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alt title(s): Chekhovs Gun "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
— Playwright Anton Chekhov (Антон Чехов). (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)
Chekhov's gun is when you have something conspicuously introduced early on in the story, but which doesn't become important until later on! It happens whenever Shakespeare loudly mentions how he loves Pop Tarts, then later, he eats a bunch of Pop Tarts!
Chekhov's Gun is the literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story whose significance does not become clear until later on. For example, a character may find a mysterious object that eventually becomes crucial to the plot, but at the time of finding the object, it does not seem to be important.
Although many people consider the phrase "Chekhov's gun" to be the equivalent of foreshadowing, the statements the author made about it can be more properly interpreted as meaning "do not include any unnecessary elements in a story."
Also known as " The Law Of Conservation Of Detail." When used properly, this rule gives the item in question some degree of presence before being used, enough to prevent a potential Ass Pull that might jar and grate on the viewer. It can, however, turn out to be a Red Herring after all.
As a result of the success of franchises like Lost or Harry Potter, viewers and fans of Myth Arc-laden and/or carefully written shows and books have become accustomed to obsessing over minuscule details and looking out for Chekhov's Guns everywhere and anywhere...whether they actually exist or not. We call these Epileptic Trees and Wild Mass Guessing.
Chekhov's Gun Depot also stocks:
Not to be confused with Chekov's Gun. Compare Schrodinger's Gun for a competing dramatic weapons dealer. Contrast to a Red Herring, where something shown early appears to be significant, but turns out not to be.
The Magnetic Plot Device can be a standing Chekhov's Gun to blame the plot on. The Impossible Task may require one. Also see Asspull which is what the viewer can sometimes confuse this with if they miss the gun the first time (or if the gun was edited out in the TV version).
This Trope Contains Spoilers By Necessity. Read At Your Own Risk.
Examples:
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General
- Wedding cakes. Whenever you see a big wedding cake in film or TV, you know it is going to be splattered all over someone. In fact, this ought to be a subtrope.
- Any big fancy cake will do. So will big fluffy cream pies.
- It's official. Links to Chekhov's Cake will now redirect to Carrying A Cake. I'm not sure how to set up an alt. title for the page, but it's a working link nonetheless.
- Ditto the chandelier in an opera house. It's gonna fall, although frequently subverted.
- What, no mention of the random fruit stands or people carrying glass across a street? So very prevalent that whenever either one is used these days, it's lampshaded (and usually mocked) without fail.
Anime and Manga
- Ouran High School Host Club hangs a lampshade on this. The device that sets up the plot of the whole series is a large, expensive vase that will be broken. The vase is seen in the foreground of most of the shots leading up to the breakage...and is indicated by a large, blinking arrow. The blinking arrow returns in later episodes to point in every device and person whom will set the plot of the episode.
- The First's Necklace that Tsunade gives Naruto becomes very important after the timeskip...
- Subverted: During their match, Neji mocks Naruto for favoring one of the most basic jutsu available, while he himself prefers his family's bloodline-specific jutsu. Naruto defeats him using a trick involving that same Jutsu. The subversion comes in that Naruto uses that jutsu for just about every fight he's in, as well as cleaning his room.
- Later on, the hole in the arena Naruto had to create to beat Neji turns out to be very important for the success of Shikamaru in his match.
- Wendy Garret in Gun X Sword carries around a gun given to her by her brother, Michael, when their home was attacked. It only has one bullet. There may as well be a large tag on the handle saying "FUTURE PLOT DEVICE".
- In Yu-Gi-Oh!, if a character even explicitly obtains a given card (from a trade, a victory, or even just though picking it) rather than having it in their deck, it will be absolutely critical to their victory in at least one duel that season.
- Except Pandora's copy of Dark Magician, which Yugi has never used.
- If this troper remembers correctly, in the anime didn't Yugi ultimately use this same Dark Magician to beat Pandora in the end? It was even crucial to the plot that Yugi had a Dark Magician to summon.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, Ayase Yue's Orbis Sensualium Pictus and Saotome Haruna's Imperium Graphices were both created well before they became useful. Both Pactio artifacts were the main way for the Ala Alba (not named that yet) to escape and defeat enemies during the arc. Nodoka's Diarium Ejus isn't as distant a creation to use timeline, while Chisame's Sceptrum Virtuale was an outright Asspull which they also lampshade both when it's created and later when a similar asspull is done with Kazumi's Oculus Corvinus is made.
- One Piece is fond of this, though how critical the Chekhov's gun is varies per use. Among examples are a rather odd pinwheel worn in the hat of Genzo, the sheriff of Nami's home village. This pinwheel has two Chekhovs to its name. First, it inspires the attack Luffy uses to remove the villain-of-the-arc's giant sea cow from the fight. But the true Chekhov comes at the end, when a flashback reveals that Genzo put the pinwheel in his hat to make the then-baby Nami laugh. To everyone's surprise, it worked, and so Genzo continued to wear it as a way of supporting Nami as she struggled, removing it only when Nami left with the Straw Hats.
- In the Davy Back Fight arc, Luffy is outfitted with an afro, thinking that it will make him stronger in his upcoming fight. Then, at the end of the fight, a shard of mirror caught in the afro proves crucial to his victory.
- Or, to give an even better example, Luffy's brother gives him a piece of blank paper early on in the Alabasta arc. The paper's purpose is left unknown for several hundred chapters/episodes (depending on whether you follow the manga or anime.)
- The third movie has Usopp use an actual boomerang in order to attack the big bad, but as it turns out, it was fairly useless. However, it's later used to lure a bunch of Horn Eaters belonging to the big bad, by imitating a pair of horns, into a ravine, where they are trapped.
- Three words: Sanji's wanted poster.
- In the first part of the ecchi OVA Labyrinth Of Flames, we briefly catch a glimpse of a Soviet T-34 tank during maintenance. Its reappearance towards the end of the second episode (powered up by Kalinka, no less) doubles as the resident Lovable Sex Maniac's Crowning Moment Of Awesome. Or So I Heard... ... WHAT?!
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, when he leaves his home village Rossiu is given the old book the village leader possessed, and it is revealed that neither of them know how to read it. Subverted, in that Rossiu tries to translate the book, but discovers that it was pure gibberish.
- That episode also has the giant robot that appears early on in the episode and only gets used by the village elder at the end. That's right, it's Chekhov's Gunman.
- In Blade Of The Phantom Master, the main character attacks a gun dealer about half-way through the movie after he is shown a little gun designed for hiding in a sleeve, which he keeps after he tosses the gun dealer into the sea. Guess what the penultimate blow to the bad guy uses.
- Pokemon Special gets away with this more often than is healthy for the reader's mind. Lt. Surge's gloves, the feathers on Yellow's hat, a shard of the Grand Meteor (multiple times), and the list goes on. Almost every object explicitly discussed in dialogue returns later in the saga — or even in a completely separate saga — to turn the plot around.
- The anime gets away with this a few times too, the most prominent being in "Pika And Goliath" — Ash revealed he kept the Thunderstone he got all the way back in "Electric Shock Showdown" in case Pikachu changed its mind about evolving.
- In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, the eponymous reservoir, while it appears halfway through the story, does not seem relevant until the final arc, where a flashback and a reveal make it retroactively the most important location in quite possibly the entire CLAMP multiverse. Shoulda known CLAMP wasn't just throwing in random words for the hell of it.
- Gankutsuou has many. One is a literal gun placed in a desk drawer by Fernand. The two suits of armor outside the Morcerf mansion are actually giant mecha. Then there's the watch given to Albert by The Count when they first met.
- Stock in trade for ''Eat-Man, where Bolt may spend the entire adventure snacking on a bag foll of bolts and other small machine parts. At the climax however, he'll swallow the last bolt, then whip a BFG he'd just finished eating the last of.
- Clannad: Remember those orbs of light Miyazawa and the Girl in the Illusionary World were talking about? Those'll really come in handy much later.
