Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

Custom Search



alt title(s): Chekhovs Gun
Chekhov's Gun

redirected from Main.ChekhovsGun

"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."
—Anton Chekhov (From S. Shchukin, Memoirs. 1911.)

Chekhov's Gun is the literary technique whereby an element introduced early in the story becomes significant 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 important.

Although many people consider the phrase "Chekhov's gun" foreshadowing, the statements the author made about it can be more properly interpreted as "do not include any unnecessary elements in a story." The gun is primed to go off on a hair trigger while foreshadowing is softer and can be missed by the audience, sometimes noticed only upon a second viewing.

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 was planted there just to throw you off. If there are a whole bunch of Red Herrings you might be looking at The Walrus Was Paul, where a writer wants to mock fans of Chekhov's Guns by repeatedly messing with them. 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, you're looking at a Brick Joke. An item that was never intended to be Chekhov's Gun but becomes one in retrospect is Olaf's Hammer. Somewhere in between is the Mac Guffin, which is introduced, is significant for some (possibly even plot-relevant) reason, but we never find out just what it is. If the Chekhov's Gun was hiding on the other side of the Fourth Wall, you have a Ninja Prop.

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).

A reverse Chekhov's Gun is also common. Explicitly showing a normally armed character forgetting his gun when leaving the house for example. The experienced troper knows that this will become the day he needs it the most.

Not to be confused with Chekov's Gun.

This Trope Contains Spoilers By Necessity. Read At Your Own Risk.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & 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.
    • When Sasuke's Team Taka is fighting Killer Bee, there's a rather conspicuous focus on a tentacle of the 8-Tails that Sasuke cut off. A couple chapters later and it turns out when Killer Bee was underwater he removed an additional tentacle, then hid inside one of them while making one of them look like his unconscious body, and came back out once Team Taka had left.
    • 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.
    • Pain mentions that the Chibaku Tensei used by the Sage of Six Paths was said to have created the moon. About 30 chapters later, it turns out this was not hyperbole.
  • 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.
  • Early in the second season of Ghost In The Shell:Stand Alone Complex Togusa investigates the disappearance of a man who was last seen talking to people who have hired a number illegal immigrants as cheap laborers. It turns out he died in an accident while salvaging parts from an old nuclear power plant inside a restricted area. However, it's not a single episode about exploitation of refugees and endangering workers to save monney, but kicks off the seasons main plot as the Big Bad initiated the illegal salavage opperation to get plutonium fall into the hands of foreign terrorists to cause a massive scare against Chinese and Korean refugees.
  • 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.
    • A better example of a Chekhov's Gun in Negima is the bracelet that Ako won when she and Negi (disguised as Nagi) finished second in a pageant-like event during the school festival. Over a 150 chapters later, Ako is seen wearing the bracelet, with the item plying a key role in stopping a Magia Erebea-corrupted Negi from attacking her and the rest of the Sports Girls.
  • 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.
    • Luffy's brother gives him a piece of blank paper early on in the Arabasta 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.
    • 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!
    • 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.
    • Captain John's treasure was predicted right after the chapter he picks it up at was released, so it wasn't a huge shock. Still the Captain John plotline is relatively low-key, but is probably another set up. When it was first shown it was just thought to be a random thing to let us check in on Buggy, and the real important event was Ace showing up on his ship. No doubt Oda is the king of this trope. Laboon and Crocus in particular have a lot of events connected to them. It seems everything after they arrive in the Grand Line has had some kind of purpose later on. The sheer impressiveness comes when you realize that some of these set-ups took more than a decade to complete.
  • 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.
  • 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 Mako/Sailor Jupiter is introduced in the first season of the anime her rose-shaped earrings sparkle with reflected light. They seem insignificant until the beginning of the fifth season, when Usagi is trapped in Queen Nehelenia's illusions and loses the will to press on to save Mamoru and Chibi-Usa. When Jupiter shields Usagi with her body to block Neheleni'a lightning attacks 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.
  • In Utawarerumono, Eruru wears an odd, apparently decorative loop in her hair at almost all times. Later it is revealed that it is some sort of transmitter originally made by the humans when it automatically opens the door to a human research facility.
  • 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 accidentally 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.
    • That's not all. It turns out Bleach has a Chekov's gun within a gun. Aizen's Arrancar army is composed of the Espada, their Fraccion, and the Exequias. And then there is this guy called Wonderweiss. In the war against the Gotei 13, after most of the Arrancar are killed off and most of the Gotei 13 and Visored are killed or wounded by Aizen, the only ones left standing are Aizen, Gin, Wonderweiss, Yamamoto, and Ichigo. Then Yamamoto activates his Shikai and the fans are all ready for the Zanpakuto battle of the ages between the two strongest shinigami. Then Yamamoto's Shikai fails. Then we see Wonderweiss in Resureccion form. Then we see Aizen explain to Yamamoto that Wonderweiss was the only Arrancar modified with the Hogyoku. Yeah, remember the Hogyoku, the thing that Aizen nearly killed Rukia over and manipulated the entire Gotei 13 in a Xanatos Gambit to get? The thing that he waited for about 100 years for a chance to get his hands on before betraying Sereitei? Turns out it he did it all to create Wonderweiss, which was only created as part of a bigger Xanatos Gambit to depower Yamamoto. Just when you thought Aizen's Magnificent Bastardry couldn't get any more magnificent, it did.
  • 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.
    • Oh please. There's another one which is WAAAAAAAAY back in season 1: Wide Area Search. Simple spell just to collect the magical jewel shards right? During the final battle, Nanoha used this again to track down Quattro.
    • In conjunction with the above spoiler, Season 3 (Striker S) opens with Nanoha rescuing a girl from a raging fire and using Divine Buster to blow a hole clear through the entire building to get her out. That scene is nothing but Chekhov's Guns. The girl becomes Subaru, whose origins are crucial to the plot and lead you to one of the big Wham Moments of the season; and Nanoha [spoiler: stalls in a battle while doing Wide Area Search so she can stop Quattro, who when it is way too late remembers Nanoha has an attack that can also serve as the biggest Dungeon Bypass in history.]]
  • 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.
  • I'm surprised that Detective Conan wasn't mentioned. It's frequently used and a regular watcher ends up being trained to look for them in every episode. They're particularly subtle, too. One episode involved the culprit wearing a headband with the name of her favorite singer. The singer, Okino Yoko, has an accent over the 'o'. When the culprit committed the crime, blood, which was the same color as headband, got on it (conveniently right on the accent mark), and was discovered by Mouri * cough* Conan* cough* as the killer. Of course, if you are an American viewer, you might tilt your head at the odd spelling at first since, hey! You don't know how Japanese worth squat! It was probably caught easier by Japanese viewers, but still subtle, and no one really pays attention to it until Conan provides the proof.
  • In the Vampire Princess Miyu TV series, Miyu and Chisato purchase two good-luck charms from an artisan. The artist is a Shinma, and the trinkets keep Miyu from sensing Chisato's own energy, as she is an exceedingly powerful Shinma who hasn't been awakened yet.
  • In the Lupin III movie The Castle of Cagliostro, there are a few details you might miss the first few times you watch the movie:
    • Right before Lupin and Jigen are attacked in their room by the Count's assassins, you see Lupin fiddling around with some sort of forgery kit. What's he doing, you ask? Making the fake ring he gives to the Count about halfway through the film.
    • Near the end of the film, as the archbishop sent to marry Clarisse and the Count travels to Cagliostro, you might notice not only is the farmer who offers to show him a shortcut cleary Jigen in disguise, but the driver who arrives at the castle is not the same driver as when we first see the archbishop.
    • In the first movie, Secret of Mamo. Goemon's sword is shattered in a duel and Lupin takes one of the shards. In the end of the movie Lupin uses the shard to save himself by reflecting Mamo's lasers back at him.
  • Griffith's Crimson Behelit in the Berserk anime. We first see it after the naked water fight that he and Guts have in an early episode, and apart from a different colored Behelit taken off a demon Guts kills in the very first episode, it doesn't have a lot of significance, save for Zodd's prophetic warning about how when Griffith's dream crumbles, Guts will face his death. The Crimson Behelit turns out to be the key to become the very next member of the Godhand, the Big Bads of the series, during the Eclipse, and when it activates, it's the point when everything goes straight to Hell for Guts and the Hawks that Griffith led.
  • Transformers Robots In Disguise had a particularly impressive example. When the Decepticons were introduced, Scourge's protoform scanned a truck that Kelly was trying to escape in, and which Optimus Prime was holding up, meaning he simultaneously scanned Prime. Initially, the only outcome of this seemed to be a Decepticon who was ironically similar in appearance to the Autobot leader. Much later, it turned out that this event had given Scourge a hybrid Predacon/Autobot/human spark based on that of Optimus Prime, which in turn allowed him to control Fortress Maximus.
  • In Wind A Breath Of Heart, everybody has a special power. Except the protagonist. This point is made whenever the subject of the powers comes up, suggesting that the protagonist will eventually awaken to a kickass power. Oddly enough, the episode in which he uses his power was taken out of the TV broadcast.
  • In Mazinkaiser episode six, Boss gives Kouji a bar to protect him while trying to get to Mazinkaiser. Kouji accepts it, but points out he has protection in the form of his Photon Gun. In the next (and final episode), Mazinkaiser's steering wheel is destroyed in battle with Hell King Gorgon. As the machine tumbles back, the bar tumbles out and Kouji remembers Boss giving it to him, causing him to shove it in the shaft and finish the fight.
    • The sequel movie, Deathmatch! Great General of Darkness has an interesting one, though - way back in Mazinkaiser episode one, the titular mech thrashes an altered Mazinger-Z and it is never seen in the series again and it is never mentioned as to its fate. Come the movie, a knife Kouji uses to defend himself is revealed to be made from Mazinger-Z's remains!
  • The bottomless swamp in Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Ilya which Rin and Luvia fell into later reappeared as the trap that finally captured Black Ilya.
  • Shakugan No Shana has a Chekhov's BFS, Blutsauger. It first appears in the hands of a minor antagonist, and when he's defeated, leaving the sword, any Genre Savvy person could correctly deduce that by the end of the season, it will be in Yuji's hands. Although it trades hands several times, Yuji does indeed use it in the first season finale, and in the second half of the second season he carries it regularly.
  • Bakemonogatari's ending song is about two lovers who go star-gazing, and the singer lists all of the constellations that they are looking for. The song's meaning is seemingly detached from the series itself until the final broadcast episode, which ends with Agaragi and Senjogahara staring up at the stars. Senjoghara points out the exact same constellations mentioned in the song's lyrics, just before the opening bars of the ending song begin playing in the background.
  • The tiny bombs that Sagara Sanosuke got from Tsukioka Tsunan in Rurouni Kenshin play an important role in the Kyoto Arc when Sagara uses them to blow up Shishio's battleship, earning a major victory for Kenshin and company.
  • Miaka Yuki's unborn child in the 3rd Fushigi Yuugi OVA. The only Shinazho that wasn't a Mac Guffin.
  • Daisuke Aurora's silver-bullet pendant in Heat Guy J it's actually a sort of flash drive containing all kinds of dirt on his brother.

    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, 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 Chekhov's Gun, no such luck. Because of its prominence, it might actually qualify as a Chekhov's 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 chapter, having been revealed as the Big Bad.

    Fan Works 
  • In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Nagato checks Kyon's wristwatch in one chapter. Later on, it saves his life when he gets shot, turning into an armour... skinsuit... thing.

