Chain Of Deals - Television Tropes & Idioms

I'll trade you a paperclip for a house...

Character A needs something from character B, but character B wants A to get him/her something from character C, who wants something from character D, etc. etc. etc.

In a comedy, the chain either collapses or is rendered moot at the end. One common way of this happening is that the item the character at the end of the chain received breaks or is otherwise unsatisfactory, and the character decides to take his original bartered-away item back. The next character decides that, if he doesn't get what he wants, he'll take his original item back as well, and so on and so forth all the way back up the chain.

In a story, this breaks Willing Suspension Of Disbelief if there are more than one or two links in the chain, and can only be effectively used in certain situations.

In videogames, this can be an extension ("extension" being the key word) of a Fetch Quest.

See also Fence Painting, Plot Coupon, and Match Maker Quest. Not to be confused with Chain Of People.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

In the first series of Dot Hack, one of the least favorite side-quests was to help someone with their trading service, which quickly went horribly wrong because nobody can do an even trade, and one more item had to be fetched in order to even start the chain of deals. Everyone lampshades how irritating this is.

Comics

This is done in a couple of Donald Duck cartoons, in particular when his nephews are involved, who seem to be quite good at this. Maharajah Donald starts out as the nephews start with a used-up piece of pencil, they end up with a holiday for them and Donald to India or a country of the sorts. In the end, Donald is captured and will be thrown into a tiger pit. The nephews find a paperclip, exclaiming they've found the thing that can save their uncle. cut to "sometime later", when they trade something very valuable for a truckload of raw meat. They throw it over the wall of the tiger pit, feeding the tigers, thus making them not hungry anymore when Donald gets thrown in.

Film

The Pirates Of The Caribbean films tend to enjoy these types of deals and counter deals: in At World's End, Will Turner needs the Black Pearl to rescue his father, but Sao Feng promises it to Beckett; Beckett wants Jack Sparrow's compass, which Will eventually barters with Beckett, though Davy Jones' condition is the murder of Calypso; but the pirates want Calypso alive, and Barbossa wants her released, though Sao Feng thinks he's already captured her... while Jack swans through it all messing up everyone's chains looking for immortality... which he (sort of) had before the pirates came to rescue him because Barbossa needed— oh, you get the point.
In the movie The Comrades of Summer the Russian baseball team needs a new backstop. One of the players steals the coaches Walkman and goes through a series of trades in this style. In the final trade he gets a new backstop and two new Walkmans.
The American Astronaut has Sam, who must return the late king of Venus to his family in Earth, to do so, he must provide Venus with a new king; so he will give the owner of Jupiter a woman and he will give in return The Boy Who Saw A Breast so he can be the new Venusian king. The woman for the Jupiter ruler in turn, is a clon of Eddy, the owner of the Ceres Crossroads who wanted a cat
Marcello Marcello turns this ad infinitum, considering it is supposed to be a Romantic Comedy.