- A few times in Ranma 1/2: the horned mongoose whistle Shinnosuke gave Akane ten years ago turns out to be the key to pacifying and sealing the Orochi of Ryugenzawa. The photo of Akane that Nabiki snapped (and tried to sell to Ranma, but was bought by Ryouga) gave him the impetus to save himself from a rockslide, and was later used by the bad guys to kidnap her.
- In Macross Frontier, Sheryl loses one of her earrings (inherited from her mother) when Alto crashes into her in mid-performance. She goes nuts looking for it, but later tells him to keep it as a good luck charm during combat (at which point it's lost forever.) It is later revealed that the earrings are made of Fold Quartz, a material that can transmit thoughts and emotions across the galaxy, and she (and Alto) use the remaining one during the Grand Finale to communicate with the Vajra. It became so important, the Blu-Ray release of Macross Zero went back and added the earrings in a scene with Sheryl's ancestors.
- In Sailor Moon, when Sailor Jupiter is introduced in the first season of the anime her rose-shaped earrings sparkle with reflected light. They seem insigifncant until the end of the fourth season, when Usagi is trapped in Queen Nehelenia's illusions and loses the will to press on to save Mamoru and Chibi-usa. One of Jupiter's earrings falls off and Usagi finds it later; the rose shape reminds her of her love for Mamoru, and she jolts herself out of her illusion to continue to save Mamoru.
Comic Books
- The early 1990s Marvel Comics series Sleepwalker featured the title alien's Imaginator, a teleportation device that can be used by the Sleepwalkers to teleport almost anywhere they can imagine, and to imprison the monsters they capture. Sleepwalker becomes trapped in Rick Sheridan's mind when Rick mistakes the Imaginator for a weapon and takes it away from him, before the device is later retrieved by Cobweb and used as part of his Xanatos Gambit to invade Earth and frame Sleepwalker as the invasion's leader.
- In the second issue of Villains United, one of the miniseries leading up to Infinite Crisis, we see a pair of weapons mounted on Scandal's wall when she's writing a love letter. It's the first subtle hint that she is a Dark Action Girl instead of the non-combatant Middle Management Mook she had appeared to be to that point.
- A cloneworks for xeno-anatomy and a villain with innate power-nullifying abilities both showed up early in the latest volume of Empowered. Both of those and the suit becomes invisible, wearer does not trick from an earlier collection become major factors in the last chapter.
- In an early issue of the Affectionate Parody title Quantum & Woody, the titular duo set their differing approaches to crimefighting: Quantum has a fully-laden utility belt and a multi-functional outfit, while Woody carries, quote, "[a] 9mm Beretta and a Zippo lighter". The Beretta sees occasional use throughout the series, while the Zippo doesn't get another mention until one of the last issues of the Akklaim run (which is to say, ever), when both of them are locked in a cage being slowly lowered into a pool of toxic waste, by a superpowered mercenary they had just tried, and failed, to stop with an all-or-nothing energy blast and a nuclear explosion. While Quantum recites a prayer, Woody, blinded by the fumes, desperately tries to strike the lighter to see in the "dark". The flame ignites those same fumes and blasts the cage and its occupants to (relative) safety.
- Y The Last Man: Yorick's gas mask features throughout the whole series as a handy way to disguise the fact that he's The One Guy. But that's not the Gun. This trope comes into play in the penultimate issue once Alter fires tear gas into the building Yorick is in, assuming that he'll be pacified by the gas. Thanks to Chekhovs Gun, no such luck. Because of its prominence, it might actually qualify as a Chekhovs Boomerang.
- The information pollen in Transmetropolitan, which seems to be just one among the many random, wacky elements in the story but which gives Spider a degenerative brain disease.
- The appearance of Mister Mind in the first issue of ''52''. He's mentioned off-hand maybe twice after that, and then disappears for almost fifty issues before reappearing in the penultimate chapted, having been revealed as the Big Bad.
Film
Literature
- THE ONE RING. It is just this random magical ring that Bilbo wins from Gollum in The Hobbit, but in Lord Of The Rings it's revealed that it's the most dangerous artifact in existence, and crucial for the return of Sauron, driving the entire plot.
- Almost all of the items given to the Fellowship by Galadriel. Whether it's characters not being spotted from afar due to their elvish cloaks, a supernatural flashlight, magic dirt, or even a belt that only serves to identify a dead character for sure.
- Well, except for Gimli's Galadriel-hair. He just made a necklace out of it...
- As examples of this trope turning into an Asspull, the scene where Galadriel gives these items to the Fellowship was edited out of the theatrical release, yet most of them are specifically referenced during the remainder of the trilogy.
- Perseus, prior to his fight against Medusa, gets a number of gifts from the Gods. Every one of them turns out to be critically useful, making this Older Than Dirt.
- Nightmare by willo davis roberts. About 1/3 into the story or so it mentions a side character finding shotgun shells in the back of their RV. These end up saving them from death when the same side charcter uses them as a diversion making the big bad's sidekick drop his shotgun.
- Larry Niven might just have pulled off the longest delay between the appearance of Chekhov's Gun and it's firing in the history of modern literature within the boundaries of his Known Space universe. In his 1966 short story At The Core, Niven introduces the Quantum II hyperdrive, which is capable of moving a starship a light year in 1.2 seconds (as opposed to the Quantum I hyperdrive, which moves at a mere 3 days to the lightyear). In Niven's 2006 novel Ringworld's Children, the Quantum II hyperdrive is used for it's ultimate purpose: to unilaterally end the Fringe War by removing the Ringworld from Known Space entirely. Thirty-eight years from mention to ultimate use just has to be some sort of record...
- A subversion occurs in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Maskerade. Several characters point out, in increasingly ominous tones, that the enormous crystal chandelier in the Ankh-Morpork Opera House looks like "an accident waiting to happen", but unlike in Phantom Of The Opera (which Maskerade parodies), the chandelier completely fails to be dropped on anyone. Not that the bad guy didn't try, mind you.
- Used straight in The Colour Of Magic where Rincewind rescues a small green frog from the ocean that ends up saving his life.
- Another instance in the same book has Rincewind throwing a bottle of wine at someone in an effort to distract him and escape; the man just uses magic to halt the bottle in mid air. About half a scene later, the magic wears off, and the bottle continues its interrupted journey, right into the face of a guard, distracting him and giving Rincewind the opportunity to escape.
- Also used straight in The Light Fantastic. Having been established as a pathetic wizard in The Colour Of Magic, Rincewind is revealed to have come by this trait after reading a powerful grimoire and getting a single, powerful spell stuck in his brain. It is this exact spell that must be cast at the end of Fantastic to avert complete annihilation of the Disc.
- In Small Gods, the opening paragraphs discuss eagles picking up tortoises and dropping them to crack their shells, and says something to the effect of a tortoise possibly taking advantage of this someday. Close to the end of the book Om, a god trapped in turtle form, gets an eagle to drop him on Vorbis's head (by threatening said eagle's sexual organs), killing Vorbis, and causing the crowd that's watching to become believers of Om.
- Subverted in Feet of Clay where the main mystery of the book is how Lord Vetinari keeps getting poisoned despite his food being safe. Repeated references are made to the horrible green wallpaper in his bedroom, and the implication is that it may have something to do with it, emphasized by the popular theory that Napoleon was killed by green wallpaper (arsenic was once commonly used in green paint). The wallpaper has nothing to do with it, and Pratchett has admitted to getting emails that amount to "We were sure it was the wallpaper, you bastard!"
- Of course, when one re-reads the book, one discovers that the clues to the real murder weapon were there all along ...
- Similarly to Bond, at the beginning of the Alex Rider books and the film version of Stormbreaker, Alex is given a set of gadgets — all of which will be used. In fact, most spy films involving gadgets do this, as if the equivalent of Q has the ability to see into the future.
