Chekov’s Gun and Foreshadowing: What Is the Difference?

Chekov's Gun Versus Foreshadowing

If you are writing a story, and you mention early on that the main character has psychic powers, your audience will expect those psychic powers to have relevance later on. If you never refer to those psychic powers again, your audience may feel cheated. By failing to bring up the psychic powers again, you made a "promise" to the audience that you failed to keep.

However, if you don't mention that your main character has psychic powers early in your story, but later on, that character uses psychic powers to solve a problem, the audience will be confused. They will wonder where these random powers came from.

To avoid confusing an audience, a writer must introduce elements early in the plot that will have some relevance at a later point. Chekov's Gun and Foreshadowing are two commonly used dramatic principles that do just that. Since they serve a similar purpose, it's easy to confuse them. However, while they have similarities, there is a major difference.

Chekov's Gun

Chekov's Gun was named after Russian Playwright Anton Chekhov, who said, "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep."

A Chekov's Gun may seem insignificant at first. For example, a character walking on the beach finds an object that looks unusual. He picks it up and puts it in his pocket. The object doesn't seem particularly important at this point. Later on, it's revealed that it is a key that opens an alien artifact. The importance of this "key" is downplayed when it is first introduced. If a character uses a particular object like this key in the final act, it helps to establish where it came from beforehand. Otherwise, the audience may be distracted by its unexplained appearance.

Chekhov's Gun indicates everything serves a purpose, even if it is minor and barely registers when first introduced. According to Chekov, a writer should avoid showing anything that doesn't serve an eventual purpose in the story.

In an article I wrote titled Popular Television Shows with Hated Finales, I included the show Lost, which was guilty of leaving lots of Chekhov's Guns lying around that never went off. The show's writers introduced many events, objects, and characters that they failed to explain by the end. This left many fans of the show feeling unsatisfied with the finale.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing provides the audience with hints that something is going to happen. These hints are often pronounced, but they can also be very subtle.

Let's go back to a story involving a character with psychic powers. What if you don't want to mention that your protagonist has these abilities early on because you want that to be a plot twist in the final act? To avoid confusing your audience, you can use subtle foreshadowing. You don't tell your audience the character has psychic powers. Instead, you drop hints. Perhaps there are times sprinkled throughout the story where this character knows something will happen before it does. When you make the big reveal that your character has these powers, the audience will connect all those breadcrumbs you dropped throughout the story to this big revelation.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Examples of Foreshadowing Subtle foreshadowing is used throughout the movie The Sixth Sense. The main character Malcolm Crowe is a child psychologist. He is trying to help a frightened 9-year-old boy named Cole who sees dead people. The big twist at the end is that Malcolm is one of the deceased people Cole sees. Several hints throughout the film prepare us for this shocking twist. These include Cole telling Malcolm that some of the dead people he sees don't know they are dead and Malcolm's wife completely ignoring him.

Konecheck from The Expanse

In season 5, episode 4 of the science fiction series The Expanse, Amos Burton is visiting a friend in prison. On the way to her cell, the show draws the audience's attention to a prisoner named Konecheck. Because the show puts brief but obvious emphasis on Konecheck, we expect he will have some relevance at a future point. The Expanse keeps its promise to viewers by having Konecheck play a big part in the next episode.

Chekov's Gun Versus Foreshadowing

So how do Chekov's Gun and Foreshadowing differ? Chekov's Gun is a type of foreshadowing. It is the idea that if something is shown early on in a story, it must have some relevance later. Since Anton Chekhov was a playwright, he likely had the stage in mind when he created this dramatic principle. Why hang a gun on a stage wall if it won't ever serve a purpose? All uses of Chekov's Gun are foreshadowing, but not all foreshadowing is Chekov's Gun. We only know that a Chekov's Gun is Foreshadowing when the story finally reveals its importance.

For example, the power loader in the movie Aliens is an example of Chekov's Gun. When first introduced, it appears to be just a piece of machinery. We only understand its significance when Ripley uses it to fight the Alien Queen. The same is true of the match in The Fifth Element. Korben Dallas finds a matchbox with two matches left. He uses one to light his cigarette, then puts the matchbox in his pocket. The box is forgotten until the movie's end, when the characters use the remaining match to light a fire and save the day. We only understand the importance of the match at the resolution of the plot.

Ripley uses a power loader to fight the Alien Queen

To some extent, Chekov's Gun is in the eye of the beholder. Some viewers may have expected the power loader in Aliens to come into play later. Is Konecheck in The Expanse too obvious to be a Chekov's Konecheck? Maybe, because he is not only shown but is also named. However, this doesn't mean every viewer interpreted his introduction as an indication he would play a more significant role. He may have appeared to be serving the purpose of providing background. What may be insignificant to one viewer may be obvious to another.

The best way to distinguish a Chekhov's Gun from Foreshadowing is to ask if something presented early in the story seems so minor the audience has no reason to surmise that it will play a more meaningful part later in the plot.

On Setup, Suspense, and Certainty: Chekhov's Gun Explained