Chekhov MIA

"In any sufficiently long-running series, if a main character's initial backstory includes a friend, relative, or beloved who is absent but not dead, then that person will eventually show up."

Often in the Pilot of a series, the writers establish characters and their relationships to others and will mention how a friend or loved one mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Because of the Law of Conservation of Detail, this becomes a form of Foreshadowing that works better than an Ass Pull when the writers run out of ideas; they can then return the relative, often through some form of Applied Phlebotinum, or else He's Just Hiding. The characters will almost Never Say "Die" when it concerns their lost loved ones; they're simply Missing-In-Action due to the "mysterious circumstances" that took them away.

An uncommon-though-not-unheard-of variant has an established character saying that the MIA character IS dead, but the MIA character later shows up, with the established character's explanation being something along the lines of "he was/is dead to me," or else otherwise skewed by the character's viewpoint.

Compare to Dead Little Sister, except for the fact that they're never dead. If the character mentioned early as missing actually is dead, and stays that way, then that's not a Chekhov MIA, that's a Posthumous Character.

In some cases, Comic Book Death is to be blamed for this.

Anime & Manga

 * Don't mention Pokémon's Ash Ketchum, please? His Dad will NEVER show up, so inverted to hell.
 * Fubuki in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
 * Van Hohenheim, Ed and Al's dad in Fullmetal Alchemist
 * Later, Shou Tucker's wife is said to have left him just before he became a State Alchemist  Then in an even more Chekovian moment,
 * In the first episode of Moyashimon, the police are searching for a missing student. The main characters stumble over what they think is her grave only to learn she's alive and their professor's graduate student.
 * Gale Glory in Rave Master.
 * Subverted in Blue Gender where the hero's best friend is MIA, he's told that it's a near certainty that the guy is dead, and he indeed never shows up.
 * Used slightly in One Piece, though the character in question wasn't part of the main canon at first. One of the original "Romance Dawn" one-shots features Luffy's grandpa, who goes unmentioned for much of the proper One Piece manga until he eventually appears as . Another example could be the Rumbar Pirates, who are missing and presumed dead when the Straw Hats enter the Grand Line. The crew eventually encounters a survivor,.
 * appears to be in the works, both as a straight and as a crooked subversion, in Negima. Negi's Father ( The Crooked subvertion would be
 * In Vision of Escaflowne, Alan's father left his family, and his sister disappeared with no explanation.
 * Van's mother and brother also disappeared like this.
 * Musashi, the kicker of the Devil Bats, from Eyeshield 21. He remained a mystery for a long time on who this "third original member" was, but it turns out he had been doing all their construction jobs for the clubhouse, which only Kurita and Hiruma knew.
 * Kid-friendly version from Fushigiboshi no Futagohime: When we (and the twins) first get to the Moon Kingdom palace, the queen notes that Prince Shade never seems to be in.
 * Subverted in Code Geass with Kallen's brother Naoto. Officially he's said to be dead, with no known cause; however, the staff teased the viewers (and, in one DVD Commentary, Kallen's voice actress Ami Koshimizu) with the idea that he might still be alive. However, nothing came from the hints, and Naoto stayed mysteriously dead.
 * Dragon Ball GT: Piccolo, of all people, pulls this. He gets blasted by Baby while trying to help Goten, and isn't seen again until the world is about to be destroyed. And THEN he dies.
 * Kana's Missing Mom in 20th Century Boys. She disappeared shortly after giving birth, leaving Kanna to be raised by Kenji, her brother. Later turns out to.
 * Kana's Missing Mom in 20th Century Boys. She disappeared shortly after giving birth, leaving Kanna to be raised by Kenji, her brother. Later turns out to.