- Happens often enough in the Harry Potter series that fans used to obsess over seemingly every little detail in the books in an often fruitless attempt to figure out what would happen in the coming book or books... but only a few picked up on Dumbledore's puter-outer, i.e. Deluminator, introduced at the very beginning of book one, which became of somewhat vital importance in the seventh and final book, a sort of long-term Chekhov's Gun that was apparently too subtle and too weirdly-used for the fandom to easily notice. Of course, it's pointedly reintroduced towards the beginning of the book, making it suddenly a whole lot less subtle and a more traditional Chekhov's Gun, but veiling its importance for that long, in hindsight, is impressive given we're talking about roughly a few million obsessive fans here.
- Of course, given that the Deluminator is suddenly attributed properties and abilities that were never even hinted at in the first book which just happen to be of vital importance to the plot of the seventh, one has to wonder how much this was planned in advance.
- ...and in contrast, the "chess game" scene in the climax of the first book was expected, quite firmly and very widely, to be of help in predicting one of the people who was going to die in the final book. It wasn't.
- In the second book, Dumbledore introduces Fawkes the Phoenix and spends five minutes recounting the various abilities of the Phoenix species - heavy lifting, bravery, healing tears - all of which are used in the final scene, to the extent that Harry might as well have replied "Thanks a lot, Q - sorry, Headmaster..."
- Several times for Peter Pettigrew. For one thing, he posed for the first two and a half books as Ron's harmless rat, and turned out to be the responsible for betraying Harry's parents to Voldemort. Then at the end of the third book Harry spares his life, and in the fourth Peter receives a synthetic, silver hand to replace the one he severed as a sacrifice to resurrect Voldemort. By having his life spared, he owed a life debt to Harry, and thusly spared Harry's life in return. The silver hand choked Peter to death and saving Harry.
- The silver hand caused many people to believe that Peter would kill Remus with it. He didn't.
- Something I noticed recently - in the first chapter of book 4, Voldemort tells Pettigrew that he will soon be of use, assisting him in a task that many of his followers would cut off their right hands for...my mother gave me a strange look when I lol'd.
- In the 4th book there are several times when bad things happen to Harry, with a bug just happening to be there. It is later revealed that the nosy reporter can turn into that bug and had been spying on Harry.
- The various Horcruxes tended to be Chekhov's Guns more often than not. Figuring out who "RAB" was before the last book came out was easy, but remembering that there was a locket in the house of Black, not so much. And who would've remembered about the diadem hidden in the Room of Requirement?
- The diadem was very well hidden, because when we first see it JKR calls it a tiara.
- This Troper saw the locket connection but thought it was a bit too coincidental. There's a post-HBP Leaky Cauldron interview with J.K. Rowling (link?) and the first theory proposed was Regulus Black and the locket.
- The Priori Incantatem effect at the end of The Goblet of Fire has an error in the order of the murder victim ghosts coming out in the first edition - because Harry's mother was killed after his father, she should have come out before he did, but the order was reversed. This led to wild amounts of speculation as whether this was an error or some deeper foreshadowing into the events surrounding the death of Harry's parents... but Rowling later explained what happened: the American editor told her there was a "mistake" (which was actually the correct order) days prior to the release. Because he had spotted some such mistakes in the past, she switched the order without thinking about it. She noticed afterwards and it was fixed for the next printings as well as for the translations.
- And also, for much of the third book, we are supposed to believe that Sirius Black is a villain...despite the fact that in the very first chapter of the very first book, it was noted that Sirius helped get Harry to safety. He lent Hagrid his flying motorbike, remember? Yeah, I forgot, too.
- This is mentioned in the tavern scene in the third book. Hagrid had an upset rant about how he should've suspect something was wrong when that happened, and believed Sirius gave it away so he wouldn't be noticed while on the run - a flying motorcycle stands out pretty well.
- There are so many important Chekhov's Guns in the series, in fact, that they can often cause Continuity Lockout in The Movies. This Troper can't wait to see the plot-hole dancing in the Deathly Hallows movies, especially during the Malfoy Manor escape with no prior nods to the mirror, Dobby (outside of the second movie) or Aberforth.
- Within Order of the Phoenix, the mirror is a subversion: Sirius gives it to Harry as a secure way to get in touch in the event of an emergency. Harry has no intent to ever use it, not wanting to risk getting Sirius arrested. At the climax of the book, the mirror would have come in very handy, but by then Harry's forgotten all about it. Harry rediscovers the mirror as he's packing at the end. (It then becomes a Chekhovs Boomerang in Deathly Hallows.)
- Philip K Dick's Paycheck is almost entirely composed of this trope. The hero Jennings has just had his memory erased of the top secret project he was working on, only to discover that before it happened he arranged to substitute his paycheck with several seemingly trivial and useless items, including a small piece of wire. Then he's arrested, whereupon it turns out the wire is just the right size to pick the lock of the squad car's back door. It seems the project was a window into the future, which Jennings used to see what was going to happen to him, and so every single one of the items has some purpose to help him stay alive and out of the bad guys' clutches. Half the fun of the story is just seeing what purpose all of them have.
- The Sword Of Truth series features what is perhaps the most long-term genuine Gun. In the seventh book, Naked Empire, Prelate Annalina is arrested in the People's Palace by Nathan Rahl and thrown into its most secure dungeon cell, specifically designed to hold in magic-users. When she is eventually released, she leaves behind her Rada'Han, a collar meant to suppress the magical ability of whomever wears it, which she had meant to use on Nathan. When the final book of the series, Confessor, rolls around, Nicci is placed into custody to be delivered to Emperor Jagang in exchange for him and his Sisters of the Dark not destroying the world through the Boxes of Orden. Eventually, Richard manages to inflict Jagang with dreams of longing for Nicci, such that he leaves the Orden preparations to collect her. Once he arrives, Nicci wastes no time snapping the Rada'Han in that very cell around his neck.
- This is to say nothing of the Magic of Orden itself, which was introduced in book one, all but forgotten in book two, and then isn't so much as mentioned again until the final trilogy...at which point it becomes the key to victory on both sides.
- You call that a long-term Gun? Shar died at the beginning of book 1, and said that should richard need help of the night wisps, to say her name. He did it near the end of book 10.
- Are you all forgetting that the Sword of Truth itself, given to Richard in the first book, turns out to be the real key to unlocking the Magic of Orden in the last book, instead of all those magic prophecy books?
- The Lost World, the sequel to the Jurassic Park novel, subverts this. Early on in the novel, a trailer is mentioned as having a bear deterrent in the form of a button that causes thousands of volts of electricity to run across the outside surface of the trailer. Later on, while two T-Rexes are trying to push the trailer off of a cliff, a character accidentally activates it. It deters the Rexes for about five seconds.
- A more traditional gun is a candy bar wrapper that gets dropped by a character, an action that is given way more detail then it deserves. Until it attracts the raptors, that is.
- A particular kind of toxin is described in the first novel, as part of the process where the modified nuclei are implanted in the ovum. Later in the book, Grant finds himself trapped in the egg nursery by some raptors and several syringes' worth of the toxin...
- A subversion when that same toxin is explicitly mentioned in the second movie, and the character describing it makes specific mention of all its properties (such as it being so quick "you'd be dead before you felt the prick [of the needle].") The gun armed with this toxin is completely unable to save the character when it gets its sight stuck in a net, letting the two T.rexes tear him in half. The gun is then lost over a cliff.
- Subverted in 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C Clarke. In the beginning of the book a mechanism is constructed to deactivate the to-be-repaired HAL 9000 instantly in case it malfunctions again like it did in the first book. The remote control for this mechanism, a rigged pocket calculator, is given to one of the characters. Surprisingly, it is never used and in fact it turns out in the end of the book that it wouldn't have worked anyway because it had been disabled at some point of the story.
- Y.T.'s scary futuristic anti-rape condom ("dentata") in Snow Crash
- Also, Y.T.'s skateboard includes a sonic blast device that shatters glass. While this gets used effectively halfway through the novel, it becomes important at the end, when Uncle Enzo gets her a replacement, and is fighting Raven. He uses the sonic blast device to shatter all of Raven's glass knives.
