Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder You Know That Show... Trope Launch Pad Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Seers

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_oracle_at_delphi2.jpg
We have such sights to show you.

"Many paths, many seasons I have seen.
Time has washed them away just like the sea.
So many fates, and dreams...
Will become...tragedies..."
— Yeul's Theme, Final Fantasy XIII-2

People who can see into the future, past and to faraway places. People can be born with this or gain it through freak accidents. If the latter, expect a Reset Button.

When a seer is really powerful, they are The Omniscient or an Omniscient Hero. However, it might turn out that they are Not So Omniscient After All.

This can also lead into a Fantastic Aesop about not using this power for selfish gains. It can also lead to Fridge Logic about being able to see the future but not being able to avoid and/or fix many problems. But then stories that do are often accused of having God Mode Sues. Although the latter can justify a Gambit Roulette because the chance involved in such plans is negated by their powers. These types will likely invoke All According to Plan.

A Sub-Trope of Psychic Powers. A Sister Trope to My Significance Sense Is Tingling (a more vague feeling instead of visions). A common power of the Magical Seventh Son.

Sub Tropes:

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Tiffa from After War Gundam X, as one of the few surviving Newtypes. It's not her only psychic power, either.
  • Kakei from Drug & Drop has precognition and, appropriately, serves as Mission Control for the protagonists. However, he cannot use his ability on those who are more powerful than him.
  • Mikoto and Sugihime in Gate 7.
  • In Haruhi Suzumiya, Taniguchi notes that Yuki's class treats her like an oracle, hanging on to her every word and basing decisions solely on if she said a single thing on any given day. Then comes the School Festival, and they assign her to be the Fortune Teller... and she gives extremely detailed "predictions" accurate down to the second.
  • Neon Nostrade from Hunter × Hunter has the ability to predict the future of someone through quatrains that she writes down unconsciously. Neon's fortunes take the form of a poem with four or five quatrains of four lines each. Each verse represents a week of the current month, and typically events referenced in the poem are present as metaphors. Inauspicious fortunes always contain advice, and misfortune can be avoided if warnings are heeded. She cannot predict her own future.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: The power of King Crimson's sub-Stand, Epitaph, is that it allows the user to see 10 seconds into the future, with all events being fated to happen, but the user can still plan accordingly. Vinegar Doppio is only granted Epitaph, meaning he has to physically plan out his course of action within the next 10 seconds, but since the Boss of Passione, Diavolo, is able to use the full power of King Crimson, he can both see 10 seconds into the future and erase 10 seconds worth of time to keep himself from being harmed.
  • Ichigen Miwa, Kuroh's late master in K, could see the future and predicted that his successor as the Colorless King would be evil. He sent Kuroh to track the boy down and kill him...
  • Both protagonist Mikura and antagonist Momomi in Mezzo Forte can see brief glimpses of future events.
  • In the backstory of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Shouta's father is mentioned to have used precognition to plagiarize a book from the future (implied to be something by J. R. R. Tolkien) so he could fund his magic studies.
  • Shizune in Night Raid 1931.
  • One Piece: Madame Shyarly is a well known seeress, but she has given up her career. Only to casually fortell the destruction of Fish-Man Island.
  • Granny Elmore from Psyren.
  • Oriko Mikuni, the titular heroine of Puella Magi Oriko Magica, has precognition as her main talent.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • Sailor Mars, being a shrine priestess, can produce visions in fire if she meditates and concentrates, and also occasionally has premonitions.
    • Ryo Urawa, an anime-only character in the first arc, has precognition, due to being a human reincarnation of the Seven Great Youma. He uses it to ace school tests.
  • Inverted in Tokyo Babylon, where Subaru meets a woman named Mirei who can see the past via touching objects. He even comments on how this kind of seer is extremely uncommon. It turns out that there are two other people able to do it: one is Mirei's mother, who uses this in an Heroic Sacrifice when Mirei is targeted by a Serial Killer... and the other is Hot Librarian Miyazaki, whom Mirei falls in love with.

    Comic Books 
  • X-Men:
    • One of the most notable clairvoyants in the Marvel Universe is Destiny, a woman who was a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. When she died, it was disclosed that she'd written books with information about the future, which triggered a power struggle as various factions tried to seize or destroy them.
    • In X-Men: The Krakoan Age, Moira McTaggart excludes mutant seers from Krakoa's offer of Resurrective Immortality, as anyone who can see the future can see the nature of her own mutant power. All of the precognitive mutants are dead or missing when Krakoa is founded, which may not be coincidence. The refusal to resurrect Destiny leads her widow, Mystique, to conspire against Krakoa's leadership - following a warning that Destiny herself gave, many years earlier, when her powers saw this coming.
  • Lilith Clay of Teen Titans has precognition as one of her powers.
  • Spider-Man
  • The most famed precog in DC Comics is Dream Girl, of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who could see the future in her dreams. Unlike the Marvel examples she is a young platinum blonde whose powers are rarely useful. But then again she was introduced more for her looks than anything else.
  • The Sandman (Sanderson Hawkins), also of DC fame, suffers from the same precognitive nightmares as his predecessor, Wesley Dodds.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): The Amazonian seer Eudia's most notable vision was the one that Wonder Woman would die, which lead to the events of "The Contest" when Hippolyta tried to avert her daughter's death. The prophecy proved Self Fulfilling and Hippolyta's attempt to save her daughter lead to the deaths of both Diana and Artemis when each was acting as Wonder Woman.
  • Italian Disney comics sometime feature seers... Only to prove them scammers or crazy by the end of the story.
  • In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy story "Future Tense" (Cartoon Network Block Part #36), Grim thinks his days are numbered when a carnival fortune teller runs off in fear from him, making him believe the teller saw something in Grim's future. He goes into the netherworld to seek advice from Nostradamus, who sees a future for Grim no better than he's getting now.
  • Played with in the Astro City story "Sorrowsday". The interdimensional rampage of Krigari Ironhand is only paused when Druin the Seer appears and foretells of his defeat by Honor Guard. This angers Krigari to refocus his energies on defeating Honor Guard and defying the prophecy. In the end, it is revealed that Druin is simply a farmer in disguise, using a desperate attempt to deflect Krigari's destructive campaign.

