History Main / ChekhovsGag

** When questioned about his life, [[DumbMuscle Ryuga Banjo]] gets overly excited to talk about how he was born a healthy baby only to be interrupted immediately afterwards. This happens twice and the second time is only a few episodes before the background truth bomb is dropped. [[spoiler: Ryuga was born after an EldritchAbomination tried to possess his mother and accidentally bonded with the fetus she was carrying instead, making him a HalfHumanHybrid.]]

** In ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'', the gag with SHIELD agent Phil Coulson attempting to have [[ComicBook/CaptainAmerica Captain Steve Rogers]] sign his mint-condition Captain America trading cards takes on a slight darker turn later on when we see the aforementioned trading cards wet with the (apparently) deceased Coulson's blood, and being used by Nick Fury to motivate the Avengers to get their act together.

* ''Series/{{Friends}}'' is full of minor examples of these, but there have been a few very significant ones. In season 5, Chandler goes away to Jersey for the weekend claiming it's for a work convention. Monica goes away to Jersey the same weekend claiming it's for a culinary fair. Afterwards, Chandler told Joey he saw Donald Trump while waiting for a lift and Joey also fields a call from Chandler's hotel regarding a forgotten eyelash curler. These appear to be nothing more than normal jokes about Joey knowing obscure trivia or thinking Chandler's gay. However, at the end of the episode, Joey overhears Monica telling Phoebe she saw Donald Trump while waiting for a lift and asking Rachel if she can borrow an eyelash curler because she's lost her own. Joey therefore becomes the first Friend to uncover the truth about Chandler and Monica's SecretRelationship, setting him up for a mini story arc whereby he learns the hard way that KeepingSecretsSucks.

* WebOriginal/SeinfeldTheTwinTowers:

--->"[[LampshadeHanging You think everyone just FORGOT about that?!]] [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome There were fingerprints; forensic reports! 19 people died, Peter.]] ''[[OhCrap And the FBI knows it was you...]]''"

* ''Literature/DiaryOfAWimpyKid'': Each installment features more of these than the last, to the point where the later books turn into Chekov's Gag minefields near the end.

** ChristmasEpisode [[Recap/DoctorWho2012CSTheSnowmen "The Snowmen"]] has a hilarious scene where the Doctor, having no interest in investigating the snowmen appearing over England, chooses to erase the memory of Clara Oswald, who witnessed his encounter with them. The Doctor sends BattleButler Strax to fetch "the memory worm" — one touch of its skin and you lose an hour's worth of memories. The problem is, when Strax returns he's empty-handed and has no memory of the last hour. Strax's failure to retrieve the worm leads to Clara not even trying to run because she finds it more amusing to watch him lose his memory a second time. The Doctor ends up using the worm's bite to remove all of the memories from this episode's BigBad.

* "Not so fireproof on the inside, are you?" from ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon'' is introduced as a one-off gag. At the climax of the movie Hiccup uses this knowledge to take out the BigBad.

* The film ''Film/MyCousinVinny'' is full of these. The movie takes care to ensure that any and every major, important point used in the case is established and demonstrated, most often in a humorous way that makes the whole incident look like a mere joke.
** For instance, Vinny tries to sleep in his car out in the woods only to be caught in a rainstorm. The car is stuck in mud and when they try to get out one wheel spins while the other doesn't spin at all. It seems like just another ridiculous bad night that serves only to wreck Vinny's suit and force him to wear a ridiculous show suit instead, until [[spoiler: it turns out that the very same issue makes it impossible for a car to leave the sort of skid marks found at the crime scene, allowing Lisa to conclude that the Skylark the boys drove, which had the same issue, could not possibly be the vehicle that left the marks.]]

* ''Film/InBruges'' has this dialogue in the middle of the film. Guess whose [[YourHeadASplode head is blown off]] by the end of the film? Jimmy, the midget actor, of course.
-->'''Ray:''' This is exactly my point! People going around calling you a midget when you want to be called a dwarf. Of course you're going to blow your head off.
** Another instance: Ken's coins. When trying to see the view from the church tower, Ken tries to get rid of some loose change by paying the entry fee of five Euros. He comes up short by 10 cents, so the annoying Belgian cashier refuses to let him enter. Later on, Ken throws the coins off the tower [[spoiler: to warn passers-by below that he's going to jump to his death.]]

