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alt title(s): Chekhovs Armoury; Chekhovs Armory Ü: Looks like an ordinary briefcase, but this contains exactly the items you'll almost certainly need on your mission.
Pip: Why should I want a gold braid, a joke book or a xylophone? Merlin: Why should you want a hammer or a saw? Pip: Because they might come in handy. Merlin: So might a gold braid, a joke book and a xylophone. Anything might come in handy in an adventure like this.
A Chekhov's Gun is an item introduced before its use, and is usually quite inconspicuous.
Chekhov's Armoury is when the writer uses several (and in some cases, uses too many) Chekhov's Guns, not all of which are painfully obvious.
The Law Of Conservation Of Detail taken to its logical extreme.
Carefully written and/or Myth Arc-laden shows tend to have a Chekhov's Armoury. It also provides good potting soil for Epileptic Trees. Opposite of Cow Tools, where there are a large number of seemingly significant tchotchkes which turn out to be just window dressing.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Films — Animation
- In Kung Fu Panda, a variation of every move Po used in the food montage was used in the final battle with Tai Lung.
- This is a standard technique in kung fu films with abnormal or inscrutable training.
Films — Live Action
- Numerous Tim Burton movies.
- Die Hard is packed to the gills with material from the Armoury. The lighter that John finds, the question "Who gives a fuck about glass?", the explosives, the Twinkies... if it shows up on screen, it gets used again. And, in some cases, again and again.
- And don't forget the Rolex.
- In Bruges (it's in Belgium), everything, from the type of bullets bought by Harry, to the movie Jimmy is starring in, etc., comes into play in the finale.
- James Bond always seems to use every gadget in his arsenal precisely once.
- That's only because they always get blown up as SOP.
- But it is so rare for any gadget he gets with an explanation not to be used, that he should have bribed Q to only explain him about gadgets that "will allow you to safely take out unsuspecting enemies from a great distance" instead of those that are "short ranged, one shot weapons which will not be noticed by the enemy, and you can use as a last resort when captured, bound and being tortured".
- Parodied by Eddie Izzard in one of his routines. "Q, I had a lot of stuff I didn't bloody use! The watch that turns into a hamster, what was the point of that?"
- Surprisingly, Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Absolutely everything from the comedy half of the movie makes an appearance when Paul is fighting back against the robbers. Even the hot sauce.
- Well, not so surprisingly — it's a beat-for-beat, almost shot-for-shot parody of Die Hard.
- Hot Fuzz may have more so than Die Hard, including two actual armouries.
- Paycheck, both the original story, and the John Woo film.
- Almost every single wish made in Shorts (and Helvetica's science project) is used in the final "short" in the fight against Giant Mecha Mr. Black, including the Bipedal Crocodile Army, the Super-Smart Baby, the germs, the aliens, the dung beetle...
- In Escape from LA, Snake is given a number of items, including an ordinary pack of matches. He uses everything given, including the matches, to light his cigarette in the total darkness once all of the world's electricity has been eliminated.
- In Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Pee Wee's trip to the magic store serves as one of these. Everything he buys ends up getting used except for the boomerang bowtie, and that's only because the scene was deleted.
- James Cameron's Avatar: every creature fights in the final fight. The Toruk, the hounds, the leopard, etc., everything is foreshadowed.
Literature
- Douglas Adams:
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. A poem, a conjuring trick, and a stuck couch in the first few chapters are all linked by the end.
- Also occurs in the weirdest way (it's Douglas Adams after all) in the sequel, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. Needless to say, Norse Gods and a somewhat popular song'' are involved in the apparent suicide by beheading of some dude. Also, Dirk's non-working fridge? That has something to do with it as well.
- The Dirk Gently books embody this trope really because they are all about the interconnectedness of everything. Chekov's Armoury isn't just a device Adams used, it's what he based the whole book on.
- The Dresden Files, and about half of them were all introduced at the same event, Bianca's party in Grave Peril.
- George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
- The Harry Potter series.
- The Commonwealth Saga uses this trope. Anything introduced at all will have some factor later on. Anything. If not in that saga, then in The Void Trilogy (set a few thousand years after).
- Mistborn. Sweet Crystal Dragon Jesus. By the end of the third book, so many seemingly insignificant conversations, objects, and so on wind up being absurdly important. The biggest is probably Vin's earring, but there are others.
- The author, Brandon Sanderson, is fond of this. Both Elantris and Warbreaker, have fully stocked armories of their own.
- My Fathers Dragon has a kid pack up a backpack full of ordinary kid stuff, like whistles and sticks of gum, and set out on a mission to rescue a dragon. You guessed it: everything he has in his backpack gets used at one point or another.