    Fan Works 
  • The Bolt Chronicles: Kelvin the labradoodle is a prognosticator, with examples of his predictive abilities shown in two fics:
    • In "The Protection Payment," he correctly predicts that Barack Obama will become the first US Black president, Michael Phelps will win eight gold medals at the Olympics, and Hurricane Ike will devastate Galveston, Texas in the upcoming months. He is also able to foresee events about to occur while helping his pigeon friends obtain food tribute for Mittens, such as predicting that the two Cleveland-bound female hitchhikers they see will get a ride within the next ten minutes.
    • In the appropriately-named story "The Seer," he correctly predicts that Mittens will shortly get her canon karmic comeuppance for mistreating his pigeon friends. He also mentions having correctly prophesied that Pluto would be demoted to a dwarf planet, Kosovo would declare its independence from Serbia, and Carrie Underwood would be the winner of the most recent installment of American Idol.
  • In Break it down, Butterfly, Paon Bleu's second power "Future Eye" allows her to see five minutes into the future.
  • Child of the Storm:
    • There's Professor Trelawney, as in canon - the fic goes with the interpretation that she's much more gifted than most (including Trelawney herself) actually realize, with Draco Malfoy remarking that she's pickling her gift. Even still, in addition to the second Prophecy, altered from canon, she performs a 10 card tarot reading for Harry in chapter 66 of the first book, some of which is fairly easily faked, but other parts of which are much more insightful and resonate well into the second book - and in one case, potentially include something that even Doctor Strange can't see for sure.
    • Doctor Strange, meanwhile, is considered to be by far the most gifted seer alive, in part thanks to his Time Stone enhanced gift for Chronomancy (Time Magic), and uses it to skilfully and effortlessly manipulate every single participant of the vast Gambit Pileup.
    • Ruth Aldine a.k.a. Blindfold appears in the second book, and like her canon self, her powers manifested under traumatic circumstances, leaving her view somewhat fractured.
  • Codex Equus has numerous characters gifted in prophecy or some other variant.
    • The antediluvian Alicorn goddess, Hylia the Wise, was known for being a powerful seer when she was alive. Her fellow Alicorns believed that the only "mistake" she made was falling in love with a mortal, the original Gleaming Shield.
    • Hylia's mortal reincarnations, Radiant Primrose, would inherit her power. This is what allowed her to make the best decisions and aid Gleaming Shield's various incarnations in winning their battles through many lifetimes. It's not surprising, since she's an Expy of Princess Zelda.
    • Princess Celestia was described as having a "gift of prophecy", which played an important role in Final Epoch's eventual defeat when Queen Dazzleglow received a telepathic warning about Final Epoch's return and the following catastrophe from Celestia through her Sun.
    • Crystal Prism, a young Alicorn demigod, has an incredibly rare type of empathy that allows him to receive prophetic visions by displaying strong emotions/thoughts for someone before going to sleep. The Church of the Stars called this "emotional foresight".
    • In a comedy short written by BrutalityInc, the creator of Codex Equus, King Aspen and his royal family of the Alvslog Deer realms have been mentioned to have multiple Seers and Druids in their service, as they were present in the interrogation of Captain Blackthorn for possible Changeling infiltrations.
    • Prince Blueblood, Celestia's adoptive nephew, has a special talent in clairvoyance, in which he is able to find various things based on which paths his magical intuition reacts strongly to. This is what allows him to manipulate and direct government power and authority to areas that need it most, making him an incredibly competent politician. However, by his own admission, he sees people like Celestia as "true" Seers in that they receive visions even while awake.
    • Belyolen of the Bogolenya pantheon is a precognitive, being described by his entry as having "a touch of prophecy". It's implied that this is one of the abilities he gives to his worshipers and champions whenever he empowers them, as Queen Vesna of Bitaniya earned it on the day of her coronation when she and her brother, King Strazha, were blessed.
    • His twin brother, Temnobog, is an inversion since he has retrocognition. His entry states that such an ability is incredibly handy in looking into the past of criminals who try to hide their deeds from him. It's implied that this is one of the abilities he gives to his worshipers and champions whenever he empowers them, as King Strazha of Bitaniya earned it on the day of his coronation when he and his sister, Queen Vesna, were blessed.
    • Golden Scepter, an Expy of the Emperor of Mankind, is described by his entry as a powerful clairvoyant who has both precognition and retrocognition, allowing him to see the futures and pasts of sapient creatures, especially Ponykind. Notably, he was able to foresee Prince Sparkling Wing's future as the beloved ruler of a great kingdom, and has started mentoring the young Alicorn on leadership.
    • As the Alicorn demigod of Prophecy, Prince Bright Eyes has precognitive abilities like Crimson Star, but his are more potent and accurate than his brother's. He can receive flashes during the day, which allows him to predict and avoid his opponent's attacks, but it's noted his visions are enhanced when he's asleep. He can grant these visions to others if he desires.
    • One of the abilities Prince Crimson Star, Golden Scepter's eighth son, has is precognition, which he shares with his younger brother, Bright Eyes. However, after he lost his sight saving a classmate in a carriage accident, he became a Blind Seer. It's noted by his entry that while his foresight isn't as powerful as Bright Eyes', Crimson Star was still able to put it to good use, averting several crises in the process. During the "Temptation Unbound" event, he saved his family from being torn apart by a crisis similar to the Horus Heresy by warning his father of a bad future vision he had. And after foreseeing the untold amounts of destruction and death affecting the Nine Realms, Crimson Star pleaded for Golden Scepter to let him avert this bad future. Golden Scepter would give his son his blessing, allowing Crimson Star and a few of his brothers to participate in the "Final Ragnarok" conflict while the rest of his family fought in the "Storm King Crisis". Also, whenever he teams up with Fanged Paw to kick ass, one of the ways he helps his older brother out is predicting when and where an enemy will attack with his foresight.
    • Katastrofa, Ispista's youngest son with Discord, has the ability to see only bad outcomes. This would eventually wear on his mind until he became an apathetic and nihilistic person who believes he's only good at sowing misery through destruction, and everything will end badly no matter what he does. Crystal Prism suggesting he could use his foresight to actively stop the disasters he sees took him completely by surprise.
    • Pokhot, the youngest daughter and child of Temnobog, has a gigantic Deer-Spider hybrid form that grants her limited precognitive abilities, which references the spider being a symbol of destiny and mysticism. This allows Pokhot to predict the outcomes of certain actions, but she prefers not to use it because 1) being able to predict anything will make her fights boring, and 2) she prides herself in her individuality, so she hates ruining the future potential of heroes and champions before they had the chance to properly grow into it. Doing so will make her no different from the pride-breakers she loathes with a passion like her mother, Ispita, and her paternal grandfather, High King Irminsul.
    • One of Pokhot's (many) divine and demi-divine sons, Prince Stoltur Skjöldur, has inherited her precognitive abilities, though it's different for him. His entry notes that as the god of Potential, he can see both the good and bad potential of people, and what they could be even years ahead.
    • One of Blue Suede Heartstrings' domains is Humility, which gives him a form of precognition that makes him see a person's future depending on their actions - he sees good futures if a person is humble and virtuous, but bad futures if not. This allows Blue to warn people of the consequences of their pride and other depravities, and help them redeem themselves. It's noted that Blue's foresight is similar to Stoltur's foresight, in which the latter sees people as they are if they reach their future potential for both good and ill.
    • Bossa Nova Heartstrings, Blue's older identical twin brother, has precognitive abilities as part of his domain of Death - namely, they allow him to foresee how a person is going to die. While it's normally a terrible power to have, he only sees it as motivation to comfort the dead and dying however he can.
    • As the Alicorn goddess of Happy Endings, Princess Twilight/Amicitia Sparkle Equestria has precognitive abilities. While the domain of Happy Endings hasn't been entirely explored yet, Luminiferous believes that it gives her a "subconscious foresight" that allows her to see and guide her towards happy endings to terrible conflicts.
    • As the Alicorn demigod of Temperance, Prince Red Blade possesses a form of precognition that shows him a person's future depending on the actions they take. This allows him to warn people of the consequences of pursuing vice, while encouraging good actions. It's noted by his entry that his precognition is heavily similar to Blue Suede Heartstrings' Humility-based precognition in this regard, except Blue focuses on discouraging unchecked Pride.
    • Prince Night Shade possesses psychic foresight just like his father and some of his brothers, except unlike them, he only sees the worst possible futures, despite not embodying Bad Ends. This partially factored into his puristic mindset as thanks to his visions, he started believing that all criminals, real or perceived, must be punished for their actions. Under the Poenan Pantheon's guidance, he also used his foresight to stamp out Evil and other crimes before they could be carried out. Fortunately, his experiences in Nocturna, including befriending the Pony family whose mother saved him, showed him otherwise, and his foresight turned out to be quite useful in predicting the arrival of malicious threats. It's because of his specific foresight that he deeply sympathizes with Katastrofa, as the Draconequus god suffered from the same thing and was driven into depressive apathy because of it, and also showed great approval of Crystal Prism befriending him. It's heavily implied that he inherited this ability because he is the Reincarnation of General Hanging Edge, who possessed the same catastrophic foresight, except without anyone to help him deal with his visions, he was slowly driven insane until he became an utter monster.
      • It's inverted with Night Shade's retrocognitive abilities, allowing him to look into a person's past. This comes from his domain of Karma, which gives him spells that can either help or hinder someone depending on their morality and actions beforehand.
    • Many members of the Trimortidae have been noted to have true precognitive sight besides the clairvoyance that allows them to sense people's impending deaths.
      • Bossa Nova Heartstrings, Blue's older identical twin brother, has precognitive abilities as part of his domain of Death - namely, they allow him to foresee how a person is going to die. While it's normally a terrible power to have, he only sees it as motivation to comfort the dead and dying however he can.
      • One of Moon Ray Vaughoof's most powerful psychic abilities is his precognition, which gives him symbolic dreams of the futurenote . Moon Ray didn't know of this at first, and during his period of addiction, he tried suppressing his dreams by drowning them in alcohol... which only left him a complete mess and very nearly killed him. After dying in a helicopter accident and Ascending to godhood sometime later, he now knows better, and his Death and Temperance domains have enhanced his dreams to the point where they're more potent than Bossa Nova's. In-Universe, Moon Ray believes that his precognition - and by extension, his psychic abilities - first emerged to warn him of the consequences of his alcohol and drug addictions. In terms of application, his precognition allows him to see a person's future based on their actions (including himself) through his Temperance domain, while his Death domain makes him see visions of a person's death.
  • Several variants on this trope show up in the Dangerverse:
    • The lesser Ravenclaw bloodline gift was a limited degree of clairvoyance (seeing things most can't in the present). By the present day, that gift has been subsumed into the Ravenclaw gift of Healing, allowing blood Heirs of Ravenclaw to instantly know someone's state of health just by Looking in the right way.
    • The primary Slytherin bloodline power was prophetic Sight. Luckily for our heroes, the branch of the Slytherin bloodline from which Voldemort descended lost that power long ago.
    • When Luna's mother's scrying bowl explodes, several of the fragments cut Luna, getting the scrying potion in her blood and granting her both clairvoyance and some limited prophetic powers. These prophetic powers are vastly enhanced when she is blood-adopted into the branch of the Slytherin bloodline that stayed faithful to the other Founders.
  • In The Dark Lady, while pregnant with Rose, Belle would have the same recurring nightmare of Fiona burning down the Dark Castle. It is later confirmed and elaborated in The Dark Children and Light Moments that Rose inherited Rumpelstiltskin's ability to divine the future, more specifically being able to see tragedies through her dreams.
  • In addition to medicine cats (like in the source material), Daughter of the Sun, a Warrior Cats fanfic, has Skypaw and Aura, who can both see into the future.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: Has Rei Hino from Sailor Moon, with her fire-reading.
  • Dungeon Keeper of Love and Justice, a fanfic of Dungeon Keeper Ami, that also has Rei Hino from Sailor Moon, with her fire-reading.
  • In Faded Blue, Steven is capable of Past Vision.
  • Fallout: Equestria: In the backstory, Pinkie Pie discovered that zebra drugs improved her mysterious Pinkie Sense even further. She combined this with her ubiquitous surveillance to always know which leads to follow up on. Littlepip is shocked when she uses one of Pinkie's memory orbs and Pinkie notices, even though Littlepip won't be born for hundreds of years after the memory was recorded. "Burning hoof means Littlepip is watching me!" At one point, Pinkie takes more drugs than ever before, which boosts her Pinkie Sense to even higher levels. When combined with a soul-mirror, Pinkie is able to speak to Littlepip directly, giving her advice that will save the world in hundreds of years.
  • The Heart Trilogy, a series of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fics, has Seers as purple-eyed women capable of seeing into all realities of past, present and future through their connection to Raw Magic. Their patron is Irmo (also known as Lórien), the Vala of visions and dreams. The Elvish term for them is Tharŷliel ("Daughter of Future Dreams"). The main heroine Kathryn is one of the last Seers, and she's targeted by several factions — like her eventual lover Smaug at first — because of this. Her main threat is the demon Fankil who wants to use her visions to locate the Door of Night so that he can release Morgoth.
  • Kimberly T's Gargoyles fics introduce Bethany Marsden, the daughter of the Xanatos family's new nanny Anne, who inherited Fey magic from her deceased father Phil Marsden. The first sign of Bethany's magic is the power of True Sight, allowing her to perceive the true nature of other beings, such as immediately recognising that the gargoyles are good creatures despite their monstrous appearance or able to see Puck's aura while he's in the disguise of Owen Burnett (something that most full-blood fey would have trouble doing). True Sight is also occasionally accompanied by the power of prophecy, with the result that Bethany calls Matt Bluestone "Daddy" upon their first meeting because she's aware that Matt will be her stepfather, and she is also able to alert her mother and Owen to an imminent attack by Hyena and Jackal.
  • The Night Unfurls: Celestine, as the reincarnation of the goddess Laurendau, can see prophetic visions. While she is not omniscient, this power, along with her lifespan as an elf, allowed her to rule Eostia and keep the land safe for centuries. Alas, she could not foresee that the Black Dogs would plan to take over.
  • Warriors Redux changes Medicine cats into seers. Seers act as spiritual leaders of the Clan. They interpret signs from StarClan, foresee kits futures, and offer advice. They also know all about Clan laws and history. Seers give up "worldy pleasures" like having mates and hunting in order to focus on the spiritual. Killing a seer is punishable by death.
  • Y/N, the main character of Toward A Bright Future, has the Quirk Prophecy, allowing her to occasionally receive visions of the future. However, it also comes with a host of drawbacks that limit her ability to majorly influence what she sees, such as giving her headaches if she tries to tell anyone about the future, or, if she manages to change the future, inflicting her with all the pain that was averted.
  • Strange Visitors From Another Century: Rowena Ravenclaw, echoing Minerva McGonagall, is unhappy to learn that a Divination class is being taught at Hogwarts in the future, because Seeing is a talent you have to be born with. According to her, it's exceedingly rare for more than one Seer to be born to a single generation — and Rowena would know, as she is her generation's resident Seer.
  • TheNight130:
    • In the crossover video The Seer, Jim is able to see the past's of anyone he touches.
    • Meg from Insanity Circus can see people's pasts by touching their hands.