** ''The World's End'':
*** Early in the film when Oliver is on the phone with his sister Sam he teasingly asks "You get lost on the ring road again?". [[spoiler:Much later in the film she says she came back for Gary, Andy and Steven because she got lost on the ring road.]]

** In ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'', in what seems to be a throwaway scene, the Avengers try to lift Thor's hammer at their celebratory party, with none of them succeeding because "they're all not worthy". As Vision tries to convince them of his good intentions, he casually picks up the hammer and hands it to Thor. The Avengers promptly agree to follow. He uses it briefly in the final battle as well.
*** Steve appears to move the hammer slightly before giving up, but it's left open whether he could have lifted it had he tried harder. [[spoiler:In the climactic battle of ''Film/AvengersEndgame'', he picks it up with ease and wields it against Thanos, suggesting that he could have done so at the party, but chose to back off out of respect for Thor.]]
---->[[spoiler:'''Thor:''' I knew it!]]

* Five books later in ''Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus'' series, Annabeth proclaiming the Laistrygonian giants to be "Canadians" in ''Sea of Monsters'' is brought back up in ''Son of Neptune'' where Percy calls them Canadians... in front of genuine Canadian Frank Zhang. Frank is not pleased.

* In ''Series/{{Angel}}'' one episode mentions Fred laughing at something a Shrub said. Later in the last season when she becomes Illyria one of her powers is talking to plants.
** Also involving Fred is one early episode for her, where she's built some odd looking contraption involving an axe. Multiple character speculate that it looks like "it is either a decapitation device or (knowing Fred) it makes toast". Come the climax of the episode, she actually busts it out and does, in fact, decapitate a demon with it by launching the axe across the room using a foot pedal.

* One of the longest running gags in ''Webcomic/BobAndGeorge'' is Dr. Wily talking to himself about his evil plans, not realizing that someone is [[RightBehindMe right behind him]]. He passed that down to his robot son Zero, who while visiting from the far future, casually mentions to X that Zero killed almost everyone in the present-day cast, when Dr. Wily is right next to him. Zero is not only aware that Dr. Wily is listening, he stops to explain which specific glitch made him go berserk upon activation. Come the epilogue, the ending seems to be a DownerEnding because [[ForegoneConclusion Zero kills (almost) all the Mega Man characters in the Cataclysm movies]], and the original characters either die of unrelated causes or never return to the Mega Man universe... until the Author reveals that the whole epilogue up until then was what WOULD have happened, had Dr. Wily not overheard Zero talking about killing them all. Dr. Wily then decide to not activate Zero in his lifetime, leading to a happy ending where everyone [[TimeTravelEscape fakes their deaths]] and [[TropicalEpilogue moves to Acapulco]].

* In ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' when Tarvek [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090921 relates all the trouble Gil got him into while they were in Paris]], there is a very short gag (just one panel, the fifth) in which he complains about having to deal with pirates because of what Gil did. The pirate in that panel looks a lot like Bangladesh [=DuPree=]. It takes [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20120222 two years and five months]] to start to guess what exactly Tarvek went through then.
-->'''Bang:''' (''with glee'') It's Prince "How Dare You"!!
** Which then becomes part of another Chekhov's Gag! When gleefully meeting Tarvek, she curiously asks, if he still has "those little scars" as an offhand comment. Chapters later when Tarvek is taking a bath after [[spoiler:having been stuck in the time bubble for 2 and a half years]], those little scars she "worked so hard on" are the first things she wants to see.

