Pay attention to the details! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for small details in film production design and mise en scène that were actually major hints about the future. Viewer beware: there are spoilers ahead.
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00:00 You're the doctor, aren't you?
00:01 No.
00:03 I'm a professor.
00:04 Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:06 And today, we're counting down our picks--
00:08 four small details in film production design
00:10 and mise en scene that were actually
00:13 major hints about the future.
00:15 Viewer beware, there are spoilers ahead.
00:17 Bulletproof vest!
00:19 Great flick!
00:20 Great freaking flick!
00:23 Number 10, the number 82, Magnolia.
00:26 Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most well-regarded
00:29 directors in Hollywood.
00:31 You will not control me.
00:32 No!
00:34 You will not take my soul.
00:35 Films like There Will Be Blood and The Master
00:38 are award-winning masterpieces.
00:41 In one of his earlier features, Magnolia,
00:43 Anderson uses the motif of the number 82
00:46 as an extremely subtle foreshadowing tool.
00:48 It shows up again and again as graffiti,
00:51 painted on an airplane and on an apartment door.
00:54 The neighbors heard, as they usually did,
00:57 the arguing of the tenants.
00:58 One audience member of the talk show in the film
01:00 holds a sign that reads Exodus 8, verse 2,
01:03 making the reference explicitly.
01:05 The Bible passage describes the plague of frogs
01:08 that God unleashes on Egypt.
01:10 At the end of Magnolia, several of the characters
01:13 witness a rain of frogs.
01:14 Number nine, the bar names, The World's End.
01:25 Filmmaker Edgar Wright is well-known for his liberal use
01:28 of foreshadowing.
01:29 He loves throwaway lines of dialogue
01:32 that ultimately tell the whole story before it happens.
01:35 In The World's End, Wright was a little more subtle.
01:37 Simon Pegg's character persuades his erstwhile high school
01:40 friends to recreate a pub crawl that was the peak
01:43 of his high school career.
01:45 Leave a light on, good lady, for though we may return
01:47 with a twinkle in our eyes, we will, in truth, be blind.
01:50 Drunk.
01:51 Unfortunately, the crawl begins in the middle
01:53 of an alien apocalypse where humans
01:55 are replaced with robots.
01:57 The name of each bar in the crawl foreshadows the events
02:00 that will occur there.
02:01 At the Two-Headed Dog, for example,
02:02 the crew fights twin robots.
02:04 They come across sirens at the mermaid.
02:11 They finish at The World's End, where the world literally
02:14 comes to an end.
02:15 Number eight, newspaper clippings, I Am Legend.
02:25 I Am Legend is part action flick,
02:27 part psychological thriller, and part tragic drama.
02:30 Mm-mm.
02:31 No, no, no.
02:33 Eat your vegetables.
02:34 Don't just push them around.
02:35 Eat them.
02:36 I'm not playing.
02:37 Will Smith stars as the apparent last man on Earth,
02:40 a survivor of a viral apocalypse.
02:42 Humans not killed are turned into vampire
02:45 and zombie-like creatures that haunt
02:47 the night and the shadows.
02:48 Smith's Robert Neville survives with help
02:50 from his German shepherd and by following strict rules.
02:53 [DOG BARKING]
02:57 Hey, hey.
02:58 Good job.
03:00 At one point in the film, while rummaging through a store,
03:02 Neville stands next to a newspaper headline,
03:05 "Infected Dogs Can Come Out at Dusk."
03:07 Had he paid more attention, he may
03:09 have avoided an attack by a pack of infected dogs.
03:13 His own companion, Sam, saves Neville's life
03:16 but gets infected herself.
03:17 [INAUDIBLE]
03:19 I'm sorry.
03:20 I'm sorry.
03:21 I'm sorry.
03:22 [INAUDIBLE]
03:25 It's going to be all right.
03:27 Number seven, The Chalkboard, "Hereditary."
03:31 Ari Aster's "Hereditary" is a horror flick filled
03:34 to the brim with shocking twists.
03:36 My mom was old, and she wasn't all together there at the end.
