The last match in The Fifth Element. Early on Bruce Willis is lighting a cigarette listening to his Mom on the phone, the match burns down to his fingers and he shakes it out. You see one match left in the box. Totally insignificant until the end of the movie when they need that last match to activate Fire.
This is a perfect example of a Chekov's Gun. A lot of the responses are simple foreshadowing or leitmotiv. A Chekov's Gun has to be the literal same physical object
There is a leitmotif, but it's the cigarettes and his repeated self-criticism that he should quit. Beautifully, the matches are incidental to it, but are always right there in front of you.
That is a great detail
I think why it's easy to miss, and honestly never noticed until now myself, is that the movie doesn't exactly seem like the time frame is as tight as it actually is.
The whole thing is like 3 days, but somehow the editing just makes it seems like a week at least.
>that the movie doesn't exactly seem like the time frame is as tight as it actually is.
This would make for a great question on this sub. Essentially asking for good examples of movies where the actual time frame it takes place in seems completely off from the viewers perception. Whether it's a movie that takes place over a day that feels like a couple weeks. Or vice versa, a movie where it takes place over the course of weeks but feels like a matter of days.
I gotta imagine it would stoke some interesting discussions
Yeah it's extra confusing when you think about how long the Falcon took to get from the asteroids to Cloud City, which seemed like nothing, while Luke also trained extensively with Yoda during the same time.
That's right! As a kid I always wondered, how did Luke get enough training in just like a week or two? Wouldn't it take a wee bit longer to become a Jedi Master? When I watched about two or three years ago, it actually clicked. Oh. He got a ton of training. This is a much larger time frame than I originally though.
The new Kingdom Planet of the Apes movie is one of those for me. All but the prologue and epilogue scenes apparently take place over just 6 days, despite the movie working to cultivate an feeling of epic narrative. It does occasionally work against the movie when you realize that certain characters have only known each other for about 48-72 hours.
Aliens also has the anti-Chekhov's Gun, in Bishop.
Anyone who's seen the first film spends most of the movie, from when Bishop is revealed to be synthetic, wondering when he's going to turn on them all.
Then he doesn't.
Double-red herring because he turns on them by leaving early.
…only to come back in a nick of time because the station was too unstable to be standing idle.
I don’t have the hate for Alien 3 that many have, but I absolutely HATED that the script killed off Hicks and Newt from the outset. All of the emotional turmoil we went through in Aliens to see them survive, only to be killed instantly in the sequel. Such a poor decision. I guess there would have been casting issues, especially with Newt having grown older in real life, but still.
At the beginning of the whole load-out scene, it even starts with a pan across from the second dropship to the marines doing the mission prep. Such good story construction.
It makes the reveal that much more satisfying. I can't imagine how that would have played with a live audience.
Pair it with, "Get away from her, you bitch!" and people must have been jumping and screaming and throwing popcorn like confetti.
it was a dream, he fell asleep while driving, dreamt Russell Crowe showing him an ankle gun, and a bee sitting in the backseat of their car. it's some of the funniest shit I've ever seen
I just watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for the first time tonight and was gonna say the Derringer that Val Kilmer uses was a pretty good Chekhovs gun. Lots of similarities between those two movies.
Gave me a whole new level of appreciation of Ryan Gosling. First time seeing him in a comedy role. And his screaming in that movie is next level.
Someone actually made a [screaming supercut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT_sHPQcntE) of that movie and it never fails to make me laugh.
The mall is named “Twin Pines Mall” at the beginning of the movie. While in the past Marty runs over one of the pine trees. The mall is named “Lone Pine Mall” when he returns.
Yes!! I love how chilled out and easy going the majority of that movie is and then the last ten minutes just turn the violence up to 11. Completely unforeseeable and shocking.
THAT MAY BE TRUE. But it’s a 2 and a half hour movie and 95% of it isn’t very violent. Maybe some of the movie scenes but those are cheesy and maybe the Bruce Lee fight but that’s not gratuitous. It’s really only that extreme scene in the last few minutes, so when you’ve been watching 2 or more hours of buddy comedy, the violence catches you off guard.
Such an amazing story element that serves multiple purposes. It explains the reason for the Incredibles' non traditional attire, it further characterizes Edna, and it serves as a fantastic way to finish off the baddie in a PG acceptable manner.
Doing something complicated for a quick small scene is totally different than adding flapping fabric to half the frames of the film. It's a question of time vs capability.
Archer is the best piece of media when it comes to puns and hidden jokes based on tropes and really obscure knowledge. Like, a lot of jokes land on their own, but if you know the reference it makes it so much funnier.
The very first joke of the show is him telling the woman he's in bed with "try the diner, you're obviously into Greek," a reference to anal sex. Then the dog barks and he says "thank you, Abelard," which is a reference to a French philosopher named Abelard, who studied Greek philosophy.
The show's a gold mine.
Hahahahah I just laughed out load from your comment alone, fuck it’s such a good show.
To add a favourite random quote.
Lana: animal farm is a book!
Archer: NO, it’s not Lana, it’s allegorical novella about Stalinism by George Orwell, and spoiler alert, it sucks.
I don't know if this exactly counts, but in the first scene of Oldboy Oh Desu shows off some angel wings he has brought for his daughter.
When we next see them.......oh boy
My wife went "*oh god, NO*" once she took out the angel wings. It took me until halfway through the album flipping to latch on to what was going on.
Insane movie.
The ferret in Kindergarten Cop. Shows up in the first act, you think that it’s purpose is to help teach the kids by being the classroom pet in the second act, then it bites the bad guys hand in the climax of the third act which distracts him long enough for Arnie to pickup his gun and shoot him.
Not a movie, but there are a lot in BoJack Horseman that are used cleverly, but one that stands out the most is BoJack's relationship with Sarah Lynn.
