History Main / RandomEventsPlot

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* ''TabletopGame/MaidRPG'' has a whole table of random events that can be invoked whenever the players see fit. If used enough, the plot of a play session essentially becomes a series of random events, though the manual warns against using it too often as it can completely derail the story.

* In ''TabletopGame/MaidRPG'' the player have the possibility to throw on a table generating rendom events even the GM isn't able to plan before. Hence Maid RPG is one of the tabletops tending most to random event plots.

* Deeply weird experimental short film ''Film/UnChienAndalou'' (1928) is probably the UrExample. There's a scene where a man slices a woman's eyeball open. A man in a nun's habit is run down in the street by a truck, after finding a severed hand on a sidewalk. A man has a huge hole in his palm that ants are crawling out of. A man gives a second man two books, which turn into two guns, which he uses to shoot the first man. And some other stuff happens, too.

* ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland''. Alice falls down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, and just sort of keeps bumping into odd characters. That's it. The adaptations, on the other hand, usually try to give her a reason for being there or make those random encounters not-so-random after all. Arguably the weakest parts of the Creator/TimBurton [[Film/AliceInWonderland2010 sequel]] [[Film/AliceThroughTheLookingGlass films]] are when they wander away from the whimsical randomness and kick off the tacked-on ChosenOne plot.

* Nearly every episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' in the last ten or so years. Sometimes there's a teeny-tiny thread holding events together. Usually there isn't. RuleOfFunny may or may not apply here.

* ''ComicBook/SupermanAtEarthsEnd''. Go on, try to explain where any of this came from. What was the first apocalypse, who designed the biomechs, what's with the children, the twin clones of Hitler, and the BrokenAesop (Guns are bad, after Superman clearly used guns to solve his problem.) was horrible. And it's part of UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks. The last one should be a turnoff for most people...

* Many [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfAnimation Golden Age cartoons]], not unlike the live-action comedies they paralleled, didn't even bother to have real stories, focusing more on collections of vignettes that set up gags relating to the shorts' general theme. Since the bulk of them were comedies or animated music videos, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this usually worked out fine.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'' likes this.

* An InUniverse example in ''Literature/MostlyHarmless'': Bartledan literature is supposed to be the greatest in the galaxy, but Arthur can't get into it because the Bartledanians have no hopes or desires, and therefore from a human perspective their books aren't ''about'' anything; stuff just happens. In one of them, the main character ''dies'', with no real set-up, two thirds of the way through and random stuff continues to happen without him.
** The original ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' itself is a straight example. The book's story starts with Arthur and Ford narrowly escaping the Earth moments before its destruction, and then describes a variety of strange things that happened to them after abandoning it, without any overarching narrative connecting them.

* In Creator/RobertEHoward's Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian stories, often Conan deals with several unrelated perils. "Literature/ShadowsInTheMoonlight" has him face an ape-man, EldritchAbomination statues that come to life, and {{pirate}}s. Generally carried off by sheer vigor.
* ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye:'' The plot can basically be summed up as "teenager gets expelled from boarding school, bums around New York for a few days before he has to go home and tell his parents." Along the way he meets some friends, meets a prostitute, meets some nuns, goes on a date, etc. Each pair of chapters winds up feeling like its own short story.
* The ''Literature/GreyGriffins'' book series. The kid heroes encounter goblins that attack them in the forest, portals that show up at convenient times to warp them away - or into - danger, zombies in a graveyard, and a bunch of DeusExMachina rescues. It's pretty fun, too, but definitely random. The events are somewhat related to the main evil that's out there, but what exactly that evil causes is definitely a bunch of random threats all over the place. One of the co-authors mentions in his public school appearances "the importance of keeping your story unpredictable." No kidding!\\
On the other hand, the randomness can really get out of hand and feel like [[AssPull Ass Pulls]] galore whenever they're not used because the author randomly thought this or that might make a cool place to take the story, even if it makes no sense.

* ''WesternAnimation/TitanicTheLegendGoesOn'' strongly suggests the guy who pitched it wasn't even aware that the Titanic disaster was an actual thing that happened. Plot elements and random-ass shit come out of nowhere, including an occasion where a character responds to an expression of gratitude by breaking out into a completely irrelevant rap song. It suggests nothing so much as that the creators played an old adventure game to figure out how to make the movie; "To make a BLOCKBUSTER HIT, you'll need A STAR-CROSSED ROMANCE, TALKING ANIMALS, WACKY HIJINX, and A RAP SONG to show we're hip with the kids."

* ''Film/TwinkleTwinkleLittleStar'', the 1980s Creator/ShawBrothers parody of Franchise/StarWars, which begins with a pair of bumbling detectives investigating alleged UFO sightings, Cherie Chung's character being hit on by her flirting boss, and the sudden, unexpected appearance of a Darth Vader expy assaulting the cast with a LaserSword. It... needs to be seen to be believed.