     Film 
  • The cars in the Russian plane in Twenty Twelve.
  • The sled from Citizen Kane. Cmon! It Was His Sled!
  • The Addams Family has an interesting case: Chekhov's Library, established in an early scene to have somewhat... literal books.
  • Airplane II: The Sequel: the bomb Joe Seluchi buys in the airport gift shop.
  • 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.
  • The Andromeda Strain (1971). Dr. Hall is repeatedly told about Wildfire's nuclear bomb Self Destruct Mechanism (which will go off if a disease escapes containment), how he's the only one who can stop it from detonating and how important it is that he be able to get to one of the deactivation terminals quickly. Guess what happens at the end of the movie.
    • In the novel, Dr. Leavitt is repeatedly shown averting his gaze from blinking lights. In the climactic chapter, he doesn't do so fast enough, and thus do we learn that he has epilepsy.
  • The new film Avatar is basically The Weapon Shops of Chekhov. For just living being examples (because a full listing would be just too long):
    • The Tricerotops/hammerhead monster. A brief appearance, then a big important scene
    • The Na'vi's ability to communicate with nature via their hair
    • The giant dragon. At first just a nice folk story, then a MAJOR plot-point
    • Some might consider the cat monster, although it had a good run the first time it appears.
    • The giant leaves that Jake fails to grab while training, but when he falls from a large height they save his life.
  • The Avengers. The boots Steed gives to Mrs. Peel, which later turn out to have a Tracking Device installed.
  • 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.
  • Perhaps the best Sci Fi example of this is the hoverboard from Back to the Future, Part II. Kept in the Delorean after Marty McFly uses it to beat Griff Tannen, the hoverboard plays an essential role in the third film, when Marty flies it over to Doc Brown, who is hanging off a speeding train. Not only are Doc and girlfriend Clara saved, but the hoverboard allows Brown to rebuild the technology, allowing him to create a FLYING TRAIN. Holy shit.
    • In a rare case of a Checkov's gun being set on the mantle in one film intentionally to be fired in the sequel, Marty walks into 1985-A Biff's hot tub room in Part II and sees him watching the scene from A Fistful of Dollars wherein Clint Eastwood uses a metallic plate-like object as a makeshift bulletproof vest. When he ends up bumping into and knocking off a stove door in the Old West in Part III during a hectic pre-shootout sequence, he remembers this and it ends up saving his life.
  • 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.
    • There are so many examples of this in Batman Begins that it is too hard to list them all. The piano, the introduction to the capabilities of the Batmobile, everything having to do with Ra's al Ghul / Ducard. Seriously, like everything in the first half of the movie comes back in the second.
    • 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.
      • Additionally, the sonar technology used to map out Lau's Hong Kong office is used again to track down The Joker during the climax.
      • Also, Harvey's coin is introduced early in the film, which he later uses when he becomes Two-Face.
    • A bit older in the Batman movieverse is in Batman Returns. Bet you forgot about that tazer Miss Kyle picked up before she became Catwoman!
  • In Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie, several items which are only briefly seen at the start of the film come into play much later (such as the M&M's, and the laxatives).
  • The ground-to-air missile in Southland Tales. Also all that other stuff that made no sense.
  • 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.
  • Bolt makes masterful use of this trope, in conjunction with the Rule Of Three. The beginning of the movie sets up one of Bolt's fictional superpowers, the Super Bark, by giving him a specific ritual to perform before making it. In the middle of the movie, he tries the ritual / Super Bark again to prove to Mittens that he's a superhero; of course, he just barks normally. Finally, when Bolt and his owner Penny are trapped in a fire at the studio, Bolt manages to lead her to an air duct ... and then performs his Super Bark ritual again to bark as loudly as he can down the duct. The echo of his bark along the ducts allows the firemen to locate and rescue them.
  • 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...
  • Subverted in the first Charlie's 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.
    • Played straight, though, in the sequel, when Bosley II points out the girls' custom-made Kevlar vests that later save them when they get shot by the Big Bad.
  • Chinatown has the car horn: Evelyn Mulwray dozes off in the car, her head falls and sets it off. In the end when she tries to escape, a policeman fires at her and then we hear the horn blare...
  • In The Dark Is Rising, the young hero gets a digital watch for his birthday, which he later uses to amaze a Viking.
  • The Da Vinci Code goes out of its way to point out an apparently 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 Angels and Demons the book, there's an unusually large amount of detail given about St Peter's tomb when the characters are merely wandering by it. Naturally, it's an important place for plot related reasons later.
  • In Day of the Dead's 2008 remake, before Hud is bitten and turned into a zombie, he tells the female romantic interest that he is a vegetarian in an attempt to impress her. When he is turned into a zombie, he doesn't eat people, which later comes to serve as an Ass Pull by allowing him to save the main character.
  • In the Death Race remake, one of Jensen's mechanics jokes that the cigarette lighter is the most important part of the car. Sure enough, in the ensuing race, Jensen uses the cigarette lighter to eliminate one of the drivers trying to kill him by igniting a tank full of napalm.
    • The Death's Head trap is another, as all the drivers manage to evade them after the preliminary intro race...until Joe and Frankenstein use their cars to obscure a Death's Head mark on the ground, causing the gigantic deathtruck from hell to impact and flip, dropping its flamethrower tank right on top of the cab.
  • In Deathtrap the main character fakes a murder and in the process invites his guest to try out Houdini's Handcuffs, which he cannot escape because they are fake. Later, when his accomplice betrays him and is robbing the house the main character is handcuffed to a chair, then shortly after calls out "You can come down now, those were Houdini's real handcuffs."
  • In the Italian horror film Demoni, 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 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.
  • 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, McClane 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, lays it down so he can see the bottom of the bottle and figures out where the villain's hiding because that's where the aspirin bottle came from.
  • Played straight in Dillinger is Dead: the main character finds an old revolver that doesn't work one night as he is making dinner at home. Throughout the movie, while going about his evening, he carefully disassembles the gun, cleans it, reassembles it, paints it red with white polka-dots, hangs it to dry, and then in the end shoots his sleeping wife with it.
  • Dodgeball had Peter's receiving of Patches' scarf and a random reading of the Sudden Death guidelines, both of which come into play in the final showdown (though not the "alternate" ending where the villains win outright... the fact that said guns would've remained unfired suggest it was never meant to be a serious ending.) However, though the fact that one of the members of the Average Joe's gym believes himself to be a pirate was important to the ending in earlier drafts (which would have had several huge scenes at the Treasure Island casino), he serves little purpose in the final cut.
  • Literally a gun in Doom (the film): The BFG. No, not a BFG, this is Doom we're talking about. It's The BFG.
  • The coin-collecting side plot in Drag Me to Hell, if Chekhov's gun was surrounded by flashing neon and howled "Look at me! Look at me!" whenever possible.
  • Dude, Where's My Car? contains several examples. The most memorable is probably the nature show the boys are watching at the beginning which provides the key to saving the universe. Many seemingly random people and events in this film are actually significant, but just as many (such as the pissing roommate) have no plot relevance whatsoever and are there solely for the WTF factor.
  • Several examples of Chekhov's Guns can be found in Enter the Dragon. In one scene, Roper is taken through a medieval torture museum room by Mr. Han, which includes a glass display case with several replacement weapon-hands. One of them, a metal claw, is used during the big fight with Bruce Lee in the end. In addition, during the big fight (which takes place in said museum room, acting as another Chekhov's Gun), Mr. Han tries throwing a spear at Lee, which goes through a wall and into the Hall Of Mirrors beyond. The climax of the movie involves Lee kicking Han right into the spear and Impaling Him With Extreme Prejudice. In fact, the advice that Bruce takes about "smashing the image" in order to defeat Han was itself a Chekhov's Gun given by Bruce's master near the very beginning of the film.
  • The mithril shirt that Bilbo gives to Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring is a mild example.
  • Fatal Attraction has a literal revolver.
    • In the original ending, it was an audio tape.
  • Clumsily done in Fletch. Near the beginning, 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.
  • Partly subverted in Flyboys. Each of the young pilots is given a revolver by veteran pilot Reed Cassidy. The explanation is that, if their plane catches fire they can use the gun for a quick suicide. The audience KNOWS this will be used for that, but the first plane to catch fire explodes before the pilot can act. It is, of course, used near the end of the movie by Briggs Lowry, finishing the loop. However, Blaine Rawlings then uses HIS gun to surprise and kill the Big Bad when his gun is shot out in the final duel.
  • 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 first ten minutes of Frequency, John's best friend's kid finds a shotgun in an old case where John's father's old ham radio is. Although it is only mentioned and seen in passing then, John's father later uses it to blow off the hand of, and, 30 years later, kill, the villain.
  • In Funny Games, the film points out a knife that gets dropped to the deck of the family sailboat. When the woman is brought back to the boat by her captors, she grabs the knife but her captors immediately spot her and grab the knife, making the whole thing a red herring.
    • Arguably a lampshaded red herring, considering the context of the film.
  • Averted and subverted in Gran Torino: Clint Eastwood's character threatens people with guns several times but only fires a gun once, by accident and early in the movie. Additionally Eastwood's character in the finale mimics movements that he made earlier where he pulled a gun, but he isn't carrying one at the time.
  • In Gremlins, the Peltzer family keeps a shield and two swords in their living room. At least one of the swords is still a very functional weapon.
  • 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.
  • In Grosse Pointe Blank, Martin Blank is given a pen with the business details of an old schoolfriend at a reunion. He later uses this to stab a would-be assassin to death.
  • In Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, while searching a car, the titular characters come across a huge stash of pepper spray. Later in the film, after they're arrested by the FBI, they manage to escape after it's revealed that Harold managed to hide a can of pepper spray in his pants and uses it to disable their captors.
    • The first Harold and Kumar movie also had a number of Chekhov's Guns. For example, the cheetah is mentioned on a number of news reports before the protagonists find it, but the news reports are just treated as background noise. The hangglider on top of the car they steal from the extreme sports enthusiasts ends up being the vehicle that carries them to their final destination.
  • In Hook, the titular captain reveals in a victory speech to his underlings that he is finally getting his total revenge on the now-adult Peter Pan. Prior to kidnapping Peter's kids, Hook killed the crocodile that had been pursuing him all these years and turned it into a Clock Tower. It winds up killing Hook in the final battle when it's accidentally brought back to life.
  • The cop-movie parody Hot Fuzz, aka "Chekhov's Gun: The Movie," 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.
      • A particularly apt example might be the sea mine, which fails to go off when it's first discovered in a farmer's barn ... so that it can be detonated in the police station right at the end of the movie.
    • "SWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANN!"
  • House of the Dead had one girl who is blatantly pointed out as being on the fencing team. This is of absolutely no importance to the plot until the climax where the Big Bad picks up a sword and a rather dull sword fight ensues.
  • Indiana Jones:
    • Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Marion is first introduced as a competitive drinker who can hold massive amounts of alcohol. Later, when held captive by Belloq, she gets him drunk so she can attempt to escape.
    • Early in Temple of Doom Indy asks Willie to hold his gun during the car chase and she throws it out the window. Near the end he's confronted by two swordsmen, reaches for his gun and... oops!
    • See also Mutt's knife in Crystal Skull, which was established mere minutes after we first see him. "Possesses a knife" proves to be his only notable trait later on.
  • 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 and his heart. 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.
      • "How did you solve that icing problem?"
    • The sequel has loads as well, including Howard Stark's model of the Stark Expo and what happens when two repulsor blasts hit each other.
      • It also contains a subversion, when we are introduced to Hammer's "ex-wife" bunker-buster shell. When Rhodes tries to use it on Vanko, it proves completely worthless.
  • 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. You basically know that a Bond movie will never end unless every named gadget from the Q scene has either been used or deliberately written off.
    • 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 because the BMW Product Placement came really late into development, so a scene using the car couldn't be created.
    • 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 watch has another subversion earlier, as it was introduced as a powerful magnet, which Bond tries to use to pull a metal canoe toward him when he's stranded in the middle of a bunch of alligators. After moving a few inches, the canoe is revealed to be securely tied to the shore.
    • 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.
    • Another bizarre example is Q's "Ultra-high frequency single-digit sonic agitator unit" in Die Another Day. It's a ring that can shatter any glass. That's it. Bond uses it twice, once to escape the bad guys, and another to rescue Jinx.
  • In the 2008 film Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D, it was magnesium veins in the rock walls.
  • 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.
  • Played straight in Kick-Ass. Half-way through the film, the bodyguard steals a bazooka off of a wall of guns. It's used in the final scene of the movie to kill the Big Bad.
  • Viciously lampshaded by Narrator!Harry in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: "Ooo-kay... I apologize, that was a terrible scene. It's like, why was that in the movie? Gee, do you think it'll come back later, maybe? I hate it when movies do that. TV's on, talking about the new power plant — hm, I wonder where the big climax will happen."
  • 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.
  • Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome has an extra-delayed-fire Chekhov's Gun. In the first movie he's a cop with the Main Force Patrol. By the second movie the MFP has ceased to exist and is never mentioned, he even loses his cop car halfway through it. In the third movie he's set to battle the gigantic Blaster. Blaster is rendered helpless by Max's MFP police whistle, since Blaster has a Weaksauce Weakness against high pitched noises
  • Men In Black
    • The flying saucers from the first MIB meeting in 1961, converted into towers at Flushing.
    • The little red button in the LTD.
    • K orders J to fasten his seat belt before they go for a drive, and J lectures him about being polite. Just after K has J push the little red button he says "And you might want to put on a seat belt".
  • 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.
    • Originally they had more modern scenes planned, but ultimately focused on the grail quest for the most part. It's funnier because it comes out of nowhere, anyhow.
    • 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.
  • Muppet Treasure Island: Gonzo's odd decision to keep starfish in his pants come in handy when they battle against the pirates. If people count, the fact that Statler and Waldorf are the animated, talking figureheads of the Hispaniola also counts.
  • My Cousin Vinny is loaded with examples, from Lisa's ever-present camera and her extensive knowledge of automobiles to the story of Judge Malloy and the diner cook's brief explanation of how grits are cooked.
  • In The Naked Gun 2 and 1/2, Frank uses a police tank to crash though a house, a gated community and a zoo. Much later, Frank wrestles Quentin Habsburg till Quentin accidentally falls out of a window. He plummets several stories before landing on a canopy and bouncing to the ground unscathed . . . where he is then mauled by a lion presumably from the zoo.
    • In a movie like this one its surprising they actually set that gag up as opposed to just having it randomly happen for no reason.
  • The Opposite of Sex: Dedee is shown packing a gun, and even helpfully informs the audience, "This is foreshadowing. Duh!". And despite the fact that she toys with being an Unreliable Narrator, it does get used later on. Twice.
  • Our Man Flint. Early in the movie Flint is woken up from suspended animation by his watch. Later on when Flint is apparently dead, the watch wakes him up again - he was just in suspended animation.
  • Ofelia's red shoes in Pan's Labyrinth are forgotten about halfway through the film, only to suddenly reappear at the end. They don't really do anything, they are just a part of the elaborate system of clues that let the viewer know the truth about what happens—red shoes are associated with The Fair Folk, as is Ofelia's all-green outfit, for that matter.
    • The bottle of sleeping medicine Ofelia's mother was given would count. At first, it seems completely unnecessary since Ofelia helps her mother to get better with the mandrake root. At the end of the movie though, she uses it to drug her stepfather and escape with her brother.
    • Mercedes' belt on her robe early on is revealed to have a hidden compartment where she stores her kitchen knife. The camera focussed on it for too long for it to not be of any importance. As it turns out, later she is tied to a chair by the Big Bad, and when his back is turned, she retrieves the knife, cuts herself free, and in a Crowning Moment Of Awesome slices open his cheek before making her escape.
  • Happens twice in Papillon. First on the boat to French Guiana, where Papillon displays his pocket knife, which later is used by Papillon to defend Louis from two robbers. Later, when Papillon, Louis and Clusiot have escaped their captivity, Papillon is shown putting an axe in the back of his pants. The same axe is later used to kill an officer.
  • Strange case in Pee Wee's Big Adventure — Pee-Wee buys several strange items at the magic shop at the beginning of the movie, including a boomerang bowtie. However, it is only used in a deleted scene, whereas most of the other items do get used in the movie.
  • 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.
    • 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.
