Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have always loved imbuing their scripts with a fair bit of foreshadowing. In Shaun Of The Dead, when Ed (Nick Frost) is describing the next day’s plans of drinking, it lines up pretty well with how the zombie apocalypse unfolds. All of the action clichés that Nicholas and Danny discuss in Hot Fuzz eventually come to pass as well. So it’s no surprise that the third film in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” The World’s End, also shares this penchant for laying out what will happen in similar coded fashion.
YouTube editor Pitching Room put together this comparison that uses the opening monologue by Gary King (Pegg) to show how, while he may be describing an ill-fated night in 1990, he is in fact presaging what will come to pass when the group of friends returns to its old stomping grounds. From the group’s parting of ways at various pubs to their dodgy encounters with blanks, not to mention the clever titling of the pubs the five friends patronize, all of this informs viewers what they are going to see, even if they don’t know it yet.
Wright himself tweeted his approval of the video:
So be sure to watch the Cornetto Trilogy (again) and take note of all the ways that the pair of screenwriters have cleverly established exactly what’s going to happen, before any of the insanity even begins.