[[{{Deadpool}} http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Deadpool2000.jpg]]
[[caption-width:275:...that it was all part of a [[RedSkiesCrossover random tie-ins event!]]]]
->''"Now let's explore the improbable chain of events that led to this amusing yet tragic farce."''
-->-- '''Ray''', ''TheSimpsons'', "Don't Fear the Roofer"

->''"Every story gets to have a really big coincidence and here's ours..."''
-->-- '''Narrator''', ''GeorgeOfTheJungle''

In order to keep a story moving, things need to happen a certain way. Sometimes everything is carefully set up and orchestrated, so that events unfold in an organic, natural fashion. More often than not, though, things happen the way they do simply BecauseDestinySaysSo.

There's just one tiny little problem with that theory: Sometimes, Destiny ''doesn't'' explicitly say so.

ContrivedCoincidence describes a highly improbable occurrence in a story which is required by the plot, but which has absolutely no outward justification -- not so much as a character saying ThereAreNoCoincidences. The concept of "destiny" is glossed over altogether, and the events in question are simply disguised as mere happenstance. This would be jarring, but most of the time no attention is drawn to the event at all. It's just a narrative convention designed to skip over lots of irrelevant stuff by putting the important events all together, leaving the audience to forget the improbability of the event.

For example, when two characters are separated in a huge battle involving millions of combatants, they will bump into each other again just in time for one to save the other's life. This is not highlighted as an example of destiny or fortuity in any way, and in fact the improbability of the two people meeting again at such a convenient moment is ignored altogether.

In many an action/adventure show or movie, the protagonists are introduced to at the very beginning or portrayed to retain various gadgets that [[EigenPlot invariably play perfectly into a dire situation]] [[ChekhovsGun they find themselves in later on]]. It has the potential to be reasonable, such as bringing hiking equipment to a mountainous terrain mission, but more often than not it's just a flat-out {{Asspull}}. Honestly, what ''didn't'' Batman [[CrazyPrepared "just so happen to" carry]] in that little belt of his? (For that matter, [=RPGs=] and {{Adventure game}}s are particularly common offenders, as inventory coincidences are often used to [[RuleOfFun maintain the progression of gameplay]].)

It's not Destiny, it's not By Design; heck, the writer may not even bother [[HandWave calling it a coincidence]]. It ''just happens''. [[BellisariosMaxim Deal with it and move on.]]

In cases where the coincidence ''is'' acknowledged, it's likely a LampshadeHanging.

Can be {{justified}} to a limited extent by the AnthropicPrinciple (see also [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle The Other Wiki]]). Unlikely coincidences are bound to happen once in a while. Exceptional things don't happen to the main characters ''because'' they are main characters; rather, they are designated main characters ''because'' exceptional things happen to them.

Make note that this is one of the most pervasive tropes out there. Just about any work of fiction, no matter how excruciatingly well-written, is sure to use this as much as they are allowed.

For a more grandiose or plot-wrapping version, see DeusExMachina. See also FridgeLogic for the moment it sinks in, and NotMyDriver for the vehicular version.

ItsASmallWorldAfterAll is a subtrope of this. So is the variant of FramingTheGuiltyParty where the one doing the framing didn't know that party was guilty. Too many contrived coincidences may result in OneDegreeOfSeparation.
----
!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime ]]