    • Ragetti's wooden eye seems to just be comic relief, until it turns out to be one of the Pieces of Eight.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Subverted in Slither. A grenade is shown in the police station's gun cabinet, and a minor character explains what it's doing there. The main character goes back for it, planning to use it to blow up 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.
    • 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.
  • An interesting 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 ubiquitous 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.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day - John Connor has a laptop computer that determines ATM PINs. It comes in handy later on.
    • Terminator Salvation details a method for crippling the T-600s. It too comes in handy later on.
  • In Wayne's 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.
  • 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.
    • At the prison, what seems like a Perpetual Molt trope turns out to be this as well.
    • 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."
  • Other Dreamworks films have done this as well, particularly in their trailers. In Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were Rabbit, the official trailer showed a scene where Wallace got stuck coming through the trapdoor to the kitchen and Gromit needed to use a mechanized hammer to get him through. This at first seemed like an amusing gag, but it turned out to be the very driving part of the film concerning Wallace's diet and his unfortunate transformation.
  • Also in the Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa trailer, during the scene where the animals' plane was crashing, Melman the giraffe blurted out that he had always been in love with Gloria the hippo. Unfortunately, she was asleep through both his confession and the crash, which lead to a bit of embarrassment for Melman when Alex and Marty gave him funny looks. The trailer made this look like just a throwaway joke to use in the midst of a plane crash, but it turned out to be a very important plot of the movie, resulting in an Interspecies Romance at the end of the film.
  • 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.
    • Janye's comment that it "sure would be nice to have some grenades" is a hybrid lampshade/inversion at the time.
  • 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.
    • The Bob-omb was actually introduced earlier and wasn't shown again until that point.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • Even better, at one point Brody briefly sees a * picture* of a shark with such a tank in its mouth, but only for a flash as he's flipping through a book. Blink and you'll miss it.
  • Subverted in the Sponge Bob Square Pants movie, in which he and Patrick are too, ahem, stupid to properly use Scarlett Johanson's airbag.
    • It could be said it made up for it when Sponge Bob used the Goofy Goober song he and Patrick had been singing throughout the movie in a rock and roll rendition to free everyone under Plankton's control.
  • Rambo. The Tallboy Bomb.
  • In Zoom, it's mentioned that if he still had his powers, Mr. zoom still had his powers, he could create a vortex that would negate the gamma rays' effects, turning his brother back to the good.
  • 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.
    • Chekhov most have written Up himself, as it's full of these; the dogs chasing the tennis balls, the Grape Soda bottle cap, the list goes on.
    • They actually started out by subverting the trope: in Toy Story Woody gets a match put into his pocket which he later pulls out to light a rocket that will let him and Buzz catch up to their moving owner...only for a passing car to immediately blow it out.
      • But then immediately plays it straight when Woody uses the burning things with a magnifying glass trick that Sid had done to his forehead using light going through Buzz's helmet to light the fuse.
    • A big example in The Incredibles is Buddy, the annoying little kid who pops up in Mr. Incredible's car in the beginning of the movie. Since the opening of the film shows us "a day in the life of a superhero", Buddy just seems like a typical fanboy...until he grows up to become the supervillain Syndrome.
      • When Mr. Incredible goes to Edna for his new costume, he asks for a cape. Edna shoots this down, describing in detail every super that had been killed by their cape. The fact that Syndrome has a cape ultimately leads to him being killed by being sucked into a jet engine.
  • 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.
    • Which was precisely the point of the movie. Everything happens for a reason.
  • In The Hunt for Red October, Jack 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.
    • Also the (seemingly random) introduction of 'Chef's assistant Loganov' to witness Ramius take possession of both Missile Keys. He is later revealed to be The Mole for the KGB.
  • 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.
  • 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 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 via dental floss swing.
    • Random Task—and his "lethal" footwear—reappears during the denouement, along with Austin's Swedish Penis Pump.
  • 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.
    • Also a more explicit example that has some crossover with McGuffin in the recurring love letter that is actually the will written in invisible ink.
    • The emphasis on laughs could count.
    Judge Doom: Have you forgotten what happened last time? If you don't stop that laughing, you're going to end up dead just like your idiot hyena cousins!
  • In Slumdog Millionaire, as soon as we see the flashback where Jamal mentions he doesn't know the name of the third musketeer, we know that it will be the final question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
    • Actually the whole movie is pretty much built on Chekhov's Guns, though some of them might be considered inversions.
  • The A Series of Unfortunate Events movie does this in a kind of creepy way. In the Wide Window segment, Aunt Josephine explains her various paranoias about using household appliances. As unrealistic as these fears sound at the time, they all happen for real when the house starts to fall off the cliff.
    • Some of these include a doorknob that could shatter into a thousand pieces (which it did by becoming super-heated), a fridge that could fall on someone (nearly falling on the siblings as the house began to tumble) and the radiator, which might explode. Her fear of the Lake Lachrymose and the Lachrymose leeches can also count, too, because she ends up falling in the lake and getting eaten by them.
    • The series also had a tendency to introduce the strange things in the various settings, having them be useful or significant later. Usually this was out of necessity (Violet using things like the crabs in the Orphan Shack to make a gadget they needed), but other things like horseradish, the Incredibly Dangerous Viper, the Quagmire's notebooks, the Snow Scout masks, and the harpoon all are significant later in their books (or the entire series).
  • Subverted in Outbreak. The soldiers begin rounding up infectees in the quarantined small town, and we get to see only one woman say a tearful goodbye to her family. We follow her for a few minutes while they take a blood sample during her initial medical exam. There is even a close up of the phial, labeled "Sample 612". In a later scene, we see a scientist examining blood slides:
    Scientist: "Sample 607: Infected. 608: Infected. 609: Infected. * Frustrated sigh* They can't all be infected. 610... Infected. 611...Infected. 612... Damn! Still infected!"
  • Teased and subverted in Secret Honor. At the start of the movie, former President Richard Nixon takes out a pistol in his study and makes sure that it's loaded. By the end, he's waved it around a bit, but not fired it.
  • A very literal example in the Bill Murray film, What About Bob. Near the end of the first act, the psychologist main character has a rifle on the mantle for an interview photo op, but takes it off in favor of a bust. At the climax, he holds Bill Murray's character up with it. The only the thing keeping this from being a perfect Chekhov's Gun is that the rifle isn't actually fired.
  • At the beginning of Duel, David Mann stops at a gas station and is advised to get his radiator hose replaced. This errand is put on hold when David is targeted by a murderous truck driver, and naturally the strain the truck's pursuit puts on his car eventually causes the hose to break.
  • In Training Day, Hoyt comes across two drug addicts trying to rape a teenage girl. He fights them off, and later picks up the girl's wallet. Later in the movie, Alonzo hires some gangbangers to kill Hoyt. They are about to execute him when they find the girl's wallet in his pocket. The girl he saved was the cousin of one of the gangbangers, and they let him go.
  • Subverted in Se7en. All through the movie we get to see Detective Summerset show exceptional skill with a switchblade, particularly with throwing it. At one point, his partner, Detective Mills even calls attention to the fact that he even has one on him at all. However, he gets almost no practical use out of it unless you count opening boxes and cutting evidence tape.
  • In Lethal Weapon 2, Sgt. Murtaugh is having his house expanded, and as he and Riggs go into the construction area, they hear a noise like a shot going off, hit the deck and pull out their pistols. It turns out that the construction worker was using a nail gun. "Don't you use a hammer?" "What's a hammer?" Later in the movie, Murtaugh is at home alone when he's attacked. He leads his attacker into the construction area, and uses the nail gun to kill him with one nail to the head— and then kill a second enemy with three to the chest. "Nailed 'em both."
  • Paul Blart Mall Cop has several, including the "Devil's Crotch" hot sauce and the Stalker With A Crush using GPS to track a cell phone.
  • From Wolfgang Petersen's Troy: Briseis's virginity. Established early for the sole purpose of ensuring that Brad Pitt takes it later.
  • The church which serves as The Killer's primary place of peace and sanctuary throughout the movie is the setting of the movie's final Bloodstained Glass Windows shootout.
  • The second Transformers movie does this in reverse, with the more significant use coming before the minor appearance. Part of the plan for getting into a museum involved tasers; Sam's college roommate, who was dragged along more or less by accident, showed his incompetence by shocking himself with one and becoming completely paralyzed. The tasers were then forgotten. Later, the same roommate was freaking out in the back of the car, and wouldn't stop until he was shocked into unconsciousness.
    • The first had an example that perfectly fits the Chekhov heading quote: the camera shows a motorcycle in the ground. 5 minutes later, Capt. Lennox rides it to attack a Decepticon.
      • And the glasses Sam tries to auction off on ebay.
  • The alien command module in District 9.
    • The prawn Exosuit would have been this if not for trailers.
  • There were several in Coraline.
    • The well
    • It was subtle but the ghost eyes: the little ball that one of the mice was playing with during the circus scene; the pearl ring that the Other Forcible wears during the theatre scene; and the part of the Other Father's tractor during the garden scene.
    • Another subtle one is the Detroit Zoo snowglobe.
    • In a way, the stale taffy after Spink breaks it to reveal the green stone that would later help Coraline find the eyes of the ghost children.
    • The green stone was a (somewhat) obvious Chekovs Gun. What is less obvious however is how it became one. Just before the second visit to the Otherworld, Coraline baits the jumping mice with a piece of cheese. Once she gets there, it has been transformed into fine cheddar.
  • In To Catch a Thief, one of the members of the heist team keeps saying that a compartment in the trunk is too obvious, it's even his catchphrase for a good portion. The villain finds it. ..and the other heist teammate looks at him, he winks. He put in another compartment and didn't tell anyone. Also, the fact that a more major character sells bootleg videos isn't ever really important, but is worth mentioning: All the people who joined in the heist were picked by looking at which movies they bought.
  • Almost averted in Get Carter. In the first act Carter finds his brother's double-barreled shotgun, which he then carries on and off for the rest of the film — but never actually fires. He does kill a man with it, though — he beats him to death with the stock.
  • In Alien Vs Predator, one scene in the beginning informs us that the waters of the Antarctic are so cold you'd die in 3 minutes. Now guess how they took out the alien Queen.
  • Crash is a movie that seems to almost entirely be based on Chekhov's Guns. The most noticeable example being part of the climax. The Persian woman insists on buying ammunition for a new gun, from a box that the owner gives her a cock-eyed look for choosing. When her father later attempts to shoot the lockpick, who he feels cheated him, the lock installer's young daughter jumps in the way. It turns out that those bullets came in handy, and were actually blanks, since the Persian woman knew that her father may actually end up firing the gun irrationally one day. Which works even better in conjunction with a rather charming example from much earlier in the movie, where the lock installer tied a "bulletproof, invisible cape" to his daughter in a heartwarming scene, which ironically worked, despite being make-believe.
  • In Doomsday the film, the main character, Eden, has a prosthetic eye in place of her missing right eye. Its purpose serves as night vision and a camera. She uses it a few times early on, and then it is forgotten about until the end when she uses it as a recording device to record incriminating evidence to bring down the Man Behind The Man.
  • In futuristic sci-fi film, The Fifth Element, Bruce Willis' character Corbin Dallas is a smoker and early on for some reason he is seen using an old fashioned box of matches to light his cigarettes. Why someone would use such low tech gadgetry in a futuristic setting with flying cars and interstellar space travel is a mystery, but he is seen being down to his last match. This match is used at the very end when a sample of each of the four elements need to be gathered together, and his match is the only sample of fire around.
  • In 80s B-Grade monster movie The Brain, the main character finds out pure sodium explodes on contact with water, and uses it for a prank involving the school's toilets. Guess what's used to kill the titular monster at the end of the movie.
  • Bill Murray himself could apply in Caddyshack. His attempts to kill the gopher are seen as just a funny subplot - until the explosives he sets off at the end cause tremors that allow Danny's final putt to sink in.
  • In Bloodsport, Frank Dux demonstrates the Dim Mak, a powerful palm strike, by breaking a brick. In the quarterfinal of the tournament, he applies this technique against the Hawaiian wrestler. And it fails to work, so he has to follow up with a cheap shot.
  • The incinerator in Gattaca- in the final scene, as Vincent finally leaves Earth, Eugene crawls into it to commit suicide.
  • In Fearless, Jet Li's character says that all tea tastes the same to him, so he doesn't bother to check what is in his cups. In the final act, he fails to notice his tea has been poisoned.
  • Medicine Man has a doctor in the rainforest where he believes he has found a cure for cancer in the local tribe's sugar supply after realising that the tribe had a very low cancer rate. He figures out that the tribe uses a particular plant for all of their food but he can't reproduce the cure himself. However he didn't consider that the supply could be contaminated and also ignores their liking for sugar coated ants.
  • In one of the first scenes of Firewall, we see the sister yelling at the brother because his radio-controlled car causes interference with the television. Guess what Harrison Ford uses later to disrupt the villain's security system?
  • Galaxy Quest. The time-machine device that allows the user to go back 13 seconds into the past, just enough time to correct a mistake. It's mentioned early in the film but then dismissed and not used until the end.
  • RedEye has a few examples of this:
    • One of the framed photographs on the mantlepiece in the opening sequence depicts Lisa playing hockey, which becomes relevant much later during the climax.
    • the Baybreeze/Seabreeze conversation at the bar, which initially seems like an irrelevant flirting scene, but isn't
    • the novelty pen that Lisa later uses to stab Rippner in the throat.
  • Averted, at least partially by accident, in Willow. As Willow Ufgood sets off on his quest, the leader of his village gives him three magic acorns which can turn what he throws them at to stone. However, throughout the entirety of the movie he attempts to use only two of them, missing a troll with one and hitting Bavmorda with the other only for her to overcome the stone transformation with her own magic. According to Warwick Davis's DVD commentary track the third acorn * was* used—in a deleted scene. Making the whole acorn thing * ding dong sound* entirely pointless.
  • Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The two metal tubes that Polly Perkins received from Dr. Jennings. They turn out to be the human DNA Dr. Totenkpf need to complete his plan.
  • The 2010 Sherlock Holmes film - pretty much everything in the chemistry lab turns out to be important in some way. Details would be spoilerific.
  • Repo Men, which begins in media res, shows Jude Law's character using a typewriter. Shortly after the film catches up to this scene, said typewriter is used to crush someone's skull.
  • In the subpar adaptation of the book The City Of Ember, Tim Robbins gives Doon a object that is basically the key to them leaving the city. Because, you know, its cool to change an entire book's plot, from being a great mystery/adventure book into a average Indy ripoff.
  • In Turner And Hooch, attention is drawn to the fact that Turner always buckles his seat belt and refuses to start his car unless all of his passengers are also buckled up. This comes in handy when a crook takes him hostage while in the passenger seat. Turner rams the car into a lamp post, causing the crook to fly out of the windshield because he didn't buckle up.
  • Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire: Snape threatens Harry with the truth-telling potion that he later uses on Moody.
  • Anchorman has a Chekhov's Gun early in the movie when Ron Burgundy says, "I'm Ron Burgundy?" while voicing the question inflection because he reads exactly what is read on the teleprompter. This later causing him to say "Go fuck yourself, San Diego" instead of his trademark "Stay classy, San Diego", which caused him to be fired, a major plot point later in the film.
  • The Hangover has several Chekhov's Guns that are used by the three friends trying to find the groom. Some are noticed immediately while others are forgotten about until later. There is the tiger that leads Mike Tyson to them, the card counting book that leads to the Chekov's Skill, the Holocaust ring that winds up in the hands of a stripper. But probably the most important one is the mattress that was thrown out of Caesar's Palace. Since the windows are locked, it could have only been thrown from the roof, where the groom is.
  • In Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, the protagonists find a fountain full of Gold Drachma's when looking for the first Pearl of Persephone. Later on, when they meet Charon, guess what they have to bribe him with?
  • Maverick. Early in the movie Maverick practices being able to tell which card he drew out of a deck without looking at it, and mentions that the trick had never worked. Near the end he must do the same thing to win the $500,000 poker championship.
  • Averted in In The Loop. One character keeps a live grenade in his office as a paperweight — several other characters mention this fact, and we even get to see the grenade, but it's never in any danger of detonating.
  • In Salt starring Angelina Jolie, there was a brief scene where she took some venom from a spider, putting it into a needle. We find out that she used it to temporarily render the Russian Prime Minister unconscious and paralyzed, giving the illusion that she shot and killed him.
  • In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, after the battle with the Katayanagi Twins, Scott picks up an extra life, which would be used at the end when he is killed by Gideon

