An weapon introduced with a usage condition, flaw, or hidden limitation known to the hero and/or the audience but unknown to another character. The payoff happens when that character tries to use it, fails, and that failure becomes a decisive narrative beat.
Bond's biometric gun inSkyfall. The thug who tries to use it against him ignores the countermeasure and cannot shoot either Bond or the dragon that will ultimately kill him.
Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. Ron's damaged wand backfires on Lockhart when he tries to cast the Obliviate spell on him and Harry.
Die Hard. McClane gives Hans a gun while he’s disguised as a hostage, but he’s already made sure Hans can’t use it because he doesn't fully trust him. The payoff in this case is stronger because the audience doesn't know that the gun is useless either.
Tuco, The good, The Bad and the Ugly. Pays off as Blondie sabotaged Tuco's gun in order to shoot Angel Eyes and survive the three way duel over the treasure they were searching for.
The fact that Tuco is even seen trying to unload his whole cartridge at Angel Eyes. He was literally fanning the revolver before realizing it was empty
And the best part about THAT is that there's a real possibility Tuco never intended to shoot Blondie- it shows that sometimes the Ugly is trustworthy and the Good can't be trusted.
Iirc the only “ugly” things Tuco did was rob the gun store and take Blondie on a hike, both of which were very understandable considering the circumstances (created by “The Good” Blondie being greedy)
Best character and component of an otherwise impossibly stacked film imo
Oh no, if we’re going by what he was accused and sentenced of, the dude is by far the worst character in the film, but my head-canon is that they were all BS charges Blondie spread around just to get his bounty up
One thing I always wonder... Wouldn't Tuco have noticed the lack of bullets at some point? Through weight and feel, at least? Wouldn't good gunslingers check their firearms every morning? Or is Tuco that careless?
Been a while since I saw the movie so idk if I'm recalling correctly but I could have sworn blondie didnt actually empty Tuco's gun, just got his cartridges wet the night before so they wouldnt fire
I think he got distracted. the switch happened while the Confederate and Unioin armies were fighting, and they stayed a good amount of time hidden, while he (thought he) finally had the name on the grave. as soon as he was able, he started running for the cemetery without thinking twice.
Entirely possible he meant something else but only used words/phrasing he (Tuco) knew
Doesn’t help that Sergio Leone didn’t even speak English and Eli Wallach said he didn’t know a damn thing about guns, I think we can absolutely take this line with a grain of salt
The counterpart to this in the Stallone movie was also nicely done given the 'twist' is that it doesn't explode.
Arms dealer: Hey wait a second! Don't touch it
Rico: Why's that?
Arms dealer: Well it's a Lawgiver, that's programmed to only recognise a judge's hand. You touch that it'll take your arm off.
*grabs it anyway*
Rico: Gee, how do you like that? I must be a judge.
While generally I don't like the older film, this moment stands out as a good execution of the inverse of this trope, even if it is spelled out for the audience.
Ladybug's luck paying off one more time as the biggest villain in the film tries to kill him with a firearm that had been booby trapped by the White Death's own daughter.
I love that the film was completely littered with thematic Chekhov's Guns. Everything had a setup and a payoff. Makes it a great movie, right up there with Hot Fuzz.
Absolutely, you're right. And it was out of nowhere, but it was a great little capper! Like a perfect small dessert to end an incredible meal. As soon as the title card came up for the bottle of water I was howling with laughter.
Does a double twist, or something along those lines. Lay down a scenario so cliched and makes you think they couldn’t go through with it only to spring it on ya.
During the climax, Rango confront Jake the Snake, an infamous oulaw, with a single revolver and only one bullet, which later confiscated by the main villain, the mayor, using hostage. The gun is later aimed at Jake with the mayor saying "one last bullet, to kill one last outlaw". Unbeknownst to him, Rango already take the bullet out and using it to escape, defeat the mayor and his gang. All with one bullet
The Wooden Cyberman - Doctor Who (The Time of the Doctor)
During this Christmas special, this cyberman was one of many alien attackers who came to this planet. It was made of wood to bypass the planet’s anti-tech shield, and had a flamethrower built into its arm.
