There may well always be signs, but standard inspections may not reveal these problems.
For example the BOAC Comet aircraft were very well inspected but the problems didn't show up on inspection until a very expensive test rig was built.
Oil filters and fuel filters can fatigue and not be noticed during inspections as the fatigue is internal to a sealed unit, the manufacturer of which will have standard MTBF figures that will be used to determine replacement schedules. Most places work to within 2sd of the MTBF, if working on a Gaussian distribution, so 0.15% of units would fail before replaced if following this, that in a lot of industries is the standard.