* ''Manga/FutokuNoGuild'': From the beginning gag after gag plays on how strongly monsters are attracted to Hitamuki, how incredibly clumsy she is, how "sensitive" she is, etc. In the end it turns out [[spoiler: this is all indication of her unique nature, a nature that defies the very definition of "human" and allows her to restore her mana as quickly as she loses it, as well as possibly playing a part in other bizarre abilities she demonstrates.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse:'' In "[[Recap/TheOwlHouseS2E19OTitanWhereArtThou O Titan, Where Art Thou]]", after Eda and Luz sneak into the Emperor's Coven precinct to get their confiscated stuff back, Eda asks Luz to keep an eye out for a box labeled "[[{{Squick}} Eda's Longest Toenails]]". At the end of the episode Eda reveals that she found the box and presents it to Luz, who opens it clearly expecting the worst... [[spoiler: Only to see that the box actually contains the piece of Palistrom wood Eda had given her in an earlier episode.]]

** Another gag had Franchise/SpiderMan saving random characters ("Everybody gets one."), that had whole seasons in between the gags.

* In the 2005 ''Film/ThePinkPanther'', Clouseau develops a love for hamburgers and can't pronounce the word properly. At the airport, he tries to sneak a bunch of burgers onto the plane, but a police dog smells them, and the police arrest him thinking he has a weapon on him, since he can't tell them otherwise.

* in ''WesternAnimation/Elemental2023'', Wade and his family play a game in which they see who cries first, Wade says "Butterfly. Windshield Wiper. Half a butterfly," and also tells a story of a man who lost his love over the summer to try making Ember cry. In the climax of the movie, Amber uses the same words to [[spoiler: restore Wade after he evaporated from her heat.([[note]]Her family helps too, Cinder by praising their love and Bernie by lifting Wade's ban[[/note]])]]

** In the second game, Franziska plants a tracking device on Gumshoe for the sole purpose of keeping an eye on him and to get the opportunity to whip him as soon as possible. This is initially shown as something on the long list of things that cements Gumshoe's ButtMonkey status as well as Franziska's hostility. It comes into play when Gumshoe grabs evidence from [[ProfessionalKiller Shelley De Killer's]] second hideout in order to get it to Phoenix as soon as possible in an attempt to save Maya, but he crashes his car and breaks his phone in the process. Franziska manages to find him and [[BigDamnHeroes deliver the evidence just in time]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'', a joke is made about Po being so fat and fuzzy, that he cannot properly be given acupuncture. This turns into a sort of unlearned ChekhovsSkill later on, when Po ends up facing the most dangerous martial artist in the land... who uses pressure-point attacks, which are useless!

* For a series with a lot of {{Continuity Nod}}s and {{Brick Joke}}s, ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'' does not have a lot of {{Call Back}}s that are necessarily this. However, they do have an example in the [[Film/BackToTheFuture first movie]] with the joke about Uncle Joey not making parole in 1985. Then we see him as a baby in 1955 and his mother says that he cries whenever they take him out of his crib.

* In ''Series/QueerAsFolk'', Stuart teases Vince about his incessant babbling about ''Series/DoctorWho'', joking that soon Vince's boyfriend Cameron would be able to name all of the Doctors in order - leading to a nice little joke where they talk about their FanonDiscontinuity for the show. However, Vince's eventual ultimatum to Cameron is to challenge him to "name all of the actors who played Doctor Who". Cameron can name Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, "that bloke with the white hair" and "the vet". Vince decides that they're breaking up.

** Early in "A New Man", there's a quick gag where Giles thinks that Ethan is drunkenly trying to flirt with him, before realizing that Ethan is actually offering his phone number to the waitress next to him. This winds up being crucial to helping Giles and Spike track Ethan down later on.

* Often done by Aaron Karo of ''Ruminations'' fame. He'll often bring up random subjects he thinks about in each issue, then come the last rumination, he ends it off with a clever callback to the previous ones before signing off with [[{{Catchphrase}} "Fuck me"]].

* In the climax of the Creator/SeltzerAndFriedberg movie ''Vampires Suck'', [[Literature/TheTwilightSaga}} Bella]]... er... [[ParodyNames Becca]] rushes to stop Edward from ending it all, fighting through a crowd of Edward and [[FanPreferredCouple Jacob]] fangirls along the way. At the end, after Becca becomes a vampire, one of the Jacob fangirls kills Edward. This results in a KarmicDeath, as Becca feasts on the fangirl's blood.