Comic Books

 * Cyclops' absent father showed up about a hundred issues down the line as a space pirate.
 * His absent mother is then revealed to have been murdered, but still later it turns out she was alive long enough for a third Summers brother to come into the world. Oh, and ca. UXM #170 readers learn that Scott's paternal grandparents are also still very much alive.
 * In both mainstream and Ultimate continuities, Peter Parker's missing biological parents are tied to some interesting work.
 * Other Marvel orphans whose parents provided grist for the story mills
 * In Daredevil #1 readers are informed that Matt Murdock's mother is dead. During Frank Miller's run it turns out she was only dead to the world, having become a nun.
 * The mystery of the parents of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch took years to solve. First they came to believe that they were the children of two Golden Age heroes, the Whizzer and Miss America. Later, after their long-lost adoptive father Django Maximoff made a reappearance, it eventually emerged that they are the children of Magneto.
 * A not dissimilar saga was that of Nightcrawler's biological parents. He had been told that he had been found as a baby next to his dying father (or mother, there were conflicting accounts). It eventually turned out that he is the son of Mystique and Azazel (although Chris Claremont had wanted him to be the son of Mystique and Destiny earlier).
 * Rogue had run away from her birth family to become the adopted daughter of Mystique and Destiny. The story of her biological parents was eventually told in Rogue vol. 3 #1-5.
 * Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner fulfills both the traditional and variant version. He originally stated that his mother was dead; after referring to her as alive later on, he modified this to their getting on so badly that he thought of her as dead, and after a reconciliation she became an occasional recurring character . His father, meanwhile, is established early to have left when Kyle was five; Kyle finally tracks him down some hundred issues later and discovers that he had a good reason.

Fan Fics

 * In The Tainted Grimoire, there is Grant, who only appeared as part of Vaticus' backstory and later shows up in the story proper to provide a Hope Spot for Clan Gully.

Film

 * The first Star Wars trilogy is a good example. In A New Hope, Luke Skywalker's father is said to be dead, killed by a young jedi called Darth Vader. Towards the end of The Empire Strikes Back, something Darth Vader says puts a new cast on things...
 * Big one that spans two films of James Bond. In Casino Royale, However, in Quantum of Solace,
 * Will's father - "Bootstrap" Bill Turner - in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is listed as missing. As of the second movie, his fate is known.
 * Charles F. Muntz in Up.
 * In-universe example: in The Truman Show, the show's crew decides to bring back Truman's missing and presumed dead father after he starts suspecting that something isn't quite right in his world.
 * Tron: Legacy: The titular character is excruciatingly conspicuous in his absence from the main plot. Until...
 * Ditto with Kevin Flynn, absent from the analog world for nearly 20 years. He just shows up earlier in the second film.
 * Star Trek makes it literal. Khan Noonien Singh, abandoned, forgotten, and left for dead. Appears again fifteen years later (in both story and real time) --and the first thing he does upon his return is cause Pavel Andreivich Chekhov to be MIA.

Literature

 * Will's father in His Dark Materials
 * Artemis Fowl II's father in the eponymous series.
