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Simply put, there's a number of somethings spread across far and wide, and the cast has to go find them. It could be more cast members, magical artifacts, pieces of a single artifact, or some other MacGuffin, but somehow each and every one will be involved in some individual plot that can pad the episode or even an entire Story Arc. The most basic form of Plot Coupon.
Ideal for TV series, as each episode can have its own obstacles, villains, and setting, and be written by a different author; just as long as each episode ends with a new plot coupon being found. The series can then claim there is a Story Arc to an otherwise completely unrelated set of stories. Also found popularity among video games for a while due to its simplicity, e.g. the Commander Keen series.
The Twelve Labours of Hercules are perhaps the earliest occurrence of this, making it one of The Oldest Ones In The Book. (Originally Hercules was expected to perform ten, but the Dungeon Master decreed that two of them didn't count and made him do two extra. This still happens today.)
Often the reason for Walking The Earth, specially as a step in the way To Be A Master.
Examples:
Anime
- Trope name taken from the advertising slogan for Pokemon, which had both the titular creatures and the Gym Badges.
- Dropped from the Anime because Ash never got his act together and wasn't, as he so proudly liked to boast he would, catching them all.
- He wouldn't know what to do with most of them if he did "catch them all".
- The Dragon Balls in the series of the same name and its sequels.
- In the first two arcs of Yu-Gi-Oh, the tournaments required specific numbers of Star Chips (Duelist Kingdom) or puzzle cards (Battle City) to gain entry to the finals.
- The cast of Inu Yasha are searching for the umptynine pieces of the Shikon Jewel, an artifact of incredible power (that, incidentally, will allow the main character To Become Human).
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch takes an odd spin on this: the main characters are also the items, at least in part.
- Subversion in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, where the search for the Plot Coupons, the Jewel Seeds, is pretty much discarded halfway through so that the writers can get to the character development.
- Sailor Moon does this at least twice. In the first season with the seven Rainbow Crystals, and in the third with the Talismans.
- The first ten or so episodes of Transformers Armada focus on recovering Minicons, a small race of robots with power-boosting abilities. Because of this, the series is sometimes referred to as "Pokeformers."
- Naruto has a little bit of this with Akatsuki looking for the Bijuu.
- At the begining of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles the cass sets out searching for Sakura's 50 bajillion missing feathers of memory, but but this pretty much ends after the drama of the Tokyo Revelations Arc
- In Princess Tutu, the titular character searches the town for shards of the Prince's heart, which was shattered when he imprisoned the raven from the story.
Western Animation
- The Shen Gong Wu from Xiaolin Showdown.
- Jackie Chan Adventures seemed to feature a new set of these for each season. First came the twelve talismans, then the eight demon portals, then twelve animals that had gained the powers of their respective talisman, and so on.
- The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo had those meddling kids (well, four of them: Daphne, Shaggy, Scooby, and Scrappy) plus mentor Vincent Van Ghoul and the supposedly loveable young rascal Flim-Flam trying to recapture 13 ghosts that had escaped from "The Chest of Demons".
- The premise of Lilo And Stitch The Series (a Recycled The Series of the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch) is that everyone has to find the other 625 experiments (Stitch's "Cousins") lost throughout Hawaii. As of the finale movie 'Leroy and Stitch', this has been completed, up to and including Leroy, who is unofficially Experiment 628
- Danny Phantom's "Reality Trip" episode, requiring Danny, Tucker, and Sam to find and retrieve three gems within a set time limit and return them to Monster Clown Freakshow. As a side note, the opening theme song implies a need for the titular character to catch all the ghosts in the show ("Gonna catch 'em all, 'cause he's Danny Phantom".)
- In Transformers Animated the All-Spark shatters into umpty-nine pieces each which affects Future-Detroit's technology as well as the giant robots in different ways. The cast has to find them.
Video Games
- CLAMP's Massive Multiplayer Crossover Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle involves the cast going from world to world to obtain feathers that represent their Princess's heart and memories.
- The Legend Of Zelda series always have some of sort: 8 pieces of Triforce, 6 medallions, 8 instruments, 3 jewels, 4 masks... the apparent only exception is Zelda II: The Adventures of Link, in which the hero has to put 6 jewels on statues, but the principle is the same...
- Twilight Princess is a particularly egregious offender: In the main plot alone, you have 3 fused shadows, then 3 mirror shards, then you have to kill 20 monsters in one village, then find 6 owl statues covering sigils. This isn't even counting all the Fetch Quest efforts that are standard to the series--Poes, Golden Bugs, Heart Pieces, etc.
- Eh, Twilight Princess isn't really any different than the other games in the series, except for that it splits up the required collectables into two groups rather than just one. The 20 masks, however, in Majora's Mask, while not all plot-required, are still the main focus of the game and if you want Hundred Percent Completion with the best ending.