    Film — Animated 
  • Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas has shades of this, though it's unclear if her premonition is a one-time thing or if she can see the future often.
    • Or it may not be mystical at all — as Santa Claus points out, she's the only character with enough common sense to see that Jack's plan was doomed.
    • However, immediately before "Jack's Obsession", the flower she's holding transforms into a tiny Christmas tree... and then catches fire, foreshadowing the results of Jack's attempts to take over the holiday. She later tells Jack about this "vision", and he doesn't act shocked, so it seems as though she has the power of premonition.
  • In ParaNorman, Norman has visions of the past revolving around the witch's curse. According to his great uncle, Mr. Prenderghast, it's a normal occurence to those who have their powers whenever the curse's anniversary is nearing.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • The Oracle of The Matrix films is a subversion, as she can't actually see the future. She can, however, predict what choices people will make with near-perfect accuracy and from that extrapolate events that will come, through an innate understanding of the human psyche. She also admits that this ability has limits: if she doesn't understand a choice someone will make, she can't predict what they will do, and she doesn't know what will happen after that.
  • The appropriately-named Precogs of Minority Report are a trio of precognitives who are kept drugged so they could produce visions of future crimes. Of the three, Agatha is the most powerful as she produces far-reaching visions than her male compatriots.
  • In Les Visiteurs: Bastille Day, 12th century French knight Godefroy de Montmirail and his squire Jacquouille are stranded during The French Revolution after yet another error in the making of their Time Travel potion. They hear of an oracle called "The Mother of God" who can see through time. As soon as they enter her room, she knows who Godefroy is and which era he comes from, becomes a Willing Channeler for the 12th century enchantress to talk to them and indicates them where to find the 18th century enchanter who can make the potion to take them back to their era.
  • A common ability of Force-sensitives in the Star Wars universe.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • X2: X-Men United: After being briefly overwhelmed by her telepathy, Jean Grey tells Scott that "something bad is supposed to happen."
    • X-Men: Apocalypse: Jean's precognitive ability expresses itself as a terrible dream full of death and mass destruction.
    • The Wolverine: Yukio knows when, where and how a person will die.

