Basic Trope: Whenever there's a set of objectives, the villains and the heroes will always bump into each other while completing said objectives.
- Straight: Alice and Emperor Evulz, when chasing after a MacGuffin's location, always meet up and fight over the same clue.
- Exaggerated: Emperor Evulz had thousands of possibilities of clues to look for, as did Alice. But no - they unwittingly choose to follow the same objective. Every single time.
- Downplayed: There are many clues out there. Alice and Emperor Evulz clash over more of them than random chance would dictate, but there are also many they hunt down without opposition from each other.
- Justified:
- Emperor Evulz is trying to hamper Alice's progress.
- There is a logical order to the clues that Alice and Emperor Evulz follow.
- We always see Alice and Emperor Evulz fighting over clues, because those are interesting. Most days they're working towards different clues and nothing of interest happens, so it's all off-screen.
- Each MacGuffin is found when it activates a pre-programmed beacon, and they only do so one by one. Alice and Evulz are thus detecting the same beacons at the same time, making it almost inevitable that they come into conflict over each one.
- Inverted: No matter how hard the two try, Emperor Evulz and Alice can never manage to meet when trying to find the MacGuffin.
- Subverted:
- Emperor Evulz stumbles upon Alice finding clues to the MacGuffin's location twice. On the third time, though, he just says "Screw it" and goes to find another clue...
- Evulz seems to be trying to be fighting for the same clue, but then he gets a Plot Coupon...and promptly destroys it. He was actually just trying to stop Alice and was presenting their encounters as an unlikely coincidence as misdirection.
- Double Subverted: .
- ...but goes back to that same clue's spot, while Alice is still there.
- That was actually a fake Plot Coupon, Evulz has the real one and is in fact following the same trail.
- Parodied: Emperor Evulz and Alice are following two different sets of clues to two entirely different sets of MacGuffins. These clues point them to the same places in the same order at the same times.
- Zig Zagged: Emperor Evulz stumbles upon Alice finding clues to the MacGuffin's location twice, and leaves to find another clue on the third time, but goes back to the same clue's location while Alice is still there, but goes to find another clue when he finds that he went to the same location (he had a slip in memory), and manages to go to another clue that Alice isn't at, but wait, there's Alice walking up to the clue...
- Averted: Emperor Evulz and Alice never bump into each other.
- Enforced: "We want it to be clear Emperor Evulz is looking for these clues, too, so let's have him and Alice meet up when she gets close to one."
- Lampshaded: "Evulz, I know that you want these clues, but seriously, why do you keep on bumping into the same ones I'm trying to get?''
- Invoked: In order to fulfill a particularly nasty Batman Gambit, Emperor Evulz has spies to see which clues Alice is going to check out so he could meet her there.
- Exploited: Evulz starts to head to the next MacGuffin on his list- then thinks better of it and skips that one heading to the next one on the list and bringing an extra helping of mooks and firepower. If Alice is going for the things in the same order he is, why not set a trap?
- Defied: Alice makes sure to know which clues Emperor Evulz is going to look at so she doesn't bump into him.
- Discussed: "If we're going after this MacGuffin, we'd better assume Evulz is too. We always seem to bump into each other over this stuff."
- Conversed: ???
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