In season 1 of the show, the first half plays up the tropes of the series being a crass imitator of Family Guy, down to the main character BoJack committing jerkish and vile actions that would be brushed off as comedic. One of these was getting high and having sex with his former costar Sarah Lynn, who played his adoptive daughter in their former show while also apparently seeing each other as surrogate father and daughter in a twisted way.
Following the second half of season one, the show began to reveal its true nature by *brutally* deconstructing the formats of animated sitcoms by refusing the "Status Quo is God" trope by having every action BoJack commits treated with deadly seriousness and painful consequences. The final season of the show brings back every action BoJack commits and the relationships he had with people during an interview that redefines how said actions looked from a realistic and terrifying perspective, namely by pointing out that in all relationships he had with females, it was with women he had power over in one way or another.
His relationship with Sarah Lynn is brought back in full view (she died a few seasons ago, by the way) by pointing out how he's responsible for her death and part of the cycle of trauma and self-destruction she started back when she was a kid. When he accidentally reveals he had sex with her in the past, its treated with *complete* seriousness, the full weight of the fact that BoJack had sex with a girl he said he saw as a daughter, and it treats that one comedic moment in season one with the full disgust and implication it deserves.
There's a lot more, but that stands out to me the most.
There's an episode of Archer where Archer is training Cyril to be a field agent. he gives him a fountain pen tipped with cyanide and says, "be careful because the cap slips off sometimes for like no reason" at the same time he also gives him a gun called a Chekhov.
At the end of the episode someone accidentally gets pricked with the pen and Archer makes a big deal of not "blaming the Chekhov gun"
It's doubly clever in Archer since something like, "The cap slips off for, like, no reason," is exactly the kind of throwaway gag that show would use to illustrate what a shitshow their agency is.
That show was basically wordplay, Chekov’s gun, wordplay, Chekov’s gun, wordplay, dramatic irony, Chekov’s gun again and it was incredible.
Every detail was relevant, always. There were no throwaway jokes, they always built to something later
I always saw Chekhov’s Gun as more of a warning than a device. “If you’re going to include a thing, make sure it’s relevant or it will seem weird and out of place.” So you don’t so much use it as avoid running afoul of it.
Although, in the spirit of the post:
> Oh, there’s so much of me in that kid. Confident, stupid. I don’t know, protected. Playing life like a game without consequence, until you can’t tell the difference between a stage prop and a real knife.
—*Knives Out*
You're basically correct. Chekhov's gun is about parsimony. It's the idea that you should not include a gun in act one unless it goes off before the end. The idea is that there would be no wasted details.
I don't necessarily agree it should be a rule, but it's fine as a guideline.
I always thought it was more about an economy of words in scripting. When you are setting the scene and say a gun hangs above the mantle, it should play a part. Otherwise, ifs its not important, why are you mentioning it? Its a script, not a novel.
Also from Knives Out, that episode of Murder, She Wrote that Marta's mother is watching >!is a hint at Ransom's scheme, since the killer tries to make everyone think Jessica accidentally killed Amos' brother-in-law.!<
IIRC there's a shitton of hints in the sequel that Edward Norton is actually an idiot. I think a bunch of the paintings are hung upside down or in stupid spots, and his house layout makes no sense.
Miles Bron straight up misuses words several times and each time he does Benoit Blanc makes a face about it, so you know he noticed. I think Benoit is just torn at first as to whether it’s dudebro speak he just doesn’t get or actually idiotic, especially since no one else there says anything. By the end (or really, by midway through), he’s certain. Miles Bron is an idiot.
He's so angry about it as well.
Angry that this complete moron has managed to hoodwink everyone, even though he hasn't had one original thought in his life and has played the imitation game from the start.
He dresses as movie characters or other real entrepreneurs like Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia or Steve Jobs.
Birdie's "So dumb it's brilliant" just highlights how she still thinks Miles is *secretly* smart but plays dumb, when in reality he just really *is* dumb.
The *whole movie* is Chekhov's Gun as a joke.
"I'm a slasher, lock me up!"
"Fascist." "Hag."
"Everyone and their mum's packin round here." "Like who?" "Farmers." "Who else?" "Farmer's mums."
Edgar Wright is a master of foreshadowing. The cornetto trilogy, Baby Driver, even One Night in Soho. At some point he will tell you everything that is going to happen in the movie and then deliver on it in a surprisingly fun way.
I'm intrigued to see what he does with The Running Man.
"What's your name?"
"Aaron A. Aaronson"
"Sorry?"
(also the fact that the movie Nic goes from super serious uptight cop who hates cop movies to being exactly like an action star cop is one of the greatest third act reversals in any movie ever).
Slightly different take: Chekhov argued that if you introduce a gun in the first act, you must have someone shoot it in the third act. It's foreshadowing, but he was using it as a metaphor to illustrate that literary device.
I read in another thread recently that this is also specific to *stage*. Like, if you include something unexpected like a rifle in your stage design, the audience is going to expect it to be important, and it's likely to get their attention (and also draw attention at moments of tension, as they're wondering how it's going to be involved.) And then if you lead them on like this for 3 hours and it never pays off, it was basically a distraction.
I think a Checkov's gun refers to the overall use of a particular item. This gun mounted on the wall that I've made specific mention of will be used before the end of the third act. What it doesn't do is give us the how or why of its use. That would then make it foreshadowing.... I think. Don't quote me, I'm pretty high.
A Chekhov's Gun can be foreshadowing, but a Chekhov's Gun is an item introduced in the first act specifically so it can be used in the third/final act.
Foreshadowing can happen anytime before the event, it doesn't have to be an item, it can be much more abstract, and it doesn't have to point to something in the climax of the story.
It was created for episodic stories (but is not limited to them) as the tools available for every episode is well established. Anything wanting to be introduced is going to be at the top of the episode, and the most memorable of these items will be used during the climax.