Literature

The Dragaera novel Orca follows this trope, as Vlad has to fulfil a series of deals in order to obtain a cure for a friend.
Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's children's book The Day I Traded My Dad for Two Goldfish has the protagonist trade his father for two goldfish, then have to unravel the Chain Of Deals that resulted afterwards to get his dad back.
John tries such a chain in Me and My Little Brain after talking to a man who could start with a fifty-cent pocketknife and trade up to a twenty-dollar cow. He manages about nine or ten trades easily, but the chain collapses because he never considered what he would want out of the whole deal. He accepts a piglet as payment in the final trade, but since he can't keep it at home or afford to board it elsewhere, the other boy offers to take it back.
In one of the Henry Reed books, Henry goes to visit an auction, and starting out with some fireplace tools that turn out to be valuable to another bidder who missed them, he parlays the two dollar bid on the tools through to another item and another, until he ends up getting an item and two dollars for his item, finally ending up with two items that the owner bid $40 apiece, a lot of money to Henry. By the time he's finished he's essentially traded things that he ends up getting something worth $100, which cost him nothing because he got the original $2 back during one of the trades.
There is an old children's book in which a fox gets his tail hacked off for trying to steal a woman's goods; in order to get it back he has to give her a sewing needle, leading to a chain of deals.
There is a children's story about a woman who wants her son to go to school on time. He refuses, so she tells a cane to beat the boy up. The cane doesn't want to, so she tells a fire to burn the cane. When the fire refuses, she orders a puddle of water to put out the fire, then orders a cow to drink the water when refuses too, tells a butcher to kill the cow, orders a rope to hang the butcher, tells a mouse to gnaw on the rope, and finally tells a cat to eat the mouse, which it agrees to in return for a saucer of milk, and in the end the boy goes off to school. One has to wonder what the moral of the tale is, given that the sociopathic main character callously attempts to orchestrate the deaths of several people, animals and curiously sentient objects just because they refuse to carry out her murderous intents.
- And that's a version of The Old Woman and the Pig, wherein the old woman implores a whole sequence to do something to the person before them to get the pig to jump over the stile. The last one does so, and the whole cascade ensues. Thus making this. . . . but anyway, here's the sequence with two deals to go (milk for the cat, hay for the cow who gives it):
  Old Woman: Cat, kill rat! Rat won't gnaw rope, rope won't hang butcher, butcher won't kill ox, ox won't drink water, water won't put out fire, fire won't burn stick, stick won't beat dog, dog won't bite pig, pig won't jump over the stile, and I shan't get home tonight!
This is how the Deveels in Aspirin's Myth Adventures series make their fortunes. The graphic novel even contains a visual representation of a chain of deals that begins with a coat hanger and concludes with a giant ruby.
Numerous stories of how this led ancient barter economies to realize the flaws in their systems and decide to create a universal medium of exchange, which we now call "money".
The well-known Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen also wrote a lot of short stories with all sorts of themes and messages - one of these is What Father Does is Always Right (guess the message here) about a man who goes to the market with a horse and makes a long chain of deals, each time lessening the value of his animal/ object and ending up with a sack of rotten apples. He meets a couple of rich Englishmen who make him a wager that his wife will be mad at him for it - however, when he gets home with them, it turns out that she's been insulted by a neighbor, and the rotten apples are just what she needs to get her revenge, and the Englishmen lose the bet.
Example from a forgotten story in a magazine: The protagonist was named Scipio (after the Roman general) and he lived in a small town. His goal for the story required him to trade things with different people in succession with the end result of allowing a collector to complete his prized set of Napoleonic silver plates if the collector did what Scipio wanted him to do. This story of Scipio trading things to accomplish something apparently a regular feature in this magazine.
In a Russian fairy tale a rooster choked on a bean. His hen hurried to the housewife asking for some butter to lube rooster's throat, but the woman needed some milk from the cow, who needed the farmer to cut some grass for her, but the farmer needed a scythe from the blacksmith, so the hen ran to the smith, got a scythe and unwound the sequence. Naturally, cynical Russians spoofed the story, so when the hen reaches the blacksmith...
Hen: "Oh, good blackmith, please give me a scythe. Our farmer will cut some grass for the cow, who will give milk, which the housewife shall churn into butter that I will lube rooster's throat with for he choked on a bean."
Blacksmith: "Why sure, I can give you a scythe, but wouldn't it be easier if you just ask me for some butter?"
Hen: "Yeah? And fuck up a cool quest?!"

