Chekhovs Gun / Live Action Films A To F

Chekhov's Gun Main Live-Action Films Subpage
A - F | G - L | M - R | S - Z

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• Two Hands combines a Chekhov's gun and a Chekhov's gunman - both are literal, but the gunman uses a different gun. A gun fails to fire twice, first in the middle of the film and then again at the end, because the thug it belongs to put it through the wash. The first time allows the protagonist to escape execution by Pando's men. The second time it costs the thug his life when the boy from early in the film guns down Pando and his men.
• In The 6th Day, Arnold's character Adam Gibson is a chartered helicopter pilot. In one of the first scenes he is seen checking out the new model of remote control for the helicopters. Much later in the movie the remote is used to fly a decoy helicopter.

A

• Adele Hasn't Had Her Dinner Yet:
  • Police commissioner Ledvina always eats, usually junk food like sausages, pickled sausages or smelly ripened cheese, and he's seen using his own pepper-pot and salt-cellar. The pepper-pot saves detective Nick Carter's life. When he's being devoured by Man-Eating Plant Adele, police commissioner Ledvina throws the pepper-pot into her mouth. Adele starts coughing and gagging, and she spits Nick out.
  • A man trying to fly a bicycle with wings and propellers can be seen in the background several times. Near the end of the movie, Nick borrows his flying machine, fixes its glitch and uses it to catch the villain who's escaping in a hot-air balloon.
• Aliens
  • 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 she goes on to use this exact piece of equipment in the climactic mano-a-mano battle with the Alien Queen.
  • Even more subtle is the air lock that the Marine sergeant offhandedly demands to be sealed in the same scene.
  • Ripley is seen smoking out of habit when Burke and Gorman meet her aboard Gateway Station, and can be seen using a specific lighter at several points. Later on, when she discovers that the facehuggers are in the Medical Lab with her and Newt, she uses the same lighter (which she carried with her from Gateway) to activate the fire alarm and notify the Marines that the duo are in danger.
  • The tracking device that Hicks gives to Ripley. Ripley later gives it to Newt, and near the end she uses it to track down Newt inside the alien hive. It doesn't get her to Newt's exact location, but it does get her close enough to hear Newt scream when the egg near her hatches.
• In AVP: 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.
• The Amazing Spider-Man has the Ganali device. Connors points it out to Peter when he shows him around the lab, saying it's been sitting there collecting dust. The Lizard takes it to spread the serum across New York; Peter uses it to distribute the antidote instead.
• Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 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 displayed on the teleprompter. This later causes 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 Andromeda Strain has one in the film and in the novel it is based.
  • In the film, 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.
• In Angels & 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.
• There are two major ones in Anna and the Apocalypse:
  • One is a star-shaped set piece being used in the Christmas show Anna's school is putting on, which is noted to be dangerous due to how easily someone could just pull a certain rope and send it flying across the stage. Anna ends up using it at the climax to knock Savage into a crowd of zombies and save her dad.
  • The other one is Steph's car keys. They get confiscated from her early in the film, and she manages to locate them during the climax, giving her and her surviving friends safe transport out of town.
• Annie (2014):
  • Cell phones. Due to most phones being smart phones, they prove instrumental in helping save Annie in the film's climax.
  • Social Media: Bobby's having given Annie her own Twitter account results in her getting mentioned all over the site and trending when she realizes her "real parents" are nothing of the kind and starts trying to get help by waving at passerby.
• In the beginning of Arachnophobia, carpenters building Dr. Jennings' wine cellar introduce him to a nail gun, which he uses in the final act of the movie.
• Are You Being Served?:
  • The Lifebelle Inflatable Swimsuit is shown off at the start of the film for a few gags, then becomes relevant again in the latter half of the film when Mr. Humphries has to use it to disguise himself as Mrs. Slocombe.
  • When the Grace Brothers staff arrive at the Don Bernardo Palace Hotel, they notice a large balloon advertising it. In the climax, they attempt to use it to spread the message that they're trapped in the middle of the revolutionaries' attack. It, and the also-previously set-up fact that the toilet locks from the outside, also ends up being used to subdue Spanish revolutionary Cesar Rodriguez when he is locked in the toilet, which is then dragged off into the sky.
• Apocalypto begins with a group of hunters funneling a tapir into a spring-loaded trap. Later, as the hero is being pursued by warriors through the area, he finds a similar use for the trap.
• Apparitional: Berger shows the crew a device he obtained that's meant to dispel an electro-magnetic field, causing all ghosts in the area to be dispelled with it. At first, the others dismiss it because a device meant to drive ghosts away goes against the point of their show (capturing evidence of ghosts). However, when they're being pursued by a hostile spirit, the device proves very useful.
• Assassin's Creed (2016): While Moussa is in Sophia's office, there's a glimpse of a couple of bombs encased in glass on a table. He later initiates the prison break by using them on the guards in the cafeteria.
• 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. While initially Austin gets mad believing that she's reminding him of his bad teeth again, Vanessa says that now he can use them as weapons: 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 (mutated and ill tempered) sea bass, allowing Austin and Vanessa to escape via dental floss swing.
  • Random Task and his "lethal" footwear reappear during the denouement, along with Austin's Swedish Penis Pump.
• Avatar: 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 (1998). The boots Steed gives to Mrs. Peel later turn out to have a Tracking Device installed.
• In Awake (2007), there is a brief scene near the beginning of the film where Sam, the protagonist's wife, grabs her mail and sticks it in her purse as she and Clayton are on their way out of her apartment. This becomes important later on when Clayton's mother goes through Sam's purse after finding out that Clayton's transplant failed, and finds out that not only was Sam living under an assumed identity... but that she used to be a nurse, who worked with Clayton's doctor in the past. She then realizes that Sam has been part of a conspiracy with Clayton's doctor to kill him and take his money.

