Chekhov's gun is the literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story, but its significance does not become clear until later on. For example, a character may find a mysterious object that eventually becomes crucial to the plot, but at the time the object is found it does not seem to be important.

Although many people consider the phrase "Chekhov's gun" to be the equivalent of foreshadowing, the author's statements about it can be more properly interpreted as meaning "do not include any unnecessary elements in a story." Because of the common misconception about the meaning, failure to observe the rule of "Chekhov's gun" may be cited by critics when discussing plot holes.

Origins:

The earliest form of "Chekhov's gun" was repetitive designation. This foreshadowing technique dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which contains "repeated references to some character or object which appears insignificant when first mentioned but which reappears later to intrude suddenly in the narrative".

A notable example is in the tale of "The Three Apples", a murder mystery narrated in the Arabian Nights. At the beginning of the story, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open to see what is inside. The story describes multiple layers of shawls and carpets in great detail until a dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces is revealed underneath it all. He then orders his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, to investigate the crime.

The shawls and carpets described in the beginning appear to play no part in the story until two men, one young and one old, claiming to be the murderer reveal themselves near the middle of the story. Both men argue and call each other liars as each attempts to confess to the crime.

This continues until the young man proves that he is the murderer by accurately describing the contents of the chest in which the young woman was found, including the multiple layers of shawls and carpets. He then narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the body's discovery at the beginning of the story.

The name Chekhov's gun comes from Anton Chekhov himself, who stated that any object introduced in a story must be used later on, else it ought not to feature in the first place:

• "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." Chekhov
• "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."
• "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

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