Sandbox / One Degree Of Separation Wick Chevk

A wick check for One Degree of Separation.

Concern: 43% of the wicks for this trope (489 out of 1115) are on character pages, which is throwing off my numbers, as a single franchise can be listed under many different pages.

Many connections between characters

• Offending a Foreign Country: In One Piece, Saint Charlos of the World Nobles makes the mother of all Fee Fi Faux Pas by openly attempting to enslave princess Shirahoshi of Fishman Island, right in front of her family, in the first day of the Levely, a meeting of the kings, queens and assorted monarchs of the member nations of the World Government that takes place every four years in order for its members to discuss and set the course of worldwide politics. Naturally, Shirahoshi's family does not take it well, and while a few other dignataries protest against it, Charlos simply orders CP0 to kill anyone who tries to stop him. Mind you, attacking a World Noble for lesser slights has been answered with in the past by sending a freaking Admiral against the offending party. Considering that several of the aforementioned dignataries had become friendly both with Shirahoshi and each other solely on the account of being personally acquainted with the Straw Hat Pirates, who had saved their countries in the past, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that their countries would've gone to war against the World Government over the incident, with the Straw Hats (and by extension the Straw Hat Grand Fleet and maybe the Revolutionary Army) getting involved the second they heard about it and possibly escalating the conflict into a worldwide scale. Luckily, the whole incident is defused by Saint Mjosgard, who was influenced by Shirahoshi's mother in the past to become a better person and intends to repay the Neptune Family, by smacking Charlos in the face with a spiked club and ordering his slaves to release Shirahoshi and CP0 to stand down. Good thing too, since King Neptune was about to get himself killed trying to save his daughter.
• ADifferentLesson.Tropes M To Z: The Wu Sisters not only happen to have gone to school with Crane and Mei Ling (and are the latter's half-sisters), and have met Tai Lung and helped him on the way to becoming a Fallen Hero (a reference to their having been part of his army in the original script), but they also happened to know Po's biological parents and promised them they'd look in on the panda and Ping. While the former connections are there just for dramatic narrative purposes, the last one is surely meant as another symbolic way to underscore how Po and Tai Lung aren't so different, being Foils and two halves of a Bash Brothers, Red Oni, Blue Oni, Yin-Yang Bomb pairing. The fact it was the Wu Sisters' father who brought Tai Lung to the Jade Palace as a baby, as a favor to the wife of his friend after the latter's death, and that Xiu killing him kept Tai Lung's origin a secret as much as Po's was via oath, is even more of an example. "There are no accidents", indeed.
• Canada's Drag Race Season 3: Out of 12 contestants, 3 knew each other, and one knew a contestant from last season.
  • under Halal Bae: Not only is she the drag mother of fellow competitor Bombae, but many of the other queens have heard stories that she and Jada Shada Hudson hooked up in the past (which Jada confirms in a confessional).
  • under Bombae: She's the drag daughter of fellow competitor, Halal Bae.
  • under Kimmy Couture: She's the drag-daughter of Icesis Couture, fellow Ottawan and winner of the second season of Canada's Drag Race. When Icesis shows up in the finale to meet the final 4, she's over the moon seeing that Kimmy made it to the end.
  • under Jada Shada Hudson: Many of the other queens point out a rumor that she and Halal Bae hooked up in the past, which Jada later confirms in a confessional.
