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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."
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 necklace that turns out to be the power source to the Doomsday Device, 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." The gun is seemingly primed to go off on a hair trigger, while foreshadowing is much softer and is rarely acknowledged by the characters in retrospect.
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:
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. If there is a very long delay between the introduction of the element and its use in the story, to the point where most of the audience has long forgotten about it, then you're looking at a Brick Joke. An item that was never intended to be Chekhov's Gun but becomes one in retrospect is Olafs Hammer.
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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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...
- During the Chunin exams 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.
- The new book Kakashi had becomes very important before the Pain arc.
- One of Jiraya's books about a battle against a rogue ninja. Once again is important in the Pain arc.
- Itachi stuffing some crow down Naruto's throat. We know its going to be important, but how its going to show up is a mystery.
- 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.
- One other example was Jounouchi winning the Fortress Whale card from Ryouta Kajiki during Battle City, which he never used. This time its actually justified in that Fortress Whale is a Ritual summon, so Jou couldn't use it without the ritual card needed to summon it.
- 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.
- Oda seems especially fond of this trope. Early on in the story, our beloved pirate/clown Captain Buggy is looking for the treasure of one Captain John. A long long long way down the line during the Thriller Bark arc, Captain John's zombie turns up. After the conclusion of this arc, Buggy's self-proclaimed rival Luffy finds a cool armlet in the Thriller Bark treasure hoard, which stays with him for about a hundred chapters before he and Buggy end up in Impel Down together. Only THEN, do we realize that the armlet Luffy took is in fact the key to finding the long lost treasure that Buggy has been looking for all along!! Are you impressed? This troper is!
- One word: Laboon. The crew meets him just after they've entered the Grand Line, and it is mentioned that Laboon is waiting there for a pirate crew he befriended to come back. Several hundred chapters/episodes later, they gain a new crew member (Brook) who just happens to be the only remaining member of that pirate crew and his goal is to keep his promise that he'll come back to see Laboon again.
- 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.
- This Troper also thinks that the lump of green crystal that Simon give Nia might also count, as it seems to have been used later on as the heart of her engagement ring, which in turn is what let them find the location of the Anti-Spiral homeworld.
- 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 Crank may spend the entire adventure snacking on a bag full 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.
- Eureka 7 features a very sneaky Chekhov's Gun in the form of Eureka and Anemone's collars. They seem like random accessories until the very last episode, where it's revealed that they're devices meant to destroy the Scub Coral, triggered by Dewey Novak's suicide.
- Ichigo's Super Hollow form in Bleach could be this. They hint several times that the longer he stays in Hueco Mundo, the more power his hollow side absorbs.
- It goes much deeper. WAAAAAAY back near the beginning of the story Don Kannonji accidentaly turned a half-Hollow into a full Hollow by widening his Hollow-hole. Later in the Hueco Mundo Arc it's mentioned that Ulquiorra likes to give his victims a hole identical to his own. Guess what triggers Ichigo's Super Hollow transformation.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has Chekhov's Wave Motion Gun; an early episode in A's gives us an apparently throw-away scene involving a high-powered magical cannon, the Arc-En-Ciel. The Arthra is out of service most of the season being refitted. When it returns, what should it come equipped with, but an Arc-En-Ciel.
- In Monster a hospital director helps himself to the unconscious antagonist's candy. Nothing happens for a while. And then they find his body next to a candy wrapper.
- Macross Frontier gets points for sneaking Chekhov's Gun into what looks to be a throw-away Accidental Pervert gag: the fact that the Vajra start retreating from Island 1 just after Ranka's scream in that scene is no coincidence.
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
- 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 is 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.
- Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000 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.
- Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy uses this trope ad nauseam 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 character of Agrajag is pretty much a mix of Karmic retrobution and Chekhov's Arsenal. In the first book, approaching Magrathea, it is referenced that two missiles were turned by the infinite improbability drive into a whale and a bowl of Petunias. The whale's thought-processes as it falls to Earth are described in detail, and it is stated that the bowl of Petunia's thought only 'Oh no not again'. At the very beginning, reference is made to 'eating oysters' to provide background to an event. Elsewhere, Arthur talks about 'this damn fly', before remarking 'Got it!' At the beginning of the third book/Tertiary Phase, it references that Arthur kills a rabbit and makes a bag out of its skin. He teleports to Lord's Cricket Ground - where his sudden materialisation gives a man with a heart condition such a shock he has a heart attack and dies, and Arthur's aforementioned love of cricket is reiterated - and the bag is replaced for some strange reason with another one. He expresses his love for the lost bag, and talks about a bag he lost at an airport once coming back from holiday, which had a bottle of Retsina in it. Later on, he teleports somewhere, but is hijacked and ends up in some form of mountain, where he is confronted by a monstrous creature - with hugely impractical sharp teeth - who reveals that all of the creatures Arthur has ever killed in his life were various reincarnations of himself, including the heart-attack man, the bowl of Petunia's ('cruelly dragged back into life after I had given up'), and the rabbit, 'whose skin-bag', Agrajag noticed, 'he had lost'. Agrajag then accidentally stabs himself throught the brain with the teeth, before self-destructing the mountain. Arthur escapes by learning to fly - a long-running Hitch-Hikers' joke in the books, which states that the trick to flying is to be distracted when throwing yourelf at the ground, causing you to miss - after noticing the bag he thought he had lost at the airport a long time before. He then rejoins his friends at a party in a flying house, which they are prevented from entering for not having a bottle. He gets the bottle of retsina out of the bag, and they enter the party to save the universe. Thus reducing Agrajag's character to a device enabling the characters to overcome a totally unnecessary obstacle to get into the party. Into which MASSES of background has been invested over the course of the two previous books and the rest of the book, along with the further two books. Then his love of cricket is used as the whole thing that the plot of that third turns on, but that's a separate example...
- Jim Butcher loves these.
- One of the baddies in the first Dresden Files book, Storm Front, 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.
- In the beginning of The Dresden Files book Death Masks, while Harry and Ebeneezer McCoy discuss Harry's astronomy lessons 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.
- Michael Crichton's The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park, subverts this. Early on, 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.
- Another one from The Lost World: after a very close call with the T.rexes, Levine says that they're good parents. They're such good parents, that they probably teach their offspring how to hunt, by bringing small or weakened creatures to the nest for them to finish off. Well, guess what happens to Dodgson when the T.rex gets him but doesn't eat him outright. (Also a case of Karmic Death, as the infant T.rex who ends up killing him is the one whose leg he had broken earlier.)
- The Lost World has plenty of these: Arby's printout of the Isla Sorna facilities (hint: boathouse and river docks;) Eddie's insistence on adding backup systems and safety devices in Thorne's vehicles without telling anyone; the observation cage with its prodigious resistance to impacts; the maia eggs stolen by King; Levine's damn candy bars; also, the rifles armed with neurotoxins are finally put to good use during the raptor chase.
- 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 the end of the book reveals that it wouldn't have worked anyway because it had been disabled at some point.
- 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 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
- 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 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.
- 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.
- Similarly to Bond, at the beginning of Anthony Horowitz's 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.
- The dumpy, mushroom-colored bonnet in Diana Wynne Jones' Howls Moving Castle. At first it's simply a cleverly-written joke when the story Sophie tells while making the bonnet comes true, but then in the end, it turns out that Sophie is a somewhat powerful witch without even knowing it - she has the ability to dictate the fate of any inanimate object by speaking to it.
- In Stephen King's Desperation, a shotgun shell becomes a key item in the last few pages of the book They use it as a blasting cap to detonate explosives that trap a demon / evil god in an abandoned mine.
- 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 useful by the end, though neither in the way that's 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.
- 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...
- Gary Paulsen's The Rifle is pretty much a story told from the point of view of a Chekhov's Gun.
- In Peter Straub's "Ghost Story", Stella Hawthorne makes use of a Chekhov's Hatpin. Oddly, despite being a somewhat obvious example of the trope, it doesn't really affect the overall story very much.