*A couple of characters in ''Starblazers'' (''UchuuSenkanYamato'') are on Titan being chased by an alien mook. One of the characters comes across a blaster lying on the ground and shoots the mook with it. After doing so, he notices that the blaster belongs to his brother, who was thought to have been KIA in the area. (His brother's abandoned ship is also close by.) It would have been quite a stroke of luck for ''anybody'' to stumble upon these items after landing on a random area of the planet, much less the missing pilot's ''own brother''...
**The fact that the main (human) heroine of the series is a [[IdenticalStranger dead lookalike]] for (the alien queen) Starsha and her sister is also an unexplained and apparently random coincidence.
* ''KeroroGunsou'' uses it for humor in episode 37, pointing out the four different coincidences (including one that seems to have nothing to do with anything) that just so happen to resolve the plot in exactly the right way.
-->'''Narrator:''' Eh? Why did this happen? Well... we can't help it now that it's done with.
* ''ElfenLied'', both fortunately and unfortunately, happens to be chock full of this trope. This is basically the reason why all of the characters meet in the first place, as the chances for these select few individuals encountering one another (especially Lucy and Kouta) is next to impossible.
* In ''RoseOfVersailles'', Rosalie [[spoiler: sees her foster mother get run over by a carriage being driven by the noblewoman who is none other than her birth mother. Continuing the stretch of crazy coincidences, Rosalie meets Oscar when attempting to prostitute herself, then meets Oscar again later when she mistakes Oscar's home for Versailles. Rosalie just can't avoid the contrived coincidence...]].
*While a lot of things can be [[{{Handwave}} explained]] by Lelouch using his Geass off screen, the second episode of the second season is just a little convenient [[spoiler:Lelouch having lost his memory, decides to go gambling in a skyscraper that just happens to be at the start of a street that goes straight to the Chinese consulate, the skyscraper also exactly tall enough to be stretched out along the street, has a spacy ventilation shaft inside it which would protect people in the unlikely event that it would topple over... Starting to guess what's going to happen?]]
** The first season's episode 22 is just as bad. [[spoiler: See my mind control eye? I can make you do anything, all of which being horribly bad for everyone involved, and none of them funny, even though I'm trying to make a joke. It would be horrible if my power forced you to do one of them, now - er... Whoops?]]
* The film ''TokyoGodfathers'' has quite a bit of this, to the point of being a plot point. One of the main characters repeatedly mentions that the baby they've found is a gift from God, and we see many times that she might be what's making everything fall into place so perfectly.
* In ''MaisonIkkoku'', Kyoko just happens to walk by when Kozue tricks Godai into a goodbye kiss--which turns out to be a turning point in the series.
* The second episode of ''SailorMoon R'' reunites the Sailor Senshi for another season of adventure. How does it do this? The bad guys stage a fake casting call for a TV show and out of untold millions of girls, they just happen to completely randomly stumble upon four of the five Senshi and the best friend (and favored VictimOfTheWeek) of the fifth. Let it be noted that it wasn't even as though the bad guys chose these people based on some vague explanation of them having a ton of energy or whatever. It was the original TV staff that just happened to choose them.
** Kaorinite (from SailorMoon S) explains that the senshi's powers orchestrate events so that senshi are always close to a place of a future attack. This makes sense given that just five senshi (nine for outerplanetary attacks) have to protect a planet.
* In the very first episode of ''WitchHunterRobin'', the eponymous character shows up at a warehouse where the squad is fighting a witch and saves the day, with no explanation for why she happened to go there. No one ever comments on it.
* ''MobileSuitGundam'' - The kid who finds a prototype mobile suit turns out to be a powerful psychic. In five different wars.
* In ''MacrossFrontier'', the three characters in the primary LoveTriangle have the amazing ability to randomly run into each other where ever they go, in a city that's home to millions of people. Even when a character decides to randomly visit places they've never been before, the other two happen to show up there as well.
*’’MahouSenseiNegima’’ is filled with numerous contrieved coincidences. Among some samples:
**The first student to find out about Negi’s secret, Asuna, [[spoiler:is not only a magic world princess who [[LaserGuidedAmnesia had her memories of her past wiped out]], but it appears that she is also [[LongLostRelative Negi’s aunt]].]]
**Nodoka, after receiving her Pactio card, just happens to be walking by when she overhears Chamo and Asuna discuss how the card can be used to summon magical items. This starts a series of events (and other coincidences) that results in Nodoka not only discovering her Pactio ability of MindReading, but also discovering that Negi is actually a mage.
***Interestingly enough, this isn’t the only time Nodoka was walking by when Negi, Asuna, and Chamo are discussing important stuff, as this also happens first when Negi tells Asuna about his past, and later when Negi invites Asuna to go with him to the Magic World during summer break.
**[[spoiler: When Negi and his crew arrive at the Magic World, the gatepost that they enter from just happens to be the same some that is targeted for an attack by Fate]]
**[[spoiler: In the Magic World arc, during prepariations for an attempt to rescue their friends and return back to their home, Negi, Nodoka, and Asuna (or more specifically [[MasterOfDisguise one of Fate’s Ministra Magi disguised as Asuna)]] reunite with Yue, who wasn’t kidnapped by Fate as they originally thought, but rather [[LaserGuidedAmnesia suffered amnesia]], studied magic, and became part of a group of Valkyrie who are on patrol duty during the festival that Negi’s group were using as a meet-up place]].
* In {{Monster}}, Johan Liebert is able to find another family named Liebert, who lost a son named Johan, who would be the same age that he is, allowing him to slip right into the community. This is after meeting a family named Liebert as a child who named him Johan. Fortunately, it's a fairly common name in RealLife.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* This troper has gone his entire life without seeing a crime that would require him to step in to help. No superhero, particularly one who has resolved to give up his cape, can last a day without seeing someone being mugged in an alley, or stumbling across a burning building with a woman screaming for help from a window.
**Brian Garfield realized this when writing a sequel novel to Death Sentence: "Long ago Paul [the Vigilante] had learned not to waste time in fruitless search for felons in the act of committing crimes; the odds were too long. A robbery took place in the city every three minutes.....but it was an enormous city and there were three million potential victims".
*** Some superheroes, like Batman, don't stumble upon things as often as set out to find them and have all sorts of explained ways of knowing how to do that.
Paul Benjamin, besides using himself as bait, comes up with the idea of shadowing the court houses. After all, criminals often are repeat offenders who have to show up for parole hearings, methadone treatment, etc. So, he tails them from the court house. See page 56
* If you are a superhero, then someone you know will [[StuffedIntoTheFridge be murdered horribly]], or [[ContagiousPowers develop superpowers]], or at least have some slightly odd be seemingly innocuous problem that will be intimately connected with a supervillain's latest {{Evil Plan}}. If you're lucky, this will be because your enemies know who you are and are targeting them because of the connection. Probably not though.
* A recent ''{{Superman}}/{{Batman}}'' story featured Jor-El using a probe to take the mind of a human to Krypton, so he could ask what kind of planet Earth was. The human he selected went on to use the advanced technology of the probe as the basis of a great company called Wayne Enterprises. AndNowYouKnowTheRestOfTheStory.