- Another Neal Stephenson book, Anathem has a character suggest about one-quarter way in using a sextant as weapon against a heavily armed alien space vehicle. About three-quarters into the book, they use a sextant as part of their plan to invade said heavily armed alien space vehicle.
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Honour Guard, there is a very brief, off-handed scene at the beginning of the novel where Captain Daur ends up being handed a small, insignificant trinket by an old woman who seems insistent that he keep it. At the end of the novel, a psychic vision reveals to Daur and other Ghosts that this trinket is the firing key for Saint Sabbat's massive Chaos-frying psychic weapons system buried underneath her tomb. Just as planned.
- Honor Harrington gets this one in an interesting manner. After the events of the first book, in which Honor and her crew successfully destroy a Q-ship (essentially a warship disguised as a freighter) before it can spark a war, the ship's home nation demands Honor be extradited for murder charges on the grounds that she massacred the crew of an innocent freighter. It's an obvious propaganda ploy, and nobody pays much attention, but later in the series (after said war breaks out anyway), Honor is captured and the murder conviction the court handed down without her present is used as a pretext to ignore interstellar treaties dealing with the treatment of prisoners.
- The first book also has a Gun that used a bit earlier in the series: the beginning of the first book shows Honor's ship getting outfitted with a Gravity Lance, which she has to figure out a way to use in war games. It is repeatedly discussed how impractical the device is for real combat situation. This same ship is the one she used against the Q-ship mentioned above. In the end, the only way Honor can defeat the Q-ship is by using the Gravity Lance.
- The Gravity Lance was impractical. The reason it's the only way she can destroy the Q-ship is because it's the only effective weapon she really has because of the weapon refit (which stripped her ship of most of its conventional armaments), and she can only use it by getting suicidally close to the Q-ship. It's mentioned by several characters that she could have done a lot more damage to the Q-ship right off the bat if the ship hadn't been refitted at the beginning of the book. The only reason she won was because of overconfidence on the part of the Q-ship captain.
- There's a much more literal example in Honor Among Enemies: early on we see Honor practicing with her "antique" Colt M1911A1
 . Sure enough, later on she uses it to blow away a man who, like everyone else she kills personally, we're assured deserved it.
- Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy uses this trope ad nauseum when it comes to a Hitchhiker's towel.
- Hitchhiker's does this with everything but towels. Towels are clearly stated as important from the beginning.
- The Thursday Next series is a truly fascinating juggling act of various plot threads that feature all kinds of little moments that pay off down the road, either in the book they appear in or several books later. Amazingly, judging by some statements Jasper Fforde has made it seems he really doesn't do that much planning ahead for the series; instead he just has an amazing memory for everything that has happened so far and can come up with ways to refer back to it all that all make perfect sense.
- In particular, this troper would like to point out the naming of a minor villain "Yorick" in the first book, who doesn't show up again until the fourth, which happens to also include Hamlet as a main character...
- "I almost feel sorry for him," said Joffy, who was a lot more forgiving than I. "Yes," replied Hamlet sarcastically, "alas." - Something Rotten
- In the beginning of The Dresden Files book Death Masks, while Harry and Ebeneezer McCoy are discussing when Harry studied astronomy under McCoy, they remember when they discovered "Asteroid Dresden", which turned out to be an old, disused Soviet satellite. At the end of the book McCoy drags the satellite from orbit and drops it on the mansion of a Red Court duke, in retaliation for cheating in a duel against Dresden]].
- Jim Butcher loves these. The one that stands out in this troper's mind is that one of the baddies in the first book is motivated to get revenge on John Marcone because her daughter was killed in a mafia shootout. Nine books later we find out that her daughter is the coma patient Marcone is protecting, the one he stole the Shroud of Turin to try and heal (in Book Five) and the guilt over which motivates him to protect innocents and help Harry out sometimes.
- Throughout The Sparrow, the author Mary D Russell drops hints about subtle changes being introduced or taking place in the alien environment. The protagonists observe these things without understanding their significance. When they lead to catastrophic conclusions, it is quite a shock, even though each is traceable to an earlier chapter and even though the story opens by telling you the mission was a disaster.
- Gary Paulsen's The Rifle is pretty much a story told from the point of view of a Chekhov's Gun.
- A major subversion in the Darksword trilogy, where in the final book it turns out that the prophecy driving most of the plot was not referring to the titular Darksword after all.
- At the beginning of The Wide Window, the third book in the A Series Of Unfortunate Events series, Mr. Poe gives the Baudelaire orphans some peppermints - forgetting that the orphans are allergic to them. Later in the story, they end up coming in handy - as the orphans take advantage of their peppermint allergy to get themselves out of a sticky situation.
- Dan Abnett's Warhammer40000 novel The Brothers of the Snake opens with a Space Marine dealing with a planet invaded by Dark Eldar. Much later, the Marines realize that their purpose there has had reprecussions.
- Elizabeth Moon's Trading In Danger has two, the model kit and the fruitcakes given to the main character near the beginning both turn out to be very usefull by the end, though neither in the way thats hinted at during the various times they are mentioned. The model kit contains the makings of a communications beacon and the largest of the three fruitcakes holds a small fortune in diamonds and a letter.
- Quite literal use in 'Silver Skull' in The Shadow series of pulps, when a gun The Shadow gives to a companion gets smuggled past captors and across the USA, only to be handed back to the Shadow at the climax when his own brace runs empty.
- In the short story The Toymakers Workshop, Mr. Silver takes some supplies from a whimpering box while working on the doll. As it turns out, the box contains the girl he kidnapped and is creating a replacement for.
- William Gibson's Neuromancer averts this: Molly gives Case a shuriken as a souvenir, and he keeps it with him for the entire book, never actually needing to use it in anger (he comments on this toward the end).
- The Whateley Weapons Fair at Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. Phase is asked to try a forcefield disruptor by an inventor who has very little cred. It's just the thing Phase needs at the end of the Fair, when someone's weapon makes everything else go haywire. Then, much later, Phase uses another one of the forcefield disruptors in a fight, and it blows up on her.
- An ironic version in Camus' The Stranger: Meursault and Raymond get into a fight with some men, including the brother of Raymond's ex-girlfriend. Meursault takes away Raymond's gun so that Raymond doesn't do anything rash. Later on, Meursault encounters the brother, and shoots him for no reason.
- In the Skullduggery Pleasant novel, the main character's (a skeleton) head is a fake: his real skull was stolen by goblins. This is mentioned as trivia at the time, but becomes important when they need a part of him to bring him back from another dimension at the end of the third book.
Tabletop Gaming
- In a game module in the Star Wars RPG, a couple of Squib merchants arguing with another group of merchants near the entrance to a ruined Jedi Academy have a burned out lightsaber for sale. This lightsaber allows you to interact with an important NPC later on, finding out some key info.
Theatre
- How about guns in Chekhov's own plays? In The Seagull, Konstantin Treplyev kills a seagull and brings his rifle on stage. The trope is seemingly subverted when he attempts to use it to suicide and is not successfull, but at the end of the play manages to succeed. In Uncle Vanya, a pistol is introduced early in the play, seemingly innocuous, but used when Vanya attempts homicide in a rage. Annoyingly, a gun is seen in The Cherry Orchard, but never fired.
- Used to great effect in Eugene O'Neill's one act play The Emperor Jones (1920). In the first scene, the eponymous self-proclaimed Emperor explains to another character how he managed to convince all of his subjects that only bullets made of pure silver could hurt him. To demonstrate his arrogance and overconfidence, he pulls out his gun and shows the other character an actual silver bullet he commissioned himself which he keeps inside the gun's bullet chamber at all times as a final resort in case the vengeful natives finally catch up with him. Naturally, the silver bullet is used towards the end of the play, but in an ironic twist, the actual bullet itself is used to 'kill' a terrifying hallucination dredged up by the Emperor's own mind. In the play's final scene, the report of the gun has given away his position to the vengeful natives, who, upon locating their hated despot in the middle of a dark jungle, riddle the Emperor full of homemade silver bullets.