    Franchises 
  • MonsterVerse: Inverted twice. In the graphic novel Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, Riccio believes he's seeing Skull Island's past when he starts having visions; which might be real or might just be hallucinations from overusing the Iwi's exotic medicine. Godzilla vs. Kong's official novelization and the tie-in graphic novel prequel both respectively reveal that Mothra (and Godzilla as a lasting consequence of absorbing her ashes) has an instinctive and almost scientifically-unexplainable awareness of Earth's entire geological and ecological history right back to when it was a molten rock billions of years ago.
  • BIONICLE:
    • In his Toa Metru state, Vakama is tormented by uncontrollable visions that some (including himself at times) dismiss as insanity, while others encourage him to follow them. In the end, they all turn out to be true, including the visions that foretold disastrous failures. When the Toa Metru get mutated into bestial Toa Hordika, Vakama's visions stop because his mind becomes too primitive, which leads him astray. There was indeed something wrong with Vakama. Due to some mishap in his brain, he accidentally tapped into the brain signals of Physical God Mata Nui, explaining how he knew things he wasn't supposed to.
    • A very early promo CD claimed Turaga Whenua could foresee events one day ahead. This was never referenced in the actual story, where Whenua's obsession was the study of the past.
    • The evil Karzahni has the Kanohi Olisi, Mask of Alternate Futures that lets him and his victims see the potential outcome of every imaginable scenario. Karzahni always focuses on the bad to enslave his targets by showing horrific events that could happen if they tried to escape.
    • Gaaki in her Toa form wears the Mask of Clairvoyance. Unlike the Olisi, this mask predicts only one unchangealbe future and the user has no control over what they see.
    • Helryx's Mask of Psychometry lets her see the past of any non-living object she touches. As with Gaaki's mask, she can't choose exactly what she sees.