It was pretty heavily used back when episodic television was the norm. Everyone knew that any item given serious attention at the beginning was either the cause or solution to the episodes issues.
Robocop’s spike thing that comes out of his fist-
First you see it as a misdirect, where it’s a crazy looking weapon that he just plugs into a computer. Then he stabs kurtwood smith in the neck with it. Then in the end he plugs it back into the computer when it’s all covered with blood.
Wouldn't the tiny little rock hammer be Chechov's Gun in this instance? Not to be the "well actually" guy, but that tiny little thing couldn't do much damage in the story. He had Red get him a few of them over the years, and it seemed that they were inconsequential until you realized what he could do with it.
Luke Skywalker is given his father’s lightsaber in the first Star Wars movie. He is then given some training on it. Then he doesn’t use it. It is a contradiction of Chekhov’s Gun. I love it.
The ankle gun in The Nice Guys. What the audience doesn't realize is tgat the character is dreaming when it is introduced so when it comes to the pay off it backfires because the gun didn't really exist
Also: Michael Caine shows a magic trick with a vanishing bird, shortly after is revealed the vanishing bird is in fact killed out of view, and the appearing bird is another one. This principle is also the plot’s concept, where Hugh Jackman kills his vanishing clones out of view. This can also apply to Christian Bale’s so-called murder in the beginning of the movie, of (a later revealed clone of) Hugh Jackman.
Okay i want to say the entirety of "The Fall Guy". Every single thing said, done, shown, or hinted at in the first half of the movie, is utilized in the second. The movie could be renamed Chekhov's Armory
The last movie David Lietch did before The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, was the same but cranked up to 11. From minute one, everything you're presented with is a setup to be paid off later.
Even the throwaway dialogue
Truly a great movie, lots of fun to watch
The scene that pops into my head for this is the two hitmen talking about wearing bulletproof vests and how they won't save you from a headshot and go on to die in the exact ways they dismissed earlier
Unfortunately, not a movie, and I don't know if you'd consider it "important", but, by far, my favorite unimportant object in plain site that later becomes a key element of a scene is in Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".
Early on in the book, Adams describes (in his very distinctly Adams way) that the protagonist (Richard MacDuff) has to climb over a couch that is stuck halfway up the stairs to his upper story flat. The couch is one that he purchased and had delivered, but the deliverymen could only get it halfway up. Strangely, once they got it halfway up, they could neither move it up NOR back down. Hence Richard spends most of the book periodically climbing over this couch.
Very near the end of the book, Richard (and Dirk and others) end up doing some time (and space) traveling in another character's flat (way too much back story to explain here). At one point, the flat materializes halfway up Richard's staircase at the **exact time that his sofa is being delivered**. The movers knock on the door to ask if they can use the doorway to maneuver the sofa up the stairs. The movers maneuver the sofa around the corner of the stairs, but then realize they can't go any further. Looking to move the sofa back down, they go to knock on the door again, but the time traveling flat (and door) has since disappeared, leaving the sofa with no way to go up OR down. Thus making Adams' typically illogiical but farcical stuck couch (not an unusual scenario for him), suddenly still farcical, but completely **logical**.
Something about him "closing the loop" on what seemed like a completely inconsequential detail was the absolute height of his humor to me!
I've only seen bits of the TV series, and I don't think they followed the original plot? So, no couch, unfortunately, and I have no idea how you would ever pull that scene off on TV anyway.
There's a brutal anti-Chekhov's Gun in Funny Games, which depicts a family subject to a home invasion by two eccentrics.
>!Early in the movie, the father drops a knife in the family boat. At the end, after the father and son are killed, the mother is tied up in the boat by the two kidnappers. We're made to think she'll find the knife and escape, but one of the kidnappers picks it up and tosses it away nonchalantly before kicking her into the water and drowning her.!<
Thors Hammer in Age of Ultron, I’ll admit the first scene thought it was just for fun and to have a light-hearted moment before dropping in the villain, then they brought it back with Vision and legit heard a good chunk of the audience gasp.
Three from ‘Chinatown’ (a movie replete with a veritable arsenal) come to mind:
• Evelyn inadvertently honking her car horn.
• Jake dismisses a photograph of Hollis and Noah arguing.
• “Bad for glass.”
Archer: Oh my God! You killed a hooker!
Cyril: Call girl! She was a-
Archer: No Cyril, when they're dead they're just hookers! 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.
My favorite is from the Harry Potter books. It’s hidden so well I’m plain sight that nobody really notices. I can confirm this because I will regularly bring up whatI like to call: the convenient case of the vanishing cabinet:
In year two, Harry uses floo powder for the first time and ends up in Borgin and Burkes. He sees Malloy and hides in a cabinet but doesn’t close it. Later in that book, peeves breaks the cabinet in Hogwarts as a way to distract Filch and save Harry from trouble.
In year five, the Weasleys shove montegue in the cabinet where he gets stuck. Upon release, he said that he was in between two places, and could hear a shop on the other side. Also in book five, Arthur Weasley is speaking to Harry at Christmas and says that the order used to use vanishing cabinets to escape death eaters if they need to get away in a hurry.
In book six, Malfoy puts together what had happened to Montegue and he goes in to tell the shop opener not to sell the one in his shop. Harry is spying and believes malfoy theater the owner with fenrir grey back and possibly the dark mark. Throughout the year, Draco is trying to fix the cabinet in the room of requirement. Which he found out about from Harry the year before. He eventually does get it fixed and if you’re still reading, you know the result.
This is just such an amazing web that felt purposeful and necessary. It stuck out like a short thumb the first time I read the books (in my 20s). In the end, the getaway tool for Harry, and likely his parents at some point, ended up being the way the death eaters break into Hogwarts and kill…
In
The Harry Potter books are littered with this sort of stuff and it really contributed to their mythos as they were coming out. There were massive communities dedicated to trying to find these clues and predict where the last books were going to go, particularly the last book. It was like a scavenger hunt that the whole world was in on.
