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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's (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.
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
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.
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.
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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 seperate saga - to turn the plot around.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Film
- An interesting movie subversion is in Snake Eyes, where the huge ball that has been lying on the ground for most of the movie doesn't roll over anyone (read: Gary Sinise). However, this was only because test audiences didn't like the originally-planned ending in which it does roll over Sinise.
- The Da Vinci Code goes out of its way to point out what appears to be an utterly trivial detail about the Louvre near the beginning of the film — which turns out to be of vital importance in its last minutes.
- In the beginning of a James Bond film, Q briefs 007 on all the new clever gadgets. Not only will every single one get used at some point, but every aspect of each item will be relevant. When, for example, Q added a fingerprint recognition feature into the grip of a camera-gun, the weapon was subsequently taken by a foe and pointed at Bond. The pause while the thug fruitlessly attempted to fire the weapon gave 007 the moment he needed to dispatch him.
- An exception to this is the film Goldeneye, where Q explains all the gadgets in Bond's new BMW, none of which are used at all in the film.
- This is (I've heard) because the Bond scriptwriters write themselves into a corner, invent a gadget to get out of it, and then write them all into the Q scene later. Except for the BMW, which was just barefaced Product Placement.
- This was referenced in an Eddie Izzard bit where he points out that Bond never returns and says "Q, I've got a lot of stuff I didn't even fucking use!"
- An especially good example also comes from Goldeneye, however. At one point, Boris the hacker's nervous habit of spinning a pen in one hand while typing with the other is conspicuously shown. When combined with Q's earlier scene, you just know Boris will be spinning Bond's pen-grenade near the end, with explosive consequences. Sure enough ...
- Live And Let Die both utilized and subverted this. Bond is given special "shark pellets" that are capsules full of compressed gas. He never uses them on any sharks, instead using them as a quick way of dispatching the villain by force feeding him one and making him swell up like a blimp and pop. The subversion is practically the opposite of the above Goldeneye subversion example; instead of not using a gadget that has been introduced earlier, he more or less produces a gadget out of nowhere with no build-up or foreshadowing whatsoever, in this case being a miniature buzz-saw blade in his watch that he uses to saw through rope.
- The car chase at the beginning of Quantum of Solace ends when James Bond pulls out a machine gun and blasts the bad guys off a cliff. We had not seen this gun in the movie before Bond uses it... but we do see him with the gun at the end of Casino Royale, in a scene that takes place about an hour before Solace begins.
- Subverted early in the first Pirates Of The Caribbean — a decorative shield-and-swords hangs over a fireplace in the governor's mansion in the grand swashbuckling fashion. When Elizabeth later goes to draw one of the swords to defend herself against invading pirates, she ends up pulling the whole thing down off the wall by accident — the swords are firmly attached to the shield and won't come loose.
- Possibly intended as a reference to Gremlins, in which the Peltzer family for some reason keep a shield and two swords in their living room. At least one of the swords is still a very functional weapon.
- It's played straight in the same movie: Norrington mocks Jack's pistol (with only one shot) and compass (that's apparently broken); the pistol has symbolic importance and the compass proves important not only to the first movie but to the sequels as well.
- Played straight in the 2nd movie as well, especially in the scene in Tia Dalma's shack, where you see a locket mysteriously similar to Davy Jones' locket (which hadn't been shown yet in the movie), and the newly resurrected Barbossa's boots long before he reveals himself.
- An interesting one comes in the form of the sword Will forged for Norrington. At the end of the third film, Will is killed with this sword.
- A perfect example of Chekhov's gun can be found in Shaun Of The Dead. While getting drunk in the Winchester, Shaun and Ed discuss whether the gun behind the counter is real. Later, while dealing with a rather unexpected zombie problem, they discover that the gun is in fact genuine.
- The cop-movie parody Hot Fuzz, from the same team, has what would be better described as Chekhov's Arsenal stashed in a police evidence room. Actually the entirety of Hot Fuzz is a great example of this, as nearly everything seen, done, or said in the first half of the film becomes an important plot point in the second. Watch it twice then make a checklist. It's uncanny.
- The DVD feature Fuzz Facts points out every single one of them. And there are a lot.
- Early in Grindhouse: Death-Proof, the characters have a conversation about whether or not carrying a gun is necessary to protect oneself. Near the climax, the character who carries one shoots the Big Bad with it.