- Used in Beaumarchais's The Marriage of Figaro: Marcellina makes a throwaway comment in Act I regarding her long-lost son—who is naturally revealed later to be Figaro, conveniently removing his obligation to marry her.
Live Action TV
- Arrested Development is chock full of Chekhov's guns. Nearly every episode has at least one, and there are a few that don't go off until several episodes have passed.
- Heroes does this numerous times. One particular example is the train wreck in the first episode. For the first two and a half seasons, we just know it as the train wreck where Claire tests her power by walking through fire and saving a man. However, in Volume Three's flashback episode "Villains", we discover that the train wreck was actually caused by Meredith trying to escape Thompson and the Company.
- This also commonly is used with Sylar's stolen abilities. Whenever he takes an ability, it will play a part in a future episode, often after people tend to forget he got the power. One example is his cryokinesis, which is shown once in the second episode, then doesn't appear again until two of the last four episodes of the season.
- Another example is his ability to know an object's entire history by a single touch early on in Volume 3. That power then becomes the most important element into his transformation as Nathan at the end of Volume 4.
- Prior to Isaac's death, he gave his sketchbook to a seemingly random comic book geek. After going the rest of the season, all of season 2, and most of season three without it, it seemed like a dropped plot line. However, in episode 10 of Volume 3, we find out that this sketchbook is what Matt, Daphne, and Ando need to find out what will happen to Hiro when he goes 16 years into the past.
- The Babylon 5 episode "Grey 17 Is Missing" referenced this by having Garibaldi discuss an antique gun extensively in Act I, which was then not used in the rest of the episode. This was a bit of an in-joke for the people who hung out in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5; series creator/producer J Michael Straczynski frequented the newsgroup and often cited "Chekhov's Gun" when talking about TV writing.
- This becomes a double-subversion (partially) when Garibaldi uses the bullets for the gun, which he conveniently put in his pocket, later in the show to defeat the Monster Of The Week.
- In the Firefly episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds", Jayne offers up his very favorite gun, Vera, for the new blushing bride. Of course, the Captain refuses, and when the bride betrays them, Jayne happily uses Vera to shut down the electric "net" that would kill them all. Another example in Firefly is Kaylee repeatedly referencing the need for a new part for the engine so they don't get stranded in space. Low and behold, guess what happens in a later episode.
- If KITT has a new gadget installed on Knight Rider, you know Michael will be activating it by the end of the episode. In fact, it'll probably get used twice.
- In Doctor Who, the 3-D glasses that the Doctor wears throughout the episode "Doomsday", for no apparent reason until the climax. He hangs a lampshade on it, asking if anyone's going to ask why he's wearing them.
- "Warriors of the Deep" features intelligent reptiles as the Monster Of The Week. Early in the story, a character identifies bottles of 'hexachromite gas' as lethal to all reptile life, making the climax rather predictable.
- In "Planet of the Ood", the villain, Mr Halpern, is constantly drinking hair tonic given to him by an Ood slave. Later, we find out that the Ood have been feeding him a biological compound... which turns him into one of his own slaves.
- A particularly cool (and long lasting) example of a Chekhov's Gun is the Doctor's hand. It was first severed in "The Christmas Invasion," Jack kept it in his office in Torchwood and used it to find the Doctor in "Utopia," the Master used it so he could age the Doctor with his laser screwdriver in "The Sound of Drums," and finally in "Journey's End," the Doctor pushed his regenerative energy into it and when Donna touched it there was a two way "Time Lord-human meta-crisis," in which another Doctor grew from the hand and Donna was turned half-Time Lord. Which meant that a Chekhov's Gun first appearing in 2005 finally went off in 2008.
- Speaking of "Journey's End", the previous episode introduced the Osterhagen key, established as a rather obvious Chekhov's Gun; the finale also introduced two further devices with the potential to end Davros' plans, and characters threaten to use all three at the same time. The whole thing is cleverly subverted when the Daleks casually separate the characters from their respective doomsday devices.
- It's subverted in "The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky." Part one goes to some trouble to point out Martha's engagement ring and her reluctance to use guns, leaving the audience to surmise that the absence of one or both of these will tip the Doctor off when she's replaced by an evil clone at the cliffhanger ending. Turns out it's actually neither; instead, the clone just smells wrong. Though, he mentions that this is one of MANY things...
- Bad Wolf, and the rest of the Arc Words.
- In "The Two Doctors", it's established early on that Oscar Botcheby collects moths, and to kill them he uses cyanide rather than ammonia. At the end of the story, the Doctor comes across the cyanide and butterfly net, and uses them to finish off the otherwise far stronger and deadly Shockeye.
- Subverted in "Last of the Time Lords". Early on Martha shows her allies the gun she is constructing to kill the Master. Later on the Master destroys the gun and it seems like all is lost - until Martha reveals that that wasn't her real plan.
- Professional Wrestling has used the table the announcers sit by at ringside (and any monitors, voice cables, etc., attached to it) as a weapon so often it became a Running Gag for most of 1998. Even today, any fight going near the Spanish team's announcing table is guaranteed to result in the fans hoping said table is destroyed. The same goes for any weapons retrieved under the ring, to the point that even the announcers wonder what they were doing under there in the first place. Additionally, whatever wrestler is seen producing a bag of thumbtacks is, as a general rule, going to be the first who is going to end up making contact with the thumbtacks - with the notable exception of The Undertaker.
- The destruction of the Spanish Announce Table was so prevalent that at one WWE pay-per-view, heel announcer Paul Heyman responded to a wrestler being face-planted on the English table by screeching, "The Spanish guys are over there!"
- Happens in Alias with the Bond-like gadgets that Sydney gets, particularly in early episodes, though most of them have a specific and outlined use within missions.
- Apparently the main employer of Cabot Cove in Murder She Wrote is a factory that makes Chekhov Guns.
- In the first episode of The Adventures Of Lano And Woodley, Frank goes to fly a model plane in the park. It doesn't respond to his control, and keeps flying in a straight line, until it crashes through the window of their apartment just in time to hit Col and stop him from laying the smackdown on Frank.
- Angus Mac Gyver, anyone?
- This trope was played for laughs on a Wayne And Shuster parody of the siege of Troy. When Shuster's character suggests the Trojan Horse trick by hiding troops in a giant wooden horse, Wayne's character keeps complaining multiple times as a running gag that he preferred his idea of using a giant cake. At the end of the story, the narrator appears to finish his tale and make a cheap joke about it, only to be suddenly hit in the face with cake. Wayne and Shuster's characters suddenly appear in an inset window with Wayne triumphantly noting, "I told you that cake would come in handy!"
- Emma Peel has a Chekhov's Wardrobe in The Avengers (original series). Her clothing style either involved wearing a skirt or a skin-tight Spy Catsuit. Proper British ladies cannot fight in skirts, so she was always wearing her catsuit whenever she became involved in a fight. This may suggest otherwise unmentioned psychic powers she possessed, as her unerring ability to recognize hours before a fight that she would later be involved with one, sometimes requiring her to go home and change clothes before taking other actions. Likewise, if she is seen infiltrating enemy territory in a dress or skirt, it's clear that she will not be caught or otherwise need to pound on said enemies. Either this or we must assume that catsuits cause fights and skirts create peace.
- The one exception to this otherwise hard and fast rule occurs in the episode Return of the Cybernauts, where fashion sense (Emma was going to a formal party) and the plot (she will later attack Steed after being mind controlled) could not be meshed, resulting in an oddly surreal scene where the villain of the piece pulls off her skirt after mind-zapping her so that she can perform the subsequent, oddly stilted, fight scene.
