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* In ''Tracy Beaker Returns'', we have S2E5 Money concering a bag of stolen money. Frank keeps some of it for his grandad. {{spoiler|1=In S2E12 Grandad Frank tries to use this money to get a gravestone when Grandad dies.}}
* In ''[[I Spy]]'', the pendant given to the wife of a not-so-late traitor actually contains the secret photos that supposedly had burned up.
* Happens in ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' with the Bond-like gadgets that Sydney gets, particularly in early episodes, though most of them have a specific and outlined use within missions.
** Also, Chekhov's Earrings: the pair of earrings Irina brings with her to the CIA, leaves for Sydney in "A Dark Turn", and transmit a message to her in [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[
** Spencer's episode-acquired possessions usually join the main plot like the fishing rod, the Proton Cruiser and the mechanical bull.
** In ''iEnrage Gibby'', Freddie sets up another camera to examine how two pieces of bread rot in a period of time for the iCarly webcast. At the end of the episode, this camera also provided proof that the incident between Tasha and Freddie was an accident.
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* Humourously subverted (and possibly lampshaded) in an episode of ''[[The Young Ones]]''. At the end of one scene, the camera zooms in on an innocuous-looking matchbox...who then proceeds to say "Don't look at me. I'm irrelevant." And sure enough, it's never mentioned again.
* ''Angus [[MacGyver]],'' anyone?
* ''[[Arrested Development (TV series)|Arrested Development]]'' is chock full of Chekhov's guns. Nearly every episode has at least one, and there are a few that don't go off until several episodes (or ''seasons''—remember Buster's hand chair?—have passed.
* Emma Peel has a Chekhov's Wardrobe in ''[[The Avengers (TV series)|The Avengers]]'' (original series). Her clothing style either involved wearing a skirt or a skin-tight [[Spy Catsuit]]. Proper British ladies cannot fight in skirts, so she was always wearing her catsuit whenever she became involved in a fight. This may suggest otherwise unmentioned psychic powers she possessed, as her unerring ability to recognize hours before a fight that she would later be involved with one, sometimes requiring her to go home and change clothes before taking other actions. Likewise, if she is seen infiltrating enemy territory in a dress or skirt, it's clear that she will not be caught or otherwise need to pound on said enemies. Either this or we must assume that catsuits cause fights and skirts create peace.
** The one exception to this otherwise hard and fast rule occurs in the episode ''Return of the Cybernauts'', where fashion sense (Emma was going to a formal party) and the plot (she will later attack Steed after being mind controlled) could not be meshed, resulting in an oddly surreal scene where the villain of the piece pulls off her skirt after mind-zapping her so that she can perform the subsequent, oddly stilted, fight scene.
** Calling it a "fight scene" is a stretch; she robo-marches up to an unsuspecting Steed and lays him out a single karate chop.
* ''[[Babylon 5]]''
** "Grey 17 Is Missing" referenced this by having Garibaldi discuss an antique gun extensively in Act I, which was then not used in the rest of the episode. This was a bit of an in-joke for the people who hung out in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5; series creator/producer [[J. Michael Straczynski]] frequented the newsgroup and often cited "Chekhov's Gun" when talking about TV writing.
** This becomes a double-subversion (partially) when Garibaldi uses the bullets for the gun, which he conveniently put in his pocket, later in the show to defeat the [[Monster of the Week]].
** The alien healing device is used in one episode in season 1, brought out for an episode in season two, and then never mentioned again until the end of season 4.
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** This is a pretty subtle and minor one, but early in Season Two when Chief Tyrol, while attempting to prove he isn't a Cylon ([[Reverse Funny Aneurysm|lol]]), is listing the battlestars he's served on he mentions the Pegasus, which showed up a few episodes later.
* In Breaking Bad, {{spoiler|the hollow-point bullet in the episode One Minute.}} In all honesty Breaking Bad should be renamed "Chekhov's Gun: The Series".