** In the very first Batman/Superman crossover, Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne happen to take a cruise at the same time and are coincidentally assigned to be roommates. [[FridgeLogic Why Wayne can't afford a single occupancy cabin or, for that matter, his own cruise liner]], is unexplained. They are both in the cabin at the same time, changing into costume, when a bright ray of light beams through a port hole, lighting up the room and revealing the two superheroes' to each other.
*** And Lois Lane wound up on the same cruise, because [[UnfortunateImplications a female passenger chickened out at the beginning]]. Apparently only one person disappeared from the cruise, so Clark couldn't be given his own room.
**** A later comic [[RetCon RetCons]] this story, saying that due to an overbooking error, there are only two rooms to share between Clark, Bruce, and Lois, and obviously Lois isn't going to share a bed with either of them.
* This deliberately happend in ''Cable & {{Deadpool}}''. In the wake of ''[[CrisisCrossover House of M]]'' Deadpool was was searching for the real Cable trapped somewhere in an alternative timeline. But ''just as'' he teleported to the real world with the real Cable, Scarlet Witch had [[CosmicRetcon changed the real world into her image]], thus the middle aged Cable was transported into a baby (ItMakesSenseInContext). And despite everything changing to normal, baby Cable stayed as a baby (but not for long). It was all to being sold as a tie-in to House of M, and apart from some breath issues forward it didn't do much for the plot.
* YTheLastMan - The most successful human cloning scientist in the United States happens to be a woman who [[spoiler: is the daughter of another scientist who may or may not have wiped out all the men in the world except him and Yorick and he tested on Yorick's monkey, Ampersand, who was probably the reason Yorick survived the {{gendercide}} and Yorick happened to get Ampersand through a shipping error because it was next to the monkey Yorick was supposed to get but didn't because they both escaped and the shipping guys didn't know which was which.]] There are plenty more, but I'd have to reread the entire series and double the page length to get them all.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* ''IndependenceDay'' has loads of this, being a massive {{Homage}} to old disaster and sci-fi movies, which were also loaded with this. To take just one of the many examples, WillSmith, an astronaut wannabe and the only fighter jock to survive an attack on his base, who has shot down an alien fighter and captured its pilot, just happens to crash nearly in front of a convoy of refugees who happen to be going in the general direction of Area 51, which Will just happened to notice in the middle of a dogfight.
** Don't forget he was walking towards the refugee convoy and, therefore, AWAY from Area 51!
* LampshadeHanging in ''TheGreatMuppetCaper'': When Miss Piggy is stranded and needs to get across town in time to foil a museum heist, a motorcycle just happens to drop off a passing box van, to which she remarks, "What an ''unbelievable'' coincidence!"
* In ''StarWars Episode IV'', the odds of Luke meeting up with childhood friend Biggs at the Rebel base (as shown in the Special Edition) is next to nothing -- as the two characters themselves acknowledge earlier in the film (this part of the footage was not restored). All six films are riddled with bizarre ItsASmallWorldAfterAll moments, starting with the two droids just happening to be brought to the Lars homestead. There's some justification, since "There's no such thing as luck," and ''[[KnightsOfTheOldRepublic KOTOR]]'' lampshades the matter by having most Jedi characters interpret the ''massive'' coincidences and unlikely happenings coming their way as [[BecauseDestinySaysSo part of the Will of the Force]].
-->'''Mission:''' "Wow. What are the chances of that happening?"
-->'''Canderous:''' "Remember, we're talking about the Force here. At this point, Malak himself could drop out of the sky, and I wouldn't bat an eyelash."
-->'''Mission:''' "Good point."
* Quite a bit of it goes down in ''{{Crash}}'', most conspicuously the car crash scene with the cop and the woman he had molested earlier.
* In ''{{Borat}}'', the titular character falls for Pam Anderson at first sight, but doesn't wish to cheat on his wife. A few hours later, Borat receives a letter telling that his wife is dead. High five! And even later, he happens to meet her in person!
* {{Toku}}satsu action film ''Casshern'' literally runs on this in almost every single scene, with the broken lightning bolt from a giant mountaintop statue accidentally landing in a scientist's mystical Neo-Cell soup and reanimating a bunch of dismembered body parts into the baddass Shinzo-Ningen...who then just happen to stumble during their escape into the funeral of the scientist's dead war-hero son and kidnap his mother and then just happen to find a giant war factory in the middle of ''nowhere'' with an army of robots for them to use...while the scientist resurrects his dead son whose expanded musculature can only be contained by a super-suit coincidentally designed by the scientist dad of his girlfriend... and that's only the beginning! The only excuse this movie has for ''any'' of it is its stylized weirdness and the epic, Gotterdammerung-esque tone that hints that, though not explicitly stated, literal DeusExMachina may be involved. After all, that was a hell of a convenient lightning bolt.
* In ''Vantage Point'', watching the Contrived Coincidences come together is half the fun. The other half is figuring out the stinking XanatosRoulette.
* In ''TheFifthElement'', the taxi Leeloo falls into just happens to be that of the ex-special forces major who was chosen to bring back the four elemental stones.
* Receives a LampshadeHanging in ''George of the Jungle'', with the narrator's line, "Every story has a really big coincidence and here's ours..."
* ''MusicAndLyrics'': Alex is a musician and former pop-band singer/songwriter who has been commissioned to write a pop song for a current pop queen, but only ever wrote the music and can't write lyrics. Sophie, the girl who waters his plants, turns out to be a budding lyrical prodigy. What a happy coincidence!
* Not every nasty turn of events in ''TheDarkKnight'' can be chalked up to [[XanatosRoulette the Joker's work]]. In particular, there is the moment when Harvey Dent [[spoiler:gets half his face neatly burned off, and the same fire renders one side of his trick quarter distinct from the other. This was well after he'd earned the nickname "Two-Face."]]
** Also, [[spoiler: if that quarter turned up the wrong side when Joker talked Harvey into "introducing a little bit of chaos," the third act of the movie would not have happened.]]
*** Well, at least there was a 50% chance of that happening.
* In ''Lantana'' the number of coincidences builds up to become a theme. All of the major characters bump into each other randomly.
** Taken further in the original play, ''Speaking in Tongues''. In the first act, Leon and Jane's tryst takes place simultaneously with Sonja and Pete, and with nearly all the same dialogue. This occurs again when Sonja and Pete confess their near-affair to Leon and Jane only to find that their spouse cheated on them. In later acts, it is revealed that Sarah is having an affair with John behind her therapist/his wife's back, and that Leon, the detective investigating Valerie's disappearance, ran into Sarah's ex-boyfriend while jogging. In the film, Sarah is changed into a male gay client of Valerie's who she wrongly suspects of having an affair with her husband.
* In ''StarTrekXI'', no attempt is made to explain the immense improbability of [[spoiler: Kirk running into Spock Prime in a cave on the ice planet and thereby getting the exposition he needs to save the day.]] The {{novelization}} {{lampshades}} it by suggesting that the timeline is attempting to restore itself.
* ''LegallyBlonde'' gets it's ''ending'' from one of these. Seriously, the main character wins the case with her knowledge of ''perms'', which was the key to unraveling the alibi of the real murderer. If the killer had had any other hairstyle, or had at least not gotten a perm that day, she'd have gotten off scot-free.
* ''RunLolaRun is [[spoiler: one long LampshadeHanging, hung on variations on a [[ForWantOfANail theme]]]].
* In [[TheTerminator Terminator 2]], a film which argues that there is no fate but what we make for ourselves, all the main characters just so happen to crash all at once into the one place where the T-1000 might be destroyed.
* In {{Hackers}}, a hacker breaks into a massive corporate supercomputer with zillions of files. The directory he picks at random to copy as a "trophy" turns out to be a worm belonging to the villain.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

