10 Best Examples Of Movies With A ‘Chekhov’s Gun’

This off-beat comedy is full of hilarious Easter eggs, but one of the best is also a great example of a Chekhov’s gun. The police are at an impasse with an armed man, holed up inside a house, when Frank decides to commandeer an armed tank to get past him. Unfortunately, his plan works a little too well and he crashes through the house, and through the wall of a zoo, where we watch several animals escape, until the tank finally comes to a halt with a baboon sitting next to Frank.

This event is portrayed as a throwaway zany gag, along with many similar scenarios shown in the opening credits where the police car drives through buildings and appears in unusual places. However, in the final fight Frank is wrestling with Quentin trying to find out the code to disarm the bomb, when Ed, thinking he is helping, rushes over and pushes Quentin out of a multi-storey window.

Quentin falls a distance, landing on a canopy and bouncing unharmed to the ground. Before he can smugly walk off however, a lion appears and mauls him, presumably after escaping from the zoo that Frank demolished earlier. The joke is so perfectly set up that this incredible scenario appears to be a completely logical turn of events.