- Also, in The Minish Cap, you have Kinstones, which each matching pair having a different effect (unlocking secret paths, removing barriers, making special items available, etc.)
- The seven (or six, or five, or fourteen, or...) Chaos Emeralds from Sonic The Hedgehog. Often optional extras hidden in Bonus Stages that are still required to get the Good Ending or the final boss (except when they aren't due to being vital Plot Coupons)
- In the game King's Bounty, in order to find the scepter that was the game's ultimate goal, one had to find the pieces of the map detailing its location. As a Shout Out, its successor series, Heroes of Might & Magic, has generally allowed you to similarly gather pieces of a map to find some special building or artifact, although it's now a side quest, rather than the game's central plot.
- The Suikoden series of games does this with the 108 Stars of Destiny -- party members and usually-helpful NP Cs for your castle.
- In Eternal Sonata, you can collect a whole bunch of EZI paraphnelia. Much of it isn't even avaiable untill your second playthrough. Your reward for collecting it all: Nothing, in-game. But you DO get one of the most (if not THE most) high-scoring Achievement known to man: 321 points!
- Badges in City Of Heroes have a Gotta Catch Them All quality to them, the shear number of them though makes this pretty much impossible as you can get badges for thing ranging from defeating enough of a certain type of enemy and visiting certain places to fairly ridiculus things like getting killed enough or being physically restrained by enemy enough. Not even to mention the badges you can only get by doing things like buying a certain version of the game.
- Most games in the Final Fantasy series feature some form of this, either in the main quest or as part of one of the subquests.
- While not explicitly plot-related, One of the main draws of the Fire Emblem series is to collect each and every one of the Loads And Loads Of Characters without getting them killed.
- Well, actually, in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, the main quest was to collect the 5 titular stones. Nevermind that you fail to collect 4 out of the 5 stones, and still manage to win because Humanity Is Superior.
- Also in a Sailor Moon-based SNES game called Sailor Moon:Another Story, a whole chapter is spent hunting down four Mac Guffins.
- Rareware seems to be in love with this trope, managing to shoehorn huge numbers of things you need to collect into practically every game.
- Sly Cooper did this with the first game collecting pieces of his familys how to be a great thief guide, the second collecting the remains of the first games Big Bad, and the third game revolved around collecting party members for a big heist at the end of the game.
- Unreal 2's Tosc-unlocking thing. You hop around all but two missions (the first and the defense one) gathering pieces of the artifact. Then it turns out that it alters the most harmless sentient creatures in the game into killing machines with black hole guns, so what you just spent the entire game doing turned out to be a really bad idea.
- Kakurenbo Battle Monster Tactics has 125 types of monsters to defeat, each with their own type of pawprint (called a Montac) and a skill to learn if the defeated monster has enough power. (Some monsters give up the same skills though.)
- Myst likes to do this, especially in the first one: in this Gotta Catch Them All scenario, you have to find almost all of the blue and red pages for the brother's books. I say almost because completing either brother's book with the final page results in the player being trapped in that brother's book for eternity.
- As if that wasn't enough, Myst III: Exile has you traversing three ages in order to find mantras that the villain has tampered with. This scenario is, however, a truncated version of this trope, as there are only three mantras that you need to find - Along with a fourth mantra that helps you solve a certain puzzle at the end and is hidden in the text of one of the character's journals. I Am Not Making This Up.
- Koala Lumpur: Journey to the Edge. The player has to locate four pieces of a sacred scroll, each of them concealed in a different "world" within the game. The gameplay of each world is completely unrelated to the others and except for the first one, can be played in any order as the player chooses. It sort of smacks of a committee of writers who couldn't get along and were separated for their own good.
- The Ham-Chat words in Hamtaro Ham Hams Unite and Hamtaro Ham Ham Heartbreak.
Live Action TV
- Ezekiel Stone, the main character of Fox's short-lived 1998 series Brimstone, is released from Hell by the Devil to use his police skills to track down and retrieve 113 damned souls who escaped the afterlife back to Earth. Short life meant he got nowhere NEAR his goal.
- Ditto with Jeremy Piven's Cupid, who was supposed to unite 100 couples. The show only ran 15 episodes, and some of them didn't add any couples to his tally.
- The premise of Friday The 13th The Series is that Micki and Ryan must recover all of the cursed antiques purchased from their uncle's store.
- The six pieces of the Key to Time in Doctor Who.
- In TV show My Nameis Earl, the titular character must fix all the things he's ever done wrong in order to clear his karma.
- Power Rangers has had a few "Find the five Ranger-colorcoded somethings" plots.
- In the children's TV series T.Bag, every season was centred around the protagonist collecting items to complete a set, to prevent T.Bag from gaining more power.