    Literature 
  • Many novels and short stories by Philip K. Dick feature precognitive powers.
  • The Alteriens in Alterien all have precognition. However, they don't see everything and some may have visions of the same events from different perspectives.
  • It's established early on that the heroine of Amber House, Sarah Parson, can see the past of any antique she touches in her family's old ancestral home. This gives her a lot to see.
  • The high spirits of Astral Dawn can see across all of time from the astral plane.
  • Yeva Belikova from Blood Promise has precognitive dreams.
  • The main character of the Cassandra Palmer series is the Pythia, the world's chief clairvoyant and guardian of the timeline. However, the power comes as a surprise to Cassie, and to everyone else, and she finds herself in the most wanted list of the supernatural world. Apart from being a clairvoyant, Cassie can time travel and shift around, a sort of teletransport.
  • In The Changeover, the main character, Laura Chant, has a very mild case of this; more like a premonition when things can be expected to go wrong.
  • The Chronicles of Dorsa: Some of the Terintans have a real ability to see the future (though not everyone believes in or trusts this as valid). Lord M'Tongliss' mother is one, and he makes important decisions based on the things she predicts. Certain tinker fortune tellers also can genuinely tell the future, but it's apparently a diluted form of the seers' gift. Both do it through channeling the creatures of the Shadowlands when they drink tea made from horsetail mushroom. All of those we see are also women, indicating it's something only they can do.
  • Lord Mhoram in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is described as "seer and oracle" to the Council of Lords. These abilities range from prophetic (and usually highly unpleasant) dreams to simply being extremely perceptive.
  • Niklaren "Niko" Goldeye from the Circle of Magic series, who mainly devotes his talent to spotting magical influence where it was otherwise missed, such as the protagonists. Occasionally he uses it for crime-solving, since he can spot lies, look into the past, and can have visions of the future.
  • Devils & Thieves: Old Lady Jane and other omnias users are able to see the future, with the most powerful ones even being able to see when the people around them will die through a single touch alone.
  • In The Cosmere, there are many ways of seeing into the future, though almost all of them involve use of the Spiritual Realm, where time and space don't exist and all places and events are one. The Shards, who live in this Realm, are all able to see the future to varying degrees.It's also very difficult, if not impossible, to see the future of someone else who can also see the future, because this creates too many competing possibilities as the two seers each adjust to the other's future actions.
    • In Literature/Mistborn, the rare metal Atium allows the Allomancer burning it to see the future-shadows of people and objects around them, moving ahead of them and showing their actions in the next few seconds. This makes them unstoppable in combat unless they're facing someone else burning Atium or electrum, which shows one's own future-shadow.
    • In Warbreaker, the Returned often see strange portents in their dreams that the people of Hallendren believe to be prophetic.
    • In The Stormlight Archive, the ability to see into the future is culturally associated with the Voidbringers, and so attempting to guess the future is taboo in the Vorin nations. Gambling games are set up so that all the cards of a hand are dealt before betting begins, so that they are not betting on what might be drawn. Stormwardens, who use mathematical formulas to predict when highstorms will arrive, are only tolerated because they're accurate enough to be useful, and because they claim no mystic origin for their predictions. This taboo causes problems for Renarin when he starts developing this ability, as he is unable to openly share what he sees. There is also the Diagram, a very detailed (if fractured) set of revelations that Taravangian created when his boon/curse from the Nightwatcher, which randomly changes his intelligence and emotional affect each day so that one will be high and one low, gave him godlike intelligence; this one stands out for using pure intellect rather than peering into the Spiritual Realm, something which even impresses Odium.
  • Dragonvarld: The High Priestesses of the Sacred Order can tell if dragons are coming by looking into the Eye, a magic bowl which lets them scry this way.
  • In the Elemental Logic series, this is one of the abilities that can go with having fire blood. The seer Medric has dreams and visions that generally have to be interpreted, but accurately reflect the future. (Notably, he and his companions are fairly good at interpreting and acting on the things he sees.) Zanja, a fire blood but not an actual "seer", has limited prescience- she occasionally sees short-term future events, and her glyph card readings are always accurate, but her visions don't have the range or complexity of Medric's.
  • Isaac Asimov's Foundation: Everyone who learns psychohistory, a system of mathematics to predict human behaviour, is capable of analyzing the future and guessing (with a high degree of accuracy) what will happen. Hari Seldon, the one who designed the science, was decried as "Raven Seldon". It's not until decades after his death that the Scam Religion established by Terminus starts spreading the message of him as a prophet and the Foundation's destiny to rule the galaxy.
  • In The Girl from the Miracles District, the people who are connected to the Miracles District by being Pillars are often sent visions about upcoming events that might affect district's stability.
  • Coryn from Guardians of Ga'Hoole, who can see the future in the flames of a fire.
  • In Harry Potter, Seers are wizards and witches who have the ability to see into the future. This seems to be one of the rare magical abilities that cannot be taught, only inherited, such as being a Parselmouth or a Metamorphmagus. Professor Trelawney the Divinations professor at Hogwarts has Seer ancestry, though she herself is also one, though she has only given two actual prophecies in her entire life, and has no memory of either. Professor McGonagall is dismissive of Divinations in general and Trelawney in particular because she believes that seeing into the future isn't magic that can be taught and thus has no place in Hogwarts. Even a true Seer's prophecies don't always come true anyway, since people are perfectly able to Screw Destiny in this setting.
  • In Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon, Conan the Barbarian meets one. Somewhat cryptic.
    I am but an oracle, through whose lips the gods speak. My lips are sealed by them lest I speak too much. You must find the heart of your kingdom. I can say no more. My lips are opened and sealed by the gods.
  • Joel Suzuki has the Sight, which means that by relaxing and clearing his mind, he can notice tiny details others miss. With practice, he learns to use his ability to see into the past by looking for the ghost-like traces of people's previous actions.
  • In The Jungle Book, Kaa the python has a version of this which works backwards. He's over a century old (and still extremely healthy and powerful), and in the hundred years he's been alive, he's seen countless things. To that end, he can place himself into a trance and search his memories at will.
  • Kingdom on Fire: Lambe has the power to see the future. According to most people, they always come true.
  • The Land of Green Ginger: Nosi Parka the Egghead is a mind reader and monitors events wherever he wishes using a Crystal Ball.
  • Monster of the Month Club: Mother Lapis Lazuli, a mentor of Sparrow, has the ability to predict the future and read auras, making Rilla very nervous when she's around, since she's afraid the other woman will figure out the truth about the monsters.
  • At least two versions exist in the world of Mordant's Need.
    • Smashing a flat glass creates an augary, a collection of shards that each hold the image of one significant event from the future of the person or place pictured in the original glass. Since the images come entirely without context, interpreting an augary is somewhat less than an exact science.
    • Terisa has a dream early in the story that turns out to be prophetic, but it's never explained if she has some sort of psychic abilities, if it's a side-effect of the magic that later brings her to Mordant, or if people dreaming the future is just something that sometimes happen in the fictional version of New York she comes from.
  • Nevermoor: Lambeth's knack is that she can see the future, with the catch that it's only a few seconds ahead (usually ten seconds or less), and she can't control when it happens. Randomly getting flashes of prophecy with little to no context also makes it hard for her to function in daily life. However, she makes it work, and in action scenes, knowing what's going to happen in ten seconds can be the difference between life and death. (She also makes use of it as Mundane Utility, telling her classmates when to move so they don't hit their head on a door that's about to open and the like.)
  • In Noob all Syriallians (which means bascially every single Non-Player Character from the Order) can see someone's future by looking into their eyes. Accuracy however varies greatly between individuals, so those with exceptional natural talent such as the Ashentäk Oracle can get harassed and pushed into becoming The Hermit.
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians has the Oracle of Delphi who, like all other aspects of Greek mythology, has been transported to America in the form of a mummy hippie in the attic of the Big House and Camp Half-Blood. She occasionally comes to life to give prophecies, but other than that is dormant. "The Last Olympian" reveals that in life, she was cursed by Hades to be the Oracle forever after Zeus killed his beau (and he was AIMING for his kids) due to an prophecy gave. It also revealed that Luke's mother went mad trying to become the next Oracle because of the curse Hades had put on the position. At the end, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, a mortal who can see through the Mist becomes the new Oracle after Hades's curse is lifted, and she remains in the position for the sequel series The Heroes of Olympus.
    • Heroes of Olympus also introduces a camp of Roman demigods, who also have their own haruspex. Instead of live animals however, he "disembowels" stuffed animals and reads the stuffing, which apparently works. The story arc of the next series, The Trials of Apollo, deals with the villains disrupting all known lines of prophecy, necessitating Apollo in mortal form to quest for their restoration.
  • The Raven Cycle's heroine, Blue, grew up in a house full of seers. Her mother, mother's friends. aunts, cousins, etc. are all seers except for Blue herself.
  • Redwall: Although most other supernatural/mystical elements are left vague, rare or revealed as a fraud, many characters really have the ability to see the future at least somewhat. However, they only usually have glimpses, which can be deceptive (e.g. Nightshade knows she'll always serve Swartt, yet not how she dies).
  • Retired Witches Mysteries: One appears in book 1, said to be an ancient Greek priestess from Delphi. She takes payment in antique silver, and is able to provide the coven with some answers, though she doesn't directly identify the culprits they're after.
  • The Rifter: The walls at the convent of Umbhra’ibaye are strung with bones who are issusha’im: women who’ve been stripped of their flesh but kept alive, with charms carved on the bones. This somehow gives them the power to see through time, seeing multiple possible futures as well as (maddeningly) the lives that they might have lived if they hadn’t been turned into issusha’im. The Payshmura use the issusha’im’s soothsaying to avert future events that they don’t want. Ji, an escaped issusha leading the Fai’daum, foresaw her own death but chose to go to battle anyway; presumably she thought the results of her staying home would have been worse overall, for other people.
  • The Seer and the Sword by Victoria Hanely has Torina — who does need a crystal to use it.
  • Shatter the Sky: The Aurati seers come down from the north every seven years for touring the Empire of Zefed, giving out prophecies and counting its subjects while they receive them. It's called a service, though the people who reside in the dragon mountains know this actually serves as a meant of control for the emperor. They help him by predicting the future often. They are an entirely female order, and occasionally take girls into their ranks, as it seems only women can become Aurati. Maren's girlfriend Kaia is forced into their ranks. It turns out though there's only one Prophet, with the rest just passing on hers or making up vague ones which people buy into. Dragons here are the source of the Prophet's foresight as well, since their dreams can show the future. Prophets thus bind themselves with a dragon to see them via telepathy. Only a few Verran girls can become the Prophet.
  • The Silerian Trilogy: Mirabar is given prophecies of the future through her spirit advisor the Beckoner.
  • The Silmarillion: Tal-Palantir, the penultimate King of Númenor, had the gift of prophecy. He foresaw that when the White Tree of Númenor (a symbol of the friendship of the Valar and the Elves) perished, the Line of Kings would also perish.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: The Moonsingers apparently have clairvoyance. Originally they led escaped slaves to Braavos after they took control of slave ships carrying them. Because of it they are still highly revered in the city.
  • Wizards from Sorcery! can access a spell which allows them to see into the future - for a limited time - with a Crystal Ball.
  • In Tailchaser's Song, cats like this are called "far-sensers". They have mystical abilities which include the ability to have visions and prophetic dreams.
  • A lot of characters in Tales of the Branion Realm. Generally precognitive, and religious in nature.
  • Time Scout's Ianira Cassondra receives visions voluntarily and involuntarily. Sometimes leads to Fainting Seer.
  • The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: An old man or young woman able to see the future, usually blind or blindfolded at least. Their gift usually makes them unhappy, though old male Seers have grown resigned that nothing can be done about what they See.
  • The Traveler's Gate: Some Avernus Travelers can see the future, but only specific parts. One might be able to see her future relating to money, another the stars on a given night (useful for predicting the weather), and another knows when the latrines need to be emptied (which saves the clan from disease). On their own, these visions are incomplete at best, but an entire clan working together can paint a clear picture of the future.
  • The Trojan Cycle: Many seers appear. The Trojans Cassandra and Helenus, the Achaean Calchas, and even the ghostly Tiresias.
  • Villains by Necessity: The old Gypsy fortune teller who Kaylana consults can genuinely see what's coming in the future, though only bits and pieces.
  • Warrior Cats: Medicine cats and Clan leaders often receive visions and prophecies from StarClan.
  • Watership Down features Fiver, a rabbit who is the runt of his litter (which may qualify him for Waif Prophet status). He has psychic visions that can both foretell the future (he sees the mass extermination of his warren early in the novel, which allows him and the other main characters to escape) and see events happening a distance away. In the novel's epilogue, we find out that he's passed this trait on to his children — one of them accurately predicts that someone is approaching before that someone is within earshot.
  • Well World: Diviners are an alien species that can see into the future and predict what events will have what outcomes, with one major blind spot — no Diviner can ever see ahead of time the consequences that will lead to its own death.
  • The Wheel of Time: Several versions:
    • Some Channelers have the ability to make Foretellings, which are essentially spontaneous prophecies often phrased cryptically, or literally but misleading. The Foreteller doesn't necessarily know what her Foretelling means better than anyone else.
    • More rare are Dreamers, channelers with a strong connection to tel'aran'rhiod who can have prophetic dreams. Unlike Fortellings, the Dreamer usually does know what the dream signifies. Egwene, one of the main characters, is a Dreamer, as is at least one of the Forsaken per Word of God (popular fan speculation is that it's Ishamael).
    • Min has the ability to sometimes see images when she looks at people. These images foretell the future, and Min knows what they mean about half the time. She's the only person in the series with this power, and Word of God indicates that while it's not unique, it's very rare (as in, once or twice over the last three thousand years rare). The Seanchan, a culture who highly prize fortunetelling, are extremely impressed by Min's ability when they find out about it, to the point that the Seanchan Empress makes Min her personal adviser and gives her the title "Doomseer" on the spot.
    • The Aelfinn also have this power, which they sometimes use to answer the three questions humans who seek them out through a particular magical gateway are permitted. Exactly how this works (and how it differs from the above methods) is not made clear.
  • In The Witchlands, Sightwitches can predict the future, though it's uncertain to what extent, as the last known Sightwitch died centuries before the beginning of the series.
  • Mud from The White Bone is a visionary, which means that she sometimes has visions of things that will happen in the future or things that are happening elsewhere. She also has very sharp eyesight for an elephant.
  • The Brotherhood of the Conch: Farseeing, one of the magical skills taught at Silver Valley, allows a person to see what's happening at the moment in a familiar but far away location. A small number of particularly skilled magic users can even see places they know nothing about.
  • The Witch of Knightcharm: It's mentioned that, while most witches can learn any spell (even if they find some easier than others), seer magic is special and can only be learned by a few who have the knack. The protagonist Emily later discovers that one of her enemies, Brynne, is capable of seer magic and is willing to use it to help out Emily's other foes (such as by telling them when Emily will attack them so they can dodge).

