Game Of Thrones: 14 Crazy Bits Of Foreshadowing Hidden Throughout The Series

With most TV shows, the writers can't really foreshadow events that far in advance. That's because the majority of television is written on a season by season basis, and so aside from the occasional thing that's planned well in advance, the writers can't know all the nuances of where the sotry will be headed.

But that's one of the luxuries of having a show that's based on a book series. When David Benioff and Dan Weiss set out to adapt A Song of Ice of Fire into Game of Thrones, they had four (soon to be five) books at their disposal, and so they could essentially see five years into the future of the show. 

By the time they put pen to paper on the pilot, they knew about the Red Wedding, about every major character's death, and even the pretty minor details about where everyone would be by this season.

Because of that, the writers have been able to sneak in incredible bits of foreshadowing throughout and, with a few seasons left to go, there's probably still some clever winks and nods snuck in there for future events that we aren't even aware of yet.

Re-watching the series, it becomes clear how many of the biggest twists and turns were actually hinted at way earlier on. Here are 14 examples of subtle foreshadowing from the show so far.

Note: We're only going to talk about foreshadowing for events that have happened on the show. So no book spoilers.

In the very first episode of the series, Ned, Jon, Theon, Robb and Bran come upon a dead direwolf. We find out that this direwolf was killed by a stag, and it actually has a pair of antlers in its neck. This is kind of symbolism and foreshadowing wrapped up into one.

How? Well, the sigil of House Stark is a direwolf. The sigil of House Baratheon is a stag. At the end of this season, Ned Stark (the wolf) is killed by Joffrey Baratheon (the stag). 

We can also interpret this as representing Robert Baratheon getting Ned killed by inviting him to King’s Landing, which might make more sense considering technically Joffrey isn't a Baratheon. But regardless, Ned’s death was one of the absolute most shocking moments of the entire series, and it was laid out for us within the first 20 minutes.

Oh, and it's worth mentioning that we also see a dead stag moments before, so if we're taking this as representing later events between the two families, both the wolf and the stag end up dead, just like both Joffrey/Robert and Ned end up dead.