    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 Retribution 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 petunias' only thought was '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 petunias ('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 through 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 yourself 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.
    • The entire plot sequence above then turns into yet another Chekhov's Gun in Mostly Harmless, in which Arthur is convinced he has Contractual Immortality since at least one of Agrajag's "deaths" hasn't happened yet. Until Agrajag dies on the last page of the book.
      • At which point, the "hugely impractical teeth" come back into play, as Arthur ended up in the place he was trying to avoid because he had mistaken Stavro Mueller's—Beta, the location that said death was supposed to take place, for a planet named Stavromula Beta due to Agrajag's monstrous form being a tad hard to understand.
  • 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.
    • Another example which has yet to be resolved. In the 3rd book Grave Peril, Harry's literal fairy godmother, Lea, receives a ritual athame from the book's big bad. Later in the same novel, it's used for an attack on Harry, and it's been referenced in multiple books since, constantly emphasizing its importance. 8 books later we still have no bloody idea what the thing is!
    • Not to mention Dead Beat where he throws a paragraph at describing the awesome nature of Sue, the T-Rex whom he later raises from the dead, in one of the most awesomely overblown moments in the entire series. I doubt anyone saw that coming on their first reading of the book.
    • In Small Favor, he even sets one up by the prominent failure to mention something that should have been there. Harry's an Unreliable Narrator, so when Mab messes with his head, we get the effects as well.
    • Not just in the Dresden Files—Butcher's Codex Alera series is full of them. If Tavi learns a new skill at the beginning of a book, expect him to use it on the Big Bad at the end. Some even show up several books later.
      • Special mention: At the beginning of the third book, Tavi and Magnus are making a catapult from an old Roman design as an experiment. Max promptly breaks it, and the plot moves on to more important things. At the end of the sixth, Bernard and Amara turn out to have installed hundreds of them along defensive walls in Calderon, and when they're loaded with a ton of little glass spheres full of fire furies that even kids and grannies can make, they deal more damage to the Vord than the Persons of Mass Destruction.
  • 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.
  • 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).
    • It also plays it straight. Early in the book, we find out that the psychotic showman Riviera projects holograms thanks to a projection unit implanted in his chest, where a lung used to be. The Finn notes "He could narrow that into a pulse, fry a retina over easy." Riviera does just that later in the book. to 3Jane's ninja assassin, Hideo. This turns out badly for RIVIERA, as Hideo is very experienced in hunting and fighting in the dark, and is now pissed off and immune to deception via hologram.
  • 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.
      • Not just the rule of funny but the fact that the Discworld runs on Narrative Imperative and the story itself displays the power of mass belief. If the people in the area believe eagles have external gonads and the story being played out requires it, eagles (or this eagle anyway) will have them.
    • 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.
    • Another fine example in Interesting Times where an experimental Discworld cannon is used as teleportation counterweight to send Rincewind to the other side of the disc. Of course, they send it back the way it was (ready to fire).
    • Pratchett can place a Chekhov's Gun so smoothly, you barely even notice it's there. In Reaper Man, Miss Flitworth is seen brewing up rat poison in the kitchen, which appears (along with the chicken's demise) to be purely a part of Bill Door's lessons in what death means to mortal creatures, human or animal. Yet this passing reference also provides the basis for the debut of one of Discworld's perennial scene-stealers, the Death of Rats.
    • There's another in Discworld/Hogfather: Archancellor Ridcully offhandedly mentions that someone with access to part of another person's body has the power to control them. Turns out to be a major plot point.
  • 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 (which is a real product, by the way).
    • 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.
    • Arguably, the One Ring is an example of this trope in The Hobbit itself. It starts out as an ordinary ring that Bilbo happens to find on the ground, only for him to discover that it happens to be a magic ring that can turn him invisible and pave the way for him to get into adventuring. Not bad!
  • 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.
      • The motorcycle itself fits this trope, as it vanishes after the mention in the third book, only to show up again in Deathly Hallows, when Hagrid uses it to ride Harry to safety.
    • 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.
      • The hand also acts as a physical Idiot Ball, a slight hesitation in performing an act is punished by an action that will ensure the act is never performed. Nice Job Breaking it Villain.
      • 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 existance of the penknife also explains why Sirius slashed the Fat Lady's portrait in book 3: he was trying to "unlock" the entrance.
    • 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?
      • "More often than not" is an understatement. In addition to the locket (mentioned in Order of the Phoenix, destroyed in Deathly Hallows) and the diadem (first mentioned in Half-Blood Prince), there was the diary (destroyed in the same book it debuted, Chamber of Secrets, but became important again when the concept of Horcruxes was first introduced four books later), Nagini (debuted in Goblet of Fire, and became a Horcrux shortly after her debut as Voldemort was going to make his last Horcrux when he killed the Potters, but never got around to it(or so he thought)), Harry (we've known about the lightning-bolt scar since the very beginning, and his connection to Voldemort established when he first gets his wand, but the big hint that he is inherently "connected" to Voldemort comes in Order of the Phoenix when he starts getting the visions and becomes able to see through Voldemort's eyes—and, you'll remember, Nagini's, again setting her up as containing another piece of Voldemort's soul), and even the ring, which was already a destroyed Horcrux when it debuted in Half-Blood Prince, but turned out to also be one of the three Deathly Hallows. Only the goblet of Hufflepuff appeared solely as a Horcrux.
      • Indeed, in Chamber of Secrets Harry says [Voldemort] "put a bit of himself ... in me", which was a very useful clue to the fact Harry was a Horcrux.
    • In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry tells Dumbledore that Trelawney went all odd and recited some verse to him. Dumbledore offhandedly comments that it appears to be her second real prophecy ever and he should give her a pay rise. Her first real prophecy turns out to be a crucial Mac Guffin in Order of the Phoenix.
    • There are so many important Chekhov's Guns in the series, in fact, that they can often cause Continuity Lockout in the movies. I 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 Chekhov'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 gets used to save Ron's life.
      • It possibly went unnoticed because it got a reminder in the book it was used in, which is what prompted Harry to seek out a bezoar to begin with; in the Prince's old potions text, next to an incredibly long and dry section about the various ways to cure a wide assortment of poisons (and presumably, made during a lecture about same), is written, dripping with bored weariness, "Just shove a bezoar down their throat."
      • Hermione even mentions that when Harry tries to argue that the Half-Blood Prince's notes helped him to remember how to cure Ron - she reminds Harry that if he had been paying attention to Snape that day in the first book, he still should have known. Of course one would think that remembering one lesson from five years ago would be a bit of a stretch, but then it is Hermione...
    • How did we forget the snitch?! C'mon, people, pull it together!
    • In the first book, when Harry asks Hagrid why someone would be mad to try and rob Gringotts, he mentions some of the security measures: spells, enchantments, dragons possibly guarding the high security vaults. Six books later...
  • 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.
      • Which she explained, in great and scathing detail, to the weapon's principle advocate in the Manticoran military hierarchy, Admiral Lady Sonja Hemphill, after the battle, earning the long-term hostility of Admiral Hemphill's allies. Hemphill herself had sufficient intelligence and integrity to get over it — she and Honor work quite well together in some of the later books, as some of her other innovations, like missile pods and the gravity-based FTL communicator, turn out to be much more effective than the gravlance — and Honor is instrumental in proving the field effectiveness of several of them.
    • 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.
      • Said character himself falls into this category: he first appears as an apparently minor scumbag who does manage to escape justice in the first book of the series by being smart enough to know when to get out of Dodge. Honor Among Enemies is the fourth book.
      • Nope, you're mixing up two different evil men, both of whom Honor shot with chemical powered slug-thrower pistols instead of the electromagnetically-driven pulsers more standard for her era. In Honor Among Enemies, which is indeed the sixth book, she used the antique Colt to kill Andre Warnecke, a former dictator turned pirate chieftain in the wake of the revolt that removed him from power, and a mass murderer who nukes a medium-sized town just to show that he's serious about his threat to nuke all the population centers on the planet he and his pirates have seized and occupied. In the fourth book, Field of Dishonor, Honor kills the professional duelist Denver Summervale using a modern, high-tech dueling pistol, not the antique Colt, after Summervale is hired to provoke, challenge, and kill her lover by her long-time nemesis, the recently-cashiered Captain Lord Pavel Young, Earl of North Hollow. It was Summervale who appeared as a throwaway (but very nasty) villain in the first book, where he operated a narcotics production facility on Basilisk, and blew it up, killing both his own workers and about three dozen Manticoran law enforcement officers, when it was discovered by the authorities.
  • 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 Skulduggery 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.
  • In Otherland, Serial Killer Dread's Snuff Films that he records for his private amusement come back to bite him, as they prompt his latest "girlfriend" to make a Heel Face Turn. He shoots her for it, but as she lies there dying, she manages to combine the videos with a nasty computer virus and upload them into his system. This fatally distracts him just in time for the heroes to win.
  • Great Expectations. EVERYTHING in the first half of the book.
  • Used in The Chronicles of Prydain, several times. In The Castle of Llyr, Eilonwy gives Taran a horn as a goodbye present. It later turns out that the horn can summon Fair Folk aid once, for any situation and is used to save someone Taran cares about (not that it works out so well). In Taran Wanderer, Kaw keeps insisting on bringing Taran a piece of bone, which handily turns out not too long after to be the one thing keeping an evil sorcerer alive. Doli receives the gift of invisibility at the end of The Book of Three, which is used in virtually ever book after when the group needs someone to spy or sneak around. And then there are the two biggest: Dyrnwyn and Eilonwy's ring. Both are introduced in the first book, briefly mentioned in several others, but only given real emphasis in the last book, when it is revealed that Dyrnwyn is the only weapon to kill the Cauldron-Born and Arwan and that the ring has the power to grant Eilonwy any one wish of her choosing (which is used for her to renounce her magic powers and marry Taran).
  • Used in almost many of Steven Brust's Dragaera books, but most blatantly in Taltos. Kiera gives Vlad a vial of a goddess's blood for no clear reason at the time, which later in the book, and years later in the story, he uses to resolve a problem years later in the storyline.
  • Used a lot in Deltora Quest series. If it's mentioned or introduced near the beginning of the book, it'll be relevant later (or way later in the series). Most of which are relevant to puzzles (e.g. the names of the Diamond Guardian's pets), plot twists or eventual reveal.
  • Sometimes used, sometimes not in the Vorkosigan Saga. Vorlopolous's Law was used as a straightforward Checkhov's Gun in Warrior's Apprentice, likewise Imperial Auditors in Memory. But in Barrayar the story behind the Emperor's Birthday Present is introduced in exactly the same way and then isn't used at all.
  • Pervasive in Catch-22. Many characters or events are briefly mentioned only to become fleshed out in later chapters. E.g. Major Major.
  • In Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the White Arrow that the Sitha prince, Jiriki, gives Simon as a symbol of his life-debt, is treated throughout the story as no more than a particularly valuable possession, symbolic of Simon's Character Development. There are hints dropped, however, that it's a potent magical artifact, foreshadowing the moment when it's used to kill the Storm King's physical host.
  • :ampshaded in ''Smoke and Ashes'': "Raise your hand everyone who's surprised by this." "According to Chekhov, you should never hang a coffee shop on the wall unless you intend to use it."
  • In Remote Man, Janet buys a car in poor condition, which makes a horrible noise and has a noticeable crack in the exhause pipe. During the climactic car chase, the exhaust falls off and hit the villain's car, causing him to flip over.
  • The Father Luke Wolfe Trilogy uses Chekhov's Guns heavily.
    • In Father, Forgive Them, a motion-activated talking frog and a magic eight-ball are mentioned to be on the counter near the light switch. When Dr. Brandt is holding Father Wolfe at syringe-point, Father turns on the light, which sets the frog to talking, which distracts Dr. Brandt long enough for Father to smash the syringe with the eight-ball.
    • In Cold Comfort, the electronic equipment mentioned in the beginning of the book is hooked up to force a public confession from the murderer.
    • In Zero Tolerance, a student threatens to accuse Father Wolfe of molestation unless given a good grade. The teacher who had fixed the computers in Father Wolfe's classroom back in Cold Comfort had left a small hole for wiring between their two classrooms, through which he videotaped the student's threat.
  • In Rainbow Six, the need established earlier on for cellphone jamming technology pays off majorly when it helps foil the PIRA attack. The pussy-ass heartbeat monitors Tim Noonan tries out also come in handy at the end against the Big Bad's crew.