- Die Hard was rife with Chekhov’s Guns, from a passenger's advice regarding jet-lag, to Argyle’s list of the limousine’s features ("CB, CD, TV..."), to Holly Gennero’s new Rolex Watch. The significant details seem to outnumber the insignificant ones. In the third film, Mc Clane complains of having a headache from the moment he joins the film and convinces the Big Bad to throw him some aspirin while he's tied to a colossal bomb. After escaping, he keeps the aspirin, finds that it's empty, lies it down so he could see the bottom of the bottle and figures out where the villain's hiding because that's where the aspirin bottle came from.
- The movie Aliens features a perfect example in the form of the powerloader. In a seemingly throwaway scene towards the beginning of the film, Ripley is shown to have a remarkable degree of skill with this particular piece of equipment — and of course, she goes on to use this exact piece of equipment in the climactic mano-a-mano battle with the Alien Queen.
- Literally a gun in the Doom movie: The BFG. No, not a BFG, this is Doom we're talking about. It's The BFG.
- A fairly subtle one in The Long Kiss Goodnight. Samantha Caine slips a matchbook into her daughter's sling, so that she can keep a candle lit while her mother's away. Once Sam has her memory back and is Charly Baltimore, she and her daughter are Locked In A Freezer, where the matches (along with some gasoline) allow her to blow up the freezer door and escape.
- Jumper has one. Griffin makes a passing mention of how much the average jumper can jump with. About twelve minutes before the end of the film, that knowledge comes in handy to the main character.
- In an early scene of Back To The Future, a woman tells Marty and Jennifer about how the town's clock tower was struck by lightning and hands him a flyer that gives all the details. This works mainly since the scene is also funny, allowing viewers to think it was simply a joke and thus not realize its significance until later on.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day - John Connor has a laptop computer that determines ATM PINs. It comes in handy later on.
- In The Spanish Prisoner There are usually groups of camera-wielding Japanese tourists in the background, and their presence is noted by the characters. At the end, the protagonist is on a ferry with two villains about to kill him. He appeals to the only other passengers, two of the ubitquitous tourists. They're actually US Marshals, have been staking him out the whole time, and arrest the villains. Virtually everything in the movie is a Chekhov's Gun. Watch it five times and you'll still be noticing new ones.
- Both used and subverted in Blood Simple. The gun and the number of bullets it has is a running detail. Many other details, such as the lighter under the stack of fish, get shown but end up playing no importance at all. In fact, the whole movie is really more of a satire of Chekhov's Gun, toying with the audience as it focuses on details only to either not use them or use them in a way not expected.
- Subverted in Slither. A grenade is shown in the police station's gun cabinet, and a minor character actually explains what it's doing there. The main character goes back for it, planning to use it to blow up the the Big Bad. During the climax, the Big Bad knocks it out of his hand, twice, and it finally explodes uselessly in a swimming pool.
- I don't know if this counts as a subversion, since an attempt to use the grenade was made, and technically it did go off... just not in any way that was effective, combat-wise.
- It counts as a subversion because the item failed to be useful. However, the movie has an actual example of the trope - Kylie's nails. They're discussed during dinner with her family for some reason, later they save her by being able to stab the worm and pull it out of her mouth.
- In the Iron Man film, Tony Stark builds a electromagnetic device called an Arc Reactor to protect his heart, then upgrades the unit by having his secretary, Pepper, install a larger version in his chest. He tells her to throw the small unit away, but Pepper has it put in a display case for him. The miniature reactor becomes crucial later on, when Obadiah Stane takes the larger reactor from Tony's chest while he's paralyzed, and he must rely on the smaller model to power his suit. Also, Tony's second attempt at the suit doesn't work out too well after ice builds up during a high-atmosphere flight. He later uses this against the Big Bad.
- The giant Arc-Reactor which is mentioned in the first third of the movie, then overloaded at the end to finally defeat Obadiah Stane.
- Hell, pretty much every character, item, and detail has at least two uses in the movie.
- In the Italian horror film Demons, which is set in a movie theater, there is a mannequin of a samurai mounted on a dirt bike in the main lobby, complete with samurai sword, presumably as a movie promotion. In the film's climax, both of these items are put to good use.
- In one scene in the Sonic The Hedgehog Movie, Dr Eggman lets off a missile in the shape of a tortoise; of course, it moves so slowly that it is of very little use to him in the fight. At the end of the film, after Eggman's clone of Sonic is destroyed, he announces that he still has Sonic's DNA and he can make another clone; at this point the tortoise re-enters shot and explodes, destroying the data disk.
- Near the opening of the John Wayne movie Rio Bravo, Sheriff Chance directs an incoming wagon train to park outside of town (and near the Big Bad's land) because its cargo contains dynamite he wants away from the jailhouse. Naturally, at the end of the movie, the big shootout happens in the same location.