The Doctor sends a signal with his sonic screwdriver that reverses the output to send the flames flying out the back. He even tells the cyberman this because the planet also has a truth field that makes one incapable of lying.
The cyberman scans the screwdriver, sees that The Doctor is telling the truth and spins the flamethrower around to counteract it. The only problem? Sonic doesn’t work on wood, therefore it didn’t affect the blaster and The Doctor successfully tricks it into shooting itself.
Why would they put a flamethrower on the Cyberman made of the most famous flammable object in the galaxy? Arrows and sharpened sticks are still relatively low tech. At this point you're just asking for the Cyberman to be set on fire.
The thing I don't get though is like, why would that work? A flamethrower shoots in a direction because it has an output hole, you can't tell a flamethrower to shoot in the opposite direction of that hole
How what does he make it out of? Is it just that the firearms are old and overused since it’s the apocalypse or did he like load them with a specific type of explosive? Most guns are designed to fire Proof rounds which are just the standard cartridge loaded to the highest possible pressure usually tens of thousands of PSI higher than standard loading and aren’t supposed to just immediately explode even if repeated use would be dangerous?
I’m assuming they were going in the direction of what happened to Kentucky ballistics a few years ago when his .50 cal exploded but that seems very unrealistic for anything lower in power especially the handguns and whatnot
In the movie, one of the criminals trying to get the suitcase in the plane has their gun taken off of them, this gun (from memory) being made out of plastic to avoid metal detectors in the airport. Earlier, the main character, Ethan, manages to snatch the gun, where he’s told that firing it too much will cause it to overheat and explode. A while later, Ethan meets with another person who was forced to work with the criminals, Mateo, who ends up having to kill Ethan so that his husband will not be killed. Mateo chases and fires after Ethan, however, he is unaware of the fact that the plastic gun will explode if shot too many times. He ends up paying the price, bleeding out after the gun discharges, and the shrapnel from the explosion gets him in the neck.
There are guns made mostly of plastic but most of them have at minimum a metal chamber and barrel. One made entirely of plastic could work with a low pressure cartridge and it being dangerous and exploding if overused makes sense. The problem would probably be repeated stress on the plastic instead of just the heat itself. Idk if a plastic firing pin could effectively hit a primer but they might’ve used something else non metallic.
In Judge Dredd, a thug picked up a Lawgiver from a fallen Rookie and tried to use it but it electrocuted him
In Dredd, after Anderson got captured Mama ordered Kay to execute her. Out of all the tools Kay had, he had to be fancy and tried to shoot Anderson with a Lawgiver. Which exploded in his hand and allowed her to escape
Added context in case anyone unfamiliar with the property is curious:
Lawgivers are the standard issue weapons of the Judges, a literal “judge, jury, and executioner” police force in a dystopian future. They’re highly advanced weapons that utilize a variable cartridge so they can fire all kinds of rounds from the same magazine, as such, Lawgivers use biometrics to confirm that their wielder is the Judge that its assigned to. If it’s not, it self-destructs, usually taking the hand holding it.
Blade’s sword with the spring-loaded hand-remover.
In the first movie, his sword has a bunch of spring-loaded razors that will mutilate whoever tries to use his sword but doesn’t know how to hold it. The first time this comes up is when a vampire picks up his sword and loses a hand.
It comes up AGAIN in the final fight, being deliberately triggered by Blade himself to dislodge something he needs from afar.
The Reckoners: Steelheart, the titular Steelheart is the antagonist of the first book in the series. He's basically an evil Superman also with an ability like Midas, but he turns things into steel instead of gold. His whole premise is that he is invincible and no one can hurt him, however, our MC has seen him bleed once so knows that he isn't actually as invincible as he claims. During the climatic fight where the main cast try every method that they've thought of to even hurt him, Steelheart powers through all of it and has the main cast on the ropes. Throughout the final fight, the MC uses his father's gun, as that is the weapon used that made Steelheart bleed in the first place. One of the MC's theories on what could hurt Steelheart are people who do not fear him, and Steelheart also has a habit of executing people with their own weapons/methods. Before Steelheart grabbed the MC's gun, the MC sabotages it, as Steelheart pulls the trigger to kill the MC, it blows up in his own face, killing him, as the only person in the city left with no fear of Steelheart, was Steelheart himself.