    Live-Action TV 
  • 4400: Hayden can see into the future.
  • In Babylon 5 Centauri have dreams of their own deaths. Londo sees himself and G'kar strangling one another to death in some twenty years. Turns out he was being controlled by a parasite and begging G'kar to kill him. Some Centauri women also get visions of the futures of others while awake, but they seem to still mostly get visions of doom.
  • Buffyverse:
    • Drusilla, Doyle and later Cordelia all get visions. Where Drusilla's came from isn't explained but it's revealed she had them prior to becoming a vampire and that they had driven her quite mad; it was the reason she was turned since Angelus wanted her to suffer eternal torment. Doyle got them from the Powers That Be and passed them onto Cordelia via a kiss.
    • Whistler is also this, though his precognition is "all outta whack" after the destruction of the Seed of Wonder.
  • Phoebe of Charmed can get premonitions just by touching something. She can see the past and the future.
  • In The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Deet experiences visions of the future thanks to the Sanctuary Tree.
  • Dickinson:
    • Emily apparently has some clairvoyant/precognitive ability, as she sees a man dubbed "Nobody" first in visions, then he turns out to be real. She then sees him being killed by a gunshot, freaking her out, in an implied prediction of his death during the coming civil war.
    • It's possible that Emily's father has a similar ability, if his dream of the church burning down is any indication.
    • A black soldier who is shown in Season 3 also has this, knowing that Michael Jordan will be a celebrity of the future.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Time Lords claim precognition doesn't exist, causing a certain amount of anxiety in "The Deadly Assassin" when the Doctor has, to his surprise, a psychic precognition.
    • Carmen, a one-time character in "Planet of the Dead", has what the Doctor describes as "low-level psychic abilities"; her husband Lou further explains that she can "just tell things", and has been doing so since childhood. Carmen's powers are somewhat limited on Earth — she's able to correctly win ten pounds "every week, twice a week" in a lottery — but being exposed to alien sunlight strengthens them, allowing her to see events happening miles away, accurately sense the true intentions of others, and provide individuals with prophecies about their futures (which leads to the season's last set of Arc Words). Those prophecies often come in riddling, obscure terms; this is lampshaded by Carmen, who seems genuinely frustrated and upset by her inability to explain exactly what she's sensing.
  • In The Flash (2014), Cisco's metahuman ability is basically this. He can see into alternate universes, as well as locate people and occasionally see into the future.
  • Game of Thrones: Bran is a greenseer. This is the title given to people who possess the magical ability to perceive future, past or distant events in dreams known as Green Dreams.
    • House of the Dragon: Helaena Targaryen has a sort of divination gift, seeing future events such as her brother Aemond losing an eye to gain a dragon, the looming Succession Crisis turning into a Civil War and the dragon Meleys bursting out of the ground at the coronation of Aegon.
  • La Brea: At first Gavin was convinced that his visions were just hallucinations caused by an injury. It turns out they were real however, showing him visions of the past. He's not actually a seer as it turns out. All his visions are actually memories coming back to him in real time as his younger self in the distant past lives his life.
  • Lexx's Time Prophet, who could only see the past — which luckily was identical to the future.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Much like in the books, Tar-Palantír gets visions of the future and he often confuses the reality for his visions.
  • Merlin's Morgana, who gets future visions in her dreams.
  • Midnight Sun (2016): Some of the Sami, particularly shamans, have abilities to foresee future events and or speak with the dead. In the case of shamans, this is part of their traditional work.
  • My Babysitter's a Vampire: Ethan Morgan is a nerdy teenager who sees things whenever he touches mysterious objects/creatures.
  • Nowhere Boys: To a degree, Oscar can see into the future, or elsewhere.
  • October Faction: Viv can see the near future beforehand.
  • The Outer Limits (1995): In "Virtual Future", Jack Pierce discovers that his virtual reality suit allows him to see into the future provided that the analogue simulation rate is at a high enough level. Altering the power levels determines the timing of the future jumps. Jack's patron Bill Trenton, the unscrupulous CEO of CTY Industries, plans to use this technology for his own ends.
  • Sam and Ava in Supernatural have visions of the future.
  • That's So Raven is a sitcom all about a girl with them and the zany situations she finds herself in due to them.
  • Tidelands (Netflix): Adrielle keeps an old woman who's one prisoner. Her blood is capable of causing visions when it's in water along with the person who she shows, which Adrielle takes from her forcibly. She's revealed to be Genoveva, Adrielle's predecessor whom she overthrew. Everyone thought Adrielle had killed her.
  • The Twilight Zone (1985):
    • In "A Message from Charity", after she is accused of witchcraft, Charity Payne claims to have second sight and obliquely reveals that she is aware of the bodies of two murdered sailors hidden in Squire Jonas Hacker's root cellar. In reality, she had learned of the bodies from a history book that Peter Wood found in 1985. As a result, Hacker finds her innocent of witchcraft, saying that second sight is a gift from God which his own grandmother possessed.
    • In "20/20 Vision", the farmer's bank loan officer Warren Cribbens discovers that he can see the future through the cracked right lens of his glasses. This ability first manifests when he witnesses a teller accidentally dropping a bill into the trash several seconds before it happens. When the bank president Cutler orders him to foreclose on the struggling farmer Vern Slater's property, Warren sees a depressed and destitute Vern through his glasses. He later visits the Slater farm and sees it in a dilapidated state. Warren's conscience then gets the better of him and he loans Vern some of his own money to tide him over, which leads the furious Cutler to fire him. He also able to use his powers to prevent his secretary Sandy from falling off a ladder and breaking her neck.
  • The X-Files: Clyde Bruckman from the episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" can see past and future deaths.
  • Yellowjackets: Lottie has precognitive abilities, having first had a premonition as a little girl in the car with her parents of upcoming danger. Her screaming caused her dad to stop the car rather than go ahead... right before a truck hits the car just ahead of them, saving their lives. Afterward her dad refuses to believe it though, and she's still troubled with visions as a teenager after she's off her medication.