*Pick a Charlotte Bronte novel. Any novel.
** ''JaneEyre'': When Jane, penniless and homeless, passes out in the middle of a field, it just so happens to be on the property of her long lost cousins. Also, right before she's planning on leaving for India with St. John, she just happens to hallucinate someone calling her name, making her go back to Mr. Rochester and his burnt down house. And we cannot forget the mysterious rich uncle who bequeathed her the money necessary for her to marry Rochester "as an equal".
***The first ''ThursdayNext'' novel, ''The Eyre Affair'', does an ExternalRetcon on many of these, revealing that before Thursday's tampering ''Jane Eyre'' was a largely contrivance-free book with a DownerEnding.
**** Even ''The Eyre Affair'' offers no explanation for the fact that Jane ended up getting taken in by the Rivers family.
*** Jane is not "hallucinating" someone calling her name. In the novel's universe, Rochester is calling Jane mentally. It sounds like a hallucination to modern readers, but in the 1840s many people, even scientists, believed that such a thing could happen.
** ''Villette'' is an even worse offender. British heroine Lucy Snowe goes to work at a school for girls in some French-type country (most likely Belgium), and it so happens to be the school where her god-brother serves as a doctor. Also, her potential romance with Dr. John is stopped abruptly when the woman in France he mysteriously rescues from a burning theatre happens to be the former ward of Dr. John's mother. From England.
** Let's not forget ''Shirley,'' in which Shirley Keeldar's governess also turns out to be Caroline Helstone's [[spoiler:mother.]]
* CharlesDickens was the Grand Champion of [[LukeIAmYourFather coincidentally plunking long lost relatives together in convoluted plots.]] In fact, it would probably be easier to list the books of his that ''don't'' employ this type of plot twist...
** Not to mention the fact that at one point the ''entire denouement'' of his ''DavidCopperfield'' hinges on Mr Micawber a] just happening to be in Canterbury, and b] just happening to walk past the Heeps' door (which is of course c] wide open due to nice weather) on d] the one day - and hour - that David has been invited to tea within. This, in a book that already depends pretty heavily on characters just happening to run into one another, frequently on the streets of London, then as now one of the biggest and busiest urban metropolises in the world.
** Thus this trope is OlderThanRadio.
* Thomas Hardy did this a lot as well - The dénouement of ''[[TessOfTheDUrbervilles Tess of the D'Urbervilles]]'' required the titular character to run into the man who raped her earlier in the book, while yomping across Dorset, in just the state of mind to consider taking up with him again, and, by the way, he's given up being a country gentleman to be an itinerant preacher in the intervening time...
* ''{{Dracula}}''. Dracula's first victim upon his arrival in England happens to be the best friend of the fiance of the solicitor whom he left for dead in Transylvania. Oh, and she's also beloved by three young suitors, all of whose skills come in handy later, and one of whom is the protege of [[TheObiWan Professor Van Helsing]], probably the only man in the Victorian world to instantly recognise a vampire attack and know exactly what to do about it. This helps, as the heroes otherwise seem to be clutching the IdiotBall throughout the entire book...
* In ''A ConnecticutYankee in King Arthur's Court'' the titular Yankee's time of execution happens to coincide with a solar eclipse. (Not even to mention that he knew the exact date and time said eclipse would occur despite its status as obscure fourteen-hundred-year-old history.)
** The real coincidence being that he was the kind of person who would calculate all the solar eclipse dates in the past few millenia for fun... ''just'' before getting time warped into the past.
*The narrator of Betty Miles' ''The Real Me'' writes an essay in which she describes such coincidences in the "horse books" girls her age are supposed to love, in which a poor girl who wants a horse conveniently wins one. When the family wonders where they're going to put it, a nice man offers her father a job in the country, and their new house has a big barn out back. You'd expect someone to say "If you expect this whole family to pack up and move [[AmericanCustomaryMeasurements fifty miles]] just because of some damn horse, you're crazy," she says, but "nobody ever says that in horse books".
* The ''WheelOfTime'' books show this trope in spades, starting in the first book (Moiraine and Lan showing up ''right'' before a Trolloc attack, Egwene and Thom just ''happening'' to join the group before they flee, Loial just ''happening'' to be in Caemlyn when Rand and Mat show up, etc.), and never really stopping. This is actually [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in-story: "ta'veren" are people who warp destiny and create freakish coincidences around them just by existing, and the story happens to have three. This also applies to non-plot related coincidences; Rand in particular has trouble with it, as people around him have the tendency to stumble onto buried treasure or fall from ten-story balconies and get up unharmed...or, alternately, have their house burned down (with their neighbors' untouched) or trip over their own feet and break their necks.
* ''LesMiserables'' has some of the more spectacular {{Contrived Coincidence}}s in literature. One example: Marius's grandfather is (apparently) the father of two little bastards by his housemaid; he fires her, but pays her a substantial allowance to support them. When they die, to keep from losing her income, she takes in two children about their ages -- who just happen to be the two youngest Thenardier kids. And when these two are thrown out onto the streets, who do they take up with? Why, Gavroche... who never uses the name "Thenardier", and who's forgotten that he ever had two younger brothers.