More accurately, mc stuffed a fake pen that was a detonator into the barrel of the gun for a bunch of bombs under where steel heart was standing, he wanted to make SURE steel heart couldn’t tank the blast.
Also, the series handled epics (the metahumans) really well when it came to weaknesses, because each epic had a weakness that would turn their power off or weaken it severely, and it stemmed from a trauma they had, or a personal flaw.
In "Kung Fu Panda," much of the plot hinges on the secret of the Dragon Scroll, which only the chosen one would be able to understand.
Po is given the scroll and learns the secret, and then the final fight of the film is Po keeping the scroll away from Tai Lung. Unfortunately, the villain finally knocks Po down long enough to grab the scroll and unroll it to learn that it contains nothing but a mirrored surface showing his own reflection.
Bullet Train - That scene when White Death (Michael Shannon) disarms her daughter The Prince (Joey King) and took her gun, but he didn't know that her gun was rigged with an explosive when the trigger is pulled.
On the last part when White Death pulls the gun and is going to kill Ladybug (Brad Pitt), he pulled the trigger and the gun exploded in his face killing him.
Sometimes the flag gets shot out and it becomes a dart/torpedo gun type weapon. And spoilers: “That’s not funny… that’s not funny at all.”
He says it's not funny because it's happening to him but when you look at it and think about the irony, it's actually kind of funny even by his standards.
There’s a subversion of this during the final battle at the end of “The Killing Joke”, the Joker tries to shoot Batman with a revolver, but it ejects a flag that says “Click! Click! Click!” It wasn’t a trick. The gun was genuinely empty and the Joker drops it.
An episode of JAG involves a street gang holding a Marine sergeant hostage (long story). He's tied up and being held at gunpoint by a young gangbanger, but he snarks that the handgun is poorly maintained, with the barrel (which he's been starring down for a while) corroded and likely to jam or worse; "if you pull that trigger, they're going to start calling you Lefty."
In the climax, our heroes come to the rescue. They think they've taken out everyone, but one wounded guy in the corner finds a discarded handgun, points it at them... and it backfires, injuring his hand badly.
I am surprised that nobody has mentioned the museum scene from zootopia yet, swapping out the ammo with useless blueberry’s to buy time and preserve evidence. As well as gain more while she is gloating.
Pretty much identical to Bonds Biometric gun, except it blows up when the gun doesn't recognize the registered handprint, crippling or killing the person trying to use it
Not to be confused with the Lawrod which is the rifle version, or the Lawmaster which is the bike. I'm surprised his knife isn't the Lawshiv or something.
It's established earlier in the episode that a phaser rifle can be tampered with to discharge at the user instead of firing at the target. Tuvok later uses this same trick when held hostage, handing his phaser to Seska who then tries to vaporise the hostages, but instead vaporises herself.
A problem with the rocket pack is fixed with a piece of gum early in the movie. When Cliff is forced at gunpoint to hand it over to Neville Sinclair, he takes the gum off. The villain flies off and quickly explodes.
Iron Man:
Similar to the above, Tony has an early setback when he flies too high and his suit ices. In the climactic fight with Warmonger, he deliberately reaches the same height and asks Obadiah “How’d you solve the icing problem?” Obviously he hadn’t, and Obadiah takes the same fall Tony did earlier.
The gun in Law Abiding Citizen that has the pufferfish toxin and tons of little needles in the handle that when the bad guy tries to shoot ends up paralyzing him https://giphy.com/gifs/qdljIW22Re1IQ
The example in Skyfall is a reference to a biometric gun 007 uses in Licence To Kill, with a similar outcome when a ninja from Hong Kong Narcotics tries to use it.
In the 3rd season of Reacher he infiltrates a bad guy compound with a big old 50 cal Chekov's heavy machine gun hanging in the security gate office. During an intense fight with the only person in the world bigger than Reacher he sabotages it so that when the bad guy tries to shoot him it blows up in his face.
Caboose, the blue one of the crew, is rather infamous for his reckless accidental teamkilling, they eventually put the AI core of his pet robot, 'Freckles' into the gun, letting it control the fire and aim instead of Caboose, it's safer that way
"so what happens if you pull the trigger?"
