Unpacking the Foreshadowing and Symbolism in Labyrinth

If you grew up watching Labyrinth (1986) on a fuzzy VHS, you probably clocked the goblins, the songs, and David Bowie’s trousers. What you may have missed, buried in Sarah’s messy bedroom and sprinkled across the film like goblin glitter, is a treasure trove of foreshadowing and psychological breadcrumbs. This isn’t just set dressing, not at all. It’s purposeful, it’s meaningful.. it’s a map of things to come. By the time the Goblin King shows up with his crystal bribes, Sarah has already conjured her own adventure from the junk she’s been hoarding.

Below, we break down the most telling objects, the film’s funhouse-mirror logic, and why a scrapbook might be the most important prop in the whole story. How do you get into the Labyrinth? Well… you gets in here… Unpacking the Foreshadowing and Symbolism in Labyrinth.

The Toybox Prophecy: Characters Hiding in Plain Sight

Sarah’s room isn’t just a room, it’s the story engine. The characters and challenges she faces are prefigured in her belongings, while the emotional spine (her mother, jealousy, growing up) is spelled out in photos, clippings and toys. The labyrinth is her mind, and the clues are everywhere here inside four small walls.

Hoggle

This one’s obvious, but it cuts deeper when you think about it. Hoggle is the heart of Labyrinth . He’s the goblin who chooses friendship, who learns to trust and be trusted. He personifies Sarah’s journey and transformation, because, in a way, she is Hoggle. To run home that point, you can easily spot a Hoggle bookend perched in Sarah’s room, startlingly close to the final design of the film’s character, proportions, stance, all of it. The implication is clear: Hoggle is literally propping up her world (in this case, her stack of fantasy books where she tends to lose herself). He’s a support with wobbly loyalty, flawed, brave, and ultimately true—just like in the story.

“Should you need us, for any reason at all..”

Ludo

Ludo is BIG deal, he’s a monsterously huge creatture, who becomes Sarahs friend and proetctor. It’s no suprprise then to spot a plush Ludo lounging by the door (maybe guarding the door), gentle giant energy, soft and harmless. In the labyrinth, Ludo is exactly that: fearsome to behold, but a teddy bear who cries (for) rocks. The plush telegraphs Sarah’s instinct: what looks monstrous may be comforting when you actually face it. Sarah find her humility within this buling giant.

“Ludo… Scared!”

Sir Didymus

If Sir Didymus is anything , it’s the fearless if not reckless side to Sarah’s persona. As with many of the other characters, Sir Didymus can be found inside Sarahs room. Here he looks squirrelly, but he’s recognisably the valiant, overconfident knight with the eye patch on the correct side. Didymus is Sarah’s gallantry, the performative courage of storybooks. Noble, ridiculous, and (every so often) useful.

Jareth

The Goblin King Jareth is a huge part of Sarah’s journey. He embodies Sarah’s fears, desires, and confusion at the threshold between childhood and adulthood, powerful only insofar as she invests him with power. He’s not pure evil but a seductive antagonist, a projection of her imagination that tests her at every stage. Much like the other characters in the film, Jareth is the manifestation of real-life things, and inside Sarah’s bedroom, Jareth is actually an amalgamation of Sarah’s life. We’ll talk about some of the more poignant elements later, but here in Sarah’s toy box, Jareth’s physical form derives from a Jareth-like figure with a crystal in his left hand and a riding crop raised above, wearing a crown. It’s a distilled version of his role, but most definitely the Goblin King in physical form. The fact that it’s sat on her desk means that she’s been staring at this character for a while.

The Fireys

The Fireys are carefree, lanky creatures with flaming red pelts who revel in chaotic play, casually detaching and swapping their limbs, and even conjuring up fire, captured in their song “Chilly Down.”
They’re not malicious, but their heedless fun becomes dangerous to Sarah when they try to remove her head! A  simplified figure of a Firey like plushie sits among Sarah’s things. In the film, the Fire Gang’s cheerful violence plays like a nightmare with an unsettling mix of playful indifference and danger. Childhood can be fun , but also destructive. There comes a point all in our child hoods where we have to start taking responiosbility for our actions. It’s fun—until your head’s off.

The Cleaners

On a shelf lurks what looks like an LP/book cover showing a spiked, blade-churning device. Early script drafts reportedly refer to The Cleaners as the “Slashing Machine,” which matches the art. That chase sequence becomes literalised anxiety: adulthood’s gears will grind you up if you don’t think your way out. The shelf clue says: this fear’s already catalogued in Sarah’s brain.

The Ballroom Music Box

On top of pyshcial objects that Sarah pulls in to her fantasy, there is also an audio cue that playfully forshadows a later scene. Sarah has turned on a curious music box, and the camera passes this item when we first join the troubled teen in her bedroom room.  The box is playing “As the World Falls Down,”, a beautiful peice of music that plays out in Sarah’s fantasy, later on in the Ballroom scene. The box itself it’s an ornimetal gazebo with a miniature Princess in a beautiful white gown, the perfect dream of glamour and romance for a young teenage girl. Sarah “becomes” this princess later in the ball room scene, becoming enamored, almost hpynotised by this perfect Princess fantasy of music, dancing and romance. A wonderful but dangerous fantasy, one that Jareth conjures up to entice Sarah to forget about Toby and her goal of reahcing the center of the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth Model/Game

This one a little on the nose, but possible the most impoartnat toy in Sarah’s little toybox. A game board, possible a mable madness styled balancing game,sits on Sarah’s desk, depitcing a hedge maze, its patterns echoing the film’s set design. Sarah is a playful a fantasist; she has already faced the maze before she walked into it. When the walls rearrange, that’s not the goblins tricking her, it’s her own shifting expectations and self desctructive nature catching up with her. Sarah is impulsive and reckless, already gambling her brothers life for a little peace and quite. The shifting Labyrinth is just another way of Sarah shifting blame, and shirking responosbility.  It’s not fair… but that’s life.