**Also, Valjean is being pursued by the police through the alleyways of Paris. He climbs over a wall into a convent. And who's that working as the gardener? Why, it's that guy whose life he saved a few chapters ago! (Parisian population at the time: over 600,000...)
** Another spectacular example: The Thenardiers lure are wealthy man into their home, first to beg for money, later to extract it from him. This man is Jean Valjean, his adopted daughter is Cosette, who has lived with the Thenardiers before. Their neighbour is Marius, who fell in love with Cosette after watching her on the streets of Paris, and whose father was saved by Thenardier at the Battle of Waterloo. When Marius informs the police of the plot, he meets InspectorJavert, who is pursuing Jean Valjean. Additionally, this all happens in exactly the same house Jean Valjean and Cosette had lived in years ago.
** In the film version with Liam Neeson, this is shown to be somewhat more deliberate; the man is crippled in the accident Valjean saves him from, so Valjean uses his mayoral influence to get him the position of gardener at a nunnery in Paris. Whether or not he knew that the building he was sneaking into was a convent, or for that matter that specific convent, well...
* ''[=~The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy~=]'' pokes fun at this a lot. Most famously, when DouglasAdams had his main characters thrown out an airlock into space, he realised ''anything'' that saved their lives at this point would be a ContrivedCoincidence. Rather than {{Handwave}} this, he gave it the biggest [[LampshadeHanging lampshade]] he could think of, by inventing a space drive that creates Contrived Coincidences as a side-effect of its [[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum nonsensoleum]].
* In {{Terry Pratchett}}'s ''{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Guards! Guards!'', it is stated that a chance of one in a million holds true in nine of ten cases. This "universal truth" is later used by a bunch of people in a (failed) attempt to slay a dragon.
*** And then [[spoiler:totally accidentally, when it's a million-to-one chance that they ''won't'' die in the ensuing chaos. Naturally, they're fine]].
** Rincewind's 'entire life' is one Contrived Coincidence after another. Of course this is explained as the interferance of [[strike:Luck]] The Lady herself.
* In the ''YoungWizards'' series this is both {{lampshaded}} and [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by the phrase "There's no such thing as coincidence", meaning that the PowersThatBe and/or {{God}} set things up so they'd happen that way. One example is the fact that whenever Nita and Kit go on anything resembling a vacation, whatever their destination is just happens to be the exact place they need to be in order to fight the [[BigBad Lone Power]].
* [[{{Shakespeare}} The Bard]] is not immune to this. There's no reason at all that Romeo didn't get the message about Juliet's sleeping potion, except to make the story a "tragedy" in the loosest sense of the word. Arthur Laurents, librettist of WestSideStory, was very proud of inventing a more compelling reason the message was lost, as Tony's gang very nearly rapes the messenger. Making this OlderThanSteam.
**In fact, the way Romeo learns of the party (Where he meets Juliet), is because the clown Sir Capulet has entrusted his guest list to can't read, and asked Romeo and Benvolio ot read it for him by chance.
** Baz Luhrmann's 1996 adaptation, ''Romeo + Juliet'', has Romeo hear of Juliet's death and leave Mantua before the letter from Friar Lawrence arrives.
**''The Comedy of Errors'' requires unimaginable coincidences, as do most of Shakey's comedies.
* {{Edgar Rice Burroughs}} (who created {{Tarzan}}, among other things) is another classic example; he was particularly fond of having separated characters be unexpectedly reunited while lost in the middle of thousands of square kilometers of jungle, ocean and/or trackless wasteland.
** A non-Tarzan example is Burroughs' ''[[AtTheEarthsCore At the Earth's Core]]''. The MartyStu main character, after coming to the inner world of {{Pellucidar}} immediately meets a [[DamselInDistress beautiful]] [[TheChick girl]] who happens to be a [[{{Everythings Better With Princesses}} princess]], an old man who happens to be a king, and soon after a young man who happens to be [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking yet another king]]. Needless to say, he will need the help of all these royals and their kingdoms later in the story.
** In ''[[JohnCarterOfMars Gods of Mars]]'', John Carter is talking to a fellow prisoner, who speaks of his father. When John Carter asks who is his father is, he gets to "My father is -- " before they are interrupted. So they get to escape before a third companion calls Carter by name, to get the reaction, "I am his son."
* One could argue that ''TheDresdenFiles'' Knights of the Cross have Contrived Coincidence as a part of their skill-set courtesy of Divine Intervention. A funny example occurs in ''Grave Peril'', when knight Michael prepares to rush out to his wife's rescue despite the fact he has children at home. Lo and behold, his priest comes to the door and begins explaining how his car suddenly broke down on the way home from giving someone a ride before stopping and asking Michael "You need a babysitter again, don't you?"
** It's even better than that: Harry is still skeptical that the contrived coincidence power works, so Michael sighs and opens the door without looking out, just as the priest is about to knock.
* The heroes of SM Stirling's ''Emberverse'' novels are either the beneficiaries of a whole honking string of these, or they are getting very powerful help from somewhere.
* A particularly egregious case of this trope occurs towards the end of ''{{A Clockwork Orange}}'' in which the brainwashed and rehabilitated ex-hoodlum Alex just so happens to bump into every single person he ever wronged throughout the course of the book, all within in the same evening. The consequences were dire.
* Lampshaded in several Peter Wimsey stories, in which Peter discusses with an author the annoying fact that coincidences look contrived in stories, even though they happen all the time in real life.
* {{Starship Troopers}} was obscene about this. Basically, every time the author wanted to drive a point home, he would have something completely incredible or improbable happen to a character. The character who doesn't like his CO: [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin freezes to death in a training exercise]]. Want to justify a biological caste system: [[BrokenAesop have a human woman pull off a 1 in a trillion atmospheric reentry that several SUPERCOMPUTERS in that universe couldn't pull off]], even though the author himself says "specialization is for insects." How to drive the point home that military service is the only way to serve one's country: have ''several'' characters who were COMPLETELY HAPPY with their current lives, and vocal about being anti military, [[EasyEvangelism not only join the service,]] but end up in the exact same company, on the exact same ship, under the exact same command of the main character, so they can give an {{Anvilicious}} speech about how wrong they were to not want to join the military.
* In Lois [=McMaster=] Bujold's ''[[VorkosiganSaga The Vor Game]]'' Miles just happens to get tossed into a jail cell several light years from home with his runaway emperor, later runs into a former Barrayaran general, that he had caused to be cashiered from the service. She then lampshades all the coincidences when Miles runs into yet another old friend, and responds to their surprised "What are you doing here?" with "Somehow, I figured that might be your first question."

