One of my favorites is how tiny pieces of lore in One Piece become major plot points later. At first, people thought it was some 5D chess foreshadowing. Nope, it turns out the lead writer just goes back and re-reads his old content when he starts running out of ideas. He’ll just grab some tiny thing from like two years ago, and turn it into the next major plot hook.

There was that D&D dungeon master tip where the DM would ask the players what they think it was, or what their solution was, and the DM would pick their favorite answer because they didn't actually think of one.

English teacher: "wow, look at the incredible symbolism in the camera work"

Creator: "uhhhh.... this is a documentary, and that was a video that some bloke took with his phone"

Soon this meme template will be two pixels.

Foreshadowing is utterly pointless to me because I can't remember the beginning of a novel or series in that level of detail by the time I get to the end.

Just because a writer isn't consciously aware of doing it intentionally doesn't mean it wasn't part of the process that happened in their brain

So that's what George R R Martin looked like when he was young!

Writing start to finish vs writing the end and going backwards.

First is all about having characters and just seeing what they do in a situation the author throw's them into. Not great for having a good ending unless you are really clever, lucky, or willing to just keep writing until you naturally hit a solid end point. However, it is good for having memorable characters usually and can enable an excellent hook or high concept.

The opposite, where you write the ending and work backwards in time, usually ensures a high quality plot but can risk making character's flat or uninteresting unless you put in a ton of extra work to make sure they're interesting or fleshed out. And also can make it difficult to hook readers and might result in a more mundane/average overall concept.

Okay, but it's a pet peeve of mine when a show shows me something about a character and then it's immediately relevant. Feels a bit forced, I'd like at least a 20 minute break