"Doctor Jones. Again we see there is nothing you can possess that I cannot take away."
Way To Go, Serge —
It will eventually turn out that, for a minimum of the first sixty percent of the game, you were actually being manipulated by the forces of evil into doing their sinister bidding for them. In extreme cases this may go as high as 90%. The clear implication is that it would have been better to not get involved in the first place.
The
Adventurer Archaeologist has gone through all manner of
Death Course hazards and exhausted himself
narrowly escaping from certain death, but he has succeeded in retrieving the
idol! ....except that he emerges to find his
arch-nemesis aiming a gun point blank at him, casually ordering him to hand it over.
The Hero has collected a
ragtag band of fellow survivors and enemies of the
Evil Overlord, and even ventured deep into the very underbelly of the earth, fighting his way past killer trapped doors and all manner of random encounter beasts to get hold of an
artifact of legendary power before the
Big Bad gets to it, and thereby safeguard it from his
Evil Plan.... but when the team comes struggling up out of the dungeon to return to the surface, half dead and gasping for a save point, there's the
Big Bad, confronting them with overwhelming power fresh from an HP/MP restore! He seizes the artifact, and leaves them
Only Mostly Dead, as his
Evil Plan moves forward.
Sometimes you just have to wonder why the good guys never say to each other, "Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't
we hide out near the entrance of the dungeon, get a good night's sleep, and wait for
him to go in and fetch the
Mac Guffin for
us, this time?!" Ah, the magic of
Genre Blindness.
This is one of the rare cases in good vs. evil where evil invariably triumphs, and its popularity is due to the fact that the audience wouldn't get to see the
Evil Plan play out in full if the good guys win this scene. We want the good guys to win in the
Grand Finale, where the
Big Bad is as big and bad as possible while still being beatable. Otherwise it could get downright anticlimactic, if the guy who burned down your
Doomed Hometown has to give up and go into hiding because he can't
Take Over The World without the one
Mac Guffin you managed to hang onto, preventing him from
completing the set needed for his
Evil Plan. Nobody likes a hero who hunts down and murders a villain that already threw in the towel.
Of course, that means that even if the hero does get ahold of it,
expect it to leave his hands before they can use it, getting us back to the start of the trope.
Contrast with the
Xanatos Gambit, where the villain's goal is unknown to the heroes. In a
Mac Guffin Delivery Service, the heroes know the villain wants the
Mac Guffin, and preventing the villain from getting it is, ironically, the reason for the whole quest. Maybe not the only reason, but a major reason throughout the story arc.
Polar opposite of
Keep Away. Compare
The One True Sequence.
Examples:
- In the original Tomb Raider, Lara inadvertently helps Natla reclaim her original Scion piece, and also the other two.
- Sonic Adventure uses the Chaos Emeralds this way.
- So bad that this trooper's friend, who hadn't been paying that much attention to the plot, thought he was collecting the emeralds for Eggman.
- Erazor Djinn actually plays a similar, more successful Xanatos Gambit against Sonic in Sonic and the Secret Rings. And he almost killed Sonic, too!
- Final Fantasy IV sometimes does this with elemental crystals. Notably when after the final dark crystal in the sealed cave, and after fighting the incredibly annoying evil wall, Kain reaffirms his status of hypnosis and makes off with the crystal, bringing it back to Golbez. Keep in mind that the Sealed Cave is riddled with instant death dealing Trapdoors, powerful monsters, and That One Boss, so maybe Golbez and Zemus, who's controlling him had it in his best interest to let Cecil do the dirty work for him rather than pour in minions or do it himself.
- Indiana Jones movies love this trope. They did it twice in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and did it again in the subsequent movies.
- Skies Of Arcadia, to the point where it's a surprise to keep a Moon Crystal.
- This was used on the NES Ninja Gaiden game: Ryu Hayabusa gained one of the two Demon Statues that would awaken Jashin, only to have to give them up to Jaquio who was holding Irene Lew hostage. He was then promptly dropped down a pit for his trouble.
- Inverted in the webcomic Adventurers!, where the heroes were tasked with collecting the elemental artifacts. Their enemy, Rio the thief, was ordered to steal one of the elemental artifacts so that they couldn't, but in typical Rio incompetence, he stole the one artifact that had previously been successfully kept away from them. Shortly after, he confronted Drecker, who proceeded to steal it from him, resulting in the heroes' success.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Harry plans to get to the Stone before Snape (actually, Quirrel), but only helps him almost get it just by being there.
- The Doctor Who "Key of Time" arc hangs a lampshade on this, with the heroes expecting the Big Bad to try and get every part of the Key, but eventually discover that he simply decided to wait by the last part in order to save himself the danger of collecting the others.
- Baten Kaitos does this with the End Magnus.