    Live Action TV 
  • In I Spy, the pendant given to the wife of a not-so-late traitor actually contains the secret photos that supposedly had burned up.
  • 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.
  • iCarly: Whenever the main characters seek help in searching something, the webshow itself is their main form of problem solver.
    • Spencer's episode-acquired possessions usually join the main plot like the fishing rod, the Proton Cruiser and the mechanical bull.
    • In iEnrage Gibby, Freddie sets up another camera to examine how two pieces of bread rot in a period of time for the iCarly webcast. At the end of the episode, this camera also provided proof that the incident between Tasha and Freddie was an accident.
    • In iHave a Lovesick Teacher, the titular teacher mentions in the first half of the episode that "Well, the Pear Pod wasn't cheap, but I just got the songs off one of those music-sharing websites." It is not spoken about until the end, when she gets arrested for downloading music illegally.
  • 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.
  • Humourously subverted (and possibly lampshaded) in an episode of The Young Ones. At the end of one scene, the camera zooms in on an innocuous-looking matchbox...who then proceeds to say "Don't look at me. I'm irrelevant." And sure enough, it's never mentioned again.
  • 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 season one, brought out for an episode in season two, and then never mentioned again until the end of season 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.
    • This is a pretty subtle and minor one, but early in Season Two when Chief Tyrol, while attempting to prove he isn't a Cylon (lol), is listing the battlestars he's served on he mentions the Pegasus, which showed up a few episodes later.
  • In the Farscape episode "Bone to be Wild", M'lee notes that Zhaan "smells like out there" (out there being the jungle), causing a shocked Crichton to exclaim, "You're a VEGETABLE!?" Turns out this is kinds of important, when the botanist Br'nee tries to frame M'lee for Zhaan's disappearance, even though M'lee only has interest in animals. Crichton calls him on it.
    • Farscape had a bit of a thing for these, on both an episodic and series-wide scale; the best and most notable example is probably the chrysthereum blossoms, which are visible in the season three episode "Incubator" but do not pay off until very late season four. Going back even further, the place that Stark mentioned having seen in season one was probably the chrysthereum chamber, only seen in season four.
  • 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.
    • Everything in Season 5, including one of Spike's insults. Spike calls Xander all kinds of things, including a 'glorified bricklayer' for working construction, and Xander defends himself with his bowling skills. In the final battle against Glory, Xander demonstrates his skill with construction equipment by hitting Glory with a demolition ball and shouting, "And the glorified bricklayer picks up a spare!"
  • 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.
      • It's pretty much Chekhov's Six-Shooter at that point.
      • 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.
      • Also done straight with the Master's ring. Russell T Davies planted the gun intending for a later producer to fire it- and ended up firing it himself in "The End of Time".
    • End of Time: the Nuclear Bolt cabinet. Originally used by Joshua Naismith to power the Immortality Gate, it always requires one person to be inside it. Towards the end of the second episode, Wilf gets inside the cabinet to save one of Naismith's employees, but in the ensuing chaos the Nuclear Bolt overloads with radiation and the only way for the Doctor to save Wilf, and, presumably, everyone else is to take his place in the cabinet and absorb a massive amount of radiation, leading to his death and regeneration.
  • 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. Lo 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's 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.
    • Subverted in another episode. Morgan accidentally gets stuck in the Buy More's storage cage and calls Chuck to get him out. Later, a pair of thugs come by looking for Chuck. He leads one of them to the storage cage and closes the door, presumably locking it. However, the thug opens it easily and Casey subdues him. Immediately afterward, Chuck runs into Morgan who tells him the lock was fixed.
    • The season 3 premiere of Chuck has Chekhov's Minigun. Casey remarks that he never got to fire a certain minigun while clearing out their secret base. When Chuck and Sarah are rescued at the end of the episode by helicopter, Casey is (quite gleefully) using the minigun, now mounted to the helicopter's door.
    • A later season 3 episode has Chuck give Casey a handgun stolen from Castle as a thank-you gift for helping him survive to the point where he has a chance become full-fledged spy. Casey, of course, winds up using it to both save Chuck and help him cheat on his final spy test.
  • 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 completely ludicrous 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. ("You have used three inches of sticky tape, god bless you.") 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 Chekhov's Gun as it is Chekhov'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.
  • Lost subverts this concept by introducing roughly two million potential Chekov's Guns and then only making use of about one million of them. You Fail The Law Of Conservation Of Detail Forever.
    • Recently used 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.
      • In a more rapid-fire example, Fake Locke tells the Losties they can't use that same plane to take off because Widmore loaded it up with C-4. Take a guess what's in Jack's backpack when he boards the sub.
  • 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. This one event sets into motion the events that conclude the season.
  • 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 conspicuously 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!"
  • The Wire has several instances of this, often taking place over multiple seasons:
    • The fourth season opens with a humorous scene where one of the characters purchases a nail gun. Several episodes later it becomes integral to the plot.
    • After testifying in a criminal case in the second season, a district attorney gives Omar a "get out of jail free" card for his help. In the fourth season, Omar calls in this favor after he is wrongly imprisoned for shooting a woman at a convenience store.
    • In season four, Chris and Snoop beat Michael's father to death after realizing that Michael was abused by him. Chris spits on him in rage after he's finished, and the spit eventually becomes DNA evidence used to convict Chris at the end of the fifth season.
    • Daniel's past corruption investigation, which is constantly hinted at throughout the series, but never explained until the fifth season (and even then, there isn't much more revealed), when it's used as a way to force him out of his job.
    • The most important example takes place over two seasons. In season three, Detective Bunk Moreland sees a number of kids pretending to be stickup artist Omar and his crew. In particular, one young boy is playing with what appears to be a fake gun and repeatedly insists that he plays Omar. In season five, Omar passes the same boy, who stops what he's doing (lighting a cat on fire) and recognizes him. Omar goes into a grocery store to buy cigarettes, and is shot and killed by the young boy.
    • Refrigerator and dead naked girl in Season One, anyone?
  • 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 discarded 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.
  • Desperate Housewives, given the mystery-based arc plots, has plenty of these.
    • A very subtle one occurs in the pilot: during the Cold Open showing a montage of the chores Mary Alice did on the day of her suicide, the very last one is fetching the mail. We learn later that she was Driven To Suicide by an anonymous note she received.
  • Monk has these in several episodes. Minor details are pointed out that serve to help the audience solve the case along with Monk. A massive one is Trudy's Christmas present, which is pointed out in several episodes, but doesn't get fully explained until the finale when it proves who killed Trudy.
    • In general, if Monk notices anything that's mentioned in a seeming throwaway line, it's essential to the case.
  • In the Criminal Minds episode "L.D.S.K", a literal Chekov's Gun is found in the form of Hotch's second gun. Mentioned casually in the first act, it comes back with a bang in the third.
  • In Dollhouse Season 2, many of the imprints from Season 1 begin reappearing as necessary to the plot.
  • When Casualty was still a medical drama (before it became a soap) whatever you first saw after the credits was either going to cause horrific injuries or end up being removed from some unlucky extra in surgery.
  • From Nancy Banks-Smith's review of a November 1998 episode of Emmerdale (reprinted 04.02.10): "When someone points to a box of fireworks and says, 'They should be in the cellar', you know the whole place is about to go up in a dazzling racket of rockets. Trust me. I'm a critic. No one in the history of drama has ever pointed to fireworks and said, 'They should be in the cellar', and next day put them in the cellar."
  • In the The Suite Life of Zack and Cody episode "Let us Entertain You", Zack, Cody and Marie go on vacation on the S.S. Tipton. Guess where the boys end up in the spin off The Suite Life on Deck?
  • Subverted in Big Love when Lois hints that Wanda should kill the DA. We see Wanda packing Lois's gun to take to the courthouse, presumably to shoot the DA. She actually just hands it over to Bill and tells him that Lois was going to shoot the DA.
  • In Breaking Bad episode "One Minute", introduces a Chekhov's BULLET. At the beginning of the episode one of The Cousins is given a hollow point bullet, and promptly forgets about it. It isn't until the end that it is finally used, but in a suite improbable circumstance.
  • Humourously subverted in an episode of Fringe, where Peter decides he needs some protection and buys himself a shotgun at the end of the first act. It never appears again.. all the more effective because this show has quite a few Chekhov Guns usually..
  • In The Rockford Files episode "Profit and Loss," there is an ongoing side plot involving Jim's broken garbage disposal that has nothing to do with the case he is investigating. Several objects are theorized to have fallen in, but it never seems particularly important. However, when the main villain takes Jim's gun, he misses five times before having a clear shot with the sixth and final bullet. Luckily there is no sixth bullet. It fell into the garbage disposal when Jim was cleaning the gun.