- Calling it a "fight scene" is a stretch; she robo-marches up to an unsuspecting Steed and lays him out a single karate chop.
- Chuck-ov's Gun: Pilot has a scene where Chuck and other employees are talking about a new virus making the rounds, which infects via porn website. With said knowledge, Chuck later disables a laptop and a bomb along with it, replete with a This Is No Time For Knitting (in this case, Looking for Porn) moment.
- In a later episode, Chuck and Morgan talk about a guy that sometimes sells them fireworks. Later on Chuck needs to create a distraction in the same general area that the fireworks are being sold. You probably have a vague idea about what happens next.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer. In particular, Season 5, when they faced an unstoppable god. Almost every single episode in that season, including the ones that looked like filler (Warren's Buffy Bot, the angry troll who had once been married to Anya, ...) turned out to have a Chekhov's Gun that got used in the big finale.
- Emerson's knitting needles in episode two of Pushing Daisies, and his shovel in episode five.
- The first season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles has several conspicuous scenes where electricity is used to disable Terminators, and Cameron shows the Connors exactly how to remove the processor chip from a Terminator by removing it from Vic. In the premiere for the second season, when Cameron is damaged in the car bombing and goes berserk, the Connors end up using both of these methods against her.
- A conspicuous non-firing of a Gun occurs in Stargate Atlantis: A new species of cactus is discovered, and conspicously given to (and named after) Rodney, with the warning "Careful: the needles can break the skin". A bacteria of unknown origin is affecting the entire base, and nobody can figure out where it's coming from. The cactus, however, isn't brought up again, despite it being set up as the explanation. They never do explain the delivery vector or infection method (only that it was brought to the planet a long time ago and that the 'soil samples' didn't have it).
- Averted in an episode of Midsomer Murders: We see a character unpacking a backpack and pulling a pistol out and setting it on the table. Later on, we see the killer looking in his window as he has a revelation and rushes off to call the cops. As he leaves the room the camera zooms in on the gun laying on the table. Once in the phone booth, the man is attacked by the killer wielding ... a hammer. The gun never appears again.
- Lampshaded in an episode of Father Ted where Ted criticises a fellow priest for buying useless objects, in particular a pair of false arms and a remote controlled wheelchair. "What sort of situation would require the use of a pair of fake arms and a remote controlled wheelchair. Only a complete ridiculous one". Later on in the episode however......
- Again, lampshaded in the plane episode, when Ted complains to Dougal that he bought a squeaky phone for a dog, and a tape dispenser which tells you how much you use. The former is used twice for comedic effect, the latter comes in handy when Ted has to repair a vital fuel line to stop them from crashing.
- Subverted in The Sopranos: the grenade in Tony's cupboard is teasingly never used. And, of course, the Russian never returns.
- In A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift Of All, a crossed sword and lightsaber are seen at the beginning hanging on the wall of Stephen's cabin (Continuity Nods to the Aragorn appearance and the Green Screen Challenges respectively). Stephen grabs the lightsaber about halfway through to defend himself against what he thinks is a bear.
- Happens roughly Once An Episode in House - House sends the young guns to investigate the Patient Of The Week's home, where they find some detail which is either the cause of the disease or evidence that leads House to figure out what's wrong.
- He once solves a case based on the fact that the patient had Tic-Tacs. It's not so much Chekov's Gun as it is Chekov's Secret Satellite Beam Weapon, in that it can really come out of nowhere.
- Since a single episode of the Mythbusters can only showcase a certain number of myths, some of the equipment created for certain myths may appear in the background of certain episodes aired before the episode where it is used is aired. For example, the Faraday Cage used for a myth in the seventh episode of the first season appeared in the background of the same season's first episode.
- A holiday episode of Home Improvement started with Tim and Al practically blinding the Tool Time audience with some sort of halogen setup. It seemed like a basic opening gag and so I was surprised when Tim's sons activation of the house's Christmas lights (itself a subplot) allowed the airliner he was on to land in previously paralyzing fog.
- Used twice in The X Files Season 5 Episode 4 Detour: once when Mulder and Scully are on a trip to a teambuilding conference with two other anonymous agents (which foreshadows the general theme of the entire episode) and once when the boy Louis is watching The Invisible Man.
- Used countless other times in the same series.
- Recently used on Lost: while travelling back in time to 1954, Daniel Faraday is called upon to disarm an undetonated H-bomb, but instead suggests it be sealed with lead and buried under the logic that, fifty years in the future, it hadn't gone off and destroyed the island, so why worry? Anyone who doesn't think it'll come back into play by the end of the season doesn't read this wiki.
- There are countless examples, here is one of the more subtle ones. In Season 3, the Others task Sawyer and Kate with clearing rocks from a dirt region for no discernable purpose. It turns out that they were clearing a runway, which a plane uses to land on during Season 5.
- Played straight in a recent episode of Taggart, quite literally- a suspect's brother has a conviction for modifying replica guns into working firearms, and Burke mentions that one of his guns recently blew up in the face of the user. At the end, the Criminal of the Week is pointing one of these guns at Burke, pulls the trigger... and it blows up in the crim's hand.
- "The Shield" subverted this most notably, with the "MAD Document", a notebook/dossier written by Shane Vendrell during season six of series containing EVERY single dirty deed that the Strike Team ever engaged in up until that point in time. Conceived as a means to keep Detectives Vic Mackey and Ronnie Gardocki from retaliating against him after the two discovered that Shane murdered their fellow Strike Team member Curtis "Lem" Lemansky, notebook is ultimately given to Vic in season seven, when Shane and Vic end up being forced to work together to save their asses. But as the alliance fell apart and Shane dragged Vic's estranged ex-wife into their war, Vic ultimately made the decision to beat both Shane and Ronnie to the punch and narced on both subordinates, via a cliffnotes confession to the first three seasons worth of crimes the Strike Team engaged in. After doing so, Shane contacts Vic and informs him that he's going to narc to the police on everything the Strike Team did, oblivious to the fact that Vic beat him to the punch for the immunity card. But knowing that Shane could find holes in Vic's confession via revealing new crimes that Vic didn't confess to (which would violate the terms of Vic's immunity deal, as far as loopholes go), Vic mockingly told him that not only had he already gotten immunity for his crimes, but added the lie that Vic had used Shane's own MAD Document as the basis for his massive laundry list of confessed crimes, which Vic then promptly badmouth by way of pointing out that it wasn't even as comprehensive as Shane bragged it to be. Shane then promptly went home and murdered his family, then himself after finding himself checked and checkedmated by his own plot device.
- Shane has a bad habit of this. In season 4, when he is off the Strike Team, he gets involved with Magnificent Bastard Antoine Mitchell, who gets the upper hand on him. The rest of the Strike Team has to save him (because he knows so much, see above), and Lem steals some drugs from a local dealer to leverage him in to helping. Unbeknownst to the team (or the audience), the dealer's girlfriend was an informant who tells her DEA handler about this, and they catch Lem red-handed several episodes later. They try to turn him on the Strike Team and fail, leading Shane to kill Lemansky and set off all of the events of Season 6 and 7, including the creating of the Sins List noted above.
- In a late-season episode of Andromeda, three crewmembers receive prophecies from an oracle that is "never wrong". By the end of the series (it took two seasons), all of the prophecies have come true. None of them were disproven or broken.
- The finale of Battlestar Galactica. "Racetrack's Nukes"
- Then there's Tory's murder of Cally, which looked for all the world like it would never be brought up again before becoming a key element to the war's resolution or lack thereof.
- Another one is early on in the show, when Baltar asks for a nuclear bomb (As per Head Six's order) from Adama, claiming that it's to help his research. The bomb is then detonated and the fallout becomes the most important tool for the Cylons to track down the location of the humans, who settled in a cold but habitable planet.
- Done very nicely in Degrassi Junior High with a malfunctioning boiler room and some barrels marked "flammable"
- Done in Power Rangers, In Time Force The rangers came from the year 3000 which was later revealed to be a razed earth with cities few and very very far between. Fast forward eight years later in RPM we are shown as to how it happens.