Live Action TV

The M* A* S* H episodes "For Want of a Boot", "The Long John Flap", and "The Price of Tomato Juice" all involve variations of this.
In Star Trek Deep Space Nine, the episode "In The Cards" and the B-plot in "Treachery, Faith, and the Great River" are centered around such chains. In the later example, we learn that the belief that such chains always work out is a tenet of Ferengi religion. Also, the B-plot in the second-season episode "Progress," notable for containing the first mention of self-sealing stem bolts.
Stargate SG-1 had one of these in the episode "The Ties that Bind"... which also featured Daniel Jackson as the Butt Monkey.
A short gag on Sports Night.
Francis in Malcolm In The Middle attempts this to get something or other, and agrees to make exchanges between just about all the loggers in the camp. The problem for Francis is that it's a chain of promised deals, and he keeps making grander and grander promises to try to ground out the chain at something he can manage. He keeps going unsuccessfully until they find out it's rapidly becoming a complete sham and kick the crap out of him.
An episode of Grey's Anatomy features a chain of kidney donations, where patient A's relative will donate to patient B, patient B's relative to patient C, etc. The chain almost falls apart at a number of occasions.
Happens in an episode of Dark Angel as a side note rather than a plot point. Apparently this sort of thing is common given the setting.
Rain attempts to pull one off in order to obtain hot concert tactics (Ron has backstage passes and wants a date with Chelsea, Chelsea wants an appointment with an exclusive stylist which Mallory has, Mallory wants someone to produce a demo tape which Hal can do, Hal will work for food...) in the Naturally Sadie episode "Whose Line Is It Anyway?".
An Episode of Breaker High, Sean and Jimmy need kitchen access from the chef to bake a pizza, who will only give them the key in exchange for a manicure from Ashley in exchange for phone minutes from Alex in exchange for Denise repairing his shorts in exchange for some Dramamine from Max in exchange for Max's Boombox from Captain Ballard in exchange for a written note from Max forged by Tamira in exchange for a picture of Max from Cassidy, who gives it to Sean "for the school yearbook" and takes it back when she realizes what it's really for, causing Sean to continually try shoddy alternatives as the chain falls apart.

Music

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I dunno why. Then she swallowed a spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow, horse, and died.
"There's a hole in my bucket, Eliza. With what shall I mend it?" "A stick." "Too long." "Cut it." "With what?" "A knife." "Too dull." "Sharpen it." "With what?" "A stone." "Too dry." "Wet it." "With what?" "Water." "How will I get that?" "With a bucket..."
- "Now you know why I asked in the first place." "Oh. Right. Sorry." "Fuck it, let's watch Matlock."

Oral Tradition

The Japanese legend of the straw millionaire is this trope played completely straight. A poor peasant prays to the goddess of mercy for relief from his miserable life. She grants him a single piece of straw which he trades through his travels until fortunate circumstances lead to the hand in marriage of the daughter of a millionaire. This example is definitely Older Than Print, and most likely Older Than Feudalism.

Real Life

Wondering about the page picture? As documented on One Red Paperclip, in the course of one year (July 2005 to July 2006) Kyle MacDonald negotiated a Chain Of Deals that started with a single red paperclip and ended up with a house — in only fourteen trades! And now he's putting the house up for trade. Someone get this man the Infinity Plus One Sword.
The global economic crisis.
The impracticality of this is one of the major reasons (the others being transportability and storability) for introducing currency, as opposed to relying on barter for trade.
Admit it, you do this with your video game cases being the other traders every once in a while.