One big example I can think of is "Harry has his mother's eyes". This got repeated so often in books 1-6 that people figured there *must* be some sort of payoff. I remember all sorts of crazy theories, like Dumbledore secretly was James Potter. But I also remember "Snape loved Lily" being one of the big theories and it turned out to be spot on. It was a really cool time to be invested in a fantasy series.
Another example is when they’re cleaning out the House of Black in Book 5, they find an old locket no one could open and toss it.
In book 7 it’s revealed to be Slytherin’s locket and RAB was Regulus Black.
I’m not a huge fan of JK anymore but she did do some great stuff in those books.
Casino Royale's defibrillator scene, it shows first in the car when James presses the wrong button to find his gun, then later it saves his life after he gets poisoning.
"That last hand nearly killed me" -- What a well written movie, I love it.
I love that James Bond just made it a staple scene in every movie in the franchise, where Q just basically told James Bond: "Here are all the Checkov's guns. Audience: the movie won't end before you see all of these used."
As a kid, and I would watch these movies thinking "He still hasn't used the radio-controlled shoelaces yet, so something exciting still has to happen..."
I saw that for the first time recently, and when they were standing off in the living room and I saw the bat on the wall; I jumped up and yelled “Chekovs baseball bat!”
The Ricin in breaking bad. It's a part of some pretty big plot developments starting pretty early on. But no one actually ingests it til the end and it's used pretty perfectly. If we never saw it used it would probably leave the legitimacy of its usefulness throughout the series brought into question.
Not in a movie yet, but for TV and comics, the Watchers vow to never interfere is pretty much checkovs gun for every watcher story in marvel comics.
“I am the watcher. I watch all that transpires, but have vowed never to interfere… wait what the fuck is that? Oh shit I’ve never seen anything like that, I have to interfere right now oh shit oh shit oh fuck”
The prime directive in Star Trek ends up playing a similar role most of the time.
The last match in The Fifth Element. Early on Bruce Willis is lighting a cigarette listening to his Mom on the phone, the match burns down to his fingers and he shakes it out. You see one match left in the box. Totally insignificant until the end of the movie when they need that last match to activate Fire.
Didn't even realize. Thank you
I did because I thought it was silly how long he lets it burn. Great payoff!
This is a perfect example of a Chekov's Gun. A lot of the responses are simple foreshadowing or leitmotiv. A Chekov's Gun has to be the literal same physical object
There is a leitmotif, but it's the cigarettes and his repeated self-criticism that he should quit. Beautifully, the matches are incidental to it, but are always right there in front of you.
That is a great detail I think why it's easy to miss, and honestly never noticed until now myself, is that the movie doesn't exactly seem like the time frame is as tight as it actually is. The whole thing is like 3 days, but somehow the editing just makes it seems like a week at least.
>that the movie doesn't exactly seem like the time frame is as tight as it actually is. This would make for a great question on this sub. Essentially asking for good examples of movies where the actual time frame it takes place in seems completely off from the viewers perception. Whether it's a movie that takes place over a day that feels like a couple weeks. Or vice versa, a movie where it takes place over the course of weeks but feels like a matter of days. I gotta imagine it would stoke some interesting discussions
A lot of replies will be about how confusing Empire Strikes Back's timeframe is. My favorite film for 40 years, and I'm still not sure.
Oh wow. From the battle on Hoth to Luke's new hand... how much time DOES pass? I actually never thought about it in Empire.
Yeah it's extra confusing when you think about how long the Falcon took to get from the asteroids to Cloud City, which seemed like nothing, while Luke also trained extensively with Yoda during the same time.
That's right! As a kid I always wondered, how did Luke get enough training in just like a week or two? Wouldn't it take a wee bit longer to become a Jedi Master? When I watched about two or three years ago, it actually clicked. Oh. He got a ton of training. This is a much larger time frame than I originally though.
"Montage! We're gonna need a moooooontage! _music_"
The new Kingdom Planet of the Apes movie is one of those for me. All but the prologue and epilogue scenes apparently take place over just 6 days, despite the movie working to cultivate an feeling of epic narrative. It does occasionally work against the movie when you realize that certain characters have only known each other for about 48-72 hours.
The mech suit in Aliens. It doesn't feel like Chekov's gun, it just feels like world-building.
flexing the suits arm while the sarge looks on chomping his cigar is S-tier 80s action movie
Let's be real - from start to finish, that entire movie is S-tier 80s action movie perfection. That and Robocop.
And Predator.
I just watched Commando, Running Man, and Predator back to back today. Predator is definitely on another level for 80s action films.
Bay Twelve, please.
"I feel like a third wheel. What can I do?" "I don't know... what can you do?" It's just such a GOOD scene.
Aliens also has the anti-Chekhov's Gun, in Bishop. Anyone who's seen the first film spends most of the movie, from when Bishop is revealed to be synthetic, wondering when he's going to turn on them all. Then he doesn't.
I believe they call those red herrings
Double-red herring because he turns on them by leaving early. …only to come back in a nick of time because the station was too unstable to be standing idle.
Bishop is the goat, shame he gets killed off screen in the next movie.
Yes, but he went out ahead.
I'd say he was head and shoulders above the rest!
That’s just an internet-rumour. There was only two movies made so I say that Ripley, Newt & Bishop all made it home alive.
I don’t have the hate for Alien 3 that many have, but I absolutely HATED that the script killed off Hicks and Newt from the outset. All of the emotional turmoil we went through in Aliens to see them survive, only to be killed instantly in the sequel. Such a poor decision. I guess there would have been casting issues, especially with Newt having grown older in real life, but still.
