Chekhov's gun

Template:Mergesection Chekhov's Gun is the literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story, but whose significance does not become clear until later on. For example, a character may find a mysterious object that eventually becomes crucial to the plot, but at the time of finding the object does not seem to be important. In all cases, the introduced element is so conspicuous that it raises unanswered questions for the reader or audience. These questions are then answered as the story continues.

The history of devices supplied to the Hero in a classic quest, by beings who seem to have some foreknowledge of what will be needed in the quest, is very old. For example, when Perseus sets out to kill Medusa, Athena and Hermes first supply him with winged sandals, a cap of invisibility, a sickle for removing heads, and a mirrored shield. He needs them all.

An example can be found in the twin pistols of the title character in Henrik Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler, which make an appearance in the first act, but are not used to important effect until the last act.

Statements of Chekhov's principle of drama

See also: Three Uses of the Knife

The name, Chekhov's gun, comes from Anton Chekhov himself, who stated that any object introduced in a story must be used later on, else it ought not to feature in the first place:

• "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Anton Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (pseudonym of A. S. Gruzinsky), 1 November 1889.
• "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." From Gurlyand's Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov, in Teatr i iskusstvo 1904, No 28, 11 July, p. 521.’
• "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." From S. Shchukin, Memoirs (1911)

An example in which Chekhov himself makes use of this principle is Uncle Vanya, in which a pistol is introduced early on as a seemingly irrelevant prop, and towards the end of the play becomes much more important as Uncle Vanya, in a rage, grabs it and tries to commit homicide.

Usage in modern literature

• In many of our modern classical tales of the hero, the same plot device is used. As an example from the mid-20th century, in The Lord of the Rings stories, when Bilbo gives Frodo his mithril chainmail shirt, and Galadriel gives him a magic phial; both of them will be needed eventually to complete the story, in this case to save his life.
• In the Harry Potter series, several objects and characters play such a role. Many small-time referenced characters have been mentioned in earlier books of the series only to be fully materialized in the later volumes. Such characters include Sirius Black, Arabella Figg and Mundungus Fletcher. Other Chekovian guns include Harry's eyes, which result in a key character divulging important information late in the series because they remind people of Harry's mother. Within books, Rowling uses Chekhov's guns frequently. Several things from the early chapters of the first Harry Potter book return in the seventh book to play a key part, such as Sirius's flying motorbike, Griphook the goblin, the Invisibility Cloak, Mr Ollivander and Gellert Grindelwald.
• Author Lemony Snicket foreshadows a quite literal use of Chekhov's gun in The Penultimate Peril, the twelfth book in A Series of Unfortunate Events.
• Dan Brown's novel Angels and Demons includes a Chekhov's gun such that the main character learns that "one square yard of drag will slow a falling body almost twenty percent" - information that later saves his life. Conversely, the immediate mention within the text that this information will save his life is a glaring example of foreshadowing.
• Sidney Sheldon's novel The Sky Is Falling features a Chekhov's gun when the principal character, Dana Evans, learns that "a news broadcast can be interrupted with a live video feed", which later saves her life as an assassin attempts to kill her before realising that he is being filmed live on television.
• Darren Shan features several Chekhov's guns in his series The Saga of Darren Shan, such as the diaries of the main character. He occasionally makes references to these diaries, especially in the later volumes, before we learn that, due to a time-travel incident occurring at the very end of the series, the diaries are actually the volumes we are reading themselves.
• Anthony Horowitz uses Chekhov's guns in his Alex Rider series. The hero, Alex Rider, uses all of the gadgets he gets in all of the books.
• Douglas Adams had a particular habit of taking throwaway gags and making them into Chekhov's Guns.
• In the Bruce Sterling novel Zenith Angle, there's is an unusually designed soldering gun introduced early on, which toward the end, is surprise-jerryrigged into being an actual (Chekov's) gun.