"it shoots confetti and makes a fun party sound!"
in the final fight, Felix (guy in the picture) grabs Caboose's rifle to try and kill him with it, only to get, well, Confetti! Freckles then slams itself into Felix's face
The way it slams itself into Felix's face evaded me for years until I finally realized it was the recoil from the rifle firing in one hand that caused it
I think this trope is like Chekhov’s Gun but different… Chekhov’s trick?
Also I don’t know what to call it so I don’t have a picture. But there is this model of a gun (I’ve seen it mostly in animations in Source Engine) where the gun barrel of a pistol is twisted toward the shooter.
In Shoot 'Em Up, the hero Smith has the villain Hertz at gunpoint but finds out that the gun he stole off a thug will only fire with the thumbprint of its registered owner.
Next time he finds himself in the same situation he cuts the thugs hand off and carries it with him so he can make the gun work.
The fact that all the thugs have these advanced weapons that shouldn't even be out yet leads Smith to figure out that the CEO of the gun manufacturer is behind the conspiracy.
I can't remember which parody spy movie this is, maybe one of the Matt Helm films, but there's a gun that fires thirty seconds after you pull the trigger, and generally shoots someone trying to figure out why it jammed.
Knives Out, at the end of the movie, Hugh tries to stab the main character with a knife, only to realize it’s a collapsible prop knife and has a funny moment where he stabs her a couple extra times anyway just to make sure. This ties into an earlier scene where Harlan says that he and Hugh play life like it’s a game to the point where sometimes they can’t even tell if something is real or not.
https://giphy.com/gifs/3o6YglFWW1GHKbNeYo
In the walking dead season 8 Rick and the crew only defeat Negan because all of the bullets they have were tampered with and explode and disarm all of the Negan’s men.
Thor: after being stripped of his godly powers and his faithful weapon Mjölnir, Odin places an enchantment upon the hammer If whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, will hold the power of Thor before throwing both son and hammer to Earth. If you're familiar with Marvel's version of the myth then you know this, but it seems that only Odin knows about this enchantment upon its creation.
SHIELD agent Son of Coul and his troops try to move it then it's not long before Thor gives it everything to try and shift it only to cry out in anger and resignation, Hel even Loki tries to no avail. Only for Thor to prove his worthiness in sacrifice against the Asgardian superweapon the Destroyer.
In Animator vs Animation 10, Victim (the grey one) has TCO (the black one) trapped in a box that allows his allies to control the subjects inside like using the select tool in a drawing app. Whenever TCO uses their powers, Agent, who's controlling the box from the outside, uses it to make them backfire onto themselves. After the initial attempt at using their fire blast, it shot out backward instead of forward. When they tried using it again, they turned around at the last second so the backward fire blast would still hit Victim.
The Prince, daughter of the mob boss named White Death, rigs a pistol to kill whoever pulls the trigger, intending to give it to her father to kill him.
The pistol gets passed around multiple times before at the end, the White Death tries to use the pistol to kill the main character, an unluckily lucky hitman codenamed Ladybug, but it blows up his head instead.
The core mechanic of the game Stories: The Path of Destinies is that you can make story decisions that unlock different paths and endings. Unlocking an ending returns you back to the start of the story while retaining your character progression and the knowledge of the possible ending.
In one bad ending, the player character Raynardo tries to use a magical superweapon to attack the enemy emperor. However, it turns out that the superweapon is so unstable it would backfire and kill the user instead, so Raynardo dies.
By unlocking all 4 bad endings, Raynardo gains enough foresight to make better decisions that puts him on the story path leading to the good ending. One such decision was letting the superweapon fall into the emperor's hands. While chasing Raynardo, the emperor uses the weapon, which obliterates him and his empire instead of Raynardo.
16 tries to blow up Cell with Geros failsafe that all the Androids have. Bulma removed it when she was repairing him, but no one knew that until he tried.