- Variations on this trope can be found in most James Bond movies and, of course, adventure TV series like The Wild Wild West and Alias. This is very likely to happen with a villain who persists through all or most of a season, as on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, as it allows the Big Bad to share a scene with the hero at the end of the episode.
- Subverted with lampshade in the webcomic Narbonic, the "Crystal of Marinia
" story arc.
- This happens so often in the Lupin III movies that it becomes a shock when Lupin doesn't have to fork over the treasure-of-the-film.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door has a double example. When you fight The Dragon who has the last of the Plot Coupons, he tells you that he was just waiting for you to bring the rest to him. After you've collected them all and go up against the Big Bad, he tells you that he gave the final Plot Coupon to The Dragon knowing you'd defeat him, so that you'd bring all the Plot Coupons to the final area.
- And if, by chance, The Dragon managed to beat them, the Big Bad would also be able to get to the final area. It was set up so that whatever the outcome, he'd still win.
- In The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, young Link collects all three Spiritual Stones and the Ocarina of Time. Then he goes to the Temple of Time and uses the Stones to open the Door of Time to the Sacred Realm — only to be frozen in time and leaving the door wide open for Ganondorf to get the Triforce. Irony.
- Happens twice in Final Fantasy VII with the Dark Materia.
- Happens often in Jackie Chan Adventures.
- The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. If the Sword of Destiny hasn't been found in all these years, why don't they assume it's safe where it is?
- Pulled off at the end of the Tex Murphy installment The Pandora Directive.
- An interesting version of this trope occurs in the 2007 Ghost Rider game. The player travels to various locales to hunt down Blackheart's demons who threaten to open the gateway to Hell on Earth, only to find that the gate opens anyway, as the path the Rider took drew an evil symbol on the Earth in the flames left behind by the Rider's bike.
- In the KateModern episode "Seven Dials: 5pm - 23rd November 2007", Charlie emerges from a building carrying the software, with Terrence in pursuit, only to meet the Watcher, who beats up both of them and drives off with the software.
- In the film Ocean's Thirteen, Linus Caldwell and his father are about to escape Banks' building with some obscenely valuable diamonds when they are confronted by Francois Toulour (the antagonist of the previous films), who takes the diamonds at gunpoint. Subverted, however, after Toulour leaves the protagonists reveal that the diamonds they gave to Toulour were fakes, and they escape with the real ones.
- Happens in an episode of Beast Wars. Rattrap, at great risk, dives to the sunken Axalon to retrieve the Sentinel control module - only for the Predacons to blast him and swipe it when he gets to the surface. It changes hands a couple more times before the episode ends, but the ending isn't happy.
- One of the side quests in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is based around this trope. (It's even called "Nothing You Can Possess," in reference to the quote at the top of the page.) A wealthy collector hires you to retrieve a particular carving from a ruin. Upon exiting the ruin, you're immediately accosted by a rival treasure hunter and his hired goons, demanding that you turn over the carving.
- Also used in a side quest in Knights Of The Old Republic, on the planet Korriban. Subverted if you choose to simply kill the student trying to threaten you, or if you give him a fake and let Uthar do your dirty work for you.
- There's a reason why the RPG cliche list calls this 'Way to go, Serge'. It gets so mixed up at times, tho, that fans dedicate documents on Game FA Qs just explaining what the plots are.
- This IS the plot of KOTOR II. If you're dark side, you're killing Jedi Masters. If you're light side, you're gathering Jedi Masters so that Kreia, the Manipulative Bastard Man Behind The Man Big Bad can kill them all. Either way, you end up with four dead Jedi Masters .
- This happens to the titular protagonist of Shantae after obtaining the last Elemental Stone. That genie that looks suspiciously like the Big Bad who seemed to know everything about the Stones and would stop at nothing to help you get the last one? You shouldn't have been so surprised when you exited the dungeon only to be tackled and robbed by her.
- Metal Gear Solid and its PAL key again. The bad guys were counting on you obtaining the keycard, but in the course of the game you defy the odds to get it back, find out how it works, and use it to activate the nuclear weapon. Perhaps it's a Xanatos Gambit, but the bad guys' obvious astonished gratitude suggests otherwise.
- In Kim Possible, "Monkey Fist Strikes" has Kim go through numerous death traps to retrieve a monkey idol in what may have been a Shout Out to Indiana Jones, but that night, a ninja creeps into the camp and stole it. Of course, the ninja did turn out to be the masquerading villain all along.
- The plot of the Deptford Mice sequel Thomas is basically one huge example of this trope. The difference being, the chessmasters behind the good guys actually intend the bad guys to get hold of the Mac Guffin, because they've left it hallowed and thus useless for resurrecting the Cosmic Horror.