03:39 And we were pretty much estranged before that.
03:42 So it really wasn't a huge blow.
03:44 Toni Collette stars as Annie, an artist
03:47 who joins a bereavement group to mourn her mother and then
03:49 later her daughter.
03:51 She befriends Joan, another supposed mourner.
03:54 Oh, God.
03:55 I feel very silly.
03:56 I'm Joan.
03:59 Hi.
03:59 In truth, Joan is part of a cult trying
04:02 to lure in Annie and her family.
04:04 The paranormal road begins when Joan persuades
04:06 Annie to join her in a seance meant
04:09 to reach Joan's dead grandson.
04:11 She uses her grandson's old chalkboard
04:13 as a medium to connect with him.
04:15 However, sharp-eyed audience members
04:17 will notice that in the scene before the seance,
04:20 Joan has a brand new chalkboard in her car.
04:23 I met a spiritual medium.
04:29 They were performing an open seance.
04:32 It's a subtle hint that the seance is a ruse and a scam.
04:36 Number six, the tie and the teddy bear, "The Shining."
04:39 Stanley Kubrick was a master of visual language,
04:42 and he used it to great effect in "The Shining."
04:45 Who's Toni?
04:49 Toni's a little boy who loves my mom.
04:52 The film is a masterpiece, and Kubrick
04:54 uses very tiny details to foreshadow deaths
04:57 later in the movie.
04:58 Early on, while wandering in the Overlook Hotel,
05:01 Jack Torrance comes upon his son's tricycle and teddy bear
05:04 lying on the floor.
05:06 The bear is laid out in the same spot
05:08 where Jack kills Halloran later.
05:10 Stanley!
05:12 Stanley boy!
05:14 Likewise, at the beginning of the movie,
05:16 Jack is in an interview for the job of the caretaker
05:19 at the Overlook.
05:20 Well, this ought to be quite a change for you.
05:22 Well, I'm looking for a change.
05:25 He's wearing a green textured tie
05:27 that closely resembles the hedge maze where
05:29 he later freezes to death.
05:31 Number five, Tom Riddle's rock collection, "Harry Potter
05:35 and the Half-Blood Prince."
05:36 Fans of the "Harry Potter" series
05:38 will remember book and film number six,
05:41 "The Half-Blood Prince."
05:42 Harry works with Dumbledore, plumbing
05:44 the depths of collected memories to gain intel on Voldemort.
05:48 I must admit to some confusion upon receiving
05:50 your letter, Mr. Dumbledore.
05:52 In all the years Tom's been here,
05:54 he's never once had a family visitor.
05:56 Harry learns a great deal about his nemesis.
05:58 During the first of these flashback memories,
06:01 Harry witnesses Dumbledore meeting Voldemort
06:03 for the first time, when he is a young boy named Tom Riddle.
06:06 Tom is a resident at an orphanage whose darkness puts
06:09 him at odds with the other orphans.
06:12 I can make animals do what I want without training them.
06:16 I can make bad things happen to people who are mean to me.
06:19 Tom is a collector who steals items from the other children.
06:23 Shrewd-eyed viewers will have noticed a collection
06:25 of rocks on the windowsill.
06:26 There are seven of them, reflecting the seven horcruxes
06:30 that Harry must destroy.
06:32 You mean to say he succeeded, sir, in making the horcrux?
06:35 Oh, yes, he succeeded, all right.
06:37 Number four, hints that Mr. Orange is the rat,
06:40 "Reservoir Dogs."
06:42 Director Quentin Tarantino burst onto the scene in 1992
06:46 as Hollywood's latest enfant terrible
06:48 with his crime caper, "Reservoir Dogs."
06:51 In the film, a jewelry heist goes awry in part
06:54 because one of the assembled crew is an undercover cop.
06:57 You shoot me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.
07:00 Before Tim Roth's Mr. Orange confesses,
07:03 there are a few subtle visual hints.
07:05 White, pink, and orange arrive at a warehouse
07:08 after the robbery gone wrong.
