Basic Trope: One character is tangentially connected to every other character.
- Straight: Bob knows several people personally, and has a met someone who is has met each other person in Tropeville he hasn't met.
- Exaggerated: Bob personally knows everyone in the universe.
- Downplayed: Bob is one acquaintance away from most people in Tropeville, but there are plenty from whom he's separated by two.
- Justified:
- Bob lives in a very small town. Almost everyone knows everyone.
- Bob has met Jane, who Really Gets Around. Thus, Jane has met everyone in Tropeville at least once.
- Bob is a rock star, and most of Tropeville has attended his concerts and met him personally.
- Bob, as the Municipal Registration Clerk, 'knows' everyone in town.
- Inverted: Bob is an alien who has never met anyone.
- Subverted: Bob and Alice go on a date. Bob tells Alice he knows at least one person who has met Alice before him, but as he lists off a list of names of people he's met Alice shakes her head. Bob realizes in astonishment that he doesn't know anyone who had met Alice before him.
- Double Subverted:
- ... then Bob lists a name he forgot and Alice shakes her head in amazement.
- ... then Alice reveals that she was lying.
- Parodied: Bob has a device which sends him an alert to the location of someone he hasn't met and doesn't have a friend who has met him; he rushes in his car to meet them personally.
- Zig Zagged: Bob is a traveler. The number of people separating him and everyone else doesn't change.
- Averted: The average number of people between Bob and every other person is around 3.
- Enforced: The author of Bob's Adventures needs a cheap way to introduce several characters. So he lists how they all knew each other before they met.
- Lampshaded:Bob: Does everyone know everyone around here?
Alice: No, that's why we have a friend for everyone else! - Invoked: Bob begins introducing himself to everyone he meets,
- Exploited: Bob's friend Lucy realizes she can spread a rumor across the whole town very quickly if he tells Bob first.
- Defied: Bob decides not to live in Tropeville because he doesn't want to get know the Tropevillagers.
- Discussed:Bob: So you know everyone, huh? What if some new guy walks into town who hasn't met anyone?
Alice: He'd fill up for gas at Mikey's Gas Station. And everyone knows Mikey! - Conversed: "Wait a minute. The waiter at Alice's wedding was the gas station attendant that Bob met four years ago and Bob met Alice's father six years before meeting Alice in a truck stop in Trope City? That's pushing it."
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