Sudden, vivid memories of past events that appear in your mind, often used in movies or stories to show what happened before.
From 'flash' (sudden appearance) + 'back' (return to earlier time). Emerged in early 20th century cinema to describe a narrative technique of jumping to earlier scenes.
Flashbacks became a filmmaking superpower because human memory doesn't work like a straight line—we constantly jump around in our thoughts, so showing a character's random memory made stories feel more psychologically real and emotionally powerful.
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