• FateGrandOrder.Tropes K To P: The Servants of either the same periods, the same country of origins, or the same background specialties knew each other personally. It gets pretty ridiculous with the Greeks; the Argonauts are a gathering of heroes by Jason, even heroes that weren't an Argonaut like Hektor are acquaintances with several of them. So, most Greek Servants personally know each other because of Jason's ridiculously good charisma.
• Film/Clue: The guests aren't supposed to know each other and they're all addressed by aliases, but a little conversation turns up a connection: most of them live in Washington D.C. and all of them make their living from the government "one way or another", which naturally alarms them.
• Love Actually: Nearly all the main characters are linked directly or indirectly; only Billy Mack and his manager have no real connection to the other characters (unless you count his performance distracting a security guard at exactly the right time). Earlier than that, seeing the video gave Sam the idea to become a drummer to impress Joanna. The song was playing at frequent intervals throughout the whole movie since. Here's a chart◊ to make things easier.
• The Taste of Others:
  • Castella is the boss of Bruno. Franck protects him. Clara is his private English teacher and Love Interest.
  • Bruno is Castella's chauffeur. He befriends Franck. He slept with Manie years ago.
  • Franck protects Castella. He befriends Bruno. He starts a relationship with Manie.
  • Clara gives Castella English lessons. Manie sells her marijuana.
  • Manie slept with Bruno years ago. She starts a relationship with Franck. She sells marijuana to Clara.
• GameOfThrones.Tropes L To O: Normally justified, as the relatively small size of the noble class in Westeros means most families will have met or at least heard of each other.
  • Played straight with Arya's experiences wandering among the much more populous small folk - out of all the people she could have bonded with between Kings Landing and Winterfell, her closest/only friend is naturally the son of her Dad's best friend. (On other occasions she ends up serving her family's Arch-Enemy, travelling with her sister's former protector and hanging out her mother's knight).
  • Tyrion Lannister is the only main character (as of Season 6) to have visited almost every theater of action in Westeros (North, The Wall, Riverlands, King's Landing, Meereen) and met the largest pool of characters (Jon Snow, Ser Alliser, Maester Aemon, Jeor Mormont, Robb Stark, Theon Greyjoy, Bran Stark, Catelyn Stark, Lysa Tully, the Royal Court of King's Landing, Sansa Stark, Oberyn Martell, Ellaria Sand, the Tyrell family, Jorah Mormont) and he's the first major political figure in Westeros to personally visit and pay court to Daenerys Targaryen. This becomes relevant in the plot when Tyrion breaks the news of Lord Commander Jeor Mormont's passing to his son Jorah, and when Theon and Yara Greyjoy visit Meereen at the end of S6, and he dresses down Theon by bringing up their one and only meeting in Season 1.
• Les Misérables. Would you believe it, Cosette, we just happened upon the same convent of which I had saved the gardener's life? And your boyfriend, what a coincidence, feels obliged to fulfill a debt owed to the same family that abused and starved you for three years! And that same family produced that gamin on the streets who's taking care of his brothers who were supposed to go live with your boyfriend's grandfather and mon dieu let's talk about the Parisian sewers.
  • And then the barricades, where every surviving character fit for battle (and a few who aren't, like Valjean (seventy-two going on eighty) and Eponine (starving, lovesick, homeless and female) shows up either during the battle or in the sewers. Lucky I saw this on the trope page.
• Baby Sitting Is A Dangerous Job: The men who kidnap Darcy and the Foster children turn out to be the brothers and abusive father of her friend Diana.