- In Waynes World Wayne and Garth meet up with a security guard after coming out the stage exit during a rock concert, and this guard just so happens to have a lot of information about the big-wig record producer's travel itinerary, including the fact he drives everywhere in his expensive limo with a big satellite dish right on top. Lampshaded by Wayne when Garth figures out a way to use this to further the plot.
- Subverted in Foul Play. Gloria is unknowingly slipped a cigarette pack with the bad guys' plans, which ends up dropped behind a couch in her apartment. Much, much later, the landlord's pet snake finds them, only for him to say "How many times do I have to tell you, don't eat cigarettes!" and toss it in the fireplace, not knowing its importance. Cut to the snake laughing.
- In The Departed, a random scrap of paper written by one of the protagonists is the key to uncovering the mob's rat in the Massachusetts State Police.
- Kung Fu Panda: The scene where Mantis is giving Po acupuncture and reveals that it is very hard to find his pressure points under all the fur and fat—this becomes a key plot point during the final battle.
- Another example is the Wushi Fingerhold, which seems like a throwaway gag near the start of the film... really, the entire movie is a love-letter to Chekhov's Gun. Remember, "there are no accidents."
- Subverted in the first Charlies Angels film. The film goes a little out of its way to point out the lighter that Drew Barrymore carries everywhere, and when she's tied to a chair during the climax she naturally snatches it from her sleeve and tries to burn the ropes. However, it refuses to make any flame and so she has to fight a bunch of guys while still tied to the chair.
- In the 2008 film "Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D", it was magnesium veins in the rock walls.
- A subtle one can be seen in Batman Begins when Alfred is putting Rachel into a car to take her home. To lay her down in the back seat, he moves some random golf clubs out of the way. Why are they there...so Alfred can use them to beat down a henchman of the League of Shadows upon his return. Also in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is subjected to ninja hallucinogens at the beginning of the movie, which are later revealed to be the same as the Scarecrow's weird gas poison.
- Also, the monorail built by Bruce's dad turns out to be a Chekhov's Gun used by Ra's al Ghul to spread Scarecrow's gas.
- In The Dark Knight, a small gag is used with Bruce not knowing all the features of his new suit and shooting the blades of his gauntlet. Near the end of the film, he uses the gauntlet's blade-shooting ability deliberately.
- Monty Python And The Holy Grail. Halfway through the film, a historian appears to summarize the next part of the plot and is murdered. Later, Arthur, Sir Bedevere, and Sir Lancelot are stopped on their quest and arrested for his murder.
- Also, on the scene where they have to answer questions in order to cross the bridge, Arthur knows about swallows due to the first scene.
- Serenity. Captain Mal orders Jayne not to take any grenades when they go to rob the payroll shipment. During the robbery the Reavers attack and Jayne sarcastically points out how nice it would be to have grenades available. Late in the movie the Reavers attack again and Mal asks Jayne if he brought any grenades. Jayne just pulls open his coat and shows him the grenades he's wearing.
- Airplane II: The Sequel: the bomb Joe Seluchi buys in the airport gift shop.
- In the Super Mario Brothers live action movie, a Bob-omb is activated near the end, walks around harmlessly for a long time, only to come to rest and explode under the Big Bad at the climax.
- In the Will Ferrel movie Stranger Than Fiction his actions are being dictated by a writer controlling his life. The author mentions his watch repeatedly throughout the film. It turns out that the writer intended to have him be hit by a bus, breaking the watch and having a shard of the face cut through an artery and killing him, due to him accidentally having his watch set early. The writer, upon learning that she's killing a real man, rewrites the ending so that the fragment of the watch sticks in the artery, stopping him from death by watch. It makes the ending less ironic than the ending she planned, but oh-so-heartwarming.
- Fatal Attraction has a literal revolver.
- Jaws with the compressed air tanks. They are explosive if shot (in the movie, anyway). At the end the shark has one in its mouth and Brody shoots it.
- The Opposite of Sex: Dedee is shown packing a gun—and, despite the fact that she toys with being an Unreliable Narrator, it does get used later on. Twice.
- Subverted in the Sponge Bob Square Pants movie, in which he and Patrick are too, ahem, stupid to properly use Scarlett Johansson's airbag.
- Rambo. The Tallboy Bomb
- The fine folk at Pixar are masters of this, and most of their films have at least a few examples.
- Finding Nemo alone has at least a dozen. "All drains lead to the ocean." "Sandy says that sea turtles live to a hundred!" "Swim down!"
- WALL-E has a slight variant, in that the fire extinguisher which comes into use at a critical moment isn't the same one seen previously.