- Terry Pratchett plays with this a lot.
- 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.
- Granted, it's a You Fail Biology Forever (eagle gonads are internal), but it's still funny.
- This takes place in a world where you can inherit scars from your parents and powers from your ADOPTED grandfather. All science on Discworld takes a backseat to the Rule of Funny
- Subverted 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.
- Subverted in Feet of Clay where the main mystery of the book is how Lord Vetinari is being 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 ...
- Used Straight in Thief of Time where Lu-Tze shows his apprentice how Yetis "save" their lives and create a sort of premonition ability. He then proceeds to use it later on. One knows he is about to do so when the fact "they cut off his head" is mentioned, because this is how the ability was demonstrated with the yeti.
- Unseen Academicals. Remember, the ball is the ball.
- Nightmare by Willo Davis Roberts. About a third of the way into the story, a side character finds shotgun shells in the back of their RV. These end up saving them from death when the same side character uses them as a diversion making the Big Bad's sidekick drop his shotgun.
- Y.T.'s scary futuristic anti-rape condom ("dentata") in Neal Stephenson's 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.
- Neal Stephenson's 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.
- 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.
- The hobbits first acquire elven daggers in the Barrow-Downs during Book 1, a relatively unimportant plot point until Book 5 when Merry stabs the Lord of the Nazgul behind the knee, weakening him for the final kill by Eowyn. This is made possible only by the fact that Merry's blade was specifically designed for combat against the enemies in Angmar, under the rule of this very foe, the Witch-King of Angmar.
- On the subject of Tolkien, The Silmarillion introduces a Chekhov's gun in the chapter concerning the creation of dwarves by Aulë, where the Sheperds of the Trees (ents) are created by Aulë's spouse Yavanna to counter their harmful axes. Ents are never mentioned again throughout the book until following the slaying of Thingol in Doriath by the dwarves of Belegost, the dwarves flee eastward to the mountains with the prized necklace of Thingol only to meet the Shepherds of the Trees who rise up and defeat them.
- 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 put-outer, i.e. Deluminator, introduced at the very beginning of book one, which became of 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.
- One object and action regarding said object is also mentioned in the first book, and built upon in significance in the subsequent books; the Vanishing Cabinet.
- 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 recounts the various abilities of the Phoenix species - heavy lifting, loyalty, 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..."
- For most of the third book, Sirius Black is presented as the main villain. 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.)
- 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.
- Several times for Peter Pettigrew. 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. Both Pettigrew's severed finger and the rat's missing one are mentioned in the third book. Then at the end of that book Harry spares his life: now Peter ows him a life debt. In book 4 Peter receives a silver hand to replace the one he severed as a sacrifice to resurrect Voldemort. Finally, in book 7, he hesitated in killing Harry because of the life debt, and his silver hand choked him to death.
- 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.
- He also warned him (kinda) about the hand: “May your loyalty never waver again, Wormtail.”
- In the 4th book there are several times when bad things happen and a bug just happens to be there. It is later revealed that a nosy reporter can turn into that bug and had been spying on Harry.
- In the first edition of The Goblet of Fire there is an error at the end: during the Priori Incantatem scene, the order of the murder victim ghosts coming out is wrong (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 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.
- 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 never opens the gift: he has no intent to ever use whatever was inside 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 never knew he had it. Harry only discovers the mirror as he's packing at the end. (It then becomes a Chekhovs Boomerang in Deathly Hallows.)
- Another subversion: in book 4 Sirius gives Harry a penknife that can unlock any door and untie any knot. While in the bottom of the lake during the Second Task Harry notices that he could’ve used it, had he remembered to bring it. Then in book 5 he takes the penknife with him to the Ministry, only to end up ruined the only time he tries to use it to open the only locked door they find.
- 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.
- 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 with no prior nods to the mirror, Ravenclaw's diadem, Dobby (outside of the second movie), or Aberforth.
- Then again, there's the Chekov's Gun no one remembers, of the Bezoar, mentioned in passing at the start of the first book, and not used in any manner until the sixth. Where it get's used to save Ron's life.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Lampshaded in Sophie's World with the brass mirror.