** The season 4 opener "Box Cutter" introduces, well, the eponymous box cutter. Used in an innocent fashion in the cold opener, it finds a much more macabre use before the end of the episode.
** The character of {{spoiler|Hector/Tio Salamanca.}} Played a minor role in the first season, only to show up in season 4 {{spoiler|as Gus Fring's mortal enemy, and Walter's weapon against him.}}
* In the ''[[
** Farscape had a bit of a thing for these, on both an episodic and series-wide scale; the best and most notable example is probably {{spoiler|the chrysthereum blossoms, which are visible in the season three episode "Incubator" but do not pay off until very late season four. Going back even further, the place that Stark mentioned having seen in season one was probably the chrysthereum chamber, only seen in season four.}}
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. In particular, Season 5, when they faced an unstoppable god. Almost every single episode in that season, including the ones that looked like filler (Warren's BuffyBot, the angry troll who had once been married to Anya) turned out to have a Chekhov's Gun that got used in the big finale.
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** In "Planet of the Ood", the villain, Mr Halpern, is constantly drinking hair tonic given to him by an Ood slave. Later, we find out that the Ood have been feeding him a biological compound... which turns him into one of his own slaves.
** In "Journey's End", the previous episode introduced the Osterhagen key, established as a rather obvious Chekhov's Gun; the finale also introduced ''two'' further devices with the potential to end Davros' plans, and characters threaten to use all three at the same time. The whole thing is cleverly subverted when the Daleks casually separate the characters from their respective doomsday devices. All seems lost until the ''real'' Chekhov's Gun goes off when Donna's Time Lord consciousness is awakened from the human-Time Lord metacrisis.
** And let's not forget that the {{spoiler|Doctor lost his hand in "The Christmas Invasion"}} which, after showing up a number of times in other episodes (including spinoff ''[[
** It's subverted in "The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky." Part one goes to some trouble to point out Martha's engagement ring and her reluctance to use guns, leaving the audience to surmise that the absence of one or both of these will tip the Doctor off when she's replaced by an evil clone at the cliffhanger ending. Turns out it's actually neither; instead, the clone just smells wrong. Though, he mentions that this is one of MANY things...
** Bad Wolf, and the rest of the [[Arc Words]].
** In "The Two Doctors", it's established early on that Oscar Botcheby collects moths, and to kill them he uses cyanide rather than ammonia. At the end of the story, the Doctor comes across the cyanide and butterfly net, and uses them to finish off the otherwise far stronger and deadly Shockeye.
** Subverted in "Last of the Time Lords". Early on Martha explicitly introduces a gun that is believed to be the only thing that can kill a Time Lord. Later on the Master easily destroys the gun and it seems like all is lost - until Martha lampshades the ridiculousness of a plot hinging upon "a gun in four parts", then reveals her ''real'' plan.
*** {{spoiler|Also done straight with the Master's ring. [[Russell T. Davies]] planted the gun intending for a later producer to fire it- and ended up firing it himself in "The End of Time".}}
** End of Time: {{spoiler|the Nuclear Bolt cabinet. Originally used by Joshua Naismith to power the Immortality Gate, it always requires one person to be inside it. Towards the end of the second episode, Wilf gets inside the cabinet to save one of Naismith's employees, but in the ensuing chaos the Nuclear Bolt overloads with radiation and the only way for the Doctor to save Wilf, and, presumably, everyone else is to take his place in the cabinet and absorb a massive amount of radiation, leading to his death and regeneration.}}
** In "Flesh and Stone" the Doctor walks away from Amy , having lost his coat to a Weeping Angel. He then apparently returns, now wearing a jacket, warning Amy to keep her eyes closed, lest she allow the Angels access to the visual centres of her mind, and also telling her to remember what she told him when she was seven. {{spoiler|In fact, the Doctor who talks to Amy in the forest is actually the Doctor from the future, rewinding his timeline due to the events of "The Pandorica Opens". The thing he told her when she was seven was a story about him and the TARDIS, meant to make her remember him at her wedding after he was erased, so he could be brought back into existence.}}
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** River Song's lipstick offers a slight variation on this trope. Initially, her hallucinogenic lipstick is used by her to escape from jail in "The Pandorica Opens", it returns in "Let's Kill Hitler", {{spoiler|this time as poison from the Judas Tree, which she has worn as part of her plan to kill the Doctor.}}
** The Teselecta from "Let's Kill Hitler" {{spoiler|is revealed in "The Wedding of River Song" to have taken the place of the Doctor at Lake Silencio, allowing him to survive}}.