B

• Babes in Toyland, the Laurel and Hardy version: Toymakers Stan and Ollie mess up at the beginning by, instead of making 600 1-foot-tall wooden soldiers, they make 100 6-foot-tall soldiers...who join the fight in the final battle.
• Back to the Future
  • In an early scene, 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 as part of a campaign to save it. 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.
  • There are many other examples than just that; Lorraine's reminiscing about the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance, Doc's rambling about he came up with the idea for the Flux Capacitor, Marty's walkman, and the radiation suits all coming into play sometime later in the film. It uses this trope so well that film schools use it as a perfect example of Foreshadowing and Chekhov's Gun.
  • Back to the Future Part II:
    • The hoverboard is 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 Chekhov'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 similar rare Chekhov's gun is the notice of dismissal the older Marty receives in 2015. The younger Jennifer took a copy of that print in Part II while hiding in a closet. It was erased after Marty refuses to race with Needles, when he is back in 1985 at the end of Part III. Marty had learned from the past and did not react on Needles' teasing anymore. It proved he had finally overcome his Berserk Button of Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!. However, an explanation for this two rare Chekhov's guns can be given: "Back to the Future" Part II and III were recorded at the same time, but released on a different date, something rarely seen in movie history. This made it possible to use Chekhov's Guns which were planned to be set in a previous part and fired in the next.
    • In Part II, when confronting Biff about the Sports Almanac, Marty takes a matchbook on Biff's desk, representing the casino. After the almanac is burnt, the logo changes to represent Biff's auto detailing service, showing that history is back to how it should be.
    • A very sneaky one: the dust jacket on the Sports Almanac. It seems to just be a setup for a joke about DustBusters being treated as memorabilia of a bygone era. Then it leads to Marty chasing the wrong book and losing young Biff's trail for a while..
• Bad Apples: At one point in the movie, it's revealed that the rod holding the shower curtain up isn't attached to the wall. When Ella is in the bathroom with the girls, she pulls the curtain down on them to incapacitate them.
• Batman
  • Batman (1989). The Joker's helicopter first appears after Batman uses the Batmobile to blow up the Axis Chemicals complex. After the Joker and Vicki Vale climb to the top of a cathedral, the helicopter appears again (after being summoned by the Joker) as a means of escape.
  • Batman Returns (1992). Bet you forgot about that stun-gun Miss Kyle picked up before she became Catwoman!
  • Batman & Robin (1997). Gotham Observatory has a satellite system that's designed to reflect from around the world so that its telescope can look at the sky everywhere. Near the end of the movie the system is used to concentrate sunlight from the part of the world that's in daylight to defrost Gotham City.
  • Batman Begins (2005)
    • A subtle one can be seen 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 fear aerosol.
    • 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 aerosol.
    • 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.
  • The Dark Knight (2008)
    • 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.
    • 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.
  • The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
    • The film introduces one in the form of the Bat's faulty auto-pilot. It becomes relevant later when Bruce uses the Bat to dump a bomb out at sea, but has to pilot it manually due to the auto-pilot being faulty.
    • And then subverted when it's revealed Bruce had fixed the auto-pilot and used his "death" to make a new life.
• 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).
• In an early scene of The Big Clock, an elevator operator asks one of the passengers to move because he is blocking the door and the elevator won't move while the door is open. Much later, George jams the elevator door open to trap Bill in the elevator. And then, when Janoth attempts to escape, he dashes into the elevator and falls down the empty shaft.
• In Big Game, the shrapnel lodged near Morris' heart. It's even explicitly stated that it will kill him if it moves as much as two centimetres. Later, Oskari's arrow, while not strong enough to pierce a bulletproof vest, delivers enough force to do just that.
• Bird Box: The story Tom was telling the kids near the end of the film. Malorie cuts him off before he finishes, scared that putting the idea of playing outside in their heads will have them try to attempt to go outside where they could be put in danger. In the climax, when she loses track of "Girl" in the woods and calls out to her, she finishes the story to counter the creatures trying to mimic her voice and lead the girl to her.
• The Black Room: After being murdered, Anton falls into the pit in the Black Room still clutching a dagger in his hand. At the end of the film, Gregor falls into pit is fatally stabbed by the knife in Anton's hand, thus fulfilling the prophecy.
• Blade Runner. Early in the movie Gaff is shown creating small figurines out of paper (origami) and matchsticks. At the end of the movie Deckard finds one outside his apartment, letting him (and the audience) know that Gaff had been there and not killed Rachel.
  • In the Director's Cut, this takes on a whole new significance - it infers that Deckard's dreams of the unicorn have been known by Gaff, meaning that Deckard himself is a replicant.
• 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.
• 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.
• In The Boondock Saints, Rocco asks Connor and Murphy to teach him the prayer that they use when they execute people, only for Connor to refuse him, telling him that it's a family prayer that was passed down from fathers to sons for a long time. After Rocco is killed by Yakavetta, the brothers are saying the prayer over him when Il Duce, the hitman who gave them all the fight of their lives in an earlier scene, shows up and then finishes the prayer himself, revealing himself to be the McManus brothers' long lost father.
• Botched: When Boris asks the elevator passengers if they have any weapons, Anna pulls a nail file out her purse, which doesn't impress anyone. During the final confrontation, Anna uses the nail file to stab Sonya in the neck.
• In The Bourne Supremacy we're treated to a brief tour of Agent Jarda's kitchen, which is well-equipped with very nice, and very obvious, cutlery, which naturally makes its appearance in the ensuing combat between Jarda and Bourne.
• In B-Grade monster movie The Brain (1988), 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.
• 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...