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* Many episodes of ''{{Monk}}'' rely on a ContrivedCoincidence to help Monk solve a case, which sometimes results in a EurekaMoment. For example, in the episode "Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame," Monk discovers the killer's identity only because a TV playing a commercial that featured the killer happened to be on while Monk was questioning a suspect.
*Almost every episode of ''{{House}}'' involves an unlikely occurrence at just the right moment for House to realise the solution to his case. For example, in "Here Kitty" he diagnoses his patient with Cushing's. Just before she is about to undergo surgery, the cat she claims predicted her death enters the room and jumps onto House's laptop. This causes him to realise how the cat 'predicted' deaths. She was just trying to keep warm by lying on patients that were feverish or had a heating blanket, making it seem as if she 'knew' they were going to die. [[spoiler: In turn, this causes him to figure out that his patient does not have Cushing's, but cancer of the appendix.]] Another such occurrence is in "Clueless" when he reveals to a clinic patient's wife that her husband is cheating on her and she throws her gold wedding ring down onto the floor. This prompts House to realise that his main patient [[spoiler: was being poisoned by his wife with gold sodium thiamilate.]]
* In both versions of ''LifeOnMars'', the heavy-drinking Gene is shot -- but it turns out he's okay because the bullet hit the flask he keeps in his jacket pocket. "What are the odds of THAT," one of the characters asks; Gene, pulling flasks from several other pockets, says "Pretty good, actually."
* The ''RedDwarf'' episode "Quarantine" features a man-made virus which temporarily gives the "infectee" insane amounts of luck, eventually leading to the use of a rapid string of Contrived Coincidences to save the day.
* It sure was lucky that the ''{{Farscape}}'' crew happened to land on Earth just when Hallowe'en came around, so they could (nearly) get away with being aliens on an earth which had only seen the first StarTrek...
* In {{tokusatsu}} ''[[KamenRiderDenO Kamen Rider Den-O]]'', the TransformationTrinket that Ryoutaro receives in episode one has four coloured buttons, each corresponding to one of his four forms. This despite the fact that he only has ''one'' form at the beginning, and the monsters he goes on to make contracts with for his remaining forms just happen to have the same colour schemes as the remaining buttons. You'd think it wouldn't really matter, but [[SeriousBusiness on some forums, you'd be deadly wrong]].
* On ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', mainly during the first season, the main characters -who mostly lived in different parts of the USA- ran into each other several times, mostly by sheer coincidence. The worst example was when [[spoiler:Hiro, Nathan and Sylar ALL HAPPENED TO STOP TO EAT AT THE SAME ROADSIDE DINNER AT THE SAME TIME]]. Though there has been talk about some characters having a "destiny" in the series, it has not been proven yet. (In fact, history has been changed at least twice.)
** In Season 2, this trope is brought into contrast, as a guy asks the girl he's dating if he is meant to believe that the fact that her father once abducted him as a boy and now she's going out with him is just a coincidence. Having watched the series for so long, it left this troper wondering what was so hard to believe about it. Also probably the only time the word "coincidence" is used in the show.
** In Season 3, Sylar takes a member of the paramilitary group that tried to capture him to a family's house, to do the whole torture his family until the guy cracks routine. For some reason, this house was just down the street from where his father lived, and the son knew where he was. You'd expect that Sylar took the guy to his own family rather than picking one at random, but why he went there and whether they knew the guy isn't clear. Nevertheless, it's obvious that something extremely unlikely happened there, even discounting the son having superpowers and wanting to go on a road trip with Sylar.
** Mohinder's cab. Seriously, it must be the only taxi in New York or something, because whenever a character hails a cab, there he is.
* In the first episode of ''TheTick'''s live action show, The Red Scare, a communist assassin robot built in 1979 and programmed to hunt down and kill Jimmy Carter, is deployed in The City by a group of neo-commies who were trying to reprogram it to kill the postmaster general. Unfortunately, The Tick and Arthur foil them and accidentally activate the robot before the commies could reprogram it. Upon interrogating the communists and learning the latter, Arthur suddenly notices the title of that day's local newspaper. I'll give you three guesses as to what it says, and the latter two do not count.
-->'''The Tick:''' [[spoiler:Jimmy Carter]] is in town? Heavens to Betsy, what are the ''odds''?!
* On ''{{Lost}}'', pretty much all of the passengers of flight 815 have unknowingly crossed paths before meeting on the plane, to the extent that the series also falls into the {{One Degree Of Separation}} trope. For instance, only in season 3 we find out that [[spoiler:Claire and Jack are half siblings; this remains unbeknownst to Claire until her supposed death, while Jack finds out only in S4.]] These past connections eventually end up looking slighlty less contrived now that it's clearly stated that one of the main themes of the show is "destiny".
* Lampshaded in a fourth-season episode of ''TheOC'', where Ryan and Taylor are trapped in an alternate reality. When the two have to split up, Taylor assures Ryan that since it's an alternate reality, they'll "just find each other". Sure enough, they do.
* In the first season of ''[=~24~=]'', Jack Bauer and his [[DamselScrappy annoying]] [[TheKimberly daughter]] wind up in apparently separate dangerous circumstances. Because [[spoiler: this was because the BigBad was intentionally targeting Jack and his family for revenge]], this turns out NOT to be a case of ContrivedCoincidence, and the lack of same makes it seem like rather clever plotting. However, in the second season, Jack and his daughter wind up in [[TrappedByMountainLions completely unrelated dangerous circumstances]] on the same day, apparently because the writers decided not to mess with a [[StrictlyFormula successful formula]] but couldn't be bothered to make it seem remotely plausible.
* On DoctorWho, the Doctor and Donna investigating in the same building simultanously, questioning workers in the same office at the same time, using the same printer, running down parallel streets and parking their transports in the same street without [[HilarityEnsues ever]] [[MissedHimByThatMuch seeing the other]] is portrayed as pure coincidence
**[[spoiler: That is until "Journey's End" went and blamed it all on fate via the TimeyWimeyBall]]
* ''CurbYourEnthusiasm'' practically runs on this--each and every episode will have a good four or five subplots, which inevidably come together at the end to totally and completely screw Larry over. Sometimes it's not that out there, but nine out of ten times the end of an episode is this trope at work.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''FinalFantasyV''. The party needs to cross the ocean. They just so happen to find a cavern used by pirates. They try to steal the ship, and it just so happens that Faris, the goofy male pirate with pink hair, [[spoiler: is pink-haired princess Lenna's long lost ''sister'' Sarisa.]] Which is great timing since Faris needs to be around to [[spoiler: watch her father die and give her a motive to save the world.]]
* ''FinalFantasyVI''. Celes resembles the opera singer Maria closely enough to take her place.
** And is a proficient enough musician to convincingly pass for a ''world-renowned soprano'' after at most a few days of rehearsal.
* ''FinalFantasyVII''. Cloud, a former comrade of Sephiroth (who becomes the BigBad), meets Aeris, who is the [[LastOfHisKind last survivor of her race]] (and just so happens to be the only one able of stopping Sephiroth) and who just happens to be Zack's ex-girlfriend, who was another comrade of Cloud and Sephiroth, and Cloud & Zack were experimented on (as adults) by Hojo in the basement of a mansion in Cloud's childhood hometown, and Hojo turns out to be Sephiroth's father...
** ''CrisisCore'' takes it to a whole new level, with Zack Fair actually meeting many characters seen in the original game, including ''all'' the playable characters who join Cloud's party. Why none of them remember seeing a guy with the same haircut as Cloud carrying the exact same sword...
*** Well, not ''all'' of them, but certainly a majority. All of the playable characters from the original game do run into the protagonists of ''Before Crisis'' though, that NoExportForYou cellphone game prequel to ''FinalFantasyVII.''
* In ''GodOfWar II'', it would appear that every hero in Greece scheduled an appointment with the Fates the same day Kratos did.
** Justified in at least one case (Theseus serves the Fates, so would be around most of the time), and possibly justified in the others if you think of the Fates as being sort of "outside of time."
** Or it could be the Fates are throwing people into his path to stop him.
*** It was actively stated that The Fates freed the Barbarian King from Hades to stop Kratos, Perseus had been trapped in that small room for an indefinite amount of time, and the last Spartan would have set off roughly the same time as Kratos. The only real coincidence is Icarus, and even he looks like he spent so long on that ledge he went mad.
* In Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake starts out with a [[LatexPerfection stunningly realistic mask]] shaped after a GRU officer's face. The mask supposed to be used in an espionage mission that was later scrapped and it would have been thrown away had it not been for the insistence of SIGINT. ''Conveniently,'' the GRU officer happened to be Colonel Volgin's homosexual lover and helped Snake sneak into the high security wing of Groznyj Grad. Note that the mask was given to Snake during a mission that would not (theoretically) involve the GRU or Colonel Volgin.
* Regal from ''TalesOfSymphonia'' manages to keep his true identity secret for almost half of an entire disc. Yes, he emphasizes his role as a criminal to hide it, but the secret would have been revealed if anyone ever mentioned him (and he's well known) using both his first and last name.
** It helps that he never actually ''says'' his full name (before TheReveal)...and that the one person who figured it out (Zelos) decided not to call attention to it.
* ''Phoenix Wright: AceAttorney'' and its sequels run on these. Almost all the cases would be unwinnable if it weren't for at least one witness being in the right place at the right time. Any specific example would be woefully spoileriffic, though.
** Still, here's a particularly egregious one: [[spoiler:A ringmaster goes to meet up with someone, instead of his daughter. He just so happens to borrow your defendant's cloak. The murder drops what just so happens to be a golden 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.]]
*** Note that everyone realizes just how much of a Contrived Coincidence each act is, and even when the evidence supports the ''theory'', actively rebel against anyone accepting it as the truth. In the case of the above spoiler, ''Phoenix himself'' acknowledges that it's incredibly unlikely and damn near impossible, and, in his words, "But that's exactly what happened." ''This happens all the time.''
* In ''Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis'' in one place you need to gather several small blue stones to solve a puzzle. Those stones were removed from the cementary to be used in constructions. For some reason, all of them were used in visible places and not buried under other stones.
* ''{{Earthbound}}'' has a number of these, usually played tongue-in-cheek. The most flagrant example? After the Moonside segment, you receive a phone call from Apple Kid, who tells you that he is sending you his latest invention: a yogurt machine that, as of now, can only make trout-flavored yogurt. Then you are approached by a monkey who lives in a cave in the desert, whose master wants to meet you. Then a delivery man says that he brought the yogurt machine, but lost it in a cave out in the desert. (Yes, the same one.) And then one of the maids from the building you've been trying to enter all this time asks if you could bring her some trout-flavored yogurt. And all of this happens ''in immediate succession''.
* Although not affecting the plot, thistroper was playing in the battle factory in [[Pokemon Pokemon Platinum]] when he encountered an enemy trainer named Hiker [[MetalGearSolid Raiden]]. I really don't know how that happened.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