- In the Sci-Fi show "The Lost Room," characters are, for various reasons, seeking artifacts known as Objects, which originated in a 1960s motel room and are endowed with curious properties (for instance, one Object is a watch which can boil an egg placed inside the band).
- The main plot point of Reaper is that the lead has to catch escaped souls from Hell, similar to Brimstone mentioned above.
- In The Dresden Files, the Knights of the Cross have, over the centuries, collected some of the demon-possessed coins of the Order of the Blackened Denarii, but cannot finally defeat the Denarians until they get them all. This was a major plot point in Small Favor.
- The twelve Cosmo Capsules in Chousei Kantai Sazer X. When united, the twelve of them grant one wish. So naturally everyone is after them. Each episode even keeps a tally on who has what Capsules.
Literature
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth Harry Potter book, made it clear that the final book would revolve at least in part around a Gotta Catch Them All scenario, using Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes. (However, this isn't quite on the scale of most of the other examples of this trope, largely because there's only one book to deal with it, not a television series of indeterminate length.)
- Deathly Hallows, however, subverts the trope by having Harry collect all three of the MacGuffins from DUMBLEDORE's failed childhood quest by sheer accident in the course of collecting the Plot Coupons for HIS OWN quest. Of course, he then discards them anyways after he's done with his quest.
- The Deltora Quest books, unusually, differentiated their Plot Coupons from each other and gave them individual powers. The topaz, for instance, could clear and sharpen the mind, but its effectiveness depended on the phase of the moon; it could also be used to see into the spirit world. The emerald darkened at danger, the amethyst paled in the presence of poison, the opal could be used to see the future, and so forth.
- Played with backward in Life, the Universe, and Everything, the third book in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy, where it's the villains who are collecting the pieces of the Wikkit Gate, and our heroes are trying to stop them (or, some of them are. The rest would rather get a drink and have a lie down).
- Subverted by the Twelve Treasures Trilogy - The plot of each novel involves restoring one of the stolen Treasures of the magical kingdom, and (obviously) there are Twelve Treasures, but only three of them have actually been stolen (that the readers know of; a different noble house keeps each one, and no one will admit to having lost one, so things get a bit murky).
- Louise Cooper's Indigo series involves an immortal protagonist who is destined to walk the earth until she has banished the seven demons which she accidentally loosed upon the world.
- Author Matthew Reilly is a little overly fond of this trope. To the exent that his latest piece of alliterative schmutz "Six Sacred Stones" ends with a bitchy, mid-plot cliffhanger where the badass Hero has not caught them all with his bionic arm and we simply must buy another (as yet unreleased) hardcover for the resolution. Gosh, what a great way to build up a happy, loyal readership.
Film
- The cursed medallions from the first Pirates Of The Caribbean, the nine pieces of eight in the third movie might count too.
Other
- Those Who Hunt Elves spoofs this by scattering the runes of a spell to send the cast Trapped In Another World home. However, the runes are on the bodies of the elf inhabitants, so the cast decides that the logical (huh huh) thing to do is to strip every elf they come across in order to find the runes.
- The crew of the Wraith in The Pirates of Dark Water were supposed to collect 13 treasures. The show only lasted long enough for them to get 8, in part because the eighth took the entire (truncated) second season to find.
- Johnny Cash's song "One Piece at a Time" is about a man who builds a Cadillac in this manner.
- And a Donald Duck story by Don Rosa has Donald doing the same after he finds out that his neighbour (without any bad intention) sold the pieces of his beloved car to the neighbours.
- The "plot" of Adventurers!
 revolved around finding the Elemental Relics. Unfortunately, these were modern elemental relics - there were over one hundred and twelve of them. The progress on this quest was generally kept in the background.
- The Harvest Moon games have a Gotta Catch Them All aspect in Magical Melody (music notes) and Harvest Moon DS (harvest sprites)
- The 1976 Dungeons And Dragons supplement, Eldritch Wizardry, introduced The Rod of Seven Parts, a "greater artifact" that was, as the name suggests, broken into its components. The description of the item explicitly states that the Rod will never be found whole; while each of the components is powerful in and of itself, combining them brings out entirely new abilities. Thus, you Gotta Catch Them All. Years later, the publishers produced an adventure module that used the Rod as its central Mc Guffin.
- Eldritch Wizardry also introduced other artifact "sets", such as the Orbs of Dragon-Kind.
- Real Life example: One of the great mathematical accomplishments of the 20th century is the classification of all the finite, simple groups. Fits this trope because beyond the well-behaved, predictable cyclic groups of prime order, alternating groups, and classical Lie groups are the three exceptional Lie groups and the twenty-six so-called sporadic groups which do not readily fit into any category.
- The TV Tropes Wiki itself is a Gotta Catch Em All of tropes and archetypes from both fiction and nonfictional sources, whose success will have an unknown significant meaning for the universe!
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