    Mythology and Religion 
  • The oracles and sybils of ancient Greece and Rome, sworn to Apollo(n). Graeco-Roman culture took soothsaying very seriously: after an extremely pious Greek general lost a war in Sicily despite following the advice of his personal foretellers, his countrymen back home started inquiring into his past to find out where he had sinned, to motivate the Gods to give him false counsel.
  • The Etruscans who populated North Italy before the rise of Rome also had a very avid interest in foretelling the future. Their soothsayers, haruspexes, would foretell from the livers and guts of sheep and oxen, cloud formations, lightning strikes and unusual weather patterns and the flight paths of birds, among other things. Curiously, not a single bit of evidence of the Etruscans ever looking for signs from the nighttime sky, in astrology, has survived.
  • Modern Groundhog Day events presume that a rodent can be a seer, at least regarding the weather.
  • In Christian hagiology, Saint Clare of Assisi was given this by God, in order to attend Mass. This was because she was confined to a bed from illness.
  • Many Old Testament prophets qualified, seeing (and frequently warning about) future events. However, some just had an ability to speak with God, rather than seeing the future.

    Roleplay 
  • Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
    • Finn has the powers of pre- and post-cognition, allowing him to not only see the history of any object he touches, but occasionally (and randomly) experience visions of the future. Said future is malleable, and the glimpses of it allow Finn to manipulate current day events to steer the present towards a more favorable outcome.
    • Ivan has a variation in that his power allows him to create a representation of an actual event- which, in turn, can make him privy to information about said event that he wouldn't have known about otherwise.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Dungeons & Dragons, divination is the school of magic that specializes in gaining information, including clairvoyance.
    • In the optional psionics for 3rd Edition, seers are psions who specialize in the same.
  • In Wraith: The Oblivion, part of the domain of Fatalism is seeing people's past and future. Practitioners are known as Oracles, and use pratically every conceivable method of divination to focus their powers.
    • The basic levels of Lifeweb allow a wraith to perceive what's happening around their fetters, or to divine the fetters of a target wraith, no matter where they are.
    • Behest, practiced in the African Underworld, allows its practitioners to see things at a distance, so long as they have something associated with the target. At higher levels it provides a limited degree of divination.
  • Clairsentients in Æon can see at a distance (vast distances - they can see places several light-years away) and look into the past and future.
  • Games Workshop games:
    • In Warhammer: Age of Sigmar all Tzaangor are able to sense the winds of fate in the same way that a predator can scent its pray, the elite of the warflocks have far more developed prophetic abilities with the Tzaangor Enlightened able to clearly see the strands of the past while the Tzaangor Skyfires are guided by knowledge of the future. The Shamans who lead the warflocks also receive prophetic dreams and visions that help them guide their followers and advance the plans of their dark god Tzeentch.
    • Warhammer 40,000:
      • One of the Paths that the Aeldari of the Craftworlds can take is the Path of the Seer, in which they develop their race's natural psychic abilities as far as possible. Aeldari who become lost on this Path become Farseers, frighteningly powerful psykers who are able to see potential futures and determine which are most likely to happen and which can and should be made to happen to be the most beneficial.
      • Some Astartes of the Night Lords Traitor Legion share their Primarch's cursed gift of precognition. These individuals use their foresight to rise to lead warbands of their fellow Night Lords, something the 8th Edition rules represent this with the Warlord Trait 'Night Hunter's Curse' that gives the model a once per turn re-roll.
      • While many followers of Tzeentch are gifted with the ability to predict the future, Thousand Sons Sorcerers of the Cult of Prophesy are masters of divination, their entire existence dedicated to foreseeing the future and twisting it to their own ends.
  • Precognition in Rocket Age gives a person visions of the future which they can focus on to gain more specific information.
  • Since it takes a lot of inspiration from Watership Down (see its entry under Literature), Bunnies & Burrows naturally offers the option of playing a rabbit with oracular powers.
  • Visionary arcana, and in particular the Vision arcanum, is one of the kinds of magic available to Blue Rose adepts. It lets you see the possible future, with varying clarity depending on how skilled you are, ranging from a flash of blurry events for a beginner to a master being able to Rewind, Replay, Repeat her vision at will. It also comes with the added bonus of giving you a Spider-Sense.
  • Res Arcana has two mages themed after the ability to see the future:
    • The Seer's power to see the future is represented by the ability to look at the top 3 cards of a deck (your artifact deck or the Monuments deck) and rearrange them. The original illustration resembles a female Fortune Teller who uses cards to tell the future, while the male version uses a Crystal Ball.
    • The Diviner has a more aggressive variation: immediately drawing 3 cards then discarding 3, the same as the ability of the Divination magic item. The original illustration resembles a male shaman, while the female variation appears to use divine inspiration.

    Video Games 
  • The Nasuverse has characters with the clairvoyance skill, with which they can perceive and observe the world around them. Should they be particularly powerful with it, then they can qualify for Grand Caster and thus be recruited by Alaya to fight Beasts. From Fate/Grand Order, we have seen three people qualify for this: Solomon, Merlin and Gilgamesh.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • Fallout:
    • Bloomseer Poplar from Fallout 3 is a prophetic old lady living in the settlement of Oasis. Her precognition factors into the game play: you can ask about your future, and she will tell you something related to quests that you have not yet discovered.
    • The same goes for the Forecaster from Fallout: New Vegas. He can pretty much sum up the whole game for 300 caps.
    • And Fallout 4 gives us Mama Murphy, who'll reveal various hints about the Lone Survivor's future through her chem-fueled Sight.
  • Fateweavers from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Contrary to the what the name implies, the Fateweavers can only see the Weave of Fate, they can't actually change it — no one can. They were honored in the past, but nowadays have a poor reputation since people don't like to receive bad news and tend to blame the messenger. Their reactions to meeting The Fateless One are mixed — part fear and shock that someone is able to alter the Weave, and part hope since the Fateless One can give them a new unwritten future.
  • Theresa from the Fable series is a gypsy with the power to see the future. She is blind, but is capable of seeing "other worlds". Especially in Fable II, Theresa plays the role of the seer.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 has Yeul and Serah who possess the "Eyes of Etro" that allow them to see into the future. However, having visions shortens the person's lifespan until they eventually die.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles:
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Shulk has the power to see the future thanks to the Monado. His sight is of the "prediction" kind... he sees what will happen if nothing is done to prevent it. Alvis also has this power, and is directly referred to as "seer" by the High Entia. The thing the two have in common? They're both gods. Or at the very least, Shulk's carrying one around.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Mythra, the true Aegis, has the "Foresight" ability. While it normally just lets her and her Driver see a few seconds into the future (very useful in a fight), in the prequel it let her see centuries into the future, giving her a vision during her lowest moment of eventually meeting Rex. It's also strongly implied that Alvis from the first game is actually Ontos, the missing third Aegis core, meaning his abilities are the exact same. Shulk, like Rex, gained the ability due to essentially being Alvis' Driver.
  • Palutena in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate mentions having this skill in her discussion with Pit about Ness.
    Palutena: Pit, we're having this conversation via telepathy. Meanwhile, the power of flight is a type of psychokinesis, and I see you from the heavens using clairvoyance. Finally, I call you back from the battlefield with something akin to teleportation.
  • Kingdom Hearts χ: The Master of Masters is said to have the power to see the future, and it's made clear that what he sees will come to pass; there is no averting it. The explanation of his power is surprisingly simple: he had one of his eyes embedded in a Keyblade he forged, and passed this Keyblade on to his apprentice Luxu, with instructions for Luxu to observe events from a distance and make sure the Keyblade is passed on down the generations. The Master can see everything that eye has ever seen across time... and Master Xehanort is wielding that same Keyblade in the current era of the story.
  • Through her supernatural empathy, Alice Devonfort from the interactive romance novel Moonrise can intimately know others and predict their (re)actions. This allows her to predict the future to a certain extent.
  • Onmyōji (2016): Susabi used to be this, being a child of the gods sent down to a village in order to help them using his powers. Sadly, he became The Cassandra.
  • A Total War Saga: TROY: Seers are a type of agents available to players who court Apollo's favor, and focus on boosting your favor with a deity's cult while balancing their duties with a divinely-mandated errand to visit a sacred site on the campaign map.
  • Oracle of Askigaga: Implied with an official screenshot where the titular oracle speaks, with a caption of:
    Apparently, the Oracle sees more than the future.