*''OrderOfTheStick'':
-->'''Elan''': Wow, what were the chances?
-->'''Julio''': Pretty good, considering we wouldn't be having this scene if it didn't forward the plot in some way."
* ''{{Megatokyo}}'' has quite a few of these, most notably the significance of nearly ''every'' member of the Sonoda family (Yuki is Piro's student, Meimi has a hit on Largo, the Inspector knows half the cast and Erika was engaged to his brother). Oddly, the example quoted above is one of the few that can make any sense, if you're willing to believe that Largo actually CAN sense evil (given everything else in the comic, it isn't too far a stretch).
* In ''SluggyFreelance'', Torg accidentally stumbles upon Dr. Steve's laboratory and becomes the object of Oasis's affections. By sheer coincidence, one of his friends is secretly employeed by Steve's old company, Hereti Corp, which is desperately searching for Oasis.
** [[CatchPhrase Well, isn't that ironic?]]
* Lampshaded and subverted in ''{{Digger}}'', when the titular character is told she's [[spoiler:a descendant of Helix, one of the wombats who worked on the chains binding the dead god]]:
--->'''Digger''': What? Me? Isn't that a little...improbable?
--->[[spoiler:'''Helix'': I had eight sons a thousand years ago. You do the math.]]
* ''ElGoonishShive'' has an interesting [[SubvertedTrope subversion]]. During the party, a lightbulb explodes, [[MomentKiller interrupting]] [[spoiler: Susan and Justin's ill-advised hook-up]]. They see this as a [[spoiler: fortunate]] coincidence. [[spoiler: It's actually the Demonic Duck saving their friendship. He owed Justin a favor after a joke went very wrong.]]
*Chapter 3 of ''GunnerkriggCourt''. All the other parts of the comic's GenerationXerox have a reasonable in-universe explanation, but in this chapter Reynardine, attempting to escape from the Court, smashes through several roofs. And one of these roofs just happens to be the dorm of Antimony Carver, the daughter of Rey's old friend Surma. This then gets practically [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] shortly later: Annie tries to find Rey again, but has no idea where he is. Then she finds a train, [[ExpoLabel clearly labeled]] "Secret Train To Large Animal Holding Cells (Very Hush Hush, You Know.)" which naturally takes her straight to Reynardine.
* Cale lampshades the concept in http://www.lfgcomic.com/page/236.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]

