History Main / ContrivedCoincidence

Too many contrived coincidences may result in OneDegreeOfSeparation. For a more grandiose or plot-wrapping version, see DeusExMachina. A person who is a WeirdnessMagnet tends to be a walking contrived coincidence. Often, these can disguise a GambitRoulette as ThePlan. If the story's premise is this trope or relies on it, it's ItBeganWithATwistOfFate instead. FramingTheGuiltyParty invokes this trope when the one doing the framing didn't know that party was already guilty.

Compare with DoomMagnet. See also FridgeLogic (or NotMyDriver), for the moment the character realizes this trope.

* In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', Fate magic specialises in this. Low-level spells can give you small strokes good luck (like finding a 20$ bill) or bad luck (dropping your wallet in a puddle), mid-level spells can find you that thing you need in a haystack, and high-level spells can outright cause any physically possible non-supernatural event in their area, no matter how improbable. Young person getting a heart attack? Check. Finding a winning lottery ticket? Check. [[Literature/BloodRites Having a frozen turkey fall from a passing plane and stake the vampire you're fighting?]] Put enough oomph into the spell and you get it.

** ContrivedCoincidence/PhineasAndFerb

->''"I don't mean to spoil the party, but does anyone else notice that we're stuck in the middle of the ocean on this couch? I mean, it's not like a big giant ship is just gonna come out of nowhere and save us– MY GOSH!!"''

* ''VisualNovel/C14Dating'': This is how Hendrik and Rosemarie, two members of the excavation team, met. Hendrik and Rosemarie's first meeting. After a fight with her girlfriend with who she also lived, Rosemarie decided to stay at a friend's place at have good cry there. She showed up in front of the right door, but on the wrong floor and noticed her mistake only when Hendrik opened his door. Since Rosemarie had already gotten the crying part of her plan started, she already had a bad case of Your Makeup Is Running and Hendrik offered her to use his sink to fix it before going to her friend's. Hendrik had brought work home, Rosemarie noticed on the way to the sink and an unexpected networking opportunity was born.

->''"I don't mean to spoil the moment, but has anyone else noticed that we're stranded in the middle of the ocean on this couch? I mean, it's not as if a big giant ship is going to come out of nowhere and save us– MY GOSH!!"''

* In a RunningGag in ''Machinima/FinalFantasyTrilogy'', [[spoiler:Sabin, Setzer and Terra]] survive their falls off Narshe's cliffs by landing on [[spoiler:Relm, Relm's corpse and Strago]] respectively.

* In ''Machinima/CouriersMindRiseOfNewVegas'', The Courier notices that both sides of the "NO VACANCY" sign in Novac [[SignsOfDisrepair are damaged in such a way]] that they both say "NO VAC." The Courier supposes that whoever found the place probably intentionally damaged one side of the sign in such a way for the sake of publicity.

** In the third case of the second game: [[spoiler:a circus ringmaster goes to meet with someone, instead his daughter's place. He just so happens to borrow your defendant's cloak. The murderer drops what just so happens to be a bronze bust of your client on the ringmaster, killing him. The bust just so happens to snag on the cloak when he pulls it up, and to a witness from exactly the right spot, it looks like your client is flying away from the corpse - and flying just so happens to be your client's signature magic trick]].

** Apollo's entire life story. Born abroad to a magician and a musician, his father dies and his mother is unable to find him, eventually going back home and having another child with her colleague. He spends some time abroad with a foster family before somehow ending up in the American foster system, meeting his best friend. He then becomes apprentice to a distinguished attorney. Sounds normal enough, except fast forward fifteen or so years, and [[spoiler: he ends up under the tutelage of Phoenix, who's been planning to ruin his mentor Kristoph's life after Kristoph ruined his seven years ago. Phoenix was disbarred because of presenting forged evidence during his defense of Zak, Apollo's mother's second husband, and has adopted Trucy, Apollo's half-sister. Their mother Thalassa, thought dead, turns up amnesiac and blind as a witness in a case they're handling. Apollo's best friend Clay is murdered in a chain of events that end up acquitting Simon Blackquill and help usher in the end of the Dark Age of the Law. And let's not get started on how the time he spent in Khura'in affects the revolution that happens in the sixth game]]. To be fair, though, Apollo himself isn't aware of his biological family being so close to him; Phoenix knows but is deliberately keeping it from him.
** The final case in ''Apollo Justice'' is full of this. To recap, [[spoiler:Kristoph Gavin gives Drew Misham a stamp that is laced with atroquinine, to ensure he would be silenced before being able to talk about the forgery Kristoph ordered. However, Kristoph happened to pick a stamp that depicts Vera Misham's favourite magicians, so Drew ends up not using the stamp, and instead keeping it in a frame. Fast forward seven years (and a trial that ends up sending Kristoph to prison) later, and Drew decides to send a letter to Kristoph. However, he doesn't have a stamp so he decides to use the one he had framed... so he ends up dead. At the same time, Phoenix Wright is trying to introduce the juror system to court and finds out about Drew's death. He picks that case to test the system so that he could implicate Kristoph in his murder, as well as the aforementioned forgery that got Phoenix disbarred... and succeeds. All because of a man that picked the wrong stamp, and another man that forgot to buy a spare stamp]].