    Webcomics 
  • Tower of God: All the Guides, which includes Evan Edroch and Hwaryun, are said to be so knowledgeable in the ways of the Tower that at times they can foretell the future. Sia Sia also works as a fortune teller, however she probably gets all her knowledge by using her ever-common light houses.
  • Dominic Deegan is a seer for hire.
  • In Drowtales, the drowussu Chiri'nide and Shimi'lande Val'Kyorlsolenurn are seers, as is the leader of the light elves of Vanaheimr, Vala Hudr. Since it was revealed that drowussu are descended from light elves it may mean that prescience is a racial trait. This is later Retconned to a misinterpretation of Mind Reading, merely looking at peoples' future plans rather than looking through time or receiving miracles.
  • Seer is a player class in Homestuck that's concerned with seeing information pertaining to their aspect, often involving alternate timelines and a very non-linear perception of the main one. Two of the known seers are major characters, the first being Rose, the Seer of Light who gains the power to see how to take the best path to victory, with Light being heavily tied to fortune. Terezi, the Seer of Mind, can glimpse the potential consequences of her and other's choices before they make them, with Mind seemingly being the aspect heavily tied to decisions. Then there's the less central character of Kankri, the Seer of Blood, who in his life on post-scratch Alternia as the Signless was able to gleam visions of the world and friendships from his past life where trolls were able to live peacefully regardless of blood color, with Blood being the aspect tied to unity and connections between people. Heroes of Doom are similar, with Sollux and Mituna having visions of the apocalypse. However, this may have more to do with their innate Psychic Powers than anything else.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: Both Reynir and Lalli have a form of this. Reynir's Icelandic magic tradition is the only one of the two traditions that is associated with full-on visions of the future, but Lalli seems to be getting much more short-term warnings, only some of which can be explained by his magical vision that is supposed to be geared toward seeing a larger range of spirits than Reynir can.
  • Far Out There: Tax has a sixth sense about places that make Stilez mad, which is the only reason why she's the alive Morality Pet to Far Out There's furry girl version of Deadpool.

    Web Original 
  • Apollo and Hera in Thalia's Musings. They're both prophecy deities who can see visions of the future.
  • The inhabitants of Frieza Planet 419 (Kanassa) in Dragon Ball Z Abridged have the power to see the future.
  • The Pythia in Greek Ninja.
  • Worm: The Thinker classification of parahuman abilities reflects any means of accessing information that one shouldn't have. Precognition is one expression of that, though most parahuman precogs can't give more than the vaguest confirmation whether a given plan is a good or bad idea, such as a number or color. There are some powerful ones though:
    • Dinah Alcott sees probabilities. She can give the odds of a future event happening to within five decimal places.
    • Also Contessa, who has a form of precognition that lets her see guaranteed paths to the outcomes she desires. And unlike other forms of prescience, it can't be countered by other precogs.
    • The Simurgh is technically blind in the present, and can only "see" past and future timelines. She doesn't have other senses. Of course, this just means she can see one second into the future and use that as her primary sense...
    • It's eventually explained that precognitives in Worm are not actually seeing the future, but their powers operate by generating unbelievably detailed simulations or models of the world around them and extrapolating future events. This is also why most precog powers interfere with each other: a precog power cannot accurately predict the actions of another precog without duplicating that precog's power itself, which is beyond the scope of most of their abilities.

    Western Animation 
  • In Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "The Meat Zone"; Meatwad gains the power to see the future, and Shake tries to use his abilities to win the lottery or find oil.
  • Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls seems to have a variation of this power. According to his AMA, he can see "A KALEIDOSCOPE OF TEMPORAL PROBABILITY WITH FLUCTUATING RANGE!"
  • Pinkie Pie of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has her "Pinkie Sense", in which specific twitches and tics of her body (or combinations thereof) indicate certain future events; for example, her tail twitching indicates something's going to fall.
  • Oracles are one of the nine main covens in The Owl House who primarily use spells centering around communing with the spirits of the dead, telepathy, and divining the future. While it isn't directly addressed by the narritive, it's also one of only two schools of traditional magic that Luz is able to use (along with Potions) since it mostly relies on manipulating magical artifacts like Crystal Balls rather than a witch's own power.
  • Peek-A-Blue of She-Ra: Princess of Power who "sees" through the eyes on her peacock-like tail.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Garnet can do a variation with her Third Eye. Instead of one clear future, she can see multiple paths the future can take. She doesn't have a true sense of the actual probability of each future though; the episode "Pool Hopping" revolves around her realizing this herself, acknowledging that her failure to accurately predict some of the more recent events in the show were because she kept treating Steven as a child, and so kept dismissing scenarios where he performed mature actions.
      Garnet: Time is like a river. It splits into creeks, or pools into lakes, or careens down waterfalls. I have the map, and I steer the ship.
    • Sapphire also has this ability, which is where Garnet gets hers from. In a blink-and-you'll-miss moment in "Jail Break", you can see she comes to a stop exactly where Ruby will be able to see her a second before she appears. In her later appearance she uses it blatantly, though her Future Vision doesn't seem to be as advanced as Garnet's; while Garnet can see multiple outcomes, Sapphire only saw one outcome for the rebel attack in "The Answer".
    • Inverted with Padparadscha. Her future vision doesn't work correctly and she can only see things that have already happened. Due to this, she's a lot happier and more emotional than Sapphire.
    • White Diamond appears to be able either read minds or see things entire galaxies away. She shows knowledge of events that occurred on Earth, such as Pink Diamond faking her shattering (which not even the other Diamonds knew) and details of Steven's life, despite being an extreme shut-in who hasn't left the Gem Homeworld in "eons". However, she doesn't always fully understand what she sees, as she thinks that Steven was created as a Meat Puppet for his mother, instead of being his own person.
  • Lion-O of Thunder Cats and Thunder Cats 2011 through the power of the Sword of Omens.
    • Cheetara could also do this in the original show, though using this power was incredibly taxing for her. Hence why they relied more on the sword.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Chris Kirkman

With the help of the Emotion Lord, his own future self, Chris is able to see a brief glimpse of the future.

Liam's Musical ...

The Farseers

Bruno Madrigal

Alternative Title(s): Precognition, Clairvoyance

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder You Know That Show... Trope Launch Pad Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top

Chris Kirkman

With the help of the Emotion Lord, his own future self, Chris is able to see a brief glimpse of the future.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (2 votes)

Example of:

Main / Seers

Media sources:

Report

Chris Kirkman

Liam's Musical ...

The Farseers

Bruno Madrigal