Even though the show ended way back in 2007, The Sopranos still reigns supreme as the top drama in modern television even today. More than just your everyday mob story, there are also many other elements present: comedy, symbolism, deeper meanings and a fair share of foreshadowing.
While some of the foreshadowing in the show is obvious, there are many instances of foreshadowing that the average viewer may have missed—even if they have re-watched the show more than once. Here are some of them.
5. Meadow Parking the Car
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or just can’t handle the fact that it happened (it’s hard for us as well), Tony Soprano more than likely died in the show’s finale. There are just way too many clues leading up to the final episode of the series that lead to the mob boss’ demise.
When the screen goes black, show creator David Chase—as much as he’ll deny it—is telling us that Tony has been shot, and that’s why the episode came to an abrupt end. In previous episodes, Bacala even talked to Tony about death, stating that you probably don’t hear it when it happens. Similarly, the music we hear in the background stops because Tony has died.
However, there is another clue right before that scene that foreshadows Tony’s death. Throughout the show, Tony had been the subject of two assassination attempts, both of which failed. Sooner or later, someone was going to get third-time-lucky. Likewise, just before Meadow enters the diner, she has trouble parking her car, not once, but twice, until she finally gets it right the third time. It’s very small, but it foreshadows her father’s ultimate death.
4. Junior and the Jogging Outfit
This is a really unique bit of foreshadowing that you’ll find hard to come by on the internet.
When Junior was picking his suit before the dinner commemorating him being named boss, his loyal soldier (and eventually consigliere) Mikey Palmice asks him in a surprised manner whether he’s wearing a suit to the dinner.
Junior responds, “These guys today, they want to be buried in a jogging outfit.”
Little did Junior know that’s exactly how Mikey would end up dying. When Christopher and Paulie track Mikey down to kill him, he is in fact running in a jogging outfit before he gets killed by the duo.
3. Alzheimer’s
Here is another case of Junior foreshadowing something happening to someone in the future. However, in this case, it happens to him.
In the second season, when Richie Aprile is gifting Tony a jacket, he explains how he took it off Rocco DiMeo, the most feared gangster in Essex County. While he’s explaining this to Tony, Junior later steps in and mentions that Rocco later died of Alzheimer’s.
Soon enough, Junior ends up getting Alzheimer’s, and while he was still alive by the end of the show, the similarities are striking, especially when you consider Junior and Johnny Soprano also once ruled New Jersey. Once a feared mob boss; now an old man in a state facility.
2. Christopher’s Intervention
Christopher’s intervention has to go down as one of the funniest scenes in television.
The young stud was in a bad place at the time. He was always high on heroin, so much so that he even obliviously sat on Adrianna’s dog Cosette, killing the poor animal in the process. When he was fiending for more smack, he got carjacked by a Latino gang, and then proceeded to physically abuse Adrianna afterwards. Enough was enough, as an intervention was clearly needed.
Tony—an ardent animal lover who, a few episodes earlier, found out that his horse Pie-O-My was burned by Ralphie—finds out about the incident with the dog, and gets completely overcome with emotion, disgusted by Christopher’s actions.
While the hilarity ensued, one line was particularly telling from Tony when he finds out; “I ought to suffocate you, you little p—-.” And that’s exactly how Christopher died in the last season.
1. Photo Cropping
Speaking of Pie-O-My, in the fourth season Tony paid a visit to Valentina, whose boss specialized in portraits. He wanted a painting of himself and his beloved horse.
However, Ralphie was in the picture that Tony wanted to give the painter as a reference. Things were going better between Tony and Ralphie, compared to the third season, but he still wasn’t someone who Tony enjoyed being around.
Wanting the painting to exclude Ralphie, Tony asks, “But what about this deadbeat…can you leave me in and just crop him out?” That’s exactly what the painter did. And that’s exactly what Tony ended up doing the very next episode when he finds out that Ralphie had Pie-O-My killed, cropping him out of the picture via death.