* Simon Wood in ''SurvivalOfTheFittest'' version three managing to navigate his way across an entire island and find his girlfriend just in time to rescue her from an attacker.
** To some extent, this also occurs when groups of friends manage to meet up with one another very quickly: the [[DesertedIsland Deserted Islands]] upon which the games take place are rather large, and the odds of meeting your friends that fast are rather slim, to say the least.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* It's a good thing ''ScoobyDoo and co''. never stopped being scared of the fake ghosts, because there's probably not a single episode in which a chase scene didn't by pure blind luck [[ShaggySearchTechnique lead them to a clue they wouldn't have seen otherwise]].
* There was a LampshadeHanging on an episode of ''{{Futurama}}'', where Bender, after having spent quite some time hurtling through space at the speed of light and encountering all sort of circumstances along the way, gets thrown back to his worried friends, Leela and Fry, while they just happened to have started giving up on ever actually finding him. When he lands in front of them with a parachute to somehow slow his descent, Leela in incredible disbelief states, "This is, by a ''wide'' margin the least likely thing that has ever happened." Justified, because actual literal {{God}} was involved.
** Further lampshaded on the commentary when one of the writers notes 'And that's how we wrote our way out of that one'
* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Even though it is unquestionably a CrowningMomentOfAwesome, Azula's conquest of Ba Sing Se [[XanatosRoulette relied on a striking number of coincidences]] (notably that Sokka decided not to wait an hour to greet the [[DressingAsTheEnemy Kyoshi Warriors]] when they arrived).
**Katara was pretty lucky Pakku was sweet on her Grandma and he just happened to see the necklace.
* ''Captain Flamingo'' uses this a lot in the workings of the eponymous character's Bird Brain -- his "super power" to misinterpret his sidekick's suggestions in such a way that his actions end up solving everything. One of the most extreme examples is Lampshaded and HandWaved by Lizbeth (the aforementioned sidekick) and the Captain. "Isn't it awfully convenient that the book you checked out just happened to be on the exact subject you needed to return it?" "My Bird Brain works in mysterious ways. I don't question it, and neither should you. *AsideGlance* And neither should anyone else."
* One episode of ''{{WordGirl}}'' was entirely built around [[LampshadeHanging Lampshading]] this trope, starting from normal usage and becoming territory by the end of the episode.
*{{Contrived Coincidence}}s happen frequently in ''KimPossible'', usually neatly {{lampshaded}}, but the episode "Rewriting History" is the most blatant and over the top example: Kim and Ron discover that Ron's great-grandfather Jon Stoppable was a police constable with the same kind of relationship to [[SubstituteTeacher Mr. Barkin's]] ancestor, the chief of police. Most of Jon's success in police work is down to ace reporter Miriam "Mim" Possible, Kim's great-grandmother. Professor Dementor's ancestor is demonstrating his device at the World's Fair, and is just like his modern equivalent. Chasing this up, Wade discovers that his ten-year-old ancestor was there too. Ron finds this pile-up of coincidences unlikely, and when Drakken's great-grandfather enters the picture (with a sidekick resembling Shego), Ron [[LampshadeHanging declares the whole thing ludicrous]]. Having just discovered all this, it turns out that after a hundred years, the device is due to go off that day. With sixty seconds left on the clock and no idea how to disable it, Drakken and Shego burst in to steal it. Their craft takes the device far enough to go off harmlessly. Ron notes that the villains arriving in the nick of time is so unlikely, it's like a dream - [[AllJustADream and it was]] (though according to WordOfGod all the persons were real.).
**The episode ended with a statue of Ron's ancestor in Rome, who was the enemy of Dr. Drakken's ancestor. His victories may really be due to a mysterious masked Amazon who resembles Kim...
*The entire ''[[TheSimpsons Simpsons]]'' episode "Trilogy of Error". Everything that happens to each character is a direct result of something (usually stupid) that another character has done, always with no idea that their actions are influencing the rest of the family. Eventually everyone's paths have crossed and re-crossed until, at the end of the episode, everyone's in the same situation.
* Parodied in RoadRovers where the character of Hunter had the catchphrase ''yet another unexpected twist'', even if the twist is completely expected or just a wild coincidence.
* {{Futurama}}'s first xmas special: Leela and Fry are saved from Santa's TOW missile when the parrot Fry bought earlier flies into the way.
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