    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 Announcers 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 Announcers 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!"
      • That kind of thing's not a good example unless the table is called attention to in a subtle way early on. Here's a better one:
  • This trope is the entire idea behind the WWE's "Money in the Bank" matches, which give their winner the opportunity to exercise the right to a world title match anytime they like within the coming year—always at a theoretically unexpected and dramatically opportune moment.

    Radio 
  • In an episode of Gunsmoke titled "Last Fling", specific mention is made of a woman's big, fancy hatpin. Later in the story, her estranged husband attacks her and she stabs him to death with it.

    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 successful, but at the end of the play manages to succeed. It is, however, averted in Uncle Vanya, where Uncle Vanya attempts to kill the professor but no clues are given beforehand, and 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.
  • In 13, it is mentioned that Archie has Muscular Dystrophy, however, the disease doesn't show up again until He uses the disease to guilt Evan's mom into buying tickets for an R-rated movie

    Video Games 
  • Arguably, any Wide Open Sandbox will drip this trope as a simple matter of functionality- although, of course, it might not count as you may only stumble across things after accidentally Sequence Breaking or getting lost.
  • Adventure Games are all over this. If the character adds anything to their inventory, you can almost guarantee it's going to be important for advancing the plot at some point. Of course this depends on the game...some games won't allow you to pick up an item you won't use at some point, but others may have items that appear to be worthless because you went through the entire game without using them; but in fact you could have used that item for an alternative solution to a puzzle. For examples, see It May Help You On Your Quest.
    • Averted, of course, by the two Discworld games, where there really are totally useless things to collect, albeit not many, making them more Red Herrings.
  • There are Chekhov's Guns all over the place in Alone in the Dark, e.g. an Indian cover, a heavy statuette and others whose use isn't quite obvious at the beginning.
  • Clock Tower 3 uses these with its "Evade Points". For example, in the second chapter of the game, almost right before you meet the Minion of the level, you can check a bottle sitting innocently on a table. Alyssa reads the label, and comments "Sounds Flammable". Shortly thereafter you meet the acid spewing Minion, you use the Evade Point located at the bottle and Hilarity Ensues.
    • Even better when you come across an oven and throw Scissorwoman into it.
  • The original Adventure Game, Colossal Cave (frequently known just as "Adventure"), subverts this: there's a room whose description goes on for pages and pages (compared to a few terse lines for other rooms), in an age when computer memory was at an extreme premium. The room has no effect whatsoever on the plot.
    • Space Quest 6 also does this, giving a rather detailed description for something as minor as a small alcove in the floor.
      • Space Quest 4 has a whole skill that proves utterly useless: the "taste" function. —>"The sewer wall tastes like... blood! You shredded your tongue!"
  • In Crysis, during a late-game lull in the action, a technician conspicuously introduces an experimental gun that fires guided nuclear missiles. Your character asks (half-seriously) if he can try it out, and is unsurprisingly denied; of course, you end up retrieving it later after everything goes to hell, and it is instrumental in defeating the final boss.
  • Inverted in Devil May Cry 3, where human-sized chess pieces are seen in Mission 4 and must be destroyed to pass an area. 3 missions later, it becomes apparent that these chess pieces, now animated, form a type of enemy. Not something helpful.
    • Played straight in the first game, with the biplane "Carnival". It does nothing in the first mission, suspended by strings (along with some marionettes that are definitely enemies), but at the end when the player is meant to think that Dante is screwed, it crashes through the ceiling in perfect working condition just waiting to be used.
  • In the adventure game Blazing Dragons, one of the items you start with is Flicker's "clicker". Every time you look at it, Flicker says that it was his first ever invention, "the practical use of which escapes (him) at the moment". And, of course, its only use is in the very last scene of the game.
  • The princess's lute in Final Fantasy I, acquired after the first quest and necessary to complete the last.
  • Aeris Gainsborough owns a materia in Final Fantasy VII that seems to be of no use at all, but proves later to be the materia that summons the ultimate defensive spell, Holy.
  • Early in Final Fantasy IX you are introduced to the Pluto Knights, and are told what their professions and specific duties are for no particular reason. Skip to Disc 3, and you are expected to remember said duties so that they can help defend their Doomed Hometown. Doing it perfectly nets you an awesome accessory.
  • In Final Fantasy X the Checkhov's Gun isn't just an object: It's a song. We hear Hymn of the Fayth in many different versions throught the entire game, and of course we suspect nothing. Turns out that singing it is the only way to calm down the destructive Sin so it can be killed.
  • The battle scene between Greil and the Black Knight in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance sets up two. First, the Black Knight gives Greil a sword to fight with, which is revealed to be Ragnell, the only blade capable of opposing the Black Knight's Alondite, later in the game. Greil, who chose to give up the sword, turns it down, saying in regards to his axe, "The only weapon I need...is right here!" Just before the final chapter of the sequel, Radiant Dawn, the axe Greil was wielding returns—it's Urvan, an absolute Game Breaker as it is not only the most powerful axe, it also has an accuracy of 110, brutally subverting the "powerful but innacurate" nature of axes in general.
  • In Kings Quest V, Graham gets a wand in the opening cutscenes that isn't used until the final battle with Mordack.
    • Except for those damn copyright protection sequences. AARRRGGH!
  • In the Ace Attorney games, seemingly random, irrelevant things such as a metal detector or a picture of the police mascot are often inexplicably added to the Court Record as evidence. Of course, they will later prove to be crucial in cracking the case. Interestingly, the logical usefulness of an item is almost always inversely proportional to its actual usefulness: murder weapons, security camera videos, and photographs sometimes border on useless, while clay fragments, picket fences, and air tanks are crucial to solving the case.
    • The main idea is that the consequential evidence is clearly pointing the guilt of the defendant, and Phoenix's only weapon is to point out the inconsistencies and lies in their testimonies with the seemingly innocuous evidence, as those are the details that everyone overlooks. Phoenix only uses the consequential evidence when he's managed to provoke testimony in conflict with it.
      • The best example might be in the last case of the first game. Very early in the case, you acquire a screwdriver that was evidence in a completely separate case. According to Miles Edgeworth (whose car the victim was found in), it has no relevance to the current case at all. Later, when you need to prove how the killer was able to place the victim's body in Edgeworth's car, it's revealed that when Edgeworth was summoned by the killer to the police station to transfer the screwdriver to his office, and it was at the station that the body was placed in his car's trunk. Phoenix himself remarks that it was the most useless piece of evidence in the entire case up until this point.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, nearly every boss has a piece of equipment that Link can discover to use against it. In fact, The Dragon, Aghanim, can be brought low by the humble Butterfly Net, one of the earliest pieces of equipment found.
    • Similarly, in Ocarina of Time the Deku Nuts that are pretty much useless through the whole game will stun Ganon more effectively than just about any other item.
      • For that matter, in OoT, Gannodorf's magic can be deflected by the common bottle.
      • And then in Twilight Princess, the very first item Link receives is the fishing pole. Seems relatively pointless, other than for...well...fishing. Turns out that, like the net from LttP, it's a weak point for Big Bad Ganondorf in the final battle; you can't hit him with it, but you can distract him while you get in a few good shots.
  • In Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, The Plumber gives the heroes at one point a "3 3/4 centicubit hexagonal washer" "just in case". This item is utterly worthless through the game until the final cutscene, where they use it to fix the Dimensionator before a massive black hole swallows them up.
  • In Super Smash Bros Brawl, we're treated to a scene early on involving a cardboard box on an enemy ship that inches forward once. Later, Snake pops out, and gives the only spoken line in the entire mode.
    Snake: Kept you waiting, huh?
    • Not quite the only line. Captain Falcon also says "Come on!" when summoning his Cool Ship to escape an impending explosion.
    • FALCON PUNCH!
    • GREAAAAT AETHER!
    • Around the same time, you have King Dedede going around, seemingly a villain, "trophy-fying" heroes and taking them, seemingly on the same villainous side as Wario. Until he robs him. Then it seems that Dedede just wants to have his own private collection of trophies of the heroes, complete with dressing them up with odd badges, screwing around with the mission at hand (and something Dedede, at his most annoying, would plausibly have done). Until, way at the end it turns out the badges Dedede put on them were time release resurectors, and it was Dedede's plan all along to, in case the heroes failed, save them with his own backup squad. It works, very, very well.
      • This is pretty par for the course for Dedede. He's generally found engaged in activities that are taken as villainous or at least troublesome around the start. Come the ending it turns out that, on such occasions as he wasn't acting in the best interests of everyone at large, he's being mind-controlled by the real villain. He's a bit of a Chekhov's Gunman like that. I think I'm using that right, anyway...
      • The badges Dedede uses have an odd twist on this. When they're first introduced, it's completely understood that they're going to be Chekhov's Guns, and instead the player wonders what part they'll play instead. This is also built up with a scene that Kirby picks up one of them, ponders as to what it is, then runs off. Sure enough, they turn out to be character resurrectors and are key to the plot. However, what's always missed is that Kirby had the one that was presumed to be build-up for the other characters, meaning that he was resurrected too. Quite sneaky!
      • Oh, and also inverted, in that the one Kirby found was Dedede's own one, shown by how Dedede didn't have one for himself, meaning he didn't get resurrected. But it turns out that the ones he put the badges on resurrected him anyway, so it didn't matter.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game is pretty blatant about this. Two words, Cheese Sandwhich.
  • Resident Evil 5 manages to use this. Sheva picks up a syringe of serum from an attaché case. Both Sheva and Chris learn that the serum is actually one used to keep their enemy's superhuman powers in check, and that too much of a dose can hurt him.
  • In Fate Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works scenario, before his death, Lancer activates his Ansuz Rune to burn his dying place for almost no apparent reasons. That action indirectly saved Shiro, Rin and Saber from a fatal, unprepared encounter with Gilgamesh, which forces him to retreat.
    • It also inverts this trope in another instance where the "gun" in question becomes important after its used. In the prologue, Rin uses a literal family jewel to save Shiro's life and leaves it with his body. Archer returns it to her later that night. Yet in Unlimited Blade Works and Heavens Feel, Shiro is revealed to have the same jewel, and when Rin sees it she realizes The Reveal, Archer is who Shiro will become, and he returned the jewel after carrying it for his entire life (and then some) until he saw her again.
  • 5 Days a Stranger has a perfectly textbook example (perhaps intentionally): one of the very first rooms the player enters has a big shotgun hanging up (yes, over the mantelpiece) but you can't walk off with it, because Trilby refuses to lug a big heavy gun around everywhere. The final scene of the game takes place in that room, and the gun is used to solve the final puzzle.
  • In Earthworm Jim, you launch a cow into the sky at the very beginning of the game. At the game's end, when you defeat the Queen, the cow comes flying down and crashes onto the princess you just saved.
  • In Xenogears, right at the start you can buy an accessory that prevents fuel drain. This is apparently worthless, since pretty much nobody in the game * has* a fuel drain attack... until you reach the final boss battle, where fuel drain can become a crippling problem if you're not careful. (No other stores after this one sell the anti-fuel drain accessory.)
    • An available accessory that appears to be worthless, with no indication that you should buy it but without which the final boss battle is unnecessarily hard? That's not an example of this, that's Guide Dang It in action
    • What about the Mermaid tear, which you get at the very beginning of the game, and which you can't use until during a certain end-game side-quest?
  • In Super Robot Wars, Lamia Loveless (also her distant sister Aschen Brodel) is installed with Code: DTD, which serves as a 'memory reboot', that even her creator Lemon Browning deems "You probably won't need it in this war...". But then in OG Gaiden, it serves to be a truly important device when Axel Almer saved her from Duminuss and ODE influence, by resetting to the point that their alteration never occurred. Her distant sister Aschen from Mugen no Frontier, however, uses it on regular basis to kick the enemy's ass.
  • In Metal Gear Solid, in every game including the two prequels,the pack of cigarettes is highlighted early on in the game- later, Snake can, and indeed, must, use these to detect security lasers. Of course, there are other uses for them.
    • There's at least one other way to detect the lasers, so he doesn't have to use the cigarette.
    • Even more explicitly, in Metal Gear 2 (which is not Metal Gear Solid 2; that's the 4th game), the seemingly useless lighter and aerosol can are combined to create a flamethrower which defeats Big Boss.
    • The USS Missouri in MGS4 fits this trope. Insignificantly introduced early in the game as a real-life WW 2 battleship that had been recommissioned as a training vessel, it later becomes the only ship in the US Navy to survive the Big Bad's plan to disable all the weapons in the world(due to not being linked to the "System" which controls all of them), and ends up carrying and supporting the main character in their assault on his floating fortress.
    • Another good one: as Snake is about to shoot himself in front of Big Boss' grave in Guns of the Patriots, he notices that there is a flower bouquet in front of the grave right beside the one he's in front of. It makes sense after the fake credits when you realize that said grave marks the resting place of the Boss, Big Boss' spiritual mother. Now guess who dropped the bouquet before Snake came.
    • In the prologue of Metal Gear Solid 2, which centres on a US Marine Corps. Metal Gear model, a brief mention is made of a Metal Gear project led by the US Navy. Much later in the plot, the Navy's Metal Gear makes an appearance and turns out to be a significant part of the plot.
  • In Halo 3, 343 Guilty Spark has a special eye laser that he uses to fight off Flood and kill Sergeant Johnson.
    • Hell, there's a Chekhov's Gun earlier in the series. In the first Halo, Cortana steals Installation 04's Index, the only known way to fire the Halo. At the end of Halo 3, Cortana uses that same Index to fire the new Halo and wipe out the Flood.
    • Very few people then remembered that the title of the sub-level where you retrieve the Index is caled 'The Gun Pointed At The Head Of The Universe.' This is a literal Chekhov's Gun.
      • See that very prominent Bowie knife Buck keeps strapped on his chest in ODST? [[Crowning Moment/Halo Well Bungie didn't just stick it there for show.]]
    • An interesting one for Halo 3 ODST. In the ViDoc Desperate Measures Buck mentions that they "can even commandeer the city's garbage trucks if we need 'em." Well guess what you wind up protecting in the last level?
  • Mass Effect. Throughout the Citadel there are these innocuous insect creatures called the Keepers, who don't talk to anyone and only seem to exist to keep the impossibly ancient space station running. It turns out that the Keepers' job is to maintain the Citadel because it is a giant Mass Relay that will bring the Reapers into the galaxy. The Keepers' job is to enable civilizations that discover the Citadel to use it without realizing the stations' intent, enabling the Reapers to hit the center of galactic civilization first and without warning.
    • Heck, Mass Effect is replete with these. Who would guess that the Mass Relay sculpture in the Presidium was the destination point of the Conduit? (Though if you have Kaidan in your group he'll comment that the statue is making his teeth vibrate.) Or that the krogan genophage and the Rachni War would become important plot points on two of the planets you visit later?
    • A very subtle example takes place in the Citadel Council tower, if you have Ashley in your party. She'll comment that "I bet these stairs aren't just for show. They'd make for good defensive positions if this place is ever attacked...." Turns out, you are the one who does the attacking at the endgame.
    • A very minor example occurs if you choose all the paragon interactions with the Asari Consort. She gives you a seemingly worthless trinket that you can later use on another planet to unlock a cache of valuable equipment.
    • Quite a few things have been set up as possible Chekhov's Guns which been fired yet. One of the best examples is Haestrom's sun which is, inexplicably, destablizing much faster than it should be.
      • It is stated to be due to dark energy, but it was really set up as something possibly important.
    • There's also the Rift on Klendagon. It was caused by a glancing blow from a shot that killed a Reaper. What killed that Reaper may be important.
  • Front Mission: Gun Hazard winds up giving us a Chekhov's Laser Platform by way of a solar energy collector subcontracted out to The Syndicate.
  • In Taiyou no Shinden Asteka II (a.k.a. Tombs and Treasure), you get the lighter from the first room in the game, and it can't be used for anything until the last room in the game, where it's necessary to complete the game.
    • Not to mention you obtain a silver key at the same time as the lighter, which is later used to unlock the Temple of the Sun and acquire the game's prime MacGuffin, the Sun Key.
  • The World Ends With You. In the second chapter, in the cutscene before the second to last boss, Megumi reveals the only thing protecting Neku from his brainwashing is his player pin, so he imobilizes Neku and crushes the pin. It didn't work. Why? Because in waaaaay back in Chapter 2 of the first week, Shiki points out how Neku has 2 player pins, the extra given to him by Josh.
  • In Loom, the first spell cast in the game (and that is periodically replayed to you through it) is the last spell you cast.
  • One of the first things the Postal Dude's Bitch says in Postal 2 (before the game actually starts) is "don't forget my rocky road." At the end of Friday (the last day), she nags the Postal Dude about her rocky road again (after not being mentioned throughout the rest of the game), to which the Postal Dude realizes that he completely forgot about it from the very beginning and shoots himself in the head to escape his wife's nagging. This leads to the events in the add-on, Apocalypse Weekend.
  • In God of War, the sword-shaped bridge you run over early in the game turns out to be a real sword, and is the weapon needed to finish off the Final Boss.
  • Mega Man loves this. It's a safe bet that the most bloody useless Robot Master weapon you get will be the one Wily's weak to. Most extreme offenders: 3 (Top Spin) and 7 (Wild Coil).
    • Averted in 1 (Fire Storm) and 4 (Pharaoh Shot).
    • In 10, the prototype cure given to Roll.
  • Used and reemphasized to the point of deliberate annoyance in Space Quest VI. "Hey, you forgot your fish!"
  • Hotel Dusk features multiple subversions. First, the inconspicuous sewing machine and adhesive remover that come in a package near the beginning, and whose only introduction is Kyle commenting that they're useless prove to be essential to completing the game. On the other hand, the screwdriver that he repeatedly and visibly proclaims will surely be useful... has absolutely no possible use at any point in the game — the only thing it can accomplish is getting you a Game Over if you don't put it back at the right time.
  • Tales of Symphonia drops this in the form of necklace that Lloyd promises to give to Colette. First, Lloyd forgets to make it, then Colette drops a It's Not You, It's My Enemies on him, then it breaks, and is forgotten until Colette "dies" and it becomes the MacGuffin that saves her.
    • Also, in one alternating cut scene in the snowy town I forget how to spell Flanoir, depending on who you talk with as Lloyd, you get a different trinket. Later, the trinket saves Lloyd's life by keeping an arrow from piercing his chest.
  • The Fire Spears from the first Suikoden. When first introduced, it seems to serve no purpose, but Odessa insisted that Someday This Will Come In Handy. Later, the Liberation Army is flawlessly beaten by Teo's Armored Cavalry... only after getting back the Fire Spears they end up winning.
    • The Fire Spears also come back in the sequel, where they're first used to defend the Mercenary Fort against the Highland Army, though they lose effect in the next battle. Shortly after the player loses the second battle, the Fire Spears are again used to distract Luca Blight while everyone escapes.
  • Possibly a case in Sonic Adventure. Immediately after the first level (Emerald Coast), Tails explains to Sonic that his new Tornado II prototype is powered by a Chaos Emerald. Near the end of Sonic's story, the monster Chaos gets six of the seven emeralds. Where was the seventh? Still inside the Tornado II. May not directly count for two reasons: 1, the emerald in the airplane is different than the one referenced earlier, and 2, the Chaos Emeralds were established from the very beginning (arguably from previous games) as being supremely important.
  • When replaying Silent Hill, you find a device in the 7-11 lookalike that is of no use unless you're at certain locations (e.g. the rooftop of the oxidised Midwich Elementary) through which you get the Alien ending and a raygun for the next replay.
    • In Silent Hill 3, you have Heather's pendant in your inventory from the start. There's no indication that it's important and all you see when examining it is a little red bead-like thing inside. This turns out to be the one thing you need at the end of the game. It's actually the Aglaophotis in pill form. If you use it when Heather is about to birth God, it will cause her to throw up the fetus. Caludia eventually swallows it in an attempt to save it and dies a horrible death.
  • Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete gives the hero Alex an ocarina item from the very start. It cannot be dropped or sold, and doesn't seem to have much purpose other than to take up a valuable spot in Alex's limited inventory (in some versions it opens up a sound test, but that's it). He plays it briefly in an opening cutscene and then it's never once mentioned again... until the very, very end, after defeating the Final Boss, at which point Alex must use the ocarina to remind Luna - who unfortunately at that point has become a sort of deranged reincarnated goddess - who he is before she kills him.
  • In The Secret Of Monkey Island, the pirate drink "grog" is referenced early on, and a pirate in a bar says the stuff is so strong that it can "eat through a pewter mug". It's also described as "the most caustic, volatile substance known to man!" Later, you must use grog to eat through the bars of a prison ... and you have to use several pewter mugs to transport it there as it keeps eating through them!
    • In another example, Guybrush Threepwood comments early on in the first game that he can hold his breath for ten minutes, a skill he considers useless. It ends up working wonders later in the game when he's thrown off a pier with an weight tied to his waist.
      • The writers were so attentive, that if you wait 10 minutes while guybrush is under water, he will actually drown right at the 10 minute mark. It is the only way to lose the game.
    • The Monkey Island series often plays this straight, (it is an adventure game, after all). It almost always subverts it as well. While most items you pick up must or can be used at one point or another, there are always a couple items you can pick up (usually towards the beginning of the game) that have no use whatsoever except for humor value or extra background flavor.
    • Possibly the best use of this trope is when Stan hands you a bunch of random advertising pamphlets, seemingly with no use whatsoever. However, one of them just happens to be called "How to Get Ahead in Navigating". And when you encounter a group of people looking for a navigating head...
  • Done in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow; at one point, Soma is given a good luck charm from Mina Hakuba, his not-girlfriend. If you don't equip this item before going into a certain cutscene, Soma falls for the trap set by the villain and becomes Dracula. It's also done later on to get even further in the game; beating the boss Paranoia gets you the ability to enter mirrors and use them as portals. When you finally reach the pinnacle of the castle where Dario is waiting, you notice a demon lurking in the mirror behind him, boosting his power. Entering the mirror triggers the real boss fight with Aguni. Beating Dario just ends the game prematurely.
  • Subverted in Left 4 Dead. In the No Mercy campaign, there was an incident where the pilot who's gonna save you says there was an incident that happened. If you went through the commentaries, you would know that originally, it would be revealed he picked up an infected person who bit him, which caused the helicopter to crash after he turned as well. This was scrapped because, as playtests showed, people felt that a sense of accomplishment was taken away from them by that scene, so they just got rid of that ending bit, rather than fix it.
    • This is actually soon to be un-subverted. Valve has just announced a new campaign that takes place after No Mercy where the helicopter crashes called "Crash Course."
  • Disgaea Hour of Darkness uses Flonne's pendant in this fashion. One, it's an indicator of Laharl's Character Development (it burns hotter than the magma he fished it out of when it's introduced but does nothing when he grabs it near the end). Second, it's a sneak peek at the motives of two other characters who touch it - Dark Adonis Vyers (aka Mid-Boss aka benevolent Overlord King Krichevskoy) and Vulcanus (whose intentions are just as evil as he looks).
    • The four leaf clover seal on Rozalin in the second game. Turns out to be a seal on the real Overlord Zenon, a Cosmic Horror level overlord.
  • The Nancy Drew games are in love with this trope. There are many instances where the player will come across something that appears to be useless until the end of the game, which include:
    • The fire alarm in the second game, which will guarantee a game over if pulled too early, but will save Nancy's life at the end of the game,
      • The chandelier in the third game, which once again guarantees a game over if untied too early, but is used to trap the culprit at the end, and
      • A ring won on the carousel in the eighth game that becomes useful not once, but twice at the end. And these are just a few examples...
  • The chalice in Uninvited serves no ready purpose, yet you're forced to take it along in order to open a door about halfway through the game. Then in the very last room, it's the only thing that can kill the final boss. The only real clue to this is that if you happen to examine it, it emits a sparkle, which was never in the item description before.
  • Lampshaded in Discworld Noir, when Lewton notices a grappling hook behind the troll he's trying to question. Sure enough, while he can't collect it immediately, he gets to use it later. "I couldn't have been more interested if it had had 'Plot Device' written all over it."
  • The first day of the first route of Tsukihime has Shiki bringing an unidentified white ribbon with him for no particular reason. When you eventually get to the maid's routes, it's revealed this is a keepsake Kohaku gave as a sort of promise for him to come back and give it back to her. The importance he places on it, whether or not he remembers and also identifies whose it is becomes very important. As in, Akiha and Kohaku can die if he thinks Hisui gave it to him. Not bad for an item mentioned in one sentence offhandedly when Shiki is unpacking, eh?
  • Semi-subverted in the first Broken Sword. At the start of the game George is shocked with a hand buzzer by the owner of a joke shop, who then laughs and gives it to him as a gift. When George tries to pull this prank on anyone else in the game, they all refuse to shake his hand for one reason or another. It's only when an assassin has George helpless at gunpoint at the top of a mountain that George gets a chance to use it, shocking the assassin and dramatically leaping to safety while he fumbles with his gun.
  • Many of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks published in the United Kingdom have the reader collect all sorts of strange odds and ends, most of which seem to have no possible justification for the adventurer taking them along. Naturally, those seemingly useless items end up being just what the reader needs to get him- or herself out of trouble, or otherwise make an enemy easier to defeat.
  • Most of the early text based adventure games (e.g. Adventure and the Zorks) had you controlling a character traveling through what was essentially a maze of rooms in which were occasionally placed certain things that you would use later; i.e. "You're in a small room with exits to the east and the north. You see a small table here. You see a flashlight here." You could generally plan on needing that flashlight later so you would, "get flashlight".
    • Similar to the above example, nearly every Adventure game, such as Kings Quest or Monkey Island, has your character collecting seemingly random items, all of which will be used later. One game that averted this was the original Maniac Mansion game, which, due to having multiple characters and multiple endings, had many items that were worthless if you had the wrong party. It also had items that were completely worthless no matter what, such as the chain saw, which had no fuel.
      • Interestingly, the sequel goes back to the traditional tactic of not only having every single item be used at least once, but if the item is small enough to be passed through time, it will be needed in another time.
      • The only item that's never used is the hubcap....and you can not pick it up.
    • Standard policy for adventure games is that if it's not nailed down, take it, you'll need it. If it IS nailed down, find a way to remove the nails and take it. And take the nails too. Many, many early adventure games punished people for following this advice before realizing that it was a bad idea. For example, in Uninvited, picking up a certain seemingly important gem results in being demonically possessed about three turns later. Whoops.
  • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge plays with this one. At one point you can pick up a staple remover, which Guybrush remarks will probably come in handy. Contrary to almost everything else you find, it is never useful.
    • There's a staple remover in the first game as well. It is also useless.
  • Many adventure and RPG games condition pack-ratting behavior as an inventory management pressure, especially if there are inventory limitations and/or economic necessities. Not all games give clues whether the items are useful for problem-solving, or at least for uncovering Easter Eggs, or just Vendor Trash or completely dead weight. Recently the games have gotten easier by simply making the 'Handy' things undroppable/unsaleable, rather than more intuitive in their problem-solving application.
  • Mana Khemia Alchemists of Alrevis introduces us to Sulpher, Snarky Nonhuman Sidekick Mana of The Hero Vayne. Sulpher knows a lot more of what's going on than what he's been letting on, and he is quite strange for any ordinary Mana, and that's saying something. As it turns out, Sulpher is not a Mana. He's just an ordinary house cat. Vayne, on the other hand...
  • In Fallout 3, when you first enter the Citadel laboratory you see a giant robot that some scientists are working on. At the end of the game they finally get it to work and help you in the assault on the memorial.
    • The code for activating the machine at the end of the game, saving the wasteland and sacrificing your life, turns out to be the numbers of your mother's favourite verse. Your father mentions this conspicuously so far back that you're an infant at the time.
  • In Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter for the DS, Mike eventually turns out to be a key character (he's the reason Mari turned to Wilfre).
  • At the beginning of the Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Ray and Thomas kill an entire company of Union troops attacking their family estate. Later, Colonel Barnesby and his men come by and collect all the rifles off the dead troops. These rifles become a major MacGuffin later in the game's main plot.
  • The Seal of Mar at first seems like it's just a way to identify the Kid as the lost heir... until we find out that it seems to possess some mystical properties, and it confirms that Jak is Damas's son.
  • In Bioshock, when the sub carrying Atlas' family is blown up, there's no sign of any bodies from it — a bit odd, given the game's attention to detail, but it might be an oversight or they just felt they weren't necessary. It later turns out Atlas is Frank Fontaine, and made the family up. That's why there were no bodies.
  • Early on in Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Reimi scolds Lymle for drawing on the floor of your spaceship. It is played for laughs in a "precocious child" sort of way. The drawings actually form a gigantic protection symbol, which turns out to be the thing that ultimately saves the Calnus (and everyone onboard) from being completely destroyed during the assault on Nox Obscura.
  • In Star Ocean: The Second Story: It's introduced early in the plot that Rena had a pendant with her, as the last memento of her old family. Well as it turns out that pendant acts as a key to bring about Expel's Armageddon several hundred years before it naturally would.. Who would have thought?
  • True Remembrance gracefully weaves at least half a dozen of these into the first chapter, in asides and offhand comments that normally one would disregard as mere color in a Visual Novel. The entire second half is comparable to a machinegun, except instead of shooting bullets, it shoots Guns.
  • Koudelka, less-well-known prequel to the Shadow Hearts franchise, has the main character lose something in the opening FMV. You can find it again about 3/4 of the way through the game. Then you have to wait for the pendant to actually be useful, which isn't until a pre-final-boss cut-scene. Didn't pick it up? Instant game over.
  • In "Modern Warfare 2", as Price is giving his inspiring speech, a knife appears on the screen when he talks about killing the Big Bad. Take a guess what weapon kills the Big Bad...
  • Strange... the top of the page had the necklace example, but not the example from Chrono Trigger, where at the beginning of the game, Crono bumps into Marle, knocking her pendant off, and giving ti back to her to have her join you. She refuses to sell it because it has "a lot of sentimental value". Later, we find out the Pendant is the same as Schala's pendant, and is powered by Lavos' energy to open up the mysterious boxes and doors you found littered throughout the game, 'til now.
  • In the first Mata Nui Online Game, after the Po-Koro event, as a reward for helping the town, you are given an item, the "Po-Koro chisel" which seems to have absolutely no use, surprising in a game where every single item serves at least some purpose in one way or another. Flash-forward to the ending cutscenes of the game where Takua is fleeing from the newly-awakened Bohrok, and he discovers a device with an indentation that bears a staggering resemblance to the chisel. If you can't guess what happens next, you haven't been paying much attention to this page.
  • Dragon Quest VIII: After helping Prince Charmles collect an Argon Heart for his Rite Of Passage, the Royal Brat promptly renders the whole exercise pointless by buying a bigger heart, leaving Eight and his friends with a pretty but pointless trinket. However, the heart comes back into play towards the climax, when the King of Argonia reveals to Charmles that he saw him buy the heart, and kept silent as a Secret Test Of Character that Charmles failed with flying colors. Then the good ending reveals the Heart's true purpose: with Eight's Secret Legacy revealed, the Argon Heart now stands as proof that he finished the Initiation and is worthy to rule instead of his cousin Charmles.
  • In Crash Of The Titans, in the opening cutscene, Coco tries to get Crash to help her get a butter-recycler working. She asks him to hand her the 'Transpoolooper', a purple spanner thing. they are then inturrupted by Cortex in his big blimp, setting the plot in motion, and Crash puts the Transpoolooper in his back pocket. At the end of the game, they need to stop the giant Doominator robot. Cortex claims that it can't be stopped so easily, and Coco counters that she "could do it in seconds if I had my Transpoolooper"...and Crash pulls the required tool out of his pocket.
  • The Mother series has a few of these.
    • In Earthbound, the Meteor that starts off the adventure by bringing Buzz Buzz to Onett is used much, much later to gain the material used to go back in time to defeat Giygas.
    • In Mother3, the Courage Badge you are given early on is revealed later to be the/a Franklin Badge  * and is crucial to the final battle.