07:10 How did you get out?
07:12 I shot my way out.
07:14 Behind them is a table with pink, white, and orange bottles.
07:17 The orange ones are separate, hinting that one of these men
07:20 is not like the others.
07:22 In another scene, Eddie, the man who helped set up the score,
07:26 talks on the phone about the rat when an orange balloon floats
07:29 behind his car.
07:30 Hey, Doc, we got a major situation here.
07:32 Number three, a fistful of dollars saves Marty's life.
07:36 "Back to the Future Part II" and "Back to the Future Part III."
07:39 Pre-planned sequels present an excellent opportunity
07:42 to plant seeds in one movie that bloom in the next.
07:46 That's exactly what Robert Zemeckis did with "Back
07:48 to the Future Parts II and III."
07:50 Nobody calls me Mad Dog, especially not some dooded up
07:56 egg-sucking gutter trash.
07:58 In the third film, Marty travels back to the Old West
08:01 and gets tangled up with Biff's ancestor.
08:03 Going by Clint Eastwood, Marty is roped into a gun duel
08:07 to save Doc's life.
08:09 I thought we could settle this like men.
08:13 You thought wrong, dude.
08:16 Unfortunately for Buford, Marty is
08:18 protected by a piece of metal plating under his poncho.
08:21 Careful viewers will realize that Marty gets the idea
08:24 in "Back to the Future Part II."
08:26 When he confronts Biff in an alternate 1985,
08:29 his evil stepfather is watching a fistful of dollars.
08:33 In that film, the real Clint Eastwood
08:35 pulls off the same trick.
08:36 [MUSIC PLAYING]
08:40 Number two, "Stuffed Birds, Psycho."
08:50 Three years before "The Birds," director Alfred Hitchcock
08:54 filled his film "Psycho" with bird-related symbolism.
08:57 Marion's last name is Crane.
08:59 Norman's last name, Bates, is a verb
09:02 referring to a hawk beating its wings in an attempt
09:05 to leave the nest.
09:06 My mother, what is the phrase?
09:11 She isn't quite herself today.
09:13 His home is filled with stuffed birds.
09:15 From songbirds to raptors, dead animals
09:18 displayed in a facsimile of life.
09:20 You eat like a bird.
09:23 You know, of course.
09:24 At one point, Norman even claims that his mother is, quote,
09:28 "as harmless as one of those stuffed birds."
09:30 This couldn't be any more true when
09:32 we learn that Norman had murdered his mother years ago
09:35 and placed her mummified corpse in a room
09:37 like one of his avian trophies.
09:39 In fact, she's so harmless, she wouldn't even harm a fly.
09:43 Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly.
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10:03 Number one, "Orange's Mean Death."
10:05 "The Godfather."
10:06 The use of foreshadowing in "The Godfather"
10:08 has inspired filmmakers for over half a century.
10:12 Give this to Clemenza.
10:14 I want reliable people, people that
10:18 aren't going to be carried away.
10:20 The presence of oranges in a scene
10:22 means that someone is going to die.
10:24 Biro Corleone is shopping for oranges
10:26 when he is shot in the street.
10:29 [SOBBING]
10:31 He's also eating an orange when he dies
10:40 in the garden with his grandson.
10:42 The sequels carry on the tradition.
10:44 And tributes to "The Godfather Orange"
10:46 can be seen in shows like "Mad Men," "The Sopranos,"
10:49 and "The Wire."
10:50 Martin Scorsese did something similar in his film,
10:53 "The Departed."
10:54 As an homage to the original Scarface,
10:56 there's an ex in the frame there,
10:57 a character who is about to die.
10:59 OK.
11:04 Did we fail to foresee any entries
11:06 that should be on this list?
11:08 Let us know in the comments below.
11:09 Your future is whatever you make it.
11:12 So make it a good one.
11:14 Did you enjoy this video?
11:15 Check out these other clips from WatchMojo.
11:17 And be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified
11:20 about our latest videos.
11:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]
11:26 [MUSIC PLAYING]
11:30 [Music]