Plot Coupon/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character must collect several things to cash in for the plot resolution.

• Straight: Jack must collect the Seven Jewels to prevent the Dark Lord from ending the world.
• Exaggerated: The Seven Jewels were each chopped into forty-nine pieces and scattered over the world.
• Justified: The Dark Lord's invulnerability spell required a flaw to work, so he made up an Impossible Task that would kill him.
• Inverted: Jack begins his quest holding all the jewels and must place every one of the stones in a different and highly significant location.
• Subverted: The Dark Lord set up the prophecy to distract Jack from his real vulnerability.
  • Or to get Jack to gather the Seven Jewels together, an action that will give the DarkLord ultimate power.
• Double Subverted: But The Dragon, who was charged with actually carrying out the job, ensured that the prophecy was accurate.
• Parodied: After gathering the Seven Dread Jewels and the Five Watery Carbuncles, Jack is told that he must gather all one-hundred-fifty of the original Pokemon. He decides that maybe living under the Dark Lord is an acceptable alternative.
  • Jack MAKES a prophecy, reasoning that nobody can defeat any aspiring dictators WITHOUT seven jewels, and buys them at a jeweler's shop.
  • Jack has to buy the ending with the Dark Lord's defeat, and must collect literal plot coupons until they lower the price enough that he can afford it.
• Deconstructed: Characters posing as heroes regularly collect random parts of random artifacts rather than doing anything that would actually help anyone.
• Reconstructed: The characters are being steered subconsciously by genetic engineering or programming to select certain items and gather them together, even though they don't know why.
• Zig Zagged: Jack brings the Seven Jewels to defeat the Dark Lord, and as above, they cement his power, but the Dragon steps in to ensure the fulfillment of the prophecy - but fails, as the Big Bad's power now equals the Dragon's. Meanwhile Jack visits a wizard, who crafts a weapon out of the seven jewels that the Dark Lord's power cannot affect, because of the jewels, phlebotinum and yellow paint. Jack cracks his skull.
• Averted: Defeating the Dark Lord does not require any specific item.
• Enforced: Making the hero pursue the Seven Dread Jewels and then the Five Watery Carbuncles helps organize the game.
• Lampshaded: "Lemme guess, the only way to beat this guy is to collect all the jewels in one place?"
• Invoked: Making the hero collect the various trinkets tests his skill, ingenuity, and determination.
• Defied: "Heck with that Seven Dread Jewels nonsense. I bet you the Dark Lord isn't expecting us to walk right in and shoot him."
• Discussed: Jack tells his allies right off that the Dark Lord can be defeated with a little force and skill, and they do not need Seven Jewels of Power and Five Watery Carbuncles of Life to defeat him.
• Conversed: "I think I just figured out why all those videogames used to make you collect the fifteen mustard peelers or whatever to win — it's because that's how many levels the programmer wrote."

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You must collect the five sacred links back to Plot Coupon to defeat your enemy and save the world.