Alice is the main character in the plot and the one who escorts the USB drive. Bob is her partner-in-crime. Charles is the guard employed by Trope Co. that must prevent the stealing of the USB drive. Donovan is Charles's boss.
Typical forms
- Played straight: Alice and Bob infiltrate TropeCo, steal the USB drive, then escape with it. The USB drive has important information that can lead to the downfall of TropeCo.
- Justified: Alice has a personal vendetta against Charles for her firing of the company. Bob also has personal issues with Donovan. While Alice and Bob can't stand each other, they agree to put their differences aside to get the USB and bring TropeCo to court.
- Inverted: Charles, under the orders of Donovan, infiltrates Alice's hideout in order to retrieve an USB drive with information that can lead to Alice's downfall.
- Subverted:
- Alice and Bob infiltrate TropeCo, steal the USB drive, but fail to escape.
- Alice and Bob infiltrate TropeCo, steal the USB drive, but back down at the last minute, having second thoughts.
- Double Subverted: Alice and Bob infiltrate TropeCo, steal the USB drive, but back down at the last minute, having second thoughts. Alice convinces Bob to go with the plan.
- Parodied: The USB drive is actually a toy Donovan values a lot.
- Deconstructed: The USB drive is extremely protected, and Alice and Bob cannot sneak for so long, as they're still detected. They barely manage to get to the USB drive, wondering if all the effort was worth it.
- Reconstructed:
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice and Bob infiltrate TropeCo, steal the USB drive, but fail to escape. Then they manage to free themselves, only to get caught again. Rinse and repeat.
- Alice and Bob infiltrate TropeCo, steal the USB drive, but back down at the last minute, having second thoughts. They begin discussing if the idea is worth it.
- Averted: Alice and Bob don't go for the USB drive. Or the USB drive doesn't exist.
- Enforced: The company behind the work has a deal with Kingston, and the titular USB Drive was manufactured by them. Every time the USB drive is given the focus, the logo of the company is given special focus.
- Implied: Alice and Bob discuss the possibility of the existence of an USB drive with the data to take TropeCo down.
- Logical Extreme: Backups of the entirety of TropeCo's deeds, both subtle and gross, are kept in a huge vault full to the brim with USB drives, portable drives, CDs and memory chips (did you really thought all the files of a hundred years would fit in a single 5 gigabyte stick?).
Tone and Style
- Exaggerated: There are multiple USB drives, and all of them are needed.
- Downplayed: There's an USB drive, but the data they need is sunk among tons of useless data.
- Played For Laughs: The USB drive had shameful pictures of Donovan's last vacations, and he doesn't want the world to learn about them for fear his public image may be ruined.
- Played For Drama: While sneaking to get the USB drive, Alice and Bob hear a conversation between Charles and Donovan about the contents of the USB drive.
- Played For Horror: The work is a Slasher film, and Alice and Bob escape death several times. Their allies... don't.
Specific characters
- Lampshaded: Alice and Bob discuss about the content of the USB drive.
- Invoked: Alice reveals to Bob her plan to get the USB drive.
- Defied:
- TropeCo keeps its top-secret files in a secure computer drive the size of a bank safe (and equally heavy) with extremely restricted access that do not allow people to make copies.
- Donovan keeps his files in a notebook in a very secure location — which may create a similar type of MacGuffin, but is harder to obtain.
- Donovan committed the incriminating files to his memory and made sure to keep no kind of trail otherwise.
- There are absolutely no files whatsoever, electronic or otherwise (and we definitely mean "otherwise").
- Exploited:
- Donovan has a number of decoy USB drives full of malware that he leaves in easier to reach spots to screw over potential thieves.
- Donovan reveals that he places his most important files in a USB drive that he keeps under lock and key (and they are his most important files — his family photos and such) to bait thieves into going someplace Donovan can legally blow them away under ”castle doctrine")
- Discussed:
- Alice and Bob discuss about how to get the USB drive.
- Alice and Bob wonder about how the need for increased portability is a double-edged sword — you can't palm (or lose in a couch) a UNIVAC, after all.
- Conversed: Alice and Bob discuss about the different ways the plan can fail.
Back to Data Drive MacGuffin.
