There was also much wit in Bartlett's use of a parodic iambic pentameter and in the tissue of references to Shakespeare's plays: to Richard II in the image of deposition, to both parts of Henry IV in the portrait of a rogue Prince Harry rejoicing in, and ultimately rejecting, low life and even to Hamlet in the idea of Diana's ghost as an instrument of prophecy.
The arc of his involvement with what is now the world's most menacing terrorist group mirrors many others who now hold senior positions in the group: first a battle against an invading army, then a score to be settled with an ancient sectarian foe, and now, a war that could be acting out an end of days prophecy.
All that does is – it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Over a chintzy soundtrack, the voiceover to one recounted: "They decide to shun social media prophecy and return to musical naturism – just the two of them and some instruments and actual live contact with real people, in the form of intimate gigs in dirty places".
Though I remember it as being funny, the old stationmaster's prophecy ("Some nights, the signal bell rings and the train comes a-screaming and a-tearing through"), not to mention the sound and light effects that accompanied it, were absolutely terrifying.
Still maddened by the werewolf-shaped bullet prophecy, Mitchell cuts his own arm to try forcing him to feed.
Fitzgerald's absurd prophecy was that America would face a great "national testing" in the very near future: "The idea that we're the greatest people in the world because we have the most money in the world is ridiculous.
If you're going to say we're all doomed and there's no point in doing anything, you become part of the problem and create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and are no longer basically of any use to humanity because you've just said this is how it's going to be and have now disempowered yourself.
Though his prophecy of the failure of the punishment-oriented system of mainly Conservative postwar governments was repeatedly borne out, he never managed to translate his vision into workable reform.
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In Istanbul he placed in a cradle a fish dressed in infant's clothing, dramatising a prophecy that the messiah would be born under the sign of Pisces.