 * Nicholas Valiarde in Martha Wells' Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy.
 * in The Dresden Files, who makes a surprise return in Summer Knight.
 * Ser Barristan Selmy in A Song of Ice and Fire. In the first book, he's forced into retirement when, but refuses to give up, saying he'll be in the service of the true king. In the second book, all the candidates for the Iron Throne are making much ado about his comments, wondering why he hasn't shown up anywhere. In the third book,  . There's also Benjen Stark, who vanishes under mysterious circumstances early in the first book , and Howland Reed, The Ghost and the . Finally, A Dance with Dragons gives us.
 * Andrew Trent in Matthew Reilly's Ice Station. Schofield has a Flash Back when his mission starts looking suspiciously similar to the one Trent dissapeared on.
 * Mackenzie Calhoun's son Xyon in Star Trek: New Frontier. We go through an entire book with him as the secondary protagonist, then he and Calhoun finally meet, and Xyon introduces himself via a "Hey You!" Haymaker.
 * Bartemius Crouch Jr, Peter Pettigrew, and the mysterious Aberforth Dumbledore in Harry Potter.
 * In the Lonely Werewolf Girl books much mention is made of the mysterious werewolf mage Minerva MacRinnalch who was mentor to Thrix, but she remains unseen in person until late in book 2.
 * Genaa D'anhk in the Green-Sky Trilogy wants to find out what happened to her missing father, and this is a big factor in her rancor towards the Pash-San she believes responsible for his death.
 * Mekare in Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice has been missing for thousands of years. Her twin sister Maharet mentions several times how it was always Mekare who was the more decisive of the two of them. Just when it seems there will be a Curb Stomp Battle between the vampire queen Akasha and the remaining vampires, Mekare enters the room and, having gone mad from being outside of civilization for so long, simply walks up to Akasha and.
 * Very common in Agatha Christie-style mysteries. Any time a character is mentioned who disappeared years ago or inexplicably moved away to parts unknown, that character and/or what really happened to them will be important, even if their connection to the present-day mystery is not immediately apparent.
 * Marco's mother, Eva in Animorphs. She was believed dead, but technically it fits because she disappeared without a trace, then surfaced as Visser One four books in.
 * Pippi Longstocking's absent sailor father, whom she claimed had been washed up on some tropical island and become a cannibal king, finally showed up in Pippi in the South Seas.
 * The father of the main character in Esther Friesner's Gnome Man's Land, Harpy High and Unicorn U went out for a Sunday Times and never came back. It was later revealed that he'd spent the six years he'd been gone.
 * is mentioned several times throughout Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It's assumed he's dead. Then,.
 * The young adult book Daphne's Book features a middle-schooler trying to convince her grandmother and sister that her father, who went MIA during the Vietnam War, is not coming back. Averted when it's revealed he really isn't back-the grandmother "saw" him because she's suffering from dementia.
 * Wolf Boy/Boy 409 in Septimus Heap is mentioned in Magyk as having been lost in the river, but he's later reintroduced as survivor in Flyte.
 *  Dragon Slippers first mentions Shardas, a Dragon that befriends the main character, missing a " fair dragoness". Later, it's revealed that she was the Queen, and Shardas's mate, killed by the old king.