* Subverted in ''VisualNovel/{{Canvas 2}}''; it's implied that Kiri started working at Nadesico precisely ''because'' Hiroki worked there and she wanted to see him again.

* ''VisualNovel/C14Dating'': This is how Hendrik and Rosemarie, two members of the excavation team, met. After a fight with her girlfriend, Rosemarie went to visit a friend to literally cry on her shoulder. She showed up in front of the right door, but on the wrong floor and noticed her mistake only when Hendrik opened his door. Since Rosemarie had already gotten the crying part of her plan started, she already had a bad case of YourMakeupIsRunning and Hendrik offered her to use his sink to fix it before going to her friend's. Hendrik had brought work home, Rosemarie noticed on the way to the sink and an unexpected networking opportunity was born.

* ''VisualNovel/ALittleLilyPrincess'': The route focusing on Sara's maid Mariette adds an extra layer to the case of this trope that exists in [[Literature/ALittlePrincess the source material]]: [[spoiler:on top of the seminar's new neighbor searching for Sara to give her a large inheritance, preparations to move to France to follow one the leads results in his household looking to hire a French maid and getting Sara's former one]].

-->They say it's your birthday!\\

** A month long arc in which Garfield and Odie end up lost concludes with the two ending up in a pet shop, [[https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1986/09/26 which Jon ends up walking into]]. [[https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1986/09/27 After leaving the shop]], Jon comments on what a coincidence it was, saying he never would've thought to look for them there. This leaves Garfield to begin wondering why Jon went to the pet shop then, before [[ReplacementGoldfish immediately deciding]] [[YouDontWantToKnow he didn't want to know]].

** A month long arc in which Garfield and Odie end up lost concludes with the two ending up in a pet shop, which Jon ends up walking into. After leaving the shop, Jon comments on what a coincidence it was, saying he never would've thought to look for them there. This leaves Garfield to begin wondering why Jon went to the pet shop then, before [[ReplacementGoldfish immediately deciding]] [[YouDontWantToKnow he didn't want to know]].

* In this page's image, ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' [[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4eH85PUPAHk/TWBQVUWOrhI/AAAAAAAAB7E/dlpuINAMY4E/s1600/bill2.gif gave us]] the story of a jet whose engines explode "for no reason" and falls out of the sky, a half-million-ton freight train jumping the tracks after hitting a penny on the rails at 80mph, and a shift in the Earth's tectonic plates all heading for the same spot - the house of Farmer Brown, who is unaware of a gas leak as he attempts to light his stove.

* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' [[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4eH85PUPAHk/TWBQVUWOrhI/AAAAAAAAB7E/dlpuINAMY4E/s1600/bill2.gif gave us]] the story of a jet whose engines explode "for no reason" and falls out of the sky, a half-million-ton freight train jumping the tracks after hitting a penny on the rails at 80mph, and a shift in the Earth's tectonic plates all heading for the same spot - the house of Farmer Brown, who is unaware of a gas leak as he attempts to light his stove.
-->''[[OhCrap "His eye twitches involuntarily."]]''

* In ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', there were all of three students with magical talent attending Fuyuki High School. But two of them became close friends despite having no knowledge of the other's double life. (It was about a year before they realized the truth.)

* In every single telling of ''Literature/TheLittleMermaid'', including the [[Disney/TheLittleMermaid Disney version]], after the mermaid loses her voice and becomes human, the first human she encounters is always the prince, who just so happens to be wandering around at the time. And it's never a lowly fisherman, a villager, or even someone with shady intentions; it's ''always'' the prince, just for the sake of moving the story forward. The Disney version somewhat justifies this by implying the beach Eric's castle is located in is the one that's closest to Atlantica.