One or a few unexpected connections

• Godzilla: Singular Point: Mei Kamino went to the same high school as Haberu Kato, an employee of Otaki Factory.
• AshesOfThePast.Tropes L To O:
  • Falkner apparently captured the Aerodactyl that Ash and Co. released in Kanto.
  • May's mother Caroline and Serena's mother Grace were once rivals in their youth, and as a result, Serena becomes Dawn's pen-pal.
    • And once Serena realizes all the connections between her and the famous trainer Ash, she's thrown for a loop.
  • One of Ash's Butterfree's children joins Drew on his journey.
  • The Latias owned by the Pokémon inspector Nurse Joy (and the girlfriend of Ash's Latios) is apparently the sister of Tobias's Latios. Moreover, Tobias mentions he met his Latios through his sister, implying that his sister is said Nurse Joy.
• BreakingBad.Tropes M To R:
  • Walt bumps into Jane's father at a bar and they get talking about the perils of fatherhood, completely unaware of their connection. In "Fly," Walt muses on how unlikely a coincidence it was; even more so given that the very same night, Walt would go on to watch Jane asphyxiate on her own vomit.
  • Jesse meets a woman at NA who turns out to be the sister of the kid who shot Combo.
  • Tortuga was a victim of the Cousins.
• A New Hope Danganronpa Class 80: He worked for the Kuzuryu Clan in the past. It was he, not Ultimate Despair, that wiped the clan out when he decided to leave after the Tragedy hit. His only regret is not getting to kill Fuyuhiko and Natsumi, or testing himself against Peko in the process.
• A Song of Ice and Fire - The Order of the Maesters under Archmaester Marwyn: Mirri Maz Duur, the Lhazareen maegi who tends to Daenerys and is responsible for Drogo and Rhaego's deaths, learned the arts of medicine from him as a young woman.
• A Student Out Of Time Major Antagonists under Junko Enoshima: She and Emma have known each other for a few years and got along swimmingly.
• Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus under Retired Knight Garangara: He's Kathrus' maternal grandfather.
• Case Closed: Rei Furuya: We later learn that in his childhood, Misao Yamamura befriended Hiromitsu. Has fate gone another way, Furuya could have been Childhood Friends with Yamamura as well.
• Drag Race Italia Season 2 under Panthera Virus: She's the drag daughter of Ava Hangar, the lovable Sardinian drag artist from Italia's first season.
• Earth Twenty Seven Ghostbusters under Egon Spengler: His former nanny, a foreign exchange student who shared his interest in mythology, was Julia Kapatelis.
• Fate/Grand Order: Berserkers - N to Z under Salome: She is loosely connected to Percival through her mother Herodias, who according to Fate/Requiem would later be known as Kundry, Percival's love.
• Harry Potter – Other Characters under Bathilda Bagshot: She is great aunt to Grindelwald and was a neighbour of the Dumbledores and the Potters. She often visited Harry when he was a baby and during one visit related the story of Dumbledore and Grindelwald's friendship to Lily.
• Star Wars: Legacy – Protagonists:
  • under Cade Skywalker under The Cameo: He, Jariah, and Deliah make a cameo in Legacy II as scamming Sauk by selling him a stabilizing coil for an expensive price. Doubles as One Degree of Separation.
  • under Cade Skywalker: As mentioned in The Cameo above, he and the others met Sauk, so they were pretty close to meeting Ania, another heroic descendant of Anakin and Padmé.
• The Victors Project: Districts Nine to Twelve and the Capitol under Roan Tully: Crippled a stablehand by crushing his foot. That stablehand would later be reaped as the male tribute for the 74th Hunger Games, aka Katniss's Games.
• Fandom-Specific Plot.Zootopia: "Nick meets Gideon" is another fairly common plot, though how it plays out and how well they get along varies quite widely. Sometimes, particularly when this scene is a side detail to an above-mentioned "Nick meets the parents" plot, they are neutral or ambivalent towards each other, or become friendly acquaintances without forming a significant relationship. But when this meeting is the focus of the plot, more interesting things tend to happen. Sometimes, Nick feels jealous about the other fox in Judy's life. Sometimes, Nick is hostile towards Gideon for what he did to Judy as a child. Contrariwise, sometimes they hit it off very well and become fast friends, which in extreme cases can even turn into a Slash Fic. On occasion, they find out that, improbably, they already knew each other from somewhere else.
• Cheating Death: Those That Lived:
  • Anchor's uncle is Sharky Huxley, a man whom Tide owed money to, and those latter events caused Tide to volunteer for her Games.
  • In the Cheating Death universe, Augustus Braun is Glimmer's uncle.
• The King Nobody Wanted: In Chapter 18, Alyn Stackspear is introduced as a Proud Elite Commander Contrarian who seems to irrationally hate Tytos. Then Chapter 76 comes along and shows him in an entirely new light. He has a bad inferiority complex due to his demanding father and a poor showing in his first tourney (where he was sabotaged by Boros Blount). He recounts how, when the war came, he wanted to fight against Aerys (and feels that Jaime was justified in breaking his Kingsguard vows to kill him) but was unable to do so while Tywin remained neutral. The Sack of King's Landing left him a Shell-Shocked Veteran when men under his command killed Janos Slynt's father due to a misunderstanding. He encountered Tytos's son Gregor on his way to murder Rheager's family and feels that he should have done something to stop him, even though he had no idea what was going on at the time. His disdain for Tytos is a reflection of how he feels about Gregor, and he seems to shed these feelings after a heart-to-heart talk with his commander.
• Franchise/Tarzan: The Disney feature-length Tarzan cartoon was relatively free of gross instances of the studio's usual Disneyfication, although it did turn Jane from an American to a Brit among other things. It also had a villain named Clayton (note that Tarzan's real name in the book was John Clayton, not to be confused with this character who was Jane's fiancé, William Clayton, as well as Tarzan's cousin). The Disney Tarzan franchise also spawned an animated Spin-Off TV series (The Legend of Tarzan) and a stage musical (Tarzan: The Musical).