Live Action TV

 * The entire first season of Supernatural was built around this trope. In the first episode the Winchester brothers team up to find their missing father, with each episode taking them closer to their goal.
 * Their mother, who actually is dead, still manages to appear in seasons 1, 4, and 5, in the first as a ghost and in the latter two via time travel. Also in various dreams and hallucinations, more often than the dad they actually grew up with, but those don't count.
 * Their half-brother, Adam, turns out to have been dead since before they met him. Or even knew about him. He still has a pivotal role in season five.
 * Their dead maternal grandfather is a major character in season six. This family does not stay dead.
 * In Jake 2.0, Sarah mentions that her military father went MIA when working on a "top secret project".
 * Primeval: Professor Cutter's wife just vanished without a trace.
 * The 2007 Flash Gordon series.
 * Also played to mixed results with Cain's family in Tin Man. . Also played with in the royal family. Azkedellia's on the throne, her mother is imprisoned. The younger princess is believed to be dead, and the lavender-eyed queen's consort was banished....
 * In The Middleman, Wendy Watson very specifically mentions that her father disappeared "under mysterious and as-yet unexplained circumstances".
 * The X-Files did this with Mulder's sister. This later became a major plot point.
 * The actual explanation for what happened to her was fairly controversial:
 * Horatio Caine's brother in CSI: Miami. Except he was mistaken for dead.
 * Bones: Brennan's parents went mysteriously missing when she was a teenager. Why and what happened to them have since become major plot points.
 * Babylon 5 executes this trope well with.
 * House is still subverting this trope. Remember Dr. Wilson's missing brother back in season 1?
 * In the 2008 series of Survivors, Abby is adamant that her son has survived the epidemic, in spite of the fact that the majority of the world's population has been wiped out. A bit of a twist on the formula seeing as he's not technically been "taken away", but at its heart he's a missing boy and this is a slice of Chekov.
 * The 1984 TV series Airwolf. Stringfellow Hawke blackmails a US government agency: He'll fly missions in their top-secret Airwolf helicopter in return for their assistance in locating his missing brother Saint John Hawke.
 * Power Rangers in Space: An early episode establishes that Andros's sister Karone was kidnapped as a child. It later turns out that she's actually.
 * Then there's Mystic Force, where Nick's search for his biological parents, and Udonna's later search for Bowen reveal . Because of this, many RPM fans correctly predicted that the girl Dillon was searching for would turn out to be.
 * Don't forget from SPD. The  are an even better example. SPD abused this trope.
 * Manimal: Chase's father is last seen in the opening credits winging away in hawk form.
 * Chuck Bartowski's dad, who mysteriously walked out on his kids after promising to make them pancakes....
 * And let's not forget that his mother also vanished. In fact, it was her disappearance that supposedly drove their father to leaving.
 * "Gossip Girl": Serena and Eric's father, Chuck's mother
 * Season 1 of Heroes makes much mention of Peter and Nathan's late father, Arthur. Sure enough, as many fans predicted, he appears in Volume 3 as the Big Bad.
 * Farscape had  and.
 * Lost is pretty fond of this trope. Particularly noteworthy is
 * Also worthy of note is Christian Sheppard, who was actually dead since before the events of the series even began, and yet continued to play significant role throughout all six season of the show.
 * Jin (end of season 4) and Frank (late season 6) both pull rather impressive versions of this too, particularly Frank, since a lot of viewers thought he really was dead.
 * In Nash Bridges, Nash received his '71 Plymouth Barracuda when his brother Bobby went off to Vietnam and went MIA. Because Bobby never gave him the keys, Nash has to use a flattened nail in the ignition. A few seasons in, Bobby shows up
 * That Ned's father in Pushing Daisies abandoned him at a boarding school as a child is mentioned at practically the beginning of every episode. In the episode The Norwegians, Ned and Olive are rescued by a mysterious man, who at the end of the episode is revealed to be Ned's dad. Unfortunately, due to the cancellation of the show, this became an Aborted Arc and was never mentioned again for the rest of the series. In addition, Charlotte's father may be a twist on this trope, as he really is dead until Ned brings him back to life.
 * In Kamen Rider Double, Shotaro's mentor Sokichi Narumi, himself Kamen Rider Skull, was killed one year prior to the start of the series, though his body was never found. In the second movie,
 * In Kamen Rider Fourze, a student named Yamada is mentioned as having transfered to Subaruboshi High while Ryuusei transfered to Amanogawa High.
 * Fringe has William Bell, founder of Massive Dynamic and Walter's former lab partner.
 * Subverted fairly well in In Plain Sight—not only has Mary and Brandi's father yet to show up, but the two times that someone appears who may have information about him, nobody really wants to find him, so his whereabouts are still unknown.
 * Glickman from The Shadow Line. His disappearance is a major plot point in the first episode and is mentioned frequently after that, so it's no surprise when he finally appears in person in episode 5.
 * Terra Nova: Commander Taylor's son went missing some years back.
 * Twin Peaks had Josie Packard's deceased husband Andrew.
 * Torchwood gives us Gray, Jack's brother who was kidnapped by... something.
 * Glickman from The Shadow Line. His disappearance is a major plot point in the first episode and is mentioned frequently after that, so it's no surprise when he finally appears in person in episode 5.
 * Terra Nova: Commander Taylor's son went missing some years back.
 * Twin Peaks had Josie Packard's deceased husband Andrew.
 * Torchwood gives us Gray, Jack's brother who was kidnapped by... something.