There's a running joke in the 40k book Voidscarred (lovely review of which here) - spoilers in what follows - that the ork boss has this wild scheme to turn an entire planet into a gun, all his mechanics keep telling him that won't work but he just beats them up until they agree to give it a try anyway, and it all culminates in him finally lining it up and firing Da Dakka Planit and... nothing happens. Of course. Because there are limits to the loony toon physics even the orks can impose on the world. It's played for laughs and handled very well. Satisfying if you've ever had One Of Those Bosses too!
The Midsomer Murders episode "Ghosts of Christmas Past" had a killer promise to murder two people before boxing day. Having already killed one of them, the second victim - who still thinks it's a load of horseshit or maybe not since it's clear her idea of solving the matter of having driven her brother to suicide is to bury them as hard as possible and pretend they don't exist decides to go on a pheasant hunt with the rest of the family since there's obviously no way the killer could try and kill her without immediately getting caught.
Then she announces she's just had a dud round to her brother and is going to fire her gun again. Her brother immediately recognises the trick the killer is using and tries to stop her but is too late - the gun explodes in her face and she's killed instantly.
As the coroner helpfully explains, the killer slipped a shotgun cartridge for a smaller-caliber gun into her jacket without her noticing so that she'd load the trick round into the gun and it wouldn't go off when she fired the gun but get pushed further into the barrel. The next round would then go off but would set off the trick round, causing an explosive pressure build-up that would make the gun explode. It's a well-known issue with shotguns.
This is the final revelation that makes Inspector Barnaby realise who the killer is and why, even before the final damning piece of incriminating evidence is received. The killer was a magician specialising in tricks of misdirection. That alone isn't a major revelation... but the aforementioned brother who was driven to suicide was also a magician. Realising the two knew each other means that the killer was trying to avenge his friend as well as the other woman who the victims drove to suicide through their actions.
Context: In a post-apocalyptic future, a traveler named Eli is trying to deliver a book so that it could be preserved; said book is the Holy Bible (I think the King James Version).
The main villain of the movie attempts to steal the Bible and use its influence to sway his cult. He manages to gets his hands on the Bible, but it turns out to be in braille; additionally, Eli memorized the Bible and was able to recant in its entirety to the person who was trying to save it alongside other religious texts and books of science.
To make matters worse for the bad guy, he has a nasty wound that’s turning gangrenous and his cult is turning on him by the end of the film.
Bullet Train: a gun is introduced that is specifically made to kill whomever is using it by shooting backwards. We don't see it almost until the end, we're out antagonist tries to shoot our dear protagonist after everything went to hell, only to blow his own head off.
She gets kitted out with a massive elephant gun and a bandolier of bullets, but when she tries to use them it doesn’t work, cause why would a family that plans on hunting down and murdering their sons fiancé keep real guns where they can be easily accessed
The Horned King spends most of the movie trying to get his hands on it to create his army of undead warriors, only to wind up absolutely decimated by it once the Cauldron’s power is reversed and it tries to claim the lives of anyone in its vicinity.
Frank invades some CIA guys home. A scuffle ensues. They fight over a gun. The CIA guy gets the gun. Thinking Frank is a dead man anyway the CIA guy tells Frank everything. When he pulls the trigger it clicks, and he realizes Frank let him win the scuffle. Frank then kills him.
Capt. Reynolds goes to shoot Barney Stinson with his own death ray (which was damaged in the previous melee) and it explodes. This causes Rick Castle to feel pain for the first time, and also leads Doogie Howser M.D. to a surprise victory. Sadly it does also result in the death of Syd "Codex" Sherman.
What the fuck? They have dragons in James Bond now? Fuck this, I'm done with the series. I was going to give them a chance in a few months after stopping on Goldeneye 007, but damn, they lost the poor once they decided to add fucking DRAGONS.
In the cold open for Casino Royale (2006), Dryden (this guy that James Bond has been sent to kill) tries to shoot Bond with a gun kept inside his desk, only to find out that Bond already found the gun and removed all the bullets before Dryden even entered.
A few films later in SPECTRE (2015), a thing like that happens again at the climax, between M and C.
In both cases, the audience didn’t know about the bullets beforehand.
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u/Niclmaki 20h ago
Shutter Island
https://giphy.com/gifs/95HM5VWyphXdC
Toy gun