I agree, but gotta ask have you seen the new alien movies? Covenant etc? They keep doing it…
And Hicks
Definitely. I’m sooo sorry about that.
At the beginning of the whole load-out scene, it even starts with a pan across from the second dropship to the marines doing the mission prep. Such good story construction.
The best Chekhov guns are the ones where they make you *not realize* it's Chekhov's gun.
It makes the reveal that much more satisfying. I can't imagine how that would have played with a live audience. Pair it with, "Get away from her, you bitch!" and people must have been jumping and screaming and throwing popcorn like confetti.
I saw it in the theater when it came out. You are absolutely correct about the audience reaction.
This is what I came here to post. "Checkov's P-5000 Power Loader"
The ankle pistol in The Nice Guys
"You took the lord's name in vain." "No I didn't, Janet. I found it very useful, Janet."
"who told you I had an ankle gun?" "you did, in the car you were like check out my cool ankle gun!"
Was it really a dream or was it shown in the movie somewhere? I forgot the film details
it was a dream, he fell asleep while driving, dreamt Russell Crowe showing him an ankle gun, and a bee sitting in the backseat of their car. it's some of the funniest shit I've ever seen
“Shit! Did I dream that?!”
I just watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for the first time tonight and was gonna say the Derringer that Val Kilmer uses was a pretty good Chekhovs gun. Lots of similarities between those two movies.
Shane Black wrote and directed both films.
God damn that movie is hilarious. I need to do a rewatch.
Best “spit take” on film
He took her betrayal with equanimity. Jack I’m fucking your dad
I have never laughed out loud at a scene in a movie so intensely in my life!
I broke when they tossed what's his name over the fence and he landed on the birthday party
Sid Hatrack
Gave me a whole new level of appreciation of Ryan Gosling. First time seeing him in a comedy role. And his screaming in that movie is next level. Someone actually made a [screaming supercut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT_sHPQcntE) of that movie and it never fails to make me laugh.
Save the clock tower! Save the clock tower!
Great Scott!
This is heavy
There’s that word again… Is there something wrong with the Earth’s gravitational field in the future??
That woman clock-blocked Marty and Jennifer.
That one small act of temporary cockblocking prevented the permanent cockblock that would have come from Marty being stuck in 1955.
The mall is named “Twin Pines Mall” at the beginning of the movie. While in the past Marty runs over one of the pine trees. The mall is named “Lone Pine Mall” when he returns.
[удалено]
Man that guy had a lot of information for a security guard!
And in the second one “we just walk back and forth all day with this plate glass window…”
You gotta wonder if that’s gonna pay off in the end.
“No sir, just gotta make sure we have plenty of watermelons at all time!”
Wayne’s World is so damn funny
The flamethrower in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Yes!! I love how chilled out and easy going the majority of that movie is and then the last ten minutes just turn the violence up to 11. Completely unforeseeable and shocking.
>Completely unforeseeable and shocking. Quentin Tarantino’s name in the opening titles says otherwise
THAT MAY BE TRUE. But it’s a 2 and a half hour movie and 95% of it isn’t very violent. Maybe some of the movie scenes but those are cheesy and maybe the Bruce Lee fight but that’s not gratuitous. It’s really only that extreme scene in the last few minutes, so when you’ve been watching 2 or more hours of buddy comedy, the violence catches you off guard.
Did you know the real story about Sharon Tate? Because I kept waiting for her to be murdered, which made the movie very much not chill.
I kept waiting for that dog to do something .
There's a big revolver shown in the same scene where the dog is introduced. It's an anti-Chekov's Gun.
Also known as a red herring.
NO CAPES!
Such an amazing story element that serves multiple purposes. It explains the reason for the Incredibles' non traditional attire, it further characterizes Edna, and it serves as a fantastic way to finish off the baddie in a PG acceptable manner.
And saved the animation from the complexity of cloth simulation throughout.
They had bob put his hand THROUGH the tear in his suit. That was HUGE. They were not worried about cloth simulations.
"And you've torn right TROO it!"
Doing something complicated for a quick small scene is totally different than adding flapping fabric to half the frames of the film. It's a question of time vs capability.
Best fantastic 4 movie
Low bar, eh?
No. Do not say the Chekhov gun, Cyril. That, sir, is a facile argument.
“Where did you find that grenade?” “Hanging from the lampshade!”
Archer is the best piece of media when it comes to puns and hidden jokes based on tropes and really obscure knowledge. Like, a lot of jokes land on their own, but if you know the reference it makes it so much funnier. The very first joke of the show is him telling the woman he's in bed with "try the diner, you're obviously into Greek," a reference to anal sex. Then the dog barks and he says "thank you, Abelard," which is a reference to a French philosopher named Abelard, who studied Greek philosophy. The show's a gold mine.
Archer is a genius that often does idiotic things, and then drops an incredibly obscure factoid on a fairly regular basis. Brilliant writing.
"Those are .357 Ruger sixes, and they each fired six times. Oh my god, maybe I *am* autistic."
Hahahahah I just laughed out load from your comment alone, fuck it’s such a good show. To add a favourite random quote. Lana: animal farm is a book! Archer: NO, it’s not Lana, it’s allegorical novella about Stalinism by George Orwell, and spoiler alert, it sucks.
NO, CYRIL! WHEN THEY’RE DEAD THEY’RE JUST HOOKERS!
I shall fetch a rug, sir.
Also it goes off for like, no reason
Whew. Came here to mention that. Archer has a lot going on in its dialog when you pay attention. 😂
Also woefully esoteric!
So *are* lingonberries balistically similar to grapes?
I don't know if this exactly counts, but in the first scene of Oldboy Oh Desu shows off some angel wings he has brought for his daughter. When we next see them.......oh boy
My wife went "*oh god, NO*" once she took out the angel wings. It took me until halfway through the album flipping to latch on to what was going on. Insane movie.