* In the ''[[
* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' does this numerous times. One particular example is the train wreck in the first episode. For the first two and a half seasons, we just know it as the train wreck where Claire tests her power by walking through fire and saving a man. However, in Volume Three's flashback episode "Villains", we discover that the train wreck was actually caused by Meredith trying to escape Thompson and the Company.
** This also commonly is used with Sylar's stolen abilities. Whenever he takes an ability, it will play a part in a future episode (or in some cases, the graphic novels), often after people tend to forget he got the power. One example is his cryokinesis, which is shown once in the second episode, then doesn't appear again until two of the last four episodes of the season.
*** Another example is his ability to know an object's entire history by a single touch early on in Volume 3. That power then {{spoiler|becomes the most important element into his transformation as Nathan at the end of Volume 4}}.
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* If KITT has a new gadget installed on ''[[Knight Rider]]'', you know Michael will be activating it by the end of the episode. In fact, it'll probably get used ''twice.''
** A slight subversion: I remember one episode (it might have been a two parter or a season premiere) where KITT gets a new button marked "C". I thought it was going to be some new weapon or defensive mechanism, but at the very end of the episode it was revealed to stand for {{spoiler|convertible}}.
* Apparently the main employer of Cabot Cove in ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]'' is a factory that makes Chekhov's Guns.
* ''[[Chuck]]''-ov's Gun: Pilot has a scene where Chuck and other employees are talking about a new virus making the rounds, which infects via porn website. With said knowledge, Chuck later disables a laptop and a bomb along with it, replete with a [[This Is No Time for Knitting]] (in this case, Looking for Porn) moment.
** In a later episode, Chuck and Morgan talk about a guy that sometimes sells them fireworks. Later on Chuck needs to create a distraction in the same general area that the fireworks are being sold. You probably have a vague idea about what happens next.
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* Subverted in ''[[The Sopranos]]'': the grenade in Tony's cupboard is teasingly never used. The Russian never returns.
* In ''[[The Colbert Report|A Colbert Christmas]]: [[Christmas Special|The Greatest Gift of All]]'', a crossed sword and lightsaber are seen at the beginning hanging on the wall of Stephen's cabin ([[Continuity Nod|Continuity Nods]] to the [[The Lord of the Rings|Aragorn]] appearance and the [[Chroma Key|Green Screen Challenge]]s respectively). Stephen grabs the lightsaber about halfway through to defend himself against {{spoiler|what he thinks is}} a bear.
* Happens roughly [[Once an Episode]] in ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' - House sends the young guns to investigate the [[Patient of the Week]]'s home, where they find some detail which is either the cause of the disease or evidence that leads House to figure out what's wrong.
** He once solves a case based on the fact that the patient had ''Tic-Tacs''. It's not so much Chekhov's Gun as it is Chekhov's Secret Satellite Beam Weapon, in that it can ''really'' come out of nowhere.
* Since a single episode of the ''[[
* A holiday episode of ''[[Home Improvement (TV series)|Home Improvement]]'' started with Tim and Al practically blinding the ''Tool Time'' audience with some sort of halogen setup. It seemed like a basic opening gag and so I was surprised when Tim's sons activation of the house's Christmas lights (itself a subplot) ''allowed the airliner he was on to land in previously paralyzing fog''.
* ''[[
** Recently used while {{spoiler|travelling back in time to 1954,}} Daniel Faraday is called upon to {{spoiler|disarm an undetonated H-bomb,}} but instead suggests it {{spoiler|be sealed with lead and buried under the logic that, fifty years in the future, it hadn't gone off and destroyed the island, so why worry?}} Anyone who doesn't think it'll come back into play by the end of the season [[Viewers are Morons|doesn't read this wiki]].