- Subverted slightly in the Speed Racer movie. Speed is presented with the modified Mach 5, with 7 different gadgets for him to use. While 6 of them come in handy, the last one is never used, apparently only being included because it was there in the original anime version.
- The last one remaining unused is fitting, since it was very rarely used in the show and often didn't work right.
- Signs has a few: Merrill's bat, Bo's abandoned glasses of water, and, arguably, Morgan's asthma.
- Let's face it... Signs could very well have been retitled Chekhov's Gun: The Movie.
- Burn After Reading plays it straight and literal. Harry Pfarrer brags more than once that in all his years as a federal marshall, he's never discharged his weapon. So you know before the end of the movie...
- In The Hunt For Red October, Ryan consults with a submarine expert in his factory. One of his side projects is a "daughter-ship" mini-submarine capable of docking with other submarines. Later, the mini-submarine permits the American protagonists and the Russian defectors to commune and collaborate aboard Red October, unbeknownst to the crew adrift.
- Certain items herald their later use by their very existence. For instance, anytime you see a vat of acid (or chemicals or boiling oil,) you know that someone (most likely a villain) is going to fall into it. And anytime you see a character looking up at a large showy chandelier, odds are good that it's going to fall on someone.
- In the animated movie Once Upon a Forest, early on in the movie the animals are told by their teacher that a certain part of the forest is off limits, but says that the reason why is "not today's lesson". Pan across to reveal a trap. This is promptly forgotten...until the very end of the movie, when Edgar the Mole gets caught in it while trying to evade some humans doing cleanup after the gas damaged the forest. One of them frees Edgar, smashes the trap, throws it in the garbage bag, and proves to the animals that perhaps (contrary to dire warnings throughout the movie) humans aren't exclusively destructive monsters. Not bad as environmentalist messages go.
- In the movie Stay Tuned, Roy's fencing swords from Junior College (mentioned early in the movie) are used to save his life in the climax, when he needs a sword to fight Mr. Spike.
- We Were Soldiers has Chekhov's Gatling Gun: Lt.Col. Moore first meets his new battalion's officer in a hangar where they've just been checking out an M134 Minigun... weapons which play a prominent role in the movie's climactic Big Damn Gunships moment.
- Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: Midway through the movie, Vanessa shows Austin a variety of dental hygiene products. Austin assumes that they are actually weapons, but she informs him that they really are for him to clean up his teeth. Later on in the movie, when Austin and Vanessa are suspended over a pool of ferocious sea bass, Vanessa remembers the toothpaste. Austin judo-chops the tube, spraying toothpaste in the only guard's eyes and causing him to fall into the water where he gets consumed by the bass, allowing Austin and Vanessa to escape.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, during the scene where Eddy visits the scene of Marvin Acme's murder, some of the cops on the site are seen fooling around with a portable hole and a mallet with a spring-loaded boxing glove in it. Both these props come in handy during Eddy's confrontation with Judge Doom at the end of the movie.
- Clumsily done in Fletch. Near the beginning of the movie, Fletch (Chevy Chase) lights a cigarette with a Zippo lighter. This is the only time he's ever seen smoking in the movie. But at the climax, when he needs a way to escape, the lighter comes in handy.
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.
- 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.
- Actually, it's common in folk tales in general. The hero runs around accumulating assets in the form of allies, objects, skills, and knowledge, and by the end of the tale every single piece has been used. Often enough in the exact order accumulated.
- On the other hand, it's not really Chekhov's Gun because, for the purposes of the myth, the use to which the hero puts any given item was, often as not, the prescribed use for the situation-the mirrored shield Perseus used so he could see Medusa to kill her, for example, was made for that exact purpose; the fact that he was also able to use it as a shield was just a nice bonus.
- Such items are also known as Plot Coupons.
- 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 horrible 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!"
- 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.
- ...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 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- This troper just thought Neal Stephenson was trying to make a point about society when he repeatedly mentioned Y.T.'s scary futuristic anti-rape condom ("dentata") in Snow Crash, especially since Y.T. is a fifteen-year-old girl. But later on....
- 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.
- 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.
- In the 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 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 arguments), 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 no the part of the Q-ship captain.
- 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 the beginning of The Dresden Files book Death Masks, while Harry and Ebeneezer Mc Coy are discussing when Harry studied astronomy under Mc Coy, they remember when they discovered "Asteroid Dresden", which turned out to be an old, disused Soviet satellite. At the end of the book Mc Coy 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]].
- 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.
Live Action TV
- 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.
- 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.
- Bad Wolf
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- This troper recently saw a holiday episode of Home Improvement that started with Tim and Al practically blinding the Tool Time audience with some sort of halogen setup. Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention, but 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.
Video Games
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