- Chasm City manages to feature Chekhov's Brain Surgery. Early on, we hear about an assassin who used Grand Theft Me to kill and replace a loyal retainer. At the climax, we learn that the protagonist used the same process in reverse, to overwrite his own personality with a different one.
- Although Walter Moers has something of a soft spot for the Deus Ex Machina, he included at least three of these in The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear. Rumo the Wolpertinger, Nightingale's darkness from deep space, and - oddly enough - Deus X. Machina himself.
Live Action TV
- 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.
- 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 were disproven or broken.
- Angus Mac Gyver, anyone?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Of course there's a far more obvious Chekhov's Gun. The alien healing device is used in one episode in series one, and never mentioned again until the end of series 4.
- 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.
- 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 BuffyBot, 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.
- Done very nicely in Degrassi Junior High with a malfunctioning boiler room and some barrels marked "flammable"
- 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. All seems lost until the real Chekhov's Gun goes off when Donna's Time Lord consciousness is awakened from the afore-mentioned "meta-crisis".
- 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 explicitly introduces a gun that is believed to be the only thing that can kill a Time Lord. Later on the Master easily destroys the gun and it seems like all is lost - until Martha lampshades the ridiculousness of a plot hinging upon "a gun in four parts", then reveals her real plan.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- A slight subversion: I remember one episode (it might have been a two parter or a season premiere) where KITT gets a new button marked "C". I thought it was going to be some new weapon or defensive mechanism, but at the very end of the episode it was revealed to stand for convertible.
- Apparently the main employer of Cabot Cove in Murder She Wrote is a factory that makes Chekhov Guns.
- 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.
- Emerson's knitting needles in episode two of Pushing Daisies, and his shovel in episode five.
- Subverted 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.
- 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.
- Mad Men, of all shows, recently had a Chekhov's Tractor. Ken Cosgrove brings a John Deere lawnmower into the office (how was he able to fit it in the elevator?) and goofs around with it. At the end of the fairly lighthearted episode a clumsy secretary riding it hacks through the foot of a suave British redshirt, covering everyone's Gorgeous Period Dress with tons of blood.
- 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.
- I Love Lucy uses the occasional Chekhov's Gun.
- In the episode The Freezer for example in the first few minutes Fred tells Lucy and Ethel that the furnace is off as he just replaced the fire brick in it and the mortar needs to set. The deactivated furnace then gets used later by Ethel to eavesdrop on Ricky and Fred and again by Lucy to hide seven hundred pounds of beef in. And finally at the end the furnace gets relit, cooking all the hidden beef.
- Parodied in That Mitchell And Webb Look in the 'Get Me Hennimore' sketches, which parody old timey sitcoms. A preposterous back story (i.e. a giant jam jar for an Eastern European president, a giant wasp, Hennimore's boss' wife going to a fancy dress party as a wasp) results in a Gilligan Cut to the fallout of a mix-up (Hennimore hitting his boss' wife with a bat).
- 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.
- 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, the 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 checkmated 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 an episode of the Australian cop drama Blue Heelers, early in the episode a police officer loses their pen due to it rolling off and falling behind a filing cabinet, to which another officer offhandedly remarks that the cabinet doesn't sit straight. Later on a major plot point develops with another police officer suspected of stealing a vial (containing a blood sample of a suspect) which had mysteriously disappeared - in the end it's revealed the vial had been left on the aforementioned filing cabinet sometime during the episode and had, of course, rolled off and fallen down behind it.
- 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).
- Played straight in a recent episode of Taggart - 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 points one of these guns at Burke, pulls the trigger... and it blows up in the crim's hand.
- 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!"
- Season four of The Wire opens with a humorous scene where one of the characters purchases a nail gun. Several episodes later it becomes integral to the plot.
- 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.