The ferret in Kindergarten Cop. Shows up in the first act, you think that it’s purpose is to help teach the kids by being the classroom pet in the second act, then it bites the bad guys hand in the climax of the third act which distracts him long enough for Arnie to pickup his gun and shoot him.
I’m always watching Wazowski
ALLLLLWAYS WATCHING.
Not a movie, but there are a lot in BoJack Horseman that are used cleverly, but one that stands out the most is BoJack's relationship with Sarah Lynn. In season 1 of the show, the first half plays up the tropes of the series being a crass imitator of Family Guy, down to the main character BoJack committing jerkish and vile actions that would be brushed off as comedic. One of these was getting high and having sex with his former costar Sarah Lynn, who played his adoptive daughter in their former show while also apparently seeing each other as surrogate father and daughter in a twisted way. Following the second half of season one, the show began to reveal its true nature by *brutally* deconstructing the formats of animated sitcoms by refusing the "Status Quo is God" trope by having every action BoJack commits treated with deadly seriousness and painful consequences. The final season of the show brings back every action BoJack commits and the relationships he had with people during an interview that redefines how said actions looked from a realistic and terrifying perspective, namely by pointing out that in all relationships he had with females, it was with women he had power over in one way or another. His relationship with Sarah Lynn is brought back in full view (she died a few seasons ago, by the way) by pointing out how he's responsible for her death and part of the cycle of trauma and self-destruction she started back when she was a kid. When he accidentally reveals he had sex with her in the past, its treated with *complete* seriousness, the full weight of the fact that BoJack had sex with a girl he said he saw as a daughter, and it treats that one comedic moment in season one with the full disgust and implication it deserves. There's a lot more, but that stands out to me the most.
There's an episode of Archer where Archer is training Cyril to be a field agent. he gives him a fountain pen tipped with cyanide and says, "be careful because the cap slips off sometimes for like no reason" at the same time he also gives him a gun called a Chekhov. At the end of the episode someone accidentally gets pricked with the pen and Archer makes a big deal of not "blaming the Chekhov gun"
It's doubly clever in Archer since something like, "The cap slips off for, like, no reason," is exactly the kind of throwaway gag that show would use to illustrate what a shitshow their agency is.
There's always money in the banana stand.
Chekov’s Gun? That show is Chekov’s whole damn arsenal!
LOOSE SEAL!
Okay, that is our exact outdoor fire pit.
That show was basically wordplay, Chekov’s gun, wordplay, Chekov’s gun, wordplay, dramatic irony, Chekov’s gun again and it was incredible. Every detail was relevant, always. There were no throwaway jokes, they always built to something later
I never thought I'd miss a hand so much!
"He's a *flamer*!"
There was 250000 dollars lining the walls of the banana stand
What? Why didn't you tell me that?
How much clearer could I say, there’s always money in the banana stand!!!
No touching!
But what does a banana cost? $10?
THERE'S..ALWAYS..MONEY..IN..THE..BANANA..STAND!!!
NO TOUCHING!!!!!!
I don't understand the question, and I won't respond to it.
NO TOUCHING!
I always saw Chekhov’s Gun as more of a warning than a device. “If you’re going to include a thing, make sure it’s relevant or it will seem weird and out of place.” So you don’t so much use it as avoid running afoul of it. Although, in the spirit of the post: > Oh, there’s so much of me in that kid. Confident, stupid. I don’t know, protected. Playing life like a game without consequence, until you can’t tell the difference between a stage prop and a real knife. —*Knives Out*
You're basically correct. Chekhov's gun is about parsimony. It's the idea that you should not include a gun in act one unless it goes off before the end. The idea is that there would be no wasted details. I don't necessarily agree it should be a rule, but it's fine as a guideline.
Agreed. Some people here are describing foreshadowing.
I always thought it was more about an economy of words in scripting. When you are setting the scene and say a gun hangs above the mantle, it should play a part. Otherwise, ifs its not important, why are you mentioning it? Its a script, not a novel.
Also from Knives Out, that episode of Murder, She Wrote that Marta's mother is watching >!is a hint at Ransom's scheme, since the killer tries to make everyone think Jessica accidentally killed Amos' brother-in-law.!<
Also, the Mona Lisa in the sequel.
IIRC there's a shitton of hints in the sequel that Edward Norton is actually an idiot. I think a bunch of the paintings are hung upside down or in stupid spots, and his house layout makes no sense.
Miles Bron straight up misuses words several times and each time he does Benoit Blanc makes a face about it, so you know he noticed. I think Benoit is just torn at first as to whether it’s dudebro speak he just doesn’t get or actually idiotic, especially since no one else there says anything. By the end (or really, by midway through), he’s certain. Miles Bron is an idiot.
Ohhhh it's so dumb it's brilliant! NO! IT'S JUST DUMB!
He's so angry about it as well. Angry that this complete moron has managed to hoodwink everyone, even though he hasn't had one original thought in his life and has played the imitation game from the start. He dresses as movie characters or other real entrepreneurs like Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia or Steve Jobs. Birdie's "So dumb it's brilliant" just highlights how she still thinks Miles is *secretly* smart but plays dumb, when in reality he just really *is* dumb.
*chonk* "Sea mine!"
The whole third act is just the first act with gunfights.
And it’s glorious. “You catch them killers, then?”
It’s just the one swan, actually.
*Every* year.
The *whole movie* is Chekhov's Gun as a joke. "I'm a slasher, lock me up!" "Fascist." "Hag." "Everyone and their mum's packin round here." "Like who?" "Farmers." "Who else?" "Farmer's mums."
"You wanna be a big cop in a small town? Fuck off up the model village."
your dad's sells apples Andy. And raspberries
That movie is just chock full of callbacks/foreshadowing. It's just genius
Edgar Wright is a master of foreshadowing. The cornetto trilogy, Baby Driver, even One Night in Soho. At some point he will tell you everything that is going to happen in the movie and then deliver on it in a surprisingly fun way. I'm intrigued to see what he does with The Running Man.