** There are countless examples, here is one of the more subtle ones. In Season 3, the Others task Sawyer and Kate with clearing rocks from a dirt region for no discernable purpose. It turns out that they were {{spoiler|clearing a runway, which a plane uses to land on during Season 5.}}
*** In a more rapid-fire example, Fake Locke tells the Losties they can't use {{spoiler|that same plane}} to take off because {{spoiler|Widmore loaded it up with C-4}}. Take a guess what's in {{spoiler|Jack's backpack}} when he boards {{spoiler|the sub}}.
* ''[[Mad Men]]'', of all shows, had a Chekhov's ''Tractor''. Ken Cosgrove brings a John Deere riding lawnmower into the office ([[Fridge Logic|how was he able to fit it in the elevator]]?)<ref>Service elevator? Assembled from parts? It's a small lawnmower?</ref> and goofs around with it. At the end of the fairly lighthearted episode {{spoiler|a clumsy secretary riding it ''hacks through the foot'' of a suave British redshirt, covering everyone's [[Gorgeous Period Dress]] with ''tons of blood''}}. This one event sets into motion the events that conclude the season.
** Also a ([[Black Humor|very dark]]) [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]. It was [[Bloody Hilarious
** See also the list on the trope page; there are a lot of cases where things that wouldn't exactly be Chekhov's Guns in any other setting (e.g. the date of a wedding) become ''massive'' Chekhov's Guns thanks to [[Call Forward|the setting being the early to mid 1960s]] (e.g. the date of said wedding being [[John F. Kennedy|23 November 1963]]).
* Done in ''[[Power Rangers]]'', in ''[[Power Rangers Time Force|Time Force]]''. The rangers came from the year 3000 which was later revealed to be a razed earth with cities few and very, very far between. Fast forward ''eight'' years later to ''[[Power Rangers RPM|RPM]]'' where we are shown as to how it happens.
** [[Word of God]] states that ''[[Power Rangers RPM|RPM]]'' is set in a different continuity but that was said previously about ''[[Power Rangers Lost Galaxy|Lost Galaxy]]'' before it was [[Retcon|RetConed]] into the established timeline so this could still work.
* In an early episode of the 2006 ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'', the outlaws come across a ledger that details how to experiment with Greek fire (that is, explosives). Robin throws it into the campfire, but the episode ends with Djaq discreetly saving it from the flames. It isn't seen or referenced again until the end of Season 2, where it turns out she was going to give Robin the gift of a pig's head stuffed full of black powder for his birthday. She uses it to {{spoiler|scare an army of mercenaries into delaying their attack, buying the gang enough time for help to arrive.}}
* ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' uses the occasional Chekhov's Gun.
** In the episode "The Freezer", for example, in the first few minutes Fred tells Lucy and Ethel that the furnace is off as he just replaced the fire brick in it and the mortar needs to set. The deactivated furnace then gets used later by Ethel to eavesdrop on Ricky and Fred and again by Lucy to hide seven hundred pounds of beef in. And finally at the end the furnace gets relit, cooking all the hidden beef.
** Also, the infamous [[Intoxication Ensues|"Vitameatavegamin"]] episode. The guys are talking about the Vitameatavegamin, and one picks it up and notes all the ingredients, one of which is "Alcohol 23%" (at which he does a double take.) As Lucy rehearses the commercial (unaware of how potent the stuff is), she becomes very, very drunk.
* Parodied in ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'' in the 'Get Me Hennimore' sketches, which parody old timey sitcoms. A preposterous back story (i.e. a giant jam jar for an Eastern European president, a giant wasp, Hennimore's boss' wife going to a fancy dress party as a wasp) results in a Gilligan Cut to the fallout of a mix-up (Hennimore hitting his boss' wife with a bat).