Deepening the Fantasy

It’s not just toys that feed Sarah’s fantasies, there are many other elements that are key factors in The Labyrinth’s design, characters and adveture.

Merlin

Merlin is Sarah’s Old English Sheepdog, who we first see standing in for Jarath when the film starts. It’s probably important to note that Sarah is reading out-loud lines from a book called “The Labyrinth”, and reading the same lines she feeds the real Jarath at the films conclusion. It’s clear form her introduction that Sarah’s head is firmly in the clouds, filled with adventure and fantasy, it’s no wonder that she pulls Merlin in with her to the fantasy land. Her trusted friend becomes a trusted (if not cowedly) steed to Sir Didymus, called Ambrosius.

Outside Over There

Where the Wild Things is a book is visible in Sarah’s room, but the real world refercne here is a bit of an odd one. Written by Maurice Sendak, the fantasy author also wrote another book that almost shut down the production of The Labyrinth in a lawsuit. Sendak thought the plot was too close to his own story Outside Over There, an illustrated children’s book where a baby girl is stolen away by goblins and her sister must rescue her “over there!” In both stories, the central character must decide to leave their fantasy world behind to return to reality, having gained a greater understanding of themselves. To settle the Lawsuit, Sendak Recived a credit statement at end of the film , reading “Jim Henson acknowledges his debt to the works of Maurice Sendak”. It’s an odd fact, but one that we have to respect, as Outside Over There looks to be the progenitor story behind Labyrinth’s script.

Relativity Stairs

It seems that Sarah also has a love of art, as shown by a massive MC Escher’s “Relativity” print hanging beside Sarah’s bed. Like many of the items in Sarah’s room, this is not just set dressing, but the fabrick in which her fanatasy is woven from. The final chase in the Goblin King’s castle riffs directly on Escher’s impossible staircases.  Adolescence is an architecture where up and down trade places depending on your angle, disorientates and confuses anyone who enters it.. The rules don’t stop changing until you step outside the puzzle. The film even pays tribute to the art prints use, with an acknowledgment to the Escher estate  given in the credits for the film.

The Love Affair Scrapbook

Probably one of the most poigant and influential parts of the puzzle come in the form of family troubles that have clearly caused Sarah to retreat deep into her fantasy world. We get brief glimpses of Sarah’s scrapbook that world builds Sarah’s family history. We know that her Sarah lives with her Dad Robert , Step Mother Irene (all these name are revealed in the novalisation of the book) and her baby half-brother Toby. But it’s the pages of the scrapbook that fill in the blanks to what may have happend to her mother. The pages reveals that her Mother Linda is a famous actress and that she had an on-off relationhip with another actor called Jeremy, who looks just like Jareth.

Whilst any views on Linda fate for the film is fair game (the novel makes it very clear she is alive), it’s easier to follow the bread crumbs laid out for us in the scrapbook, and assume that Linda left her husband Robert for a more glamerous (and child-less) life-style with Jeremy. Sarah feels abandoned by her Mother, and that Jeremy has taken away her life. At the same time, she is clearly quite taken by the handsome and charming actor, as he is transformed into a seductive antagonist in her fanatsy. When Sarah is left alone (abandoned again) to look after Toby, she imagines Jeremy/Jareth taking away another peice of her family. However, this time, Sarah has the power to actually fight back. It’s testiment to great story telling that such back stories have been fed to us, even if its vague.  The story is there, leaving you to interpretate it in any way you wish.

Beyond the Goblins

When Labyrinth first graced our screens, it was easy to miss so may of the films little easter eggs hidden throiugh out the movies opening moments. Many of us missed the big screen debute, and lived the fantasy through the grainy little screens of our 14″ TV’s and VHS setups, which did extactly give you the HDR 4K experience we can enjoy today. It’s easier now to absorb the wealth of imagery and imagination that fed into Sarah’s pyche. Her “labyrinth” was a maze of stories, toys, music, images and family trauma all fused into a single world of magic and mayhem.  The film hands you the key in the first five minutes, quietly tucked among a scrapbook, a music box, and a print on the wall. If you missed it, that’s fine. The goblins were always louder. But the room was always telling the truth.

Sarah’s fanatsy incoperated her world, strung togther through her adolescence emotions and the growing pressure to become a young adult. We see her inner struggles when she meets the “Trash” lady, casually wading through the junk of Sarah’s life. By the end, she doesn’t burn her collection of “junk”; she reframes it. When her friends appear in her mirror and she says she’ll still need them “every now and again,” it’s the healthy version of keeping your toys. You don’t live in the fantasy, you visit it when you choose.

Labyrinth endures because it’s not just a quest; it’s a pressure test for becoming a person. The film dresses its psyche in goblins and glitter, but the message is rugged: grow up without giving up wonder. Keep the stories, lose the chain… and Dance! Dance the magic… dance!