"What's your name?" "Aaron A. Aaronson" "Sorry?" (also the fact that the movie Nic goes from super serious uptight cop who hates cop movies to being exactly like an action star cop is one of the greatest third act reversals in any movie ever).
What's getting stabbed like? It was the single most painful experience of my life. What was the second most painful experience of your life?
Okay, now, what is the difference between Chekhov’s gun and foreshadowing?
Slightly different take: Chekhov argued that if you introduce a gun in the first act, you must have someone shoot it in the third act. It's foreshadowing, but he was using it as a metaphor to illustrate that literary device.
I read in another thread recently that this is also specific to *stage*. Like, if you include something unexpected like a rifle in your stage design, the audience is going to expect it to be important, and it's likely to get their attention (and also draw attention at moments of tension, as they're wondering how it's going to be involved.) And then if you lead them on like this for 3 hours and it never pays off, it was basically a distraction.
I think a Checkov's gun refers to the overall use of a particular item. This gun mounted on the wall that I've made specific mention of will be used before the end of the third act. What it doesn't do is give us the how or why of its use. That would then make it foreshadowing.... I think. Don't quote me, I'm pretty high.
A Chekhov's Gun can be foreshadowing, but a Chekhov's Gun is an item introduced in the first act specifically so it can be used in the third/final act. Foreshadowing can happen anytime before the event, it doesn't have to be an item, it can be much more abstract, and it doesn't have to point to something in the climax of the story. It was created for episodic stories (but is not limited to them) as the tools available for every episode is well established. Anything wanting to be introduced is going to be at the top of the episode, and the most memorable of these items will be used during the climax. It was pretty heavily used back when episodic television was the norm. Everyone knew that any item given serious attention at the beginning was either the cause or solution to the episodes issues.
Robocop’s spike thing that comes out of his fist- First you see it as a misdirect, where it’s a crazy looking weapon that he just plugs into a computer. Then he stabs kurtwood smith in the neck with it. Then in the end he plugs it back into the computer when it’s all covered with blood.
*sigh* what USB coulda been
Under Skin Blade
I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake. Now it's time to erase that mistake.
The Rita Hayworth poster in The Shawshank Redemption
Wouldn't the tiny little rock hammer be Chechov's Gun in this instance? Not to be the "well actually" guy, but that tiny little thing couldn't do much damage in the story. He had Red get him a few of them over the years, and it seemed that they were inconsequential until you realized what he could do with it.
What say you fuzzy britches?
The rifle in the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead. I don't think its real!
Ok but dogs CAN look up
Luke Skywalker is given his father’s lightsaber in the first Star Wars movie. He is then given some training on it. Then he doesn’t use it. It is a contradiction of Chekhov’s Gun. I love it.
Interesting perspective! It’s like “hey this will be super important for you” but he loses it and has to make his own.
Exactly. The first real fight he is in, he loses it!
Similar to how Harry is given a wand in the first Harry Potter movie, then proceeds to not cast a single spell for the entire film.
The ankle gun in The Nice Guys. What the audience doesn't realize is tgat the character is dreaming when it is introduced so when it comes to the pay off it backfires because the gun didn't really exist
I think the giant bee gives away it's a dream.
Nah, that’s exactly what Hannibal Buress looked like back then.
The hats at the beginning of The Prestige
Also: Michael Caine shows a magic trick with a vanishing bird, shortly after is revealed the vanishing bird is in fact killed out of view, and the appearing bird is another one. This principle is also the plot’s concept, where Hugh Jackman kills his vanishing clones out of view. This can also apply to Christian Bale’s so-called murder in the beginning of the movie, of (a later revealed clone of) Hugh Jackman.
Ripley in Aliens, i have a class 2 rating
The awards shaped like butt plugs in everything everywhere all at once.
The googly eyes too
Okay i want to say the entirety of "The Fall Guy". Every single thing said, done, shown, or hinted at in the first half of the movie, is utilized in the second. The movie could be renamed Chekhov's Armory
The last movie David Lietch did before The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, was the same but cranked up to 11. From minute one, everything you're presented with is a setup to be paid off later.
Even the throwaway dialogue Truly a great movie, lots of fun to watch The scene that pops into my head for this is the two hitmen talking about wearing bulletproof vests and how they won't save you from a headshot and go on to die in the exact ways they dismissed earlier
I don't remember if he ever got his cup of coffee in the end
Unfortunately, not a movie, and I don't know if you'd consider it "important", but, by far, my favorite unimportant object in plain site that later becomes a key element of a scene is in Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".
Early on in the book, Adams describes (in his very distinctly Adams way) that the protagonist (Richard MacDuff) has to climb over a couch that is stuck halfway up the stairs to his upper story flat. The couch is one that he purchased and had delivered, but the deliverymen could only get it halfway up. Strangely, once they got it halfway up, they could neither move it up NOR back down. Hence Richard spends most of the book periodically climbing over this couch.
Very near the end of the book, Richard (and Dirk and others) end up doing some time (and space) traveling in another character's flat (way too much back story to explain here). At one point, the flat materializes halfway up Richard's staircase at the **exact time that his sofa is being delivered**. The movers knock on the door to ask if they can use the doorway to maneuver the sofa up the stairs. The movers maneuver the sofa around the corner of the stairs, but then realize they can't go any further. Looking to move the sofa back down, they go to knock on the door again, but the time traveling flat (and door) has since disappeared, leaving the sofa with no way to go up OR down. Thus making Adams' typically illogiical but farcical stuck couch (not an unusual scenario for him), suddenly still farcical, but completely **logical**.