* The first season of ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' has several conspicuous scenes where electricity is used to disable Terminators, and Cameron shows the Connors exactly how to remove the processor chip from a Terminator by removing it from Vic. In the premiere for the second season, when Cameron is damaged in the car bombing and goes berserk, the Connors end up using both of these methods against her.
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** The most important example takes place over ''two'' seasons. In season three, Detective Bunk Moreland sees a number of kids pretending to be stickup artist Omar and his crew. In particular, one young boy is playing with what appears to be a fake gun and repeatedly insists that he plays Omar. In season five, Omar passes the same boy, who stops what he's doing (''lighting a cat on fire'') and recognizes him. Omar goes into a grocery store to buy cigarettes, and is {{spoiler|shot and killed by the young boy}}.
** Refrigerator and dead naked girl in Season One, anyone?
* Used twice in ''[[The X-Files]]'' Season 5 Episode 4 ''Detour'': once when Mulder and Scully are on a trip to a teambuilding conference with two other anonymous agents (which foreshadows the general theme of the entire episode) and once when the boy Louis is watching ''[[The Invisible Man (
** Used countless other times in the same series.
* On one episode of ''[[NCIS]]'', Tony steal's McGee's apple, munches on it, and tosses the core away in Abby's trash bin. Just yet another example of Tony treating McGee like the [[Butt Monkey]], right? Yes, except two episodes later we find out that {{spoiler|Chip stole the discarded apple in order to get a copy of Tony's teeth marks, and used them to frame Tony for murder}}.
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* In ''[[The Rockford Files]]'' episode "Profit and Loss," there is an ongoing side plot involving Jim's broken garbage disposal that has nothing to do with the case he is investigating. Several objects are theorized to have fallen in, but it never seems particularly important. However, [[spoiler:when the main villain takes Jim's gun, he misses five times before having a clear shot with the sixth and final bullet. Luckily there is no sixth bullet. It fell into the garbage disposal when Jim was cleaning the gun.
* Vin's earring in the ''Mistborn Chronicles''.
* ''[[Nikita (TV series)|Nikita]]'': In a flashback to Nikita's "first kill", her target mentions to Nikita (who is posing as a prospective nanny for his newborn) that he worries his daughter will inherit his peanut allergy. This comes into play later when it turns out her victim faked his death and is now the head of a gang specializing in human slavery. When Nikita is captured, he proves his dominance by forcing a kiss on her, unaware that she was wearing lipstick laced with peanut oil.
* In one episode of ''[[The Adventures of Brisco County Jr]]'', the [[The Dragon]] escaped from a jail cell and leaves the keys to the cell on the cell's cot. Naturally, the fact that the keys to the cell are ''inside'' the cell becomes important later when someone needs to escape from the jail.
* In the ''[[Full House]]'' episode "Knock Yourself Out," Stephanie gives Danny a colourful tie tack as a present. Later that night, while on TV as a sportscaster, he interviews a boxer called "The Sandman" and asks about his wife leaving him. Apparently, the boxer never knew this and gets knocked out in the next round. Danny later apologizes to him on the air, and the boxer forgives him, but then fires his trainer for keeping it from him. Infuriated, the trainer punches Danny in the abdomen, but Danny is still standing and unhurt while the trainer holds his fist and moans in pain as he walks off. Looking in the camera, Danny opens his suit jacket and reveals the tie tack pinned to his tie, and thanks Stephanie on the air.
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* ''[[Party Down]]'' Somewhat lampshaded in the episode "Investor's Deal". A prop gun is brought out and assumed to be real, a scuffle occurs so they decide to hide the prop gun. Casey delivers the line "Well, you know what they say about a gun in the first act". Later a real gun is pulled on party guests and assumed to be the fake prop gun. This turns out to be a real gun while the prop gun remained in the bag.
* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' TOS episode "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby". Near the beginning of the episode Frisby is playing his harmonica, and someone asks him to stop because of its poor sound. Near the end of the episode he plays it while he's being held prisoner by aliens, and the music acts as a "[[Brown Note|death sound]]" on them.
