Chekhov's Gun/Professional Wrestling

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Professional Wrestling has used the table the announcers sit by at ringside (and any monitors, voice cables, etc., attached to it) as a weapon so often it became a Running Gag for most of 1998. Even today, any fight going near the Spanish Announcers Table is guaranteed to result in the fans hoping said table is destroyed. The same goes for any weapons retrieved under the ring, to the point that even the announcers wonder what they were doing under there in the first place. Additionally, whatever wrestler is seen producing a bag of thumbtacks is, as a general rule, going to be the first who is going to end up making contact with the thumbtacks - with the notable exception of The Undertaker.
    • The destruction of the Spanish Announcers Table was so prevalent that at one WWE pay-per-view, heel announcer Paul Heyman responded to a wrestler being face-planted on the English table by screeching, "The Spanish guys are over there!"
      • That kind of thing's not a good example unless the table is called attention to in a subtle way early on. Here's a better one:
  • This trope is the entire idea behind the WWE's "Money in the Bank" matches, which give their winner the opportunity to exercise the right to a world title match anytime they like within the coming year--usually at a theoretically unexpected and dramatically opportune moment, like right after the current champion has just been thoroughly beaten up by someone else or at an event where they have better moral support, like Rob Van Dam at One Night Stand 2006.