is there a word for when something (seemingly unimportant) from earlier in a book/movie is brought back later on in it? It seems like theres a word i'm thinking of and its on the tip of my tongue but i'm drawing a blank
Foreshadowing is thge word I was going to come up with. From the perspective of the later references you could also call it reprising a theme.
@Kratos - It's "Chekhov's" gun. @OP - Dunno if that's what you're looking for but a Chekhov's gun is the principle that if you bother mentioning a rifle on the mantle in Act 1; someone damn well better have fired that rifle by Act 3. Also known as the "Law of Conservation of Detail".
Whatever happened to misdirection? The gun may have served its purpose in the mention of its existence. A dark cloud of potential violence may be more powerful than the act itself. Firing the gun would release the tendion embodied in the implied threat.
You mean like a motif? Or something less symbolic, more important to the plot... in which case it's also at the tip of my tongue Edited to add: It wasn't a specific term like Chekov's Gun, but I've looked it up and it sounds perfect for the definition.
In my latest story there is a gun which is never fired, but has a tendency to fire accidently, and in the end kills someone without being fired. But I've tried to make the reader expect that someone will shoot someone else.
