22 Best ‘Chekhov’s Guns’ in Movie History

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22 Best ‘Chekhov’s Guns’ in Movie History

If you’ve never heard of Chekhov’s gun, it’s not the title of a lesser-known Tolstoy novel. It refers to the principle, defined by playwright Anton Chekhov, that a gun hanging on the wall in the first act must be fired in the third. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a gun, or even a physical object. Anything the writer draws the audience’s attention to should have some kind of payoff later in the story, otherwise you’re just squirting words into your narrative diaper for no reason.

It’s a concept that’s so ingrained in modern cinema that Redditor HenryWade6 could recently ask r/Movies, “What’s your favorite example of Chekov’s gun in a movie?” and get more than 1,000 responses. They ranged from the mechanical to the metaphorical to the butt pluggery, but they were always callbacks that made the audience go, “Oh, hell yes.”

22Shaun of the Dead
21Raiders of the Lost Ark
20Aliens
19Top Gun: Maverick
18Black Panther
17Avatar
16Lethal Weapon 2
15Avengers: Endgame
14Army of Darkness
13Hereditary
12Tremors
11The Shawshank Redemption
10Signs
9Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
8Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
7Bullet Train
6Gremlins
5M3GAN
4Tropic Thunder
3Midsommar
2Everything Everywhere All At Once
1Hot Fuzz
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