- Justified in that he was advised to bring all that by a stray cat, who told him about the dragon to begin with. This cat had been to the island where the dragon was being held, and presumably knew about all the obstacles. Note that the kid seems to know exactly what to do for every animal he comes across.
- The numerous things the five defecting stormtroopers in Allegiance find in the ship they stole.
- Matthew Reilly's books. If it gets mentioned, it will be important later on. No exceptions. This includes things like weapons, tools, notes, furniture, dead bodies, building layout, machinery, debris, idle conversation... His books arn't compared to Die Hard for nothing.
Live Action TV
- Babylon Five.
- Jericho, in a manner of speaking, literally has a Chekhov's Armoury: In episode two, Robert Hawkins is seen mysteriously unpacking weaponry into a location of storage. It isn't until 18 episodes later when this cache of weapons is used to fight a frickin' war. May also be
Someday This Will Come In Handy..
- Lost. The hard part is figuring out which ones are Chekhov's Guns, which are Red Herrings, and which are something else entirely.
- Absolutely everything in Stargate SG-1. People, events, pictures of people, the whole thing. Jolinar knew something. There's two Stargates on Earth. They can overload their Stargate to shunt the connection to another one. Teal'c carries a big staff weapon normally on offworld missions. Apophis died on camera. The Asgard are floating about the place. The Reetu are invisible, and the Tok'ra have invisible Reetu detection guns, which they gave to the SGC. One shot from a Zatgun stuns, two kills. That's not including the solid Stargate fact that every single piece of Earth mythology regardless of age or culture will definitely turn out to be alien in origin, with most gods being Goa'uld.
- Isn't that mostly just good continuity and writers using items established in previous episodes though? Most of the examples cited have the follow-up episode take place at least a season after the establishing one, and Stargate didn't seem to be a series usually planned very far in advance.
- Spooks: In the episode "Love and Death", Danny and Zoe are send to intercept a scientist, with a brifcase full of documents and a false bottom containing the kit to asassinate him if that doesn't work.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 5. If it shows up, even in what you think is a breather episode, it matters in the big finale against Glorificus. In particular, the supposed breather episodes introduced the Buffybot and the troll hammer, both of which were crucial.
- How in the world was Fringe not already on this list?
Video Games
- Planescape: Torment may be the archetypal video game example. If you are prompted to pick up an item, either in dialogue or in the narration, keep that item. It will almost certainly become necessary to completing a quest days down the line.
- Final Fantasy VIII has the Information menu, which features lots of interesting little background tidbits about the setting. A lot of it turns out to be very useful information later on. There's also a lot of early references to the orphanage in Centra, including comments about Guardian Forces causing unforeseen mental effects including memory loss, Seifer and Zell's irrational hatred of one another, Quistis' attraction to Squall, Irvine's odd behavior around Edea and Selphie, and Squall's confused familiarity towards Ellone.
- In the Telltale Games Sam and Max, items from previous episodes will often still be in your inventory. The only time something doesn't carry over is if it would completely change the way to solve a puzzle.
- Odin Sphere is loaded with Chekhovs Gun after Chekhovs Gun.
Web Comics
- So much stuff in Girl Genius that the wikia doesn't even have a list. The most notable examples might be the Heterodyne it's-not-a-lamp, Agatha's broken locket, the fate of Dr. Merlot... and oh, Dear Ghu, the time windows.
- Justified in Phil Foglio's Stanley and His Monster miniseries: When Stanley has to go to he— a bad place to rescue the Monster,
John Constantine... Ambrose Bierce has him pick "Everything he thinks they will need", simultaneously casting a spell that creates a causality loop in which whatever Stanley picks will be exactly what's required.
- 8-Bit Theater has pulled the mother of all of these, a series of over 1000 comics now taking a seemingly insignificant event from one of the earliest comics and turning it into a plot device involving billions of years, the most powerful wizard in existence, and bringing back most of the major antagonists of the past 1000 comics BACK into the story for what will almost certainly be one of the comic's grand, absurdly awesome anticlimaxes.
- When the characters all get their class changes, Thief says that he stole his ninja upgrade from the future. Later, when Chaos downgrades the party back to level 1, Thief is the only one left in his class change suit. For about 5 seconds. Because guess where he stole it from...
Web Original
- The Whateley Universe is made of this trope. For example, nearly every single thing Phase has ever bought or acquired for her utility belt has gotten used somewhere, even if it's in another author's story. The story about Cavalier and Skybolt turning to the Dark Side and becoming The Don's servants was written back in 2004. The significance of that and what it really meant to the plots has only come out in the more recent stories, starting with "Christmas Elves". The backstory of Tennyo was introduced in the earliest stories; how it could be used as a weapon against her didn't come out for about five years.
Western Animation
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