Video Games

Several of the Legend Of Zelda games, including Link's Awakening and Ocarina of Time, include an item-trading quest of some sort. The one in Link's Awakening nets you a Magnifying Glass that will allow you to see invisible enemies, get the Boomerang, and reach the Final Boss, while the one in Ocarina nets you the powerful Biggoron's Sword.
- The fan-made game The Legend of Zelda and the Lampshade of No Real Significance has this as pretty much the entire plot.
Suikoden I has a classic example, where recruiting a particular member of the 108 Stars of Destiny requires you to run through a long Chain Of Deals in order to get soap for a washing-woman who's run out. When you actually succeed, it turns out that she'd just discovered that she wasn't out of soap after all, but in acknowledgement of the trouble you went through to get her soap, she joins you anyway...
- There's official art of her with a fan of throwing knives between her fingers. That chick was just spoiling for a war or two, but needed to clean her commoner gowns first.
Used in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, where you help a penguin cross a stream and get started in a trading sequence that takes you through every little island on the map, eventually unlocking an area with a bonus boss.
You can do this (with other real-life players) on the GTS in the DS Pokemon games with enough careful thought about what people might be willing to trade. In about a dozen trades, you can exchange a level 6 Magikarp for a level 100 Mewtwo. (As of late, the GTS has had nothing but people offering low-level common Pokemon for level-100 legendaries, and the other way around.)
An old Japanese legend tells of a man who started off with a single piece of straw, and traded up until he was rich. This was referenced in Shadow Hearts: Covenant, where a sidequest starts off with a man telling the player this story and giving them a straw. Eventually, the player can trade this to get the Infinity Plus One Sword for one of the characters. To be fair, it's a pretty, yet magical, steel fan, unless the player makes a wrong trade and ends up with worthless junk (or a small fortune in cash).
- The legend is referenced and subverted in Saiunkoku Monogatari, where a character is given money to buy ingredients for dinner, but ends up with a Chain Of Deals ending in a single piece of straw.
Animal Crossing occasionally forces you to go on a variant of this, in which an animal wants to get an item back from another one who borrowed it... but then you go there and discover that that animal lent the item to someone else. You have to keep following the item until you get it and can bring it back to its owner.
- It can get really weird when half the village is sharing the same handkerchief.
A quest in Kingdom Of Loathing has you getting caught in one of these while trying to get some stolen comic books back for the Gnomish Gnomads. Not only is the quest optional, the reward sucks. It also refers to the Real Life example above: the only item you actually retrieve yourself is the big red paperclip in the Haiku Dungeon.
The trickiest puzzle in the original Final Fantasy I is basically a chain of deals, the difference being that not all the trades are deliberate. (For example, you perform one "trade" by showing the Crown to Astos, killing him, and taking Matoya's crystal off his corpse.) This sequence is necessary to advance in the game; in fact, it all takes place before the first fiend.
- In the Dawn of Souls remake of the game, there's a Chain of Deals puzzle that involves trading things between a bunch of dwarves in order to progress in a dungeon.
All the Mega Man Battle Network games have NPCs who want to trade BattleChips with you. Most of the trades are standalone, but in games 3 and 6, you can make several successive trades to obtain a powerful chip.
- You can screw the chain up in 6 by dumping one of the in-between chips (DublShot C) in the trader; it's almost impossible to get another one in C code. This sounds like a hard mistake to make — who puts their last one of something in the trader? — but the BN6 boards at GameFAQs get more threads asking about this than anything else.
The desert monkey cave in Earthbound is basically a Puzzle Chain of Deals. With some lampshading thrown in ("amongst all these doors..."). Thankfully it's funny. Some players still consider it the most frustrating part of the game, mostly because every room looks like every other room and one item turns into something else (thus rendering it useless) after too much time passes. Fortunately, the player's guide (which was originally packaged with the game) eliminated most of the frustration by providing maps.
Secret of Evermore's greek market blatantly uses this, though it's entirely optional. It's even pretty complex, with multiple traders giving the same item for different exchanges, but the rewards you can get through it are items that permanently boost your abilities, so it's worth your time and resources.
Romancing Sa Ga involved a large trade quest kicked off when Strom (Water Elemental Lord) demands the "Raincloud Armlet" in exchange for a captive princess. It's in the possession of Adyllis (Earth Elemental Lord), who will only give it up if you give him the Cyclone Shoes, which you can only get by trading the Ignigarde Helmet to Avi (Wind Elemental Lord) by acquiring the Ice Sword for Pyrix (Fire Elemental Lord) in which you must plunk down 20,000 gold or by killing a recruitable character. At any point in the chain, you can decide to brute-force the whole thing and just beat the crap out of the dragon, though and you get an awesome shield as a Item Drop. However that does have some repercussions, by killing Strom you cannot get the optimal amount of jewels for doing the quest normally, are unable to do his Ecology Quest and also getting the chance to fight his Corrupted Form; Slask (Item Drop is the Chaosbringer; A powerful 2 Handed Axe that gives an Intellect boost). This also bars you from exploring his temple later, meaning that you can't get the items inside — including the Water Spirit, which is required for another quest with fantastic rewards. Also there is a trading ability for you to use in which you can trade items with monsters; so a mini Chain Of Deals is possible; Sidetracked By The Gold Saucer indeed...