C

• Cadaver (2020): At one point in the movie, after finding a bunny doll with blood on it, Jacob tastes the blood and discovers it's fake because it tastes sweet. Later on, Leonora tastes some blood on her daughter's dress... and however it tasted gave her hope she is still alive. She is.
• 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.
• Captive State: Tons. The computer teletype, the print on the wall, the record player, the Blackberry, etc.
• The Charlies Angels film duology:
  • Subverted in the first 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 in the sequel Full Throttle, when Bosley II points out the girls' custom-made Kevlar vests that later save them when they get shot by the Big Bad.
• Chinatown:
  • 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...
  • There's also "The salt water is bad for the glass." It isn't until much later that Jake realizes that because it was an Asian man with an accent who said it, he actually meant "The salt water is bad for the grass." which leads him to discover the water-related plot.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): Ugly Sonic claims that after he got fired from Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), he got a new show where he does ride-alongs with the FBI. Every scene where he mentions this, Dale thinks he's bluffing but when a transmogrified Sweet Pete is ready to shoot down him and Chip for crippling his criminal business, Ugly Sonic shows up with the FBI to arrest Pete.
• The sled from Citizen Kane. Cmon! It Was His Sled!
• In The Chronicles of Riddick Riddick kills a Necromonger with a knife that was sticking out of his back, and then gets to keep it because the Necromongers "keep what they kill." Guess what he uses this same knife for later.
• In City of Ember, Loris Harrow gives his son; Doon an object that is the key to them leaving the city.
• Subverted in City of God in scenes involving Goose's gun. When we first see the gun in The '60s, Goose is hiding it in a drawer and tells Rocket to never touch it. Later, in The '70s, Rocket finds the gun and takes it with him during his "flirtation with crime"; however, the gun is never fired or even used.
• Claw (2021): Near the beginning, Julia and Kyle find a dog chew toy in Ray's house. Around the middle, they decide to try to use the toy to lure Mr. Bonejangles back into the safety of the house, away from the raptor. It seems to work, as Mr. Bonejangle starts coming towards them. Only, the raptor intercepts him.
• Chekhov's gun in retrospect in Cloverfield. The premise of the film is that it is amateur video footage of a giant monster attack in Manhattan, and that this footage is overwriting the tape that is already in the machine. The original recording on the tape was of a date between two of the main characters several weeks earlier, and in one of the scenes left intact, the falling satellite which awakened the monster can be seen in the background. This is only seen at the end of the film, when the monster footage ends.
• In Clownhouse, the axe Randy uses as a prop when telling his ghost story winds up being buried in Cheezo's back by Geoffrey to save Casey.
• Code of Silence: An early scene at the police precinct shows a demonstration of a remote-controlled assault vehicle. Sure enough, it ends up getting used against the bad guys in the climactic showdown.
• Cool as Ice: When Johnny and Kathy ride over to the construction site for a date, we get a brief shot of some of the noisy machinery used there. Later, when listening to the ransom tape the kidnappers sent, Johnny recognizes the sound of the machinery in the background, letting him realize the kidnappers took Kathy's brother to the same place.
• In Cowboys & Aliens when the alien appears in the stranded ferry, its chest opens revealing its weak spot: it's beating heart. It was only vulnerable once, when the kid used another Chekhov's Gun: Dolarhyde's knife.
• The Country Bears, combined with Running Gag. Big Al throughout the film constantly tells people not to walk on the grass out front of Bear Hall. In the end of the movie, the band is depressed when no one shows up for their concert, but Big Al says they are all out back because he did not want them walking on his grass.
• 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.
• The Crazy Family has the drill and the ant poison, both of which are used to try and kill the family by the father.
• From The Crow (1994): Eric learns all that Shelly went through before she died—a 30 hour ordeal—by laying his hands over Albrecht's head and eyes ('seeing' through his eyes how much Shelly suffered, and what's more, feeling it as well. At the film's climax, Eric finishes off Top Dollar, the Big Bad, by putting his hands on the villain's head and sharing the same experience with him. While Eric is able to withstand the pain, Top Dollar is not.

