Things are still busy, busy, busy over in the Caedoverse, but I'm making time for this entry because I don't want to drop off the map.... again
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"It is only natural. He cut off your arm, and you wanted revenge. It wasn't the first time, Anakin. Remember what you told me about your mother and the Sand People."
- Grand Chancellor Palpatine

Right there we have an example of a direct reminder of a plot line. We're one step away from Palpatine literally turning to the audience and saying "It's been 3 years since the last movie came out, do you remember what's going on?". I'm not a huge fan of that kind of plot reminder. It doesn't flow and it tends to drag you out of the moment that's actually happening right then.

In contrast, Anakin's gloved hand reminds us of the ending duel of Episode II and in the Original Trilogy Luke's hand is featured twice - the more important being when he looks at it and then at Vader's severed hand and draws the connection between them. But more relevant to my topic is when he draws a glove over it as he's heading to Dagobah. That moment reminds us not only of the fact that his hand was shot on Jabba's Sail barge, but also that his hand was cut off by Vader. Thus in 1.5 seconds - and without requiring Yoda to come up and say "Remember when you got your hand cut off? Do ya? Do ya?!" - we remember what we need to.

Anakin's scarred eye serves a different purpose than a reminder of events that have happened. It serves to show the passage of time and the war. We very deliberately don't know what happened (unless you read the expanded universe ). It heralds to adventures we didn't see in the same way that C-3PO's mismatched silver leg, the Millennium Falcon's junk-yard look, and any number of other "lived in" features of the Original Trilogy do.

The Emperor's wrinkled face and Vader's suit and the final reveal of his scarred head in Return of the Jedi have taken on entirely different meanings and storylines that they force us to recall over the decades - rather unique in the world of entertainment.

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Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica Season 3 (up until "Exodus II") follow!!!
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Battlestar has - in my opinion - taken this idea to the extreme. For those of you that don't watch Battlestar (start!) - our heroes got stuck on a planet under occupation of the evil Cylons (fancy word for "robots and cyborgy things"), that situation continued for... 5 episodes I believe. During the occupation we see dozens of character building moments and dramatic scenes... but then we get off the planet. How on earth are we going to keep this giant story arc fresh in peoples' minds?!

Hm... How 'bout we put a character's eye out?

Now every single time we see that character with the patch over his eye... We remember the occupation storyline without needing a character to pull us out of the story and say "I was on that planet 8 months ago! Remember that? Do ya?!".

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Spoilers End Here
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Hitting up 2 last thoughts really quick. Harry Potter has a very prominently featured wound (Harry's scar), but often does go out of its way to explain everything about it because the series is designed to appeal to peoples of all ages that may not quite be able to remember what's going on even with a little reminder. Serenity featured a brief scene with Captain Reynold's shirt off where we could see the scar from where he was hit with a knife in the second episode of the Firefly. In that case it was more of a nod to the fans than anything - although it also serves the purpose of showing "this guy has been around".

Star Trek - as far as I can think currently - is remarkably entirely void of this storytelling tool. The reasoning for that being that it is an almost entirely episodic plot based series, rather than character based. We don't need to remember that Captain Kirk got shot in Episode 23 because it doesn't matter for Episode 24, 25, 26, and so on.

So in my opinion (whose else would it be?), wounds, scars, and other permanent changes to a character's appearance are perhaps the strongest storytelling tool available exclusively to television and film. It allows for an entire storyline to be summed up in a single scar, missing limb, or patch eye.... Not a word needs to be said.

Is there any stronger tool out there?
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◄Rive "Pitifully Unscarred" Caedo►
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