- Actually if you trade with monsters enough, they become "Crowned" which means they are stronger but give better Item Drops. Also trading with monsters can net in quite a bit of jewels or cash if you trade correctly.
This is how you get the Infinity Plus One Sword in Alundra 2.
The MMORPG RuneScape has an infuriating quest of this type called One Small Favor. By the time your character is halfway through building the very long chain of trades, he/she starts lampshading the ridiculousness of the whole thing. In the end, the original quest-giver doesn't seem to think getting him the original favor was such a big deal as to warrant a reward until your character goes off on him.
- Somewhat worthwhile though, a new recipe for a potion and 20000 free exp. Nothing to scoff at to an extent.
  - And a keyring, which is far more useful than it sounds.
- To clarify: this quest involves trading favours through twenty steps, culminating in fixing a gnome's runway lights after basically trekking in a complete path around from Port Sarim through almost every other area on the map and ending up on the other side of the world, and then going back. Then the ungrateful bastard who gave you the quest doesn't even give you a reward until you explain what you had to go through for some goddamn logs.
One of the subquests in Wonder Boy In Monster Land is this; start with a letter and finish with either a solution to the final dungeon (very handy - that place is a non-logical maze) or a trinket that will take off about a third of the final boss's health instantly (even more handy - if you're properly kitted out, the final boss isn't difficult to kill, making running out of time the biggest problem).
In Super Paper Mario, Merlee wants a crystal ball from Merluvlee, who in turn wants a training machine (actually a DS) from Bestovius, who in turn wants a mysterious DVD (implied to be porn) from Watchitt, who wants an autograph from Merlumina, who wants to go to sleep. Eventually, her long speeches bore you to sleep, causing her to get sleepy, leading to you completing the chain. Merlee repays you with a free curse and a key that allows you to unlock the Pixl Piccolo.
- Similar side-quests also happen in the first two games, both of them involving the aforementioned "secret DVD" (originally a tape). My, what lazy censors.
Browser-based MMORPG Travians includes several of these, and finally throws in a Lampshade Hanging:
Tombo: Oh, you're up to your strange swapping deals again?
The old game Hacker required you to send a robot around the world trading items to obtain pieces of a secret document, while figuring out how to avoid the security checks on the system you were "connected to".
Planescape Torment: You want information on Raven? OK, you just need to talk to Ecco, except she won't talk to to you at all, so maybe you should talk to Dolores who doesn't want to talk to you unless you get something from Merrian, who wants to forget, so you need to get a Stygian shard, which you can't pick up without a very special cup that you can get by curing a wizard-reject's alcoholism. Oh, yeah. You have to figure out half of these on your own too.
In the Age of Empires 2 Mongol campaing, the first scenario involves you riding around trying to coax several different tribes to join you (except one, which is stated as being 'without honor' for no apparent reason). Most of these tribes ask you to do something for them in exchange, often something you can't do until a different tribe joins you. For example, one tribe wants you to bring them a relic, and only monks can carry relics, so you have to get the tribe that gives you monks to join first.
Dark Cloud has one of these. The chain begins with a pink lollipop and ends with the single most powerful weapon upgrade attachment in the game.
Jay's Journey has one spanning most of the game, most (but not all) of which is required to complete the game. Jay sees the trope in progress and is more than happy to make bad deals, because he knows it'll all work out in the end. (He gets a bit annoyed when NP Cs are slow to give rewards, or when one NPC tries to steal the trade-item-of-the-minute, however.) All of the items have an identical description: "Some trade item".
Breath of Fire 4 has this, too. In fact, it's needed for one of Ryu's Dragon forms.
Dungeon Siege II has a chain quest that spans virtually the entire campaign.
Dr. Doom does this behind the scenes in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and you spend the entire game trying to catch up.
In Family Project, Chunhua gets a free piece of candy on the street as an advertisement and gives it to Tsukasa. Tsukasa trades it for a pack of cigarettes. He gives the cigarettes to a guy on the street and gets a 5000 yen gift certificate. He uses that to pay Masumi's debt at some store or another, and she gives him thirty lottery tickets, enough for three tries at a game. Chunhua tries three times and eventually gets a personal computer worth 300,000 yen. Lampshaded.
One of these shows up in FFTA 2; you're not doing the Chain of Deals, rather you're one of the people in it. You get to see The guy screws up: The step is adamantite for vial of silver liquid... and silver liquid melts adamantite on contact. Poor sap forgot to wash his hands.
Russian quest game ""Last Year's Snow Was Falling'' had a subversion of that. Once you understood the 5-step chain of deals and tried to grab the starting item, you were carried away to the next location.
In Dubloon, you must trade items on Stern Island to get the map location of East Sea Serpent.