Video Games
"Arthas: "Muradin's dwarves? Doesn't anyone stay dead anymore?" [given that Arthas is himself undead...]"
 * Pick any Role-Playing Game. They will almost always have a missing relative who went MIA while fighting the enemy, only to be deep undercover.
 * Varian Wrynn, King of Stormwind, was MIA throughout all of World of Warcraft and its first expansion. Ruling in his place was his nine-year-old son. In Wrath of the Lich King, he's back and became an incredibly skilled warrior.
 * And also Broken Base. Characters who were confirmed dead are also strangely not dead, but not undead. Why? Probably to flesh out the expansion Because they were just that tough. Or something. (Possibly they used one of the numerous resurrection spells or walked to the Spirit Healer.)
 * Briefly lampshaded back in Warcraft 3:


 * Mass Effect gives us an entire species of Chekhov's M.I.As
 * Fire Emblem runs on this trope. Any relative of a character, no matter how briefly mentioned, will appear eventually. Sanaki's thought-to-be-dead older sister? Lady Almedha's real son?  Also from the Tellius games we have . When Blazing Blade came out as a Prequel to Sealed Sword, many of the former game's characters' parents, or siblings, or even some of the elder ones themselves, became playable characters—but probably the most notable, because they were actually mentioned in the earlier game, though not by name, were Canas (the son of one Sealed Sword character, Niime, and the father of another, Hugh), Rath (likewise both the son and the father of a Sealed Sword character), and most of all Karla, whose husband, brother and daughter all appear as playable characters in Sealed Sword (the former two are also in Blazing Blade). The fact that Karla shows up so late in the game, and only in Hector's Story, makes this almost an Easter Egg of an appearance. And, of course, just about anyone mentioned in a conversation in the prequel is a character in the sequel (e.g. Hawkeye's daughter, Geitz's brother, etc.) And sometimes they'll just tie characters together by blood just for the hell of it. Which leads to some theories...
 * Final Fantasy II: The heroes' brother goes missing in the beginning after an enemy ambush. He later turns out to be.
 * Final Fantasy X: Jecht is listed as dead, as is Seymour's mother.  is also considered dead in the sequel. The truth...gets complicated.
 * Inverted in the Halo series. We know the Spartans who are dead, but for morale reasons they're listed as MIA.
 * In the Halo: Ghosts of Onyx novel, Dr. Halsey, who was in charge of project SPARTAN-II, makes it a point of keeping track of which ones are actually dead. This is how she recognizes Kurt-051 even through his reflective faceplate.
 * By the end of the novel,.
 * Near the beginning of the first Ace Attorney game, Maya tells Phoenix about her mom's disappearance 15 years ago.
 * The best way to be missing in action and assumed dead is to, right?   disagrees.
 * Inverted in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, where it's established in the fourth case that Thalassa Gramarye was accidentally shot dead at a rehearsal.
 * Carth's son Dustil in Knights of the Old Republic. As well as Canderous's former subordinate Jagi.
 * Also, the official story is that Revan died when Bastila tried to capture him. Only a few people know he's alive, amnesiac, and running around the galaxy with a new identity.
 * Like everything else, the Game Mod Brotherhood of Shadow: Solomon's Revenge takes it Up to Eleven. There's Revan, of course. Then, there's Shadow herself . There's the titular Solomon, thought dead during the Mandalorian Wars.   and the titular Brotherhood as Sealed Evil in a Can. The sneakiest one is where Shadow admits to killing a Jedi Master, but has no idea what became of the Padawan..
 * Technically, you DO have control of Tamlen in Dragon Age for about thirty seconds. And then he vanishes and Duncan tells you there is no point looking for him. Also, Branka, who went missing several years before
 * from No More Heroes combines this with All There in the Manual.
 * Metal Gear Solid was basically all about who Snake's father was. It took until they'd run out of plot and had to write Metal Gear Solid 4 anyway before we found out who his mother was.
 * Averted in Fallout2. Sulik never finds his sister. He was supposed to and would keep traveling with the MC out of gratitude, but the developers couldn't figure out a good place to put her without making it feel contrived, so the quest has no resolution.
 * Tales of Symphonia does this quite a bit and other the course of the game we meet up with Lloyd's Father, we learn of his mother too. We meet Genis' and Raine's mum, meet Zelos' sister, find Regal's long lost love and Presea's older sister, find Marble's (who is a very minor character) daughter...even meeting up with the Big Bad's sister by the end.
 * Dragon Quest IX has Corvus, former mentor to Aquila, who fell to the Protectorate centuries ago and disappeared.
 * In Mushroom Age, Professor Einbock's wife disappeared forty years ago. It turned out she'd been abducted by aliens.
 * In Mushroom Age, Professor Einbock's wife disappeared forty years ago. It turned out she'd been abducted by aliens.

Webcomics

 * In the opening chapters of Girl Genius, we find out that poor Agatha Clay was raised by two characters who aren't really her parents, and their identities are clues that point toward the identity of her real parents. But her real parents are still missing, and may be the most important people in the entire world, considering her father is  and her mother is
 * Very early on in Order of the Stick, we learn that Elan and his Evil Twin Nale's father was a conquering warlord in a distant country. As of Strip 723, guess who finally shows his face?
 * Also, Haley's father Ian, who was being held ransom. Though she'd been looking for him ever since they arrived on the Western Continent, he turns up quite unexpectedly.
 * And the casual mention early on (originally as a joke) that Vaarsuvius is married and has children. ..

Web Original

 * In the Whateley Universe, Michael Waite has never known his father. Up until he finally manifests as a mutant and finds out that he is really a Cosmic Horror and his father is an Eldritch Abomination. Then It Gets Worse.

Western Animation

 * In ThunderCats (2011) prodigal Old Soldier Panthro's Death Notification is delivered to his friend King Claudus by fellow explorer Grune. Grune uses suspiciously vague terms to describe the circumstances of Panthro's death, and later becomes a Turncoat, so its no great surprise that Panthro shows up later, deeply peeved at being betrayed and left for dead.