, Vergil acquires the Beowulf gauntlets and pulls off some rather... impressive martial arts. The game is a prequel to the first. In the first game, after the first Nelo Angelo fight, the boss drops his sword and gets the drop on Dante with his bare hands. Nelo Angelo is actually Vergil.
• Sam and Max Freelance Police:
  • Episode 204, "Chariots of the Dogs", has you visit the office shortly into the future, at which point you exchange a remote control for an egg. You exchange the egg for the remote control in episode 205.
  • Also from episode 204: when the past Sam and Max (from episode 102) confront their present selves:

Past Sam: Max and I need to get to the Moon. How do we get there? Present Sam: Why don't you just drive there? (as they do in episode 106) Past Sam: You can't just drive to the Moon, bonehead. Past Max: Sheesh, Sam... our future selves have no respect for plausibility.

• In the end of the second Mega Man arcade game, Wily reveals that he's working on his ultimate robot, while Bass just snarks that it's girly-looking and will be a loser like all of Wily's other non-Bass robots. The player can, naturally, see Zero's silhouette.
• After showing off his skills in car combat, a character in Interstate '76 (set in The Seventies) says "Damn, I'm so good, they should name a car after me." His name? Taurus.
• In Day of the Tentacle, Hoagie gets stuck two centuries in the past and, in an attempt to get back to his own time, aids Ben Franklin in the discovery of electric current. In return, Franklin promises to name one of his inventions after him.
• Being the source of one of the page quotes, Quest for Glory has a couple of such Call Forwards. In Quest for Glory II, two of the Magic User's potential sponsors shown are a completely black portrait (identified as the "Dark Master"), and Erana (when chosen, the Wizards say that she hasn't answered their summons for some time and asks you to choose again). Quest for Glory IV reveals both the identity of the Dark Master, and what exactly happened to Erana.
  • Taken a step further in the fan remake; if you insist upon having the Dark Master as your mentor, you get a Nonstandard Game Over where the Wizards get so incensed that they teleport you to Mordavia, the setting of QFG4, and your Have a Nice Death message mentions that you aren't strong enough to survive there.
• Alltynex Second is completely littered with these.
• A now-removed quest-chain in World of Warcraft has a character in Stormwind sarcastically utter the phrase "Next you're going to tell me that Deathwing is still alive and attacking the city." Guess what happened when the Cataclysm expansion was released...
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny, which is set between Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, has Chrono musing about how Nanoha's a natural at testing prototype weapons and namedrops the currently-in-development Blaster System, an upgrade that would eventually serve as Nanoha's Super Mode in StrikerS
• Syndicate's reboot has quite a few. Amongst these are the co-op missions taking place in areas the original games used. The Western Europe map shown in the demo is broadly similar to the original's in having to kill a Colonel, although resistance is much stiffer here.
• In the VGA remake of Space Quest, the Time Pod from Space Quest IV lands as you leave Ulence Flats.
• In the best ending of Art of theft Trilby decides to go back to England and start breaking into manors of the recently deceased, figuring it would be safer. He does this in 5 Days A Stranger: it backfires horribly.
• Kinnikuman: Muscle Fight
  • Ramenman turns into his older version from Kinnikuman Nisei in one of his victory poses.
  • Warsman can perform Kevin Mask's OLAP technique because he was Kevin Mask's teacher in Kinnikuman Nisei. The OLAP also makes a cameo in Robin Mask's British Steel Edge technique, which is a nod to Kevin Mask's Big Ben Edge finisher.
  • Ashuraman can perform the Ultimate Ashura Buster, a technique he used in the Demon Seed arc from Kinnikuman Nisei.

Web Comics

• In Chapter 3 of Gunnerkrigg Court, Antimony defends her friend Kat from a bully by Judo-flipping him. One of the teachers, Mr. Eglamore, tells Annie that was against the rules, and then he compliments her throw and tells her that it was noble to stand up for her friend. In Chapter 22, a Whole-Episode Flashback shows the young Eglamore getting into a fight in defense of his friends, and receiving a similar warning and compliment from Mr. Thorn.
• Since it's set as a prequel to the Metal Gear Solid series, The Last Days of Foxhound has these a few times. Vulcan Raven even does it in character, since he can see a limited amount of the future, and teases Ocelot on whether or not his hand will get chopped off.
• A common source of humor in Darths and Droids, as it is an alternate take on the Star Wars universe; for instance, when Anakin and Chancellor Palpatine have just fallen down an elevator shaft, the Chancellor quips, "This is fun. Perhaps I'll install a huge bottomless pit in my quarters for no apparent reason." Considering how the Canon Palpatine meets his end...

Western Animation

• One episode of The Simpsons features a flashback to Grampa's time in World War II. When Burns suggests stealing some Nazi paintings, Grampa rationalizes it by saying he needs to put away some money for retirement, after all he'd hate to be put in one of those homes...
  • In the flashback episode "I Married Marge", after Homer is first hired by Mr. Burns to work at the power plant, Burns comments to Smithers: "Simpson, eh? I'll remember that name."
• The Teen Titans episode "Go!" is practically made up of these. Notable ones include Cyborg saying "I'm only gonna say this once--Booya!" and the team stopping by an island (that of course will eventually house their headquarters) and Cyborg comments that "somebody should build a house out here."
• Batman Beyond: During the two-parter that led to the Justice League show, Old!Bruce mentions he was never fond of traveling via boom tube. In a Darkseid-related episode of Justice League, we see him use one and, yep, he looks ready to collapse afterwards. Of course, most of the guys we see using them in the DCAU are Physical Gods.
• In the Family Guy episode where Peter tells Death how he is devoted to Lois, Quagmire mentions how he hopes Peter will find her again. Peter responds that he hopes Quagmire lives next door to him someday.
• An American Tail has this line:

"I dreamed that we moved out West where I became a famous gunslinger!"

• In the 2008 Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, in one episode, Anakin had to interrogate the Geonosian leader Poggle to learn how to get rid of a certain batch of mind-controlling worms. Poggle proved uncooperative, and Anakin used Force Grip on him; cue Imperial March, foreshadowing Anakin's impending transformation into Darth Vader.

Real Life

• Similar to this, there is a real phenomenon known as Jamais Vu, the sense that you are in a familiar situation but don't recognize it.