A fork of Rural Dictionary
When a movie or TV program suspends the current events to let the viewers see something that happened in a character's past. Depending on what you're watching, flashbacks are done either to build character/plot or they are simply a way to make a joke out of past events.
"Family Guy is famous for it's random flashbacks" "Flashbacks are the third deadliest killer in animes; most of time someone dies, it's during a flashback."