If you’re unfamiliar with Chekhov’s Gun, Anton Chekhov was a playwright who said if you show a gun in the first act, it needs to be fired by the third act. It’s a common trope and it isn’t limited to guns.

For example, in Madea’s Family Reunion, Madea tells her daughter, if he beats you again, you serve him some grits, as in, while the cornmeal breakfast is boiling on the stove, you throw it on his face. Guess what happens in the final act?

I think my favourite in recent memory was in Deadpool & Wolverine, where Deadpool talks down about the Odyssey, the Honda minivan. We don’t even see the “gun”, but he follows it up much later with the famous line, “the Honda Odyssey fucks!” (It doesn’t actually, but there’s a fight in one.) I like that. I hope if I write a Chekhov’s gun, nobody sees it until it fires.