- On one episode of NCIS, Tony steal's McGee's apple, munches on it, and tosses the core away in Abby's trash bin. Just yet another example of Tony treating McGee like the Butt Monkey, right? Yes, except two episodes later we find out that Chip stole the discared apple in order to get a copy of Tony's teeth marks, and used them to frame Tony for murder.
- In an episode of ER, an African woman gives a necklace of the cross to one of the doctors tending her daughter. He claims that he doesn't deserve it, but she calls him a "man of God" for being here, helping them when no one else would. Later on, when captured by the rebels and as they brutally murdered each of their hostages, they were just about to execute the doctor, when they realize he was praying and was wearing the cross, thus believing he was a priest. The woman who gave him the necklace quickly said that even the rebels wouldn't dare harm a "man of God". And so, the rebels let him go.
- Dean has an amulet that he wears at all times. In the third season episode "A Supernatural Christmas," we find out that Sam gave it to him as a Christmas gift years ago. For many fans it represents the (sometimes disturbingly) close relationship between the two brothers. This was highlighted when Sam was shown to have worn the amulet while Dean was dead (Sam returned it when they were reunited at the beginning of the fourth season). Fast-forward to the second episode of the fifth season, when Castiel reveals that he needs to borrow the amulet, because God is missing, and it can be used to find Him, since it glows hot in His presence.
Mythology
- 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.
- In Homer's epic The Odyssey, the first book/chapter references a number of spears on on the wall at Odysseus's home. At the end, Odysseus and his son use the spears to kill the suitors, among other weapons.
Professional Wrestling
- 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!"
Close Professional Wrestling
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.
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
- El Goonish Shive is somewhat notorious for its use of Chekov's Guns, many of which have yet to go off. Perhaps the most infamous Chekov's Gun is Lord Tedd, who was first mentioned way back in the Sister Arc (and who's effects have been around since the Goo Arc, the first official arc of the series) but who's never been officially confronted.
- 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.
- 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 "IO Me: 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
- The silver dragon shown dead in this strip is likely the one he reanimated and rode into the battle at Azure City.
- 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 8-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.
- SWORD-CHUCKS, YO!
- 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.
- The regular Cyanide And Happiness comics don't have these due to short-form constraints. Their movies, however, are a delightful exception.
- Subverted in this Mountain Time comic, and lampshaded for good measure.
- MS Paint Adventures: both candy corn and 'Sepulchritude' are introduced early in the comic, and the main character has to abstain from their use several times before being used to kill the final boss.
Web Original
- There's an interesting anecdote about John Dies At The End regarding Camel Holocaust, the "song" that John wrote for his band early in the book. In the original webnovel, the protagonists have to stall a group of monsters at a later date by playing Sweet Child O' Mine on a set of guitars they stole from Elton John. When the book was to be put into print, however, the issue of copyright came up. The author stared dumbly into space, scratched his butt, and realized that he had left Chekhov's Gun sitting in his back pocket. Thus, the day was saved by
Fat Jackson's Flap Wagon Three Arm Sally.
- 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.
- The Weapons Fair is turning into a Chekhovs Armoury. The attack devise in Knick-Knack's 'lava lamps'? Used to attack Phase in a much later novel. Phase's run-in with Kew and the Spy Kidz? Important in "Ayla and the Networks". There seems to be a lot of these.
- The web series commodoreHustle (by the guys at loadingreadyrun) introduced Mr. Ballsmatron in episode 7, and other than a few cameos, it never played a role until the season finale, with an ultimate ball kick and its destruction. Making it possibly the first appearance of a Chekhov's Ball-kicking robot.
- Boatmurdered, a well-known succession game of Dwarf Fortress, has an example - an early ruler builds a catapult in the souther parts of the outdoor plains to take out problem elephants, get rid of surplus stone and train siege operators. Due to a lack of manpower and constant attacks, it never sees use and isn't even mentioned again. When a later ruler allows magma flow from Project Fuck The World to reach the southern parts of the map, it sets the catapult on fire. The smoke clouds and spreading blaze from that one structure ultimately lead to the fortress's downfall.
Western Animation
Aw, come on! There's strawberry frosting all over "As You Like It"!
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