    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 essential plot point at the end of the season.
    Spider-man: Bats, I think I might have been married and forgot about it.
  • Mari-Kari subverts this with a scythe in the elementary school's groundskeeping shed, seen in the second episode. Despite the psychotic ghost slasher girl, it's never seen again.

    Webcomics 
  • El Goonish Shive is somewhat notorious for its use of Chekhov's Guns, many of which have yet to go off. Perhaps the most infamous Chekhov'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.
    • And then there was the time when he became very excited about the particular model of plane he was riding based on its toilet facilities. He was just in it for a cheap shot at pirates, but you guessed it, it becomes important.
    • Dan Mc Ninja can shoot poison out of his eyes.
  • 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 Ansem Retort, 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!
    • Coming from one of Fighter's DREAMS, the tail of a rat.
      • Perhaps the ultimate example of Chekhov's Gun in the series: In episode 7, Black Mage, reading a Nintendo Power strategy guide, says "Four White Mages? It'll never work!" One thousand, two hundred and fourteen episodes later, Chaos, the ultimate god of evil and stuff is defeated by - you guessed it - four White Mages. In the words of Black Mage when he takes out the Nintendo Power again: "Oh, goddammit."
      • The episode in question is entitled 'Longest Set Up In Webcomic History'.
  • 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).
  • 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 Chekhov's 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.
    • The golden brooch Agatha wears at the start of the series turns out to be an entire Chekhov's Armoury all on its own. Among other things, it is the device suppressing her incredible Spark; and much later on it is the only thing that keeps the mind of The Other from possessing her.
  • 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 Chekhov's 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.
  • The MS Paint Adventures series Problem Sleuth has both candy corn and 'Sepulchritude', which are introduced early in the comic. The main character has to abstain from their use several times before being used to kill the final boss.
  • MegaTokyo invokes this several times, with perhaps the greatest example in these strips. Over 8 years apart in writing.
  • Forgath's Anymug (magically able to fill itself with any liquid) just became one of these on Goblins. Turns out there's a highly-flammable liquid Forgath is familiar with, and a cup full of that is very handy when fighting a higher-level enemy with a wooden body.
  • A Magical Roommate is peppered with very subtle plot points, which often don't come into play until hundreds of strips have passed. Heck, even the Running Gag of Aylia transforming her sister became a gun when Alassa decided to make transformation her focus... and later tried to kill a boy by turning him into a rat.
  • In A Miracle Of Science, Benjamin Prester's therapy is reported to be robust against anything less than a major psychological disturbance.
    Jon Kilgannon: This page is guaranteed to be 100% free of foreshadowing. I swear.

    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.
    • Face it, the Phase novels are nothing but Chekhov's Guns. Some of the background issues in Ayla 1 turned out to be key plot points in Ayla 6. Phase's concern with the New Olympians in Ayla 4 turns out to be critical in Ayla 7. Delta Spike's rambling in Ayla 7 about a course she took last year turns out to give Phase a crucial clue early in Ayla 8. And those are just some of the ones where the gun doesn't get fired in the novel where it's shown.
  • 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.
    • Then there's the later succession game Headshoots, and The Inexplicable Room and the path to it. Nobody remembered making either, no ruler could find how it connects to the rest of the fortress, and it could only be found via the 'find unit' function. Even a majority of the dwarves couldn't find their way in or out. The final turn, where the two unbelievably-strong soldiers Holistic Detective and Nemo2342 were skeletonized and sent against the entire fortress, the only surviving dwarf hid in the parth to The Inexplicable Room.
  • A weird little news brief from The Onion.
  • At the beginning of Just Another Fool, there's a random vignette about Logan's watch. Later, it becomes a major clue for a puzzle.
  • Mocked in The Nostalgia Chick's review of Showgirls. During Nella's song at the end, she mentions the Chekhov's Stairs (that the lead pushed someone down at the climax of the film) that have been there since Act One.