Many characters connected through a single character

• Age Of Empires II Definitive Edition under Maria Kantakouzena: Not discussed in-game, but historically, she's linked to almost every major player in the Ivaylo campaign. She's a wife to Konstantin and Ivaylo, and cousin-in-law to Ivan Asen III and Nogai Khan.
• Northern Overexposure: Becomes a problem for Rontti when he starts to look for work. More than once he meets someone that he used to be involved with, one way or the other. Needless to say, he does not have easy time finding a job.

Zero-Context Examples

• A Song of Ice and Fire - House Frey in General folder, under Big, Screwed-Up Family: And how! The Clan, Dysfunction Junction, It Runs in the Family, Tangled Family Tree, the works! They really spared no expense on the trimmings. Even if they were only out to troll everybody else, they'd still wind up contending with each other thanks to the numbers game meaning that they are practically bound to be directly related to somebody they're screwing over, whatever they do.
• Sin City: Major characters are often hanging out in the background. In some cases, this is used to show that two major stories are happening at once.

Unclear or Mixed

• Anime/Free With so many characters, all of them are surprisingly connected together in some way, especially in Dive to the Future.
  • Haru and Makoto probably don't know that Asahi and Rei have met before in Starting Days.
  • High★Speed! 2 reveals that Asahi and Rin were friends when they were little but they don't remember each other.
  • Sosuke warns Rin about Ikuya in Timeless Medley, who also happens to be Haru and Makoto's friend in middle school.
  • Mikhail, Rin's coach in Dive to the Future, is Nitori's uncle.
  • Natsuya, Haruka and Makoto's swim club captain from middle school, hung out with Rin in Australia.
• Odd Taxi: Pretty much everyone either knows Odokawa or knows somebody that does. This also applies to the cast in general, as many twists involve the revelation that seemingly unrelated characters know each other somehow. Part single character, part ZCE. Possibly valid if expanded.
• This Bites!:
  • Remember Boss's teacher and idol, Sifu Dugong? Garp regularly spars with him. Note: This seems like a single connection.
  • Hancock's Big Damn Heroes moment when Doflamingo goes after Luffy, excusing it as not liking his face. They take out a good chunk of the eastern front of the war during their clash.
    • Even more awesome since canon's reveal that Doflamingo was once a Celestial Dragon, something that Hancock and her sisters hate more than anything else in the world given their backstories. Hancock is getting a chance to fight back against her former oppressors, even if it’s by One Degree of Separation. But this seems like a different trope.
• Marvel Gems Universe Ultimate Alliance under Rose Quartz: Has connections to Asgard, Attilan, Wakanda, Atlantis, K'un-L'un, the Vishanti, Apocalypse, the Howling Commandos and S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Małgorzata Musierowicz:
  • under Jeżycjada: Everyone can be reasonably assumed to know anyone else. And if they don't know someone, they will, sooner or later.
  • under Jeżycjada under Secretly Dying: Secretly Very Ill. Mrs. Borejko in Kwiat Kalafiora. Thankfully saved by Aniela's uncle, a brilliant surgeon.
• DemotedToExtra.Anime And Manga: Why the Hell Are You Here, Teacher!?: Every volume of the series focuses on a different couple, usually related to the previous volume's characters by One Degree of Separation. The previous main characters never disappear, but they are reduced to a supporting role.
• Heartwarming.Project Sekai: Having all the groups meet and support each other is this in spades. There is something very heartwarming on seeing everyone meeting each other, no longer thinly separated by One Degree of Separation, and it makes it feels like they are one big group of friends now.

Indexes or Other Non-Examples

• Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: For applications in fiction, see One Degree of Separation.
• Made of Win (Late 2009): rsm109: Whoever's responsible for this pothole in One Degree of Separation:
  • However, on your wedding day, when you meet her father, you remember that he's the guy who failed you in biology in the twelfth grade.