- In an early episode of the 2006 Robin Hood, the outlaws come across a ledger that details how to experiment with Greek fire (that is, explosives). Robin throws it into the campfire, but the episode ends with Djaq discreetly saving it from the flames. It isn't seen or referenced again until the end of Season 2, where it turns out she was going to give Robin the gift of a pig's head stuffed full of black powder for his birthday. She uses it to scare an army of mercenaries into delaying their attack, buying the gang enough time for help to arrive.
Video Games
Web Animation
- Unforgotten Realms subverts this by having Schmoopy cause his body to revert to wolf form... just because he might not get another chance.
Eluamous: Why the hell did you make him do that?
Schmoopy: Dude, I don't want to waste a perfectly good plot device we ended up spending, like, three episodes setting up just because we're not gonna end up using it!
- A Mythology Gag referencing One More Day is used at the beginning of the second season of Marvel Vs DC: Happy Hour. It becomes an an essential plot point at the end of the season.
Spider-man: Bats, I think I might have been married and forgot about it.
Webcomics
- Dinosaur Comics refers to this trope in their "Literary Technique Comics" series here.
- Dominic Deegan: Luna's tusks are revealed to be a consequence of a curse placed on humanity by an orc, and her overcoming the stigma of having them enables her to become the savior of their homeland, a full seven years after she and her tusks are originally introduced.
- A time machine Cube sends into the future in Stickman And Cube returns just in time to stop Stickman from doing horrible things to Cube with an electric cattle prod.
- Lampshaded in Narbonic: Iris describes her fragile valuables and wonders why. Dave explains that he causes foreshadowing.
- The Order Of The Stick has a few examples:
- The Belt of Gender-Changing
- This one is debatable, though, as the author himself stated in the books commentary that he decided to use it after "remembering he has introduced it". Therefore, it wasn't meant to be a Chekhov's Gun, although it could still be said that it became one.
- Belkar's Ring of Jumping +20
- Elan's Boots of Elvenkind
- Roy's Bag of Tricks
- In fact, almost all of the items the party looted from Xykon's dungeon apply. Haley's gotten plenty of use out of that Bag of Holding, and even Vaarsuvius's Ring of Wizardry was mentioned in passing. The only exception is Durkon's Amulet of Natural Armor, though to be fair, the item has a passive, "always on" type of ability.
- Subverted in at least one instance: the comic's forums were wildly speculating about what had happened to a poisoned arrow that was misfired. The next comic featured the arrow, in a highly unlikely trajectory, narrowly missing all the most popular potential targets only to bounce off V's protection from arrows.
- Even the cast page has one, maybe two:
- Until recently, Haley's panel contained a giant diamond. The cast needed 5000gp worth of diamonds to resurrect Roy, so Haley just took the diamond and replaced it with "IOU: one big-ass diamond."
- One that has yet to be fired is the rather conspicuous absence of a last name for Elan, because he is probably the son of the warlord who's captured Haley's father.
- Explosive Runes were used before a sudden 336-episode hiatus
- In The Adventures Of Dr McNinja, while the titular Doctor is visiting Count Dracula's moon base, he learns that Bruce Lee didn't die; he simply completed his career as the greatest martial artist ever by jumping to the moon. Later, when the Doctor must fight Dracula without any weapons suited for killing vampires, he slips off and gives Bruce a visit, and uses his knowledge well.
- Gunnerkrigg Court fans speculate wildly on pretty much every background object and character in the comic because of the number of Chekhov's Guns that have already popped up.
- The gold brooch that Garanos wears for the first five chapters of the comic goes unnoticed and unmentioned, but several chapters later was revealed to be the key to restoring peace in her homeland.
- Early on in AnsemRetort, Zexion puts a fire cracker inside Riku. A few episodes later, Riku tries to use a fire elemental attack which backfires and causes said firecracker to ignite which splits Riku in half.
- In Season 6, Axel is seen fighting a shark. The shark appears for only one panel and its only purpose at the time was to show that the characters actually know that they're world is made of pure insanity. Later on, it's revealed that sharks are the only natural predators against werepires (were-wolf vampires...yeah). Lampshaded in that the shark is actually named Checkhov.
- In Eight Bit Theater, Thief is stated to have Ninja Lawyers. They inevitably prove useless however, since when he finally calls them, they turn out to have been dead for a long time.
- Also, Black Mage's ability to absorb ambient evil, introduced at Ordeal Castle, turns out to be a vital part of the endgame, as he uses it against everyone, apparently gaining god-like powers.
- The Onion Kid, having been continually abused in the strip, is revealed to become Sarda in a ridiculously complex Stable Time Loop.
- Lampshaded in this Concerned strip.
- In Irregular Webcomic, James Stud was given a literal Chekhov's Gun from Ü. Consider that in every James Bond film, every gadgets ends up being useful in some way, this probably is the most useful thing ever. And yes, there's a link to this page (and Red Herring, which the strip also talks about).
- From the same author, in Darths And Droids episode 240, Morgan-Mar mentions that the would-be assassin of Padme Amidala in Episode 2 possesses shapechanging, and while it is introduced, it is never developed afterwards (in an averted Checkhov's Gun).
- For a straighter Darths And Droids example, see this strip where Qui-Gon checks his equipment list. Sometime later...
- This Rock, Paper, Cynic comic subverts the concept with a play about pacifists in a gun shop entitled "Chekhov Was a Filthy Liar".
- In Thunderstruck, there are several Chekhovs Skills and other elements that are introduced early on and then used later. In a mild variation, there's usually a link below the comic sending readers back to the previous use of the Chekhov's Gun.
- In an early chapter of Girl Genius, Gil shows Agatha a real Heterodyne device that he's trying to figure out what it does. Shortly thereafter, they have to use it to fight a swarm when a Hive is activated. During the battle, other people notice a weird effect going on. Years later, Gil pulls it out and uses the 'weird effect' brilliantly.
- That's nothing. Phil Foglio seems to be a master of this trope; if there's a detail mentioned somewhere in the story, whether a visual cue, off-hand comment or subtle hint, you can bet it's going to be brought back up later to make for either a major twist, minor gag or even both. Perfect example: when Agatha joins up with the traveling performers, she gets hooked onto the idea of equipping them with the ability to defend themselves. However, after showing Krosp plans for "a merry-go-round that can level a small town", it's never really mentioned again......until about three volumes later, when Agatha and her performer friends are about to be executed by Baron Wulfenbach's army, and Agatha gives a special signal. Cue the wagons and circus props suddenly becoming clanks Transformers-style and utterly destroying the Baron's forces. Then, finally, as another character is recounting an event at the end of the battle, he mentions that Captain Du Pree was found wounded, and she claimed that her injuries were the results of destroying (wait for it) a merry-go-round.
- {{Misfile}} had glimpses of the Monster XR in Books 1 and 2 before it was fully revealed in Book 3. The liner notes for Book 3 show that invoking Chekhovs Gun was intentional.
- {{Digger}} has had at least two so far;
- The Vampire Squash.
- Descending Helix of Fernfossil Clan.
- Sluggy Freelance does this constantly, on a scale comparative to Harry Potter, and during a longer run of stories. Pete Abrams is also very, very good at disguising the Guns, to the point that in June 2009 he was able to reveal that a character has had the often-used ability to create huge fireballs with her mind all along for about a decade, which no reader had noticed even though it had been shown several times.
Western Animation
- Like with James Bond's Q, every gadget that Jerry gives the girls in Totally Spies gets used in that episode, many of them with even more ridiculously specialized uses.
- Italian example... Winx Club: In episode seven of the second season, a character gives a few pixies some jewels, and makes a point about how the season's Big Bad is trying to get into some place called Realix by collecting four pieces of something called the Codex... and that there is another way into this Realix place. After we gradually learn what all that means, in episode 26, the season finale, it's revealed that the other way is via those jewels, which had not been seen since they were given to the pixies.