* The beginning of one episode of [[Eureka]], someone shows off a superpower portable bass amp they just built, but Carter doesn't have time to stick around to hear about it, suspicious things are happening [[Once an Episode|down at the lab]]. The end of the episode, guess what Carter needs to disrupt the monster of the week?
* In the third season of ''[[The Mentalist]]'' it takes on the form of a literal gun. Earlier in the season Jane is given a gift of a pistol. He has never owned a pistol and is not the kind to own one, but he holds it in his hand pensively. It's seen again once more briefly but is more or less forgotten about. {{spoiler|That is until the very end of the season finale, when he keeps it hidden in his suit pocket and actually kills Red John with it, finally fulfilling the objective he'd been obsessed with since the beginning of the show.}}
* ''[[The Walking Dead (TV series)|The Walking Dead]]'' has several instances of this:
** At the beginning of the first-season episode "Guts", when Rick Grimes prepares to escape the tank, he offhandedly picks up an Army-issue grenade off a ledge and stuffs it in his pocket. The grenade is seemingly forgotten about (as Rick gets to the survivors' camp and has his clothes washed) until the first-season finale "TS-19", when the survivors are trying to escape the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. When the attempts to break the bulletproof glass fail, Carol suggests that Rick use the grenade, which she's been holding in her bag. Rick then uses the grenade to blow the window, allowing the survivors to escape in time.
** In "Guts", during the scene when Andrea, T-Dog and Jacqui flee the department store roof, Merle Dixon is still chained to a radiator. As T-Dog flees, he drops a pack of tools (in a split-second shot) in his haste to flee the roof. In the opening of the next episode, "Tell It To The Frogs", Merle manages to use his belt to reach a hacksaw that fallen out of the same bag of tools and escape by sawing off his hand.
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** The passing helicopter that Rick follows into the Atlanta city core in the pilot episode is seen once again in the second-season finale, "Beside The Dying Fire", where it's seen by a group of walkers. The group follows the noise and sound of the helicopter, growing in size along the way, and eventually break through a thick fence onto Herschel's farm, where they end up attacking and forcing the survivors to abandon it.
** The rendezvous point the survivors set up for Sophia in "Cherokee Rose" ends up being used in "Beside The Dying Fire" as a way for the scattered group to find each other.
* Annie's Class Recorder in ''[[
* [[Leverage]] loves playing with this in various ways, but "The 10 Li'l Grifters Job" features a very obvious example. At the beginning of the episode, a character remarks: "Do you know how ''long'' it took me to hide that pipe wrench in the library?" At the end of the episode, guess where Ford ends up needing an improvised weapon?
* ''[[
* In the season 4 episode of ''[[Dexter]]'', "Remains to be Seen", Dexter forgets where he hid a body after suffering a head injury in a car crash. While reviewing the kill site for clues, he spots a drop of blood that he missed. He laments being off his game, cleans it up, and forgets about it. Later, still frantically looking for the body, he comes back to the kill site and sees the drop of blood again. Confused, {{spoiler|he looks up and realizes that the body had been in a bag strung up to the ceiling the whole time}}.
* In the [[That '70s Show]] episode "Black Dog" (S5E9), Kelso's BB Gun is a literal example of this trope; it is discussed early on that it went off previously and shot Eric's hamster in fourth grade, and sure enough, it accidentally goes off again and {{spoiler|wings Hyde.}}
* In ''Tracker'', Mel finds a strange artifact among some things of her grandmother's that initially is regarded as unusual but not terribly important. Later, it turns out to be the key to the vault beneath the bar containing the alien weapon. The diary they find also counts, later proving to be a big clue to the key and the vault.
* ''[[Star Trek:
* In one episode of ''Zoey101'', Zoey's key (which she always wears on a chain around her neck) turns out to be way useful - it is used to stop the reactors in the school's new electric generators from blowing up the entire school. This is a more extreme example, though, as it was something that she did in one of the first few episodes, and this episode wasn't until season 3.
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