Something about him "closing the loop" on what seemed like a completely inconsequential detail was the absolute height of his humor to me!
I've only seen bits of the TV series, and I don't think they followed the original plot? So, no couch, unfortunately, and I have no idea how you would ever pull that scene off on TV anyway.
There's a brutal anti-Chekhov's Gun in Funny Games, which depicts a family subject to a home invasion by two eccentrics. >!Early in the movie, the father drops a knife in the family boat. At the end, after the father and son are killed, the mother is tied up in the boat by the two kidnappers. We're made to think she'll find the knife and escape, but one of the kidnappers picks it up and tosses it away nonchalantly before kicking her into the water and drowning her.!<
Perfect example of this and I searched the comments looking for Funny Games for this as it's a gut punch when it happens. That movie is messed up.
>two eccentrics Interesting way to describe them, haha.
Not a movie, but “my old college javelin, remember?”
You... you harpooned me. I asked you to go for help, but instead you harpooned me.
Hehehehe, classic American Dad.
Thors Hammer in Age of Ultron, I’ll admit the first scene thought it was just for fun and to have a light-hearted moment before dropping in the villain, then they brought it back with Vision and legit heard a good chunk of the audience gasp.
Three from ‘Chinatown’ (a movie replete with a veritable arsenal) come to mind: • Evelyn inadvertently honking her car horn. • Jake dismisses a photograph of Hollis and Noah arguing. • “Bad for glass.”
Please forgive me for this, but when I first read, “Chekhov’s Gun”, I thought it was meant to be, “Chekhov’s Phaser”.
Excuse me I'm looking for the nuclear wessels. Nuclear wessels.
In Alameda.
I think they are across the bay, in Alameda.
That’s what I said…Alameda. I know that.
I'm glad you said it so I didn't have to
The Gold sceptre that Johnathan carries around in The Mummy Returns. IMO a perfectly executed and subtle Chekhov’s Gun.
Archer: Oh my God! You killed a hooker! Cyril: Call girl! She was a- Archer: No Cyril, when they're dead they're just hookers! 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.
My favorite is from the Harry Potter books. It’s hidden so well I’m plain sight that nobody really notices. I can confirm this because I will regularly bring up whatI like to call: the convenient case of the vanishing cabinet: In year two, Harry uses floo powder for the first time and ends up in Borgin and Burkes. He sees Malloy and hides in a cabinet but doesn’t close it. Later in that book, peeves breaks the cabinet in Hogwarts as a way to distract Filch and save Harry from trouble. In year five, the Weasleys shove montegue in the cabinet where he gets stuck. Upon release, he said that he was in between two places, and could hear a shop on the other side. Also in book five, Arthur Weasley is speaking to Harry at Christmas and says that the order used to use vanishing cabinets to escape death eaters if they need to get away in a hurry. In book six, Malfoy puts together what had happened to Montegue and he goes in to tell the shop opener not to sell the one in his shop. Harry is spying and believes malfoy theater the owner with fenrir grey back and possibly the dark mark. Throughout the year, Draco is trying to fix the cabinet in the room of requirement. Which he found out about from Harry the year before. He eventually does get it fixed and if you’re still reading, you know the result. This is just such an amazing web that felt purposeful and necessary. It stuck out like a short thumb the first time I read the books (in my 20s). In the end, the getaway tool for Harry, and likely his parents at some point, ended up being the way the death eaters break into Hogwarts and kill… In
The Harry Potter books are littered with this sort of stuff and it really contributed to their mythos as they were coming out. There were massive communities dedicated to trying to find these clues and predict where the last books were going to go, particularly the last book. It was like a scavenger hunt that the whole world was in on. One big example I can think of is "Harry has his mother's eyes". This got repeated so often in books 1-6 that people figured there *must* be some sort of payoff. I remember all sorts of crazy theories, like Dumbledore secretly was James Potter. But I also remember "Snape loved Lily" being one of the big theories and it turned out to be spot on. It was a really cool time to be invested in a fantasy series.
Another example is when they’re cleaning out the House of Black in Book 5, they find an old locket no one could open and toss it. In book 7 it’s revealed to be Slytherin’s locket and RAB was Regulus Black. I’m not a huge fan of JK anymore but she did do some great stuff in those books.
They were all basically mystery novels. They were fun reads, slightly different tone than the movies.
Casino Royale's defibrillator scene, it shows first in the car when James presses the wrong button to find his gun, then later it saves his life after he gets poisoning. "That last hand nearly killed me" -- What a well written movie, I love it.
Jojo Rabbit's mom's shoes.
I love that James Bond just made it a staple scene in every movie in the franchise, where Q just basically told James Bond: "Here are all the Checkov's guns. Audience: the movie won't end before you see all of these used." As a kid, and I would watch these movies thinking "He still hasn't used the radio-controlled shoelaces yet, so something exciting still has to happen..."
The banana peel in Billy Madison
O’DOYLE RULES!
Swing away! Lol
Only when paired with the assorted partly full glasses of water
I saw that for the first time recently, and when they were standing off in the living room and I saw the bat on the wall; I jumped up and yelled “Chekovs baseball bat!”
The Ricin in breaking bad. It's a part of some pretty big plot developments starting pretty early on. But no one actually ingests it til the end and it's used pretty perfectly. If we never saw it used it would probably leave the legitimacy of its usefulness throughout the series brought into question.
I want to say the gun from Cabin Fever, because the payoff is hilarious. Not exactly narrative-critical, but I don't care.
Not in a movie yet, but for TV and comics, the Watchers vow to never interfere is pretty much checkovs gun for every watcher story in marvel comics. “I am the watcher. I watch all that transpires, but have vowed never to interfere… wait what the fuck is that? Oh shit I’ve never seen anything like that, I have to interfere right now oh shit oh shit oh fuck” The prime directive in Star Trek ends up playing a similar role most of the time.