D

• 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.
• Dante's Peak: Near the beginning, Rachel chides her son and his friends for building a hideout in the town's Abandoned Mine. When the titular volcano finally blows its top, Rachel, her kids, and Harry are just able to survive the pyroclastic cloud that flattens the entire town by driving into the mineshaft, with the snacks and drinks from the hideout allowing them to hold up until help arrives.
• Darby O'Gill and the Little People: It's established early on that asking for a fourth wishes after getting Three Wishes from a leprechaun will negate the first three: "Three wishes I'll grant ye, great wishes an' small! But you wish a fourth, and you'll lose them all!" King Brian first uses this to get the last laugh on Darby, but later on he exploits this to save Darby from being taken away by the Death Coach, meaning both Darby and his daughter Katie live.
• Date Night has a gun hanging from a wall that a character looks at briefly; naturally, a few scenes later, it's revealed that he stole it. It does eventually get fired, but is hilariously ineffective.
• In the Day of the Dead (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 Dead Pool, "Dirty" Harry Callahan witnesses the use of a portable whaling harpoon in the first act, and rediscovers it when the plot steers its location back to the same locale.
• 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 Demons, which is set in a movie theater, there is a mannequin of a samurai mounted on a dirt bike in the main lobby, complete with samurai sword, presumably as a movie promotion. In the film's climax, both of these items are put to good use.
• In 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.
• The gun in Desert Heat comes in the form of a fighter jets that always fly by at the same time each day.
• Die Hard is well-known for its use of Chekhov's Gun, to the point where it's a defining feature of the "Die Hard" on an X trope.
  • Die Hard:
    • A passenger gives John advice about recovering from jet-lag, which involves removal of all footwear. This later leaves John barefoot throughout the rest of the film.
    • Each of the luxuries of Argyle's limo, and Argyle waiting for John in the parking garage, are what clue Argyle in on what's going on, even allowing him to take out one of the terrorists himself!
    • Holly uses her maiden name at work, and in a moment of frustration, turns a family picture upside down. This keeps her husband safe long enough for him to rescue them all, as Hans realizes too late that Holly Gennero is actually McClane's wife.
    • Ellis gave Holly a Rolex - too bad she had to lose it in order for McClane to save her (and kill Hans).
    • The very fact that John is a cop is what gives him his service weapon as his starting inventory. Perhaps more crucially, McClane talks like a cop, knows how to spot phony IDs and gather evidence, and knows the emergency channels to summon help. This, in fact, is what clues Allen in on the fact that John is a fellow officer, earning the former's trust.
  • Die Hard with a Vengeance:
    • Detective McClane has a really bad hangover and desperately searches for aspirin whenever and wherever he can. Simon Gruber suffers from migraines. This gives John the vital clue as to where Simon is hiding - he traces Simon's aspirin bottle.
    • We also see Zeus admonish his nephews for not going to school. Simon later plants a (fake) bomb at that very school to get Zeus' attention.
    • Half the cops in New York play their badges in the lottery, but none of the "cops" in the elevator knew the lottery numbers.
    • Remember those fourteen stolen dump trucks mentioned off-hand at the start? Simon uses them to transport the gold out.
    • Breaking out of handcuffs and stealing cars is made easier when your partner works as an electrician/locksmith.
  • Live Free or Die Hard:
    • Warlock's CB radio frequency comes in handy when you need to contact FBI Deputy Director Bowman.
    • The chief of police knows John's exact location because his unmarked car, like all government vehicles, has a Lojack on it. Well, when the villain's fleeing in a government-owned vehicle...
    • Bowman orders an F-35 to fly over and keep an eye on Woodlawn until he gets there - then Gabriel spoofs the tower and orders that same aircraft to fire on a pursuing McClane.
    • Mai's "sexy voice", originally mentioned in a passing comment, is again recognized by Farrell when she impersonates the police dispatcher.
    • The combat technique of firing the opponent's sidearm while it's in its holster, shooting him in the foot, is first shown used by McClane at the power plant. Lucy uses that same trick at the end to distract everyone.
• 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.
• Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry opens with a shot of the freight train that the protagonists drive into at the very end of the movie.
• Early in Dobermann, Nat uses a throwing knife to scare Manu in a *Twang* Hello moment. It is a safe bet that most of the audience has forgotten about it when she draws it from under her hair and uses it on a cop during the firefight in the nightclub.
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story 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.
• Dogma:
  • It's mentioned off-hand that God is a fan of skeeball. Late in the movie Bethany realizes that John Doe Jersey is God because he was waiting for a skeeball park to open.
  • Metatron tells an anecdote about the reason for his position, namely that the first few Adams died before they realized mortals couldn't withstand God's voice. When God speaks late in the movie it kills the now-mortal Bartleby.
  • Silent Bob steals a golf club from the Archbishop as petty revenge. He later uses it to kill Azrael, as the Archbishop had blessed it to play a better game.
• In Dolphin Tale, Kyle gives his cousin Sawyer a Swiss Army Knife. Later, Sawyer uses the knife to free Winter the dolphin from the crab trap ropes.
• 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.
• Dope features an actual gun placed in a bag along with the titular dope early in the film. The hero Malcom uses it to scare off some bullies and would be thieves from from robbing him and his friends near the end of the film.
• During his initial debaucheries, Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) takes a poison ring from a dancer. Much later in the film, Dr. Jekyll consumes its contents, poisoning himself and his evil alter ego.
• In Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, the Monsignor attaches a large metal cross to door of the Count's castle to prevent him from entering; later, this is removed and cast into the ravine below, where, later still, Dracula falls to his doom, impaled on the cross itself.
• In Dracula Untold, Vlad is forced to pay silver coins as tribute to Mehmet. Silver hurts vampires. Mehmet uses the silver when they fight in the final battle.
• In Dream House, the opening scene shows Will quitting his job at GPH publishing. It is later revealed that he had been a patient at Greenhaven Psychiatric Hospital for five years, and his "co-workers" were fellow patients.
  • Jack Patterson looks at an e-mail concerning the custody dispute with his ex-wife Ann over their daughter Chloe. This was the motive for the triple murder, as he had sent a hit man to kill Ann to get the insurance benefits and sole custody of Chloe.
  • Also, Will's co-workers at GPH actually, his fellow psychiatric patients at the hospital, mention the novel he was working on. In the ending, he had published a novel called Dream House under his real name, Peter Ward.
• 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.
• 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.

E

• Emperor (2020): The bank robbery loot ends up being used to buy Tommy Green's freedom.
• 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. This scene introduces several examples:
  • The room itself is the place where the final showdown between Mr. Han and Mr. Lee begins.
  • One of the replacement hands, a metal claw, is used during the final fight.
  • During the big fight in the museum room, 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.
  • The advice that Bruce takes about "smashing the image" in order to defeat Han was itself a Chekhovs Gun given by Bruce's master near the very beginning of the film.
• Escape from L.A. has a few of these and one of the best played examples. When Snake is given the weapons and tools for his mission, they show him a Holographic projector that can display his image from a distance. He also is determined to get his Badass Longcoat from a thug who took it from him mid-film. Before taking on the mission he placed the projector in the inside pocket of the coat and never mentioned it again for the rest of the film. During the final scene, when his superiors realize that the EMP control disc they have is a fake they open fire on Snake who had been using the projector as a decoy the whole time. Cue Moment of Awesome, Destruction of Modern Society, and a badass break in the Fourth Wall.
• Everything Everywhere All at Once has a particularly funny example of this. Deirdre's oddly-shaped "awards" that are shown near the beginning of the film are later used when two henchman realize that in order to verse jump, they have to stick one of the awards up their butt.
• Executive Decision starts with the main charactertaking a flight test. At the end of the film, he has to land a 747.
• Exam: Deaf's glasses, the voice-activated lights, the gun, the pencils, Blonde's hair pin, White's pills and wristwatch, Brown's coin and chewing gum, the broken glass, test papers themselves; it'd be easier to list things that DON'T qualify.
• Ex Machina: There is a brief scene of Kyoko preparing dinner, and a close-up on her slicing fish with a knife. This knife later becomes very important when she and Ava stab Nathan to death with it.
• In Eyes of a Stranger:
  • The beginning of the film introduces the idea that Tracy can make coffee by herself (to the amazement of Jane's boyfriend, given Tracy's blindness) to show her as not totally helpless. Alone in the apartment or so she thinks just before the final action Tracy makes herself a pot of coffee even though it appears to be midday. This comes in handy when the titular Serial Killer attacks Tracy and she throws the coffee on him.
  • Tracy has a dog which exists in the story only so it can be strangled by the killer at the start of the climax, as a reveal that the killer is already inside the apartment with her.
  • A literal Chekhov's gun: we see Jane get her hands on a gun, a measure of how far off the deep end the serial killer case is taking her, but she doesn't take it with her when she goes out to investigate the killer. Luckily enough, because that means the gun is available in the apartment for Tracy to use once she conveniently regains her sight, and for Jane to use to finish the killer off.

F

• In Face/Off Caster Troy gifts Sean Archer's daughter a knife in the middle of the movie, which she uses to stab him in the finale.
• Timmy's toy yo-yo in A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!; in the end, Tootie uses it to escape the spherical cage in Magnate's lair.
• Fast Five has an extra safe of the same style that they are trying to steal.
• Fatal Attraction has the knife that Alex tries to stab Dan with during the confrontation in her apartment. Watch the lingering close-up on Dan's hand around the blade handle as he places it on the counter. In the original, Alex uses that same knife to slit her throat, effectively framing Dan for her murder.
• In Fearless (2006), 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.
• In The Fifth Element, Corbin Dallas's box of matches is almost empty in his first scene (which is OK because he's been meaning to quit smoking anyway). The last match winds up being a key part of switching on part of the alien weapon at the end.
• 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?
• Done perfectly in the 2007 film Flawless. Mr. Hobbs, the janitor, tells Laura Quinn the properties of the diamonds, one of them being that diamonds never dampen in contact with water. Later when the diamonds belonging to the company are stolen by Mr. Hobbs and Laura tries to find them, she loses a diamond earring in a sink and when she retrieves it, she notices that it is not wet. She then realizes that Mr. Hobbs had probably discharged the stolen diamonds into a sink, therefore the diamonds must be in the sewer.
• 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 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.
• Force of Nature: The Dry 2: When Ian shows Aaron and Carmen the waterfall that marks the start of the trail the hiking group was taking, Aaron asks how tall it is. Ian says it is only about 15 metres, but that the pool at the base is at least that deep again and the pressure makes it almost impossible to get out. At the end of the film, Lauren falls off the top of the waterfall into the pool and Aaron is forced to dive in after her.
• 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.
• In the opening scenes of The Fugitive, Dr. Kimble's friend Dr. Nichols returns his keys to him, thanking him for loaning him his car. Later, during Kimble's murder trial, the investigating detective testifies that there was no sign of a break-in, making him doubt Kimble's claims of an intruder. Not until the very end of the film does Gerard realize the significance of this and tell Kimble that Nichols must have used the keys to let the assailant into his home.

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