- In the original, however, she just gives them the jewels and says, "As you probably know by now, the situation is extremely critical. These must remain secret. You know what to do." We gradually learn all of the above information as the season progresses (instead of in one fell swoop early on as above), and one of the later episodes also has a flashback to that scene (which the dub cut out).
- Winx Club also provides an example of Chekhov's Gun being undermined via editing: An episode has Musa and Layla talking about what to perform at a concert she's having, and Layla suggests (and shows) some sort of rain dance. That information later becomes useful to defeat Stormy with. But in the dub version, they just show Musa defeating Stormy with the rain dance, and THEN show the scene with Musa and Layla discussing the concert, where Layla's dancing is now just her showing her dance, with any rain-related significance removed. Clip.
- This was parodied in an episode of Stripperella, when the tech group gives Stripperella a penny disintegrator, and she is later trapped in a jar being filled with pennies. Unfortunately, the disintegrator takes a full minute for each penny, so she ends up having to just break the jar.
- In The Simpsons Movie, Lisa tells Homer how to ride a motorcycle up and down a curved surface, which later enables him to save Springfield.
- Within the show itself, the episode The Blunder Years has one of the most elaborate uses of this trope ever. Burly paper towels take up a good portion of the first act and then are not mentioned again until the end, when they are hastily re-introduced to resolve the main storyline. The Simpsons writers often note that events of the first act that set the main plot in motion usually have no bearing on anything else, so the possibility of this being a self-parody or roast are equally good.
- An earlier example: in the episode Krusty Gets Busted. It seems with Krusty gone, Sideshow Bob has some big shoes to fill.
- And don't forget The Dad Who Knew Too Little, in which one of the presents Lisa gets for her eighth birthday is a Chekhov's Laser Pointer.
- The Codename: Kids Next Door finale has Nigel's subordinates tracking him down to a spaceship, thanks to a tracking device that was originally meant to be planted on the Delightful Children.
- Avatar The Last Airbender fans have become incredibly familiar with, and wary of, this trope, as apparently nigh-on EVERYTHING in the show eventually comes back as a major plot point later on.
- The best example is perhaps Uncle Iroh's white-lotus Pai-Sho tile: when first discussed, it is stated that most players regard it as a weak piece (though Iroh mentions that it is the most important piece to his "strategy"), making it seem like an even bigger waste of Zuko's time to go into town to look for one. However, early in the second season, it is revealed that the lotus tile is, in fact, a calling-card for a secret Illuminati organization called The Order of the White Lotus. This point comes up yet again, when, as a parting gift, Sokka's master gives him a white lotus tile, showing that, not only was Sokka's master a member, but Sokka is now an unknowing member himself.
- In the first season's finale, Admiral Zhao mentions entering a library hidden "deep beneath the sands" in his youth, where he learns how to kill the Moon God. Aang and his friends, in turn, unknowingly find the same Library in the second season, and learn how to defeat the Fire Nation: by attacking the Fire Nation Capitol on The Day of Black Sun.
- The amulet full of water from the Northern Water Tribe's spirit oasis, presented to Katara at the beginning of season two: Shortly before the season finale, Katara shows it to Prince Zuko, explaining that she'd been saving it for something important and suggesting that it could be used to heal his facial scarring, by way of foreshadowing the fact that she uses it to save Aang's life at the end of the finale. Too bad that only a few episodes previous, Jet was fatally injured and the spirit oasis water was never mentioned.
- Zuko's swords, seen hanging on the wall in the first episode, eventually become his weapons of choice as the story progresses; unfortunately for him, it is this signature dual-wielding style which allows Zhao to uncover the truth that Zuko is The Blue Spirit.
- One that nobody saw coming was various appearance of Lion Turtles: a picture of one in "The Library", and the statue and line about one in "Sokka's Master".
- Another that even less saw coming: Iroh's sandal Zuko finds while looking for him in the first season. Used in the last episodes to track Iroh using Jun's beast, after Zuko reveals he had it all this time. This series pretty much defines this trope.
- Toph's bracelet/piece of meteoric iron is something of Double Subversion: she missed the time it would be really useful because she didn't have it on her, but it served a mildly useful purpose an episode later.
- During the first episode of the third season, Katara commented, while healing Aang's burn on his back, that she could feel, "a lot of energy twisted up around there". In the very last episode of the series, Aang was hit hard on the scar of said burn. It was what preventing him from using the Avatar state. Cue asskicking the firelord time.
- Invader Zim "Plague of Babies": Early in the episode, we're introduced to the "Power Amplifier", a device which (evidently) "amplifies" whatever is fed into it — hence, when its input leads are plugged into Gir's head, it begins "sending out deadly waves of stupidness" (which briefly incapacitates Zim, but his pack is able to "reboot" him). Then at the end of the episode, Zim uses this device to defeat the "baby" aliens.
- In one episode of Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, the team is on an alien spaceship headed for an inhabited planet. On the bridge, they try to figure out how to stop, steer, or otherwise control the space ship, but all they find are things that activate windshield wipers and a cup holder. Later, the alien is revived, and shows them that the cup holder is actually the ship's steering mechanism.
- In Disney's film {{Recess: School's}} out, TJ steals back his lucky baseball from the principals office. At the end of the film, this baseball is used to foil the evil plan.
- Parodied in Family Guy with Mayor Adam West giving Quagmire a banana and cryptically telling him that "When the time is right, you'll know what to do with it". The banana ultimately proves useless in the end.
- Knowing Mayor West, the intended use hinted at in the cryptic instruction was to use it to have a nourishing snack. We are talking about the guy who swallowed a magazine and Stratego back in the eighties just in case he was ever in a hostage situation that dragged on so long he got bored. Speaking of which, a Chekhov's Gun there, too-in the episode where Brian holds Mayor West hostage, Stewie finds in the candy jar at his grandparents' house, a set of keys to an old model of car that isn't in production any longer. Mayor West agrees to drop all the charges incurred in the hostage situation provided they can give him a set of keys to that exact model of car. Quoth Stewie: "You're welcome."
- This is the plot basis for 95% of all Danny Phantom episodes, with their numerous Fenton devices.
- Also happens in just about every episode of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. In his most dire moment, Jimmy will have a "brain blast" and remember some trivial detail or offhand comment from earlier in the episode, and use it to save the day.
- An episode of Storm Hawks involved Dark Ace getting his hands on a suit of huge robotic armor. At the same time, Finn gets enthralled by a transforming puzzle (like an uber Rubix). It kept being conspicuously brought up when the other characters were trying to figure out how to stop Dark Ace. In fact, both the puzzle and the armour were said to drive people insane. It was working up to some revelation that either it could be used to distract Dark Ace as he falls into dimentia (it's even mentioned that he's got diminished mental ability due to the suit) or that somehow the puzzle and suit are related.. Turned out to be mostly red herring though: An offhanded comment about powering it up when it went out of juice was key to victory. The toy itself was uncemoniously melted in the episode's denoument.
- The "No Dogs Allowed" signs in Snoopy Come Home, which had been tormenting the beagle throughout the film, until the end, when one sign on Lila's apartment building got Snoopy out of his moral obligation to her, allowing him to return to Charlie Brown.
- In a Road Runner/Wile E Coyote cartoon, Wile E sets up a metal gate in the middle of the road that pops up from the ground with the flick of a switch. Road Runner comes by, Wile E flicks the switch...and the trap fails to go off, even when he tries to set it off manually. Frustrated, he tries other attempts to catch the Road Runner. When he finally starts to catch up, they come across the metal gate, which finally pops up, and Wile E slams right into it.
MEANWHILE, IN TUDOR ENGLAND!
Shakesphere, which is better: a gun that shoots chainsaws, or a gun that shoots EVEN BIGGER GUNS? Shakespeare? Aw, come on! There's strawberry frosting all over "As You Like It"!
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