Connecting the Dots

As many know, I am an avid reader. Sometimes, I feel as though i have read almost every good book out there. One thing I have noticed throughout every novel is that no good author puts something in without good reason. I forgot this while reading Great Expectations, and therefore could not find the truth for the ending. Once i reached the end of the book, and found out who the mysterious benefactor really was, I immediately remembered a scene earlier in the book-not where Pip first met the criminal though, but the meeting where Pip got the coin. When i first read that chapter, i had thought, how does this connect to the purpose of the novel, or even relevant to the plot? It made an interesting story, but I couldn't figure out why the author had included it. At first, I thought that it might have had something to do with showing more of the characters personality traits, but that was ruled out as those traits had already been shown. Once I had read the ending though, it had made sense-it was a sign of things to come for Pip. By the time I had read about Pip becoming a gentleman, i had forgotten about the coin-the first ever that was Pips, and not claimed by his sister. I think if i had remembered that, an connected it to what I had read in other books, i could have foreseen his benefactor, or at least thought of it once, instead of what the author wanted us to think. My favorite kind of book-the one that has stuff in the beginning that you forget about or don't know the truth behind until the plot spirals together and everything is revealed, and all loose ends are tied.

Are there any other instances in the novel that were not obvious from the start that anyone noticed?