Usage in comics

• In Starslip Crisis, when Mr. Jinx first stated that Cirbozoids are incapable of understanding art, it appeared to be a minor tidbit used for a one-time gag. When the Spine of the Cosmos was introduced, this fact suddenly became a key part of the comic's storyline; Cirbozoids were incapable of finding the Spine's "context", thus making them immune to its effects. In another strip, when Vanderbeam discovers that the Sai Kan is apparently better than the Fuseli in every way, one of the Sai Kan's characteristics is that it has three (later two) Cirbozoids aboard, compared to the Fuseli's one. While this first appeared to have been used purely for comedic effect, it was eventually hinted that it was these Cirbozoids that supplied Katarakis with the Spine's context under the direction of President Ishizaki.
• The Japanese manga One Piece uses the technique of Chekhov's Gun several times, often in combination with plot twists. Perhaps the most prominent is the character of Gold Roger, introduced at the beginning seemingly as a plot device to set the stage of the series, but of prime importance to later events, as the main character seems to follow in his footsteps. More often, references made earlier in the series, such as to the Seven Warlords of the Sea or Mermaid Island, are played out much later on, or characters that seem to have served their purpose in the plot become much more important, directly or indirectly, to a later event. The most recent example is the whale Laboon, whom Luffy fought in order to give it a reason to live after the pirates who befriended it "abandoned" it by fleeing the Grand Line. Thirty-three volumes later, it is revealed that the crew did not run away, but was slaughtered in the Florian Triangle, and one of them (who "survived" in skeleton form by virtue of the Devil Fruit he ate) dreams of returning to keep their promise of reuniting with the creature.
• The Japanese manga Naruto also uses Chekhov's Gun, however not so much in the will of the author. In episode one Mizuki is beaten up by Naruto's shadow clones, but returns under Orochimaru's control in the filler arcs of the series. Also, an Akatsuki member is seen to be watching the battle between Sasuke and Naruto in the Valley of the End, but whether this has any great significance is yet to be seen. This is also used prominently in Shikamaru's strategic fighting, where every small, seemingly unimportant movement has a purpose by the end of the battle.

Usage in cinema and television

A now-famous example of this narrative device is the obligatory scene in the James Bond film series, which has refined it in purer form from the books. In most of the films, Q, Bond's gadget maker, presents in detail the various special equipment the spy will be using for his mission. Thus introduced, each item typically proves a lifesaver for Bond in the field.

Similarly, early in the first season of The West Wing, President Jed Bartlet tells his daughter his worst nightmare: her being kidnapped. His description of her being gagged while in the bathroom and whisked away before anyone realises she is gone, in addition to her Secret Service bodyguards being shot in the head, describes exactly what does happen to her at the end of the fourth season.

The Gremlins series contains some Chekhov's Gun items, like a set of ceremonial swords, which act as weapons later, and Murray Futterman's snowplow, which is used to attack him later, in the first film, and Gremlins 2, where the Electric Gremlin is trapped in the phone system, only to be later used in the climax.

In the 1986 movie Aliens, Sigourney Weaver's character reveals she is able to use powered exoskeleton to load the dropship. Later in the film it becomes an important element in her battle with the alien queen.

In the movie Paycheck, the protagonist is a reverse engineer who, according to the terms of his non disclosure contracts, has his memory of the job erased when it ends. One of his projects is to help a government scientist complete his work on a future viewing machine. The protagonist must use the machine to predict which everyday items he needs to leave the secure corporate campus with after he leaves the project without his memory. He needs these items in order to survive, infiltrate the building, and destroy the machine. (The plot of the short story on which the movie was based is similar.)

In the 1985 movie Back to the Future, the protagonist, Marty McFly, is handed a sheet of paper that asks support to save the town's clock tower which was damaged from a lightning strike in 1955. When he's stuck in 1955, McFly and Doc use the strike to generate the necessary wattage (1.21 gigawatts) to travel back to 1985. A similar plot point is introduced in the sequel regarding Marty's hand injury (making him unable to play the guitar later in life), which he avoids at the end of the third film. Other subtle visual cues used to the same effect include the Twin Pines Mall (becoming the "Lone Pine Mall" after Marty destroys one of the trees in 1955), the truck Marty wishes he had (which is his after he alters the past), and the matchbook Marty picks up from Biff's casino in alternate 1985 (used to burn the Sports Almanac in 1955, and to tell that his own time has reverted to normal).

In the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters, the first sequence showing the Ghostbusters using their proton packs yields the famous speech from Egon Spengler saying not to "cross the streams." It sets up crossing the streams as both 'bad' and something that will be used later in the film. In the climax, all four Ghostbusters cross the streams to create a nuclear explosion thus closing the dimensional gate in the final showdown with Gozer.

Wayne's World parodied this device by deliberately noting when future information important for the plot "seem[s] extraneous at the time".

In the television series Beavis and Butt-head, Butt-head expresses his own version of Chekhov's Gun as follows: Any time you see a cake and a baseball bat in the same video, the cake's gonna get its ass kicked.

The 1997 thriller Funny Games eschews many popular narrative devices, including Chekhov's Gun. An early scene clearly shows a knife being dropped into a boat by one of the main characters, Georg. Later in the film, another character ends up bound and gagged on the same boat. Expectedly, this character tries to use the knife to cut the bonds but is prevented from doing so by the antagonist. In this way, the filmmakers throw the audience off-balance by introducing a Chekhov's Gun device, only to render it unimportant at a crucial juncture.

Similarly, in the film Slither, it is revealed early on that the main character, a police chief, has confiscated a hand grenade from some criminals. At the climax of the film, the character retrieves the grenade and uses it against the villain, but the grenade has no effect. This was an intentional inversion of the Chekhov's Gun device.