    Western Animation 
  • Like with James Bond's Q, every gadget that Jerry gives the girls in Totally Spies gets used in that episode, many of them with even more ridiculously specialized uses.
    • He's still at it in The Amazing Spiez.
  • Winx Club: In episode seven of the second season, a character gives a few pixies some jewels, and makes a point about how the season's Big Bad is trying to get into some place called Realix by collecting four pieces of something called the Codex... and that there is another way into this Realix place. After we gradually learn what all that means, in episode 26, the season finale, it's revealed that the other way is via those jewels, which had not been seen since they were given to the pixies.
    • In the original, however, she just gives them the jewels and says, "As you probably know by now, the situation is extremely critical. These must remain secret. You know what to do." We gradually learn all of the above information as the season progresses (instead of in one fell swoop early on as above), and one of the later episodes also has a flashback to that scene (which the dub cut out).
    • Season 4 provides a subversion: One of their smaller missions ends with the ethereal fairies giving them a {{Chekhov's Gift}} that can be used to save exactly one person from death. There was quite some speculation over who it would save, and given this show's nature, it would be used usefully, right? Well, the next episode sees Nabu getting his life drained from him, and naturally Layla decides to use the power on him... and then the season's Big Bads take the power from her and waste it on a limp flower.
    • The 4Kids dub provides an example of Chekhov's Gun being undermined via editing: An episode has Musa and Layla talking about what to perform at a concert she's having, and Layla suggests (and shows) some sort of rain dance. That information later becomes useful to defeat Stormy with. But in the dub version, they just show Musa defeating Stormy with the rain dance, and then show the scene with Musa and Layla discussing the concert, where Layla's dancing is now just her showing her dance, with any rain-related significance removed. Clip.
    • And the reverse has happened a few times before: While Bloom just randomly shields herself from a Trix attack, the dub has an off-screen Tecna telling her to use a "Griselda bubble", a shield that their teacher demonstrated in class at the start of the episode. Also, an S1 episode has dub-only dialog of Bloom reading up on a protection spell for an exam. Guess what she ends up doing in said exam.
    • If you're into Wild Mass Guessing, you could also argue that they turned a straight use into a subversion, by having Tecna's Sphere of Truth spell turn out not to have worked. To everyone else, it's a Dub Induced Plot Hole.
  • This was parodied in an episode of Stripperella, when the tech group gives Stripperella a penny disintegrator, and she is later trapped in a jar being filled with pennies. Unfortunately, the disintegrator takes a full minute for each penny, so she ends up having to just break the jar.
  • In The Simpsons Movie, Lisa tells Homer how to ride a motorcycle up and down a curved surface, which later enables him to save Springfield.
    • Within the show itself, the episode "The Blunder Years" has one of the most elaborate uses of this trope ever. Burly paper towels take up a good portion of the first act and then are not mentioned again until the end, when they are hastily re-introduced to resolve the main storyline. The Simpsons writers often note that events of the first act that set the main plot in motion usually have no bearing on anything else, so the possibility of this being a self-parody or roast are equally good.
    • An earlier example: in the episode "Krusty Gets Busted". It seems with Krusty gone, Sideshow Bob has some big shoes to fill.
    • '"The Dad Who Knew Too Little", in which one of the presents Lisa gets for her eighth birthday is a Chekhov's Laser Pointer.
  • The Codename: Kids Next Door finale has Nigel's teammates tracking him down to a spaceship, thanks to a tracking device that was originally meant to be planted on the Delightful Children.
    • In a previous episode, a cigar-shaped-laser that can change a person's age is used on the main villain (who had owned it). At the very end, we see the Delightful Children from Down the Lane take it. A couple of episodes later, that same device is used to age Numbuh One (and several minor plot elements from previous stories also make a re-appearance). This was actually the very first significant cross-episode use of this trope in this series. Until the DC's showed up with the cigar again, the average viewer most likely would have shrugged the first episode's ending off as a generic Or Is It ending, not expecting any follow-up whatsoever.
    • One of the previous plot elements that makes a re-appearance in the above ep also provides a subversion: An episode begins with the gang training using a Humongous Mecha. Later, Numbuh Three calls it in to fight a giant turnip... that promptly smashes it to bits while she's locking and loading. (In fact, every single appearance of the training mecha ends with it getting smashed or whatever... including the one time it actually did anything useful.)
    • The Boyfriend Helmet.
    • Lizzie's soup in Operation: S.N.O.W.I.N.G.
    • Chester's Happy Headband.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender fans have become incredibly familiar with, and wary of, this trope, as apparently nigh-on EVERYTHING in the show eventually comes back as a major plot point later on.
    • The best example is perhaps Uncle Iroh's white-lotus Pai-Sho tile: when first discussed, it is stated that most players regard it as a weak piece (though Iroh mentions that it is the most important piece to his "strategy"), making it seem like an even bigger waste of Zuko's time to go into town to look for one. However, early in the second season, it is revealed that the lotus tile is, in fact, a calling-card for a secret Illuminati organization called The Order of the White Lotus. This point comes up yet again, when, as a parting gift, Sokka's master gives him a white lotus tile, showing that, not only was Sokka's master a member, but Sokka is now an unknowing member himself.
    • In the first season's finale, Admiral Zhao mentions entering a library hidden "deep beneath the sands" in his youth, where he learns how to kill the Moon God. Aang and his friends, in turn, unknowingly find the same Library in the second season, and learn how to defeat the Fire Nation: by attacking the Fire Nation Capitol on The Day of Black Sun.
    • The amulet full of water from the Northern Water Tribe's spirit oasis, presented to Katara at the beginning of season two: Shortly before the season finale, Katara shows it to Prince Zuko, explaining that she'd been saving it for something important and suggesting that it could be used to heal his facial scarring, by way of foreshadowing the fact that she uses it to save Aang's life at the end of the finale. Too bad that only a few episodes previous, Jet was fatally injured and the spirit oasis water was never mentioned, prompting certain viewers to think that maybe he hadn't been fatally injured after all. They were right the first time.
    • Zuko's swords, seen hanging on the wall in the first episode, eventually become his weapons of choice as the story progresses; unfortunately for him, it is this signature dual-wielding style which allows Zhao to uncover the truth that Zuko is The Blue Spirit.
    • One that nobody saw coming was various appearance of Lion Turtles: a picture of one in "The Library", and the statue and line about one in "Sokka's Master".
    • Another that even less saw coming: Iroh's sandal Zuko finds while looking for him in the first season. Used in the last episodes to track Iroh using Jun's beast, after Zuko reveals he had it all this time. This series pretty much defines this trope.
    • Toph's bracelet/piece of meteoric iron is something of Double Subversion: she missed the time it would be really useful because she didn't have it on her, but it served a mildly useful purpose an episode later (picking a lock).
    • During the first episode of the third season, Katara commented, while healing Aang's burn on his back, that she could feel, "a lot of energy twisted up around there". In the very last episode of the series, Aang was hit hard on the scar of said burn. It was what preventing him from using the Avatar state. Cue asskicking the Fire Lord time.
    • A more ingenious one I noticed, although it's more of a Chekov's Skill. Remember in the episode The Storm when Iroh redirected lightening? Guess what begins to become really important throughout the second half of sesaon two and season three?
    • Katara's necklace is also used pretty ingeniusly as a Chekov's Gun. She is shown wearing it in the first episode, and then later Zuko takes it and uses it to track down Katara and the Avatar. Later, when the gang goes to the Northern Water Tribe, it is only after seeing Katara's necklace that Master Paku realizes that she is the granddaugter of his first love, for whom he made the necklace. This in turn causes him to change his mind about teaching Katara waterbending, her knowledge of which is essential in the rest of the series
  • Invader Zim "Plague of Babies": Early in the episode, we're introduced to the "Power Amplifier", a device which (evidently) "amplifies" whatever is fed into it — hence, when its input leads are plugged into Gir's head, it begins "sending out deadly waves of stupidness" (which briefly incapacitates Zim, but his pack is able to "reboot" him). Then at the end of the episode, Zim uses this device to defeat the "baby" aliens.
  • In one episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, the team is on an alien spaceship headed for an inhabited planet. On the bridge, they try to figure out how to stop, steer, or otherwise control the space ship, but all they find are things that activate windshield wipers and a cup holder. Later, the alien is revived, and shows them that the cup holder is actually the ship's steering mechanism.
  • In Disney's film Recess: School's out, TJ steals back his lucky baseball from the principal's office. At the end of the film, this baseball is used to foil the evil plan.
  • Parodied in Family Guy with Mayor Adam West giving Quagmire a banana and cryptically telling him that "When the time is right, you'll know what to do with it". The banana ultimately proves useless in the end.
    • Knowing Mayor West, the intended use hinted at in the cryptic instruction was to use it to have a nourishing snack. We are talking about the guy who swallowed a magazine and Stratego back in the eighties just in case he was ever in a hostage situation that dragged on so long he got bored. Speaking of which, a Chekhov's Gun there, too-in the episode where Brian holds Mayor West hostage, Stewie finds in the candy jar at his grandparents' house, a set of keys to an old model of car that isn't in production any longer. Mayor West agrees to drop all the charges incurred in the hostage situation provided they can give him a set of keys to that exact model of car. Quoth Stewie: "You're welcome."
  • This is the plot basis for 95% of all Danny Phantom episodes, with their numerous Fenton devices.
  • Also happens in just about every episode of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. In his most dire moment, Jimmy will have a "brain blast" and remember some trivial detail or offhand comment from earlier in the episode, and use it to save the day.
  • An episode of Storm Hawks involved Dark Ace getting his hands on a suit of huge robotic armor. At the same time, Finn gets enthralled by a transforming puzzle (like an uber Rubix). It kept being conspicuously brought up when the other characters were trying to figure out how to stop Dark Ace. In fact, both the puzzle and the armour were said to drive people insane. It was working up to some revelation that either it could be used to distract Dark Ace as he falls into dementia (it's even mentioned that he's got diminished mental ability due to the suit) or that somehow the puzzle and suit are related.. Turned out to be mostly red herring though: An offhanded comment about powering it up when it went out of juice was key to victory. The toy itself was unceremoniously melted in the episode's denouement.
    • Played straight with the Oracle Stone from the Forbidden City in season one, which turns out to be a very, very important item in the final (and only real arc) of the series, with serious ramifactions when it falls into the wrong hands.
  • The "No Dogs Allowed" signs in Snoopy Come Home, which had been tormenting the beagle throughout the film, until the end, when one sign on Lila's apartment building got Snoopy out of his moral obligation to her, allowing him to return to Charlie Brown.
  • In a Road Runner/Wile E Coyote cartoon, Wile E sets up a metal gate in the middle of the road that pops up from the ground with the flick of a switch. Road Runner comes by, Wile E flicks the switch...and the trap fails to go off, even when he tries to set it off manually. Frustrated, he tries other attempts to catch the Road Runner. When he finally starts to catch up, they come across the metal gate, which finally pops up, and Wile E slams right into it.
    • There's another Road Runner cartoon where Wile E sets up a crate filled with explosives that will activate when someone picks up the glass of water sitting on top of it, setting up a sign reading "Last Water For [something hundred, I don't remember the exact number] Miles". Road Runner then pops up behind him with a sign reading "Road Runners can't read and don't drink," flicks his tongue and zooms off. At the end of the episode, Wile E is dragging himself along, having escaped another explosion, exhausted, tired, and defeated. He notices a crate with a glass of water and, relieved, picks it up. He realizes what he's done just before the crate explodes.
  • Used extensively in Gargoyles during the Avalon World Tour Arc. In almost every episode, somebody would relate some legend or fairy tale, and the characters would inevitably end up encountering it.
  • This crops up from time to time in The Fairly Oddparents, like Cosmo's thought being elevator music in "Mind Over Magic", or Poof's smile being uplifting in "Wishology: Part III".
  • The Dethphone, in its first appearance in Metalocalypse, a phone that the band created while they were drunk. It has spikes all over it, doesn't get nighttime minutes until 11 PM, and it's basically designed to eat up minutes. Murderface, after getting annoyed with it one last time, ends up using it to kill the troll they summoned early in the episode.
  • Jonny Quest TOS episode examples: "Mystery of the Lizard Men" (hydrofoil and mirror), "The Robot Spy" (Parapower Ray Gun), "Arctic Splashdown" (snow skimmer), "Calcutta Adventure" (sonic amplifier), "Pirates from Below" (Jonny and Hadji's communication devices and the underwater probe's waldo arms).
  • Futurama: In "Future Stock", That Eighties Guy mentions that he got himself cryogenically frozen because he had terminal bone-itis and there was no cure in his day. It isn't mentioned again for the rest of the episode...until the very end, where it kills him before he can take full control of Planet Express, and all his shares revert back to Fry, their original owner.
    "My only regret...is that I have...bone-itis..."
    • There's a newer example that actually is a gun, too. In the beginning of "Lrrreconcible Ndndifferences," Farnsworth looks at an ad he put in a comic book for a "disintegrater ray" which is actually a teleporter (teleporters are apparently cheap and worthless in the year 3010). Later, an "[[Furry Fandom Omicronian" that Lrrr had a one-night stand with appears holding the same kind of gun, and Ndnd steals it and shoots her. Later, Ndnd passes the gun to Lrrr and he is forced to shoot either Leela or Ndnd. He chooses to shoot Leela, but Fry does a pseudo - Heroic Sacrifice by jumping in the way. He is apparently destroyed, but then Lrrr's ex-girlfriend comes back and says the gun she had was just a stupid teleporter, and Fry is found in the Planet Express building.
  • In one episode of Filmation's GhostBusters, Tracy chomps down on a piece of bubble gum before the team enters a haunted castle. It becomes useful later. Does that make this Chekhov's Gum?
  • In an early scene of the Russian The Snow Queen film, (the animated one) a bird freezes to death to save her babies from the cold, and it becomes more important later on in the film rather than just serving as a Tear Jerker.
  • In Legion of Superheroes, Superman X, through Lego Genetics, was given immunity to the literal Kryptonite Factor. It was never addressed again, and not even once throughout the series did it have any use, until the finale, when it saves the Original Superman's life.
  • Archer: Archer gives a gun, branded "Chekhov", to Cyril and adds that it tends to go off for no reason. Later on... nothing happens with the Chekhov gun, but the unreliable pen he also gave him does become important. So let's see, that's subversion, aversion, lampshading and playing it straight?
    Archer: "God, I SAID the cap slips off the poison pen for no reason, didn't I?!"
    Cyril: "I know, I know, but I just assumed that if anything bad happened it-it would've been-"
    Archer: "No, do NOT say the Chekhov gun Cyril! THAT, sir, is a facile argument!"
    Woodhouse: "Also woefully esoteric."
  • The Wayne Manor technology fair sequence in The Batman vs. Dracula introduces a machine that stores and releases sunlight. Hm... A sunlight-beam machine in a vampire movie? I wonder if it will be used at all later.
  • In Mickey Donald Goofy The Three Musketeers, Goofy manages to recreate a Disaster Dominoes sequence from earlier to defeat the Beagle Boys.
  • This sows up from time to time in Jimmy Two-Shoes. One example is the Miracle-Gro Monster in The Big Date and

Avoid The Dreaded G RatingCreator SpeakCreation Myth
Chekhov's ExhibitLaws And FormulasChekhov's Gunman
CharactersGenerally Recognised TropesChiaroscuro
Chekhov's HobbyThis Index Will Be Important LaterChekhov's Gunman
new edits
forum
page history
edit page
view source
discuss
random
Creative Commons License
This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.