Chain of Deals: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''"He traded sand for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand."''|[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=3744 Squandered Resources], [[Magic: The Gathering]]}}

* ''[[Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian]]'' has a story like this, starting with a red paper clip, and ending with {{spoiler|a teddy bear}}.

 

 

* Occurs in a couple of [[Carl Barks]] comics, in particular when [[Donald Duck]]'s nephews are involved, who seem to be quite good at this. ''Maharajah Donald'' starts out as the nephews start with a used-up piece of pencil, they end up with a holiday for them and Donald to India or a country of the sorts. In the end, Donald is captured and will be thrown into a tiger pit. The nephews find a paperclip, exclaiming they've found the thing that can save their uncle. cut to "sometime later", when they trade something very valuable for a truckload of raw meat. They throw it over the wall of the tiger pit, feeding the tigers, thus making them not hungry anymore when Donald gets thrown in.

* [[Older Than Print]]: The Japanese legend of the straw millionaire is this trope played completely straight. A poor peasant prays to the goddess of mercy for relief from his