Web Comics

Parodied here by Eight Bit Theater.
Skin Horse features an increasingly absurd chain as main character Tip tries to deal with an increasingly bizarre string of escaped/lost sentient lab experiments.
- Which proves to have some consequences, since he ends up screwing up the whole chain of deals his boss was used to dealing with - which results in her having to find out if the new leadership down in the basement is amenable to talking with the folks upstairs. Lampshaded at several points during the whole chain.

Western Animation

The Ed Edd N Eddy episode "Who, What, Where, Ed!" featured a Chain Of Deals that started with Eddy trying to get a chicken egg from Rolf, who wanted sawdust they had to borrow from Kevin, who wanted paint they had to borrow from Jimmy, who wanted clams they had to borrow from Johnny, and so on, driving Eddy closer and closer to insanity (as well as Lampshade Hanging) with every turn. The chain goes to Jimmy twice, and eventually stretches back to Rolf. And while the Eds finally resolve the chain, Ed breaks the egg the second they get it because he thought there would be a chicken inside. Which is right, but they didn't want it for that and the chick had to develop first.
In one of the "Lord Bravery" segments of Freakazoid, Lord Bravery is given a Cease-and-Desist order on his name, as it was first used by a bakery. As it turns out, the bakery resorted to Lord Bravery because the name the owner wanted to use was already taken. The owner offers to give Lord Bravery back his name if the owners of the business with the name she wants will give it to her. This leads to a ridiculously long chain of businesses with ludicrously inappropriate names that ends only with the discovery of a shop owner who is quite happy with his business' name, causing the chain to collapse.
- And forcing Lord Bravery to change his monicker to Lord Smoked Meats And Fishes, making people respect him even less than they did before.
This was also the basis for the Looney Tunes short Leghorn Swoggled, with Henery Hawk making a long string of deals in order to catch Foghorn Leghorn. After making a bunch of deals (dog wants a bone, cat knows where to get a bone but wants a fish, mouse knows where to get fish but wants cheese) he remarks "I wonder what the cheese will want?"
The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Juniper Lee": June manages to successfully complete a Chain Of Deals to un-spell a few monsters. One of those "deals" involved winning a wrestling match.
In an episode of Recess the gang arrange a Chain Of Deals to enable Mikey to achieve his dream of becoming a crossing guard. The chain works perfectly, but when it starts to rain Mikey decides he doesn't want the job after all.
Parodied on Two Stupid Dogs. An off the hook payphone tells the dogs to get a quarter, so they go to a change machine, but they need to get a dollar. This leads them on a quest to get larger and larger sums of money, each of which is eventually traded in for a smaller amount right down to the quarter.
- Which is then used to phone the larger dog, in prison with a $10,000 bail.
Chowder goes through a Chain Of Deals to retrieve his lost hat, but accidentally gives the hat away in the process, requiring an undoing of the chain... and a redoing... and another redoing... and it's all done in song. (Lampshaded at the fourth stop, when a giant says "I'm beginning to see a pattern here...")
In an episode of House Of Mouse, after accidentally spending the rent money on cheese, Mickey is in desperate need of $50. Merlin will give Mickey $50 in exchange for a sword for Arthur, The Headless Hoseman will give Mickey a sword in exchange for a pumpkin to use as a head, Cinderella will give Mickey a pumpkin in exchange for an alternate ride home, Aladdin will give Cinderalla a carpet ride home if he can get a rose for Jasmine, Beast will give Mickey an enchanted rose in exchange for a book for Belle, and Yen Sid is in no mood at all to share his books, scaring Mickey off and throwing the whole chain apart.
A U.S. Acres segment in Garfield And Friends had Orson wanting to get Bo a record player. Booker has one but wants a skateboard. After failing to hit Roy's three practical jokes, one of which involved super-hot chewing gum, Orson convinces Roy to part with his skateboard in exchange for a pie. Lanolin is willing to give up her pie for a stepladder. Wade is more than happy to get rid of his stepladder, but Orson insists on giving him something... specifically, the spicy chewing gum he got from Roy. When Wade realizes how horrible the gum is, he takes back his ladder, causing the whole chain to temporarily reverse.

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