The 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl introduces a single-shot flintlock pistol given to Jack Sparrow prior to the events of the film, which is used in the climax to kill the central villain, Hector Barbossa. Sparrow's compass also becomes more important as the film, and the series, progresses. Furthermore, Ragetti's ever-present fake eyeball first introduced in the first movie of the trilogy finally makes its true purpose known in the third movie as one of the nine items that imprisons Calypso in her human form.

Shaun of the Dead contains a literal version of Chekhov's gun: a Winchester rifle hung above the bar in a tavern of the same name. It is pointed out by Ed (Nick Frost) in the first act, though Shaun (Simon Pegg) believes it is not loaded. In act three, the gun is used, and revealed to be loaded, in the battle against marauding zombies, and specifically against Shaun's undead mother.

In the film Deep Rising, when the luxury liner first encounters difficulties during its voyage, a speed boat breaks loose and drops into the ocean. Seemingly unimportant and unnecessary, this boat later damages another vessel, and provides a futile means of escape for one of the antagonists at the climax of the film.

In the movie Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams, a rubber band (with 1000 uses) is introduced as one of the kids gadgets, which later on in the movie is used to stop the uncontrollable machine.

In the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the door to the Pod in which Dave Bowman and Frank Poole discuss the fate of HAL, and in which Dave is later trapped by HAL, is shown (multiple times) to have a warning label concerning explosive bolts that can be used to blow out the door in an emergency. Dave Bowman is later forced to use this method of egress in order to re-enter Discovery.

The TV series LOST has many examples of Chekhov's Gun. Many of the questions and items that are found in the beginning of the series are still not explained as of 07/19/2007, at the end of Season 3. An example would be numbers "4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42", which have had numerous usage throughout the series.

In the opening to the film Saw, two men wake up chained to the pipes of a large washroom with an apparently dead body in the middle of the floor; the significance and identity of the body is only revealed in a plot twist in the closing few minutes of the film.

In the 1978 move Jaws, an accident sents several bottles of compressed air across the deck of the ship, earning the ire of the captain who warns that "these can explode!". Of course, in the final moments of the film the significance of the information becomes revealed.

Usage in popular music

The song "Frankenstein" by singer Aimee Mann contains the line, "I won't find it fantastic or think it absurd / When the gun in the first act goes off in the third."

Usage in video games

In Tales of Symphonia, the Unicorn says that it exists to cure Martel's sickness. This is briefly pondered, but no conclusive meaning is found. Later in the game, however, Kratos tells the party to remember what the Unicorn told them, saying that it will help them cure Colette. The party then realizes that the extremely rare ailment Colette is suffering from is the same one that Martel, one of Mithos the hero's companions, had, allowing them to find a cure for it.

In the original Final Fantasy, the character obtains the seemingly useless "Lute" item at the beginning of the game. It remains unused until the end of the game, where the party must use it to find the final boss, Chaos.

In Final Fantasy V, the player finds two halves of a sealed book in the Ancient Library and Surgate Castle, in Bartz's and Galuf's worlds, respectively. When the worlds are united, the two halves of the book are as well, allowing the player to find the 12 sealed weapons wielded by the legendary heroes. Numerous other Chekhov's guns that become relevant after the worlds are reunited are introduced, such as one crystal shard that is out of the player's reach when the crystal first breaks and can be accessed by submarine in the reunited world.

In Illusion of Gaia Will's aunt teaches him a song that has no immediate use. Will sings the song when the bounty hunter known as the Jackal takes Kara hostage in the Pyramid, triggering a trap that kills the hunter and saves Kara.

The MegaMan Battle Network series often requires Lan Hikari to obtain an item for an obvious use. The same item, having stayed in Lan's inventory for a while, will occasionally be used again for a completely unforeseen purpose. One notable instance occurs in MegaMan Battle Network 3. Lan's terminal breaks, so his father gives him a replacement that is reportedly so hard that an elephant could not break it. In a hostage crisis later, Lan ends up throwing the hard device at his foe, temporarily knocking him out. In MegaMan Battle Network 2, shortly before Lan embarks on a trip overseas, Mayl gives him a wireless transmitter, claiming his horoscope says it's his "lucky item". Later on, he uses it twice to escape some deathtraps where he can't reach the jack-in port to disable them.

Recent games in the Castlevania canon have made use of Chekov's guns in the form of talismans or bracelets. The character will usually begin with the object in their inventory-- it initially seems useless, but is later proven to be key later in the game to unlocking better endings.

Most adventure games such as the Lucasarts SCUMM games like Maniac Mansion, or the Sierra Adventure games such as Kings Quest, Space Quest or Police Quest all involve piecing together innocuous items together to solve the puzzles that will reveal the plot of the game. The sixth game in the Space Quest series takes it to satirical extremes, with the player character receiving a dead fish on the first world and repeatedly having the fish given back to him throughout the game, until it is used to defeat the final enemy in the game.

See also

• MacGuffin
• Plot coupon
• Twist ending
• Foreshadowing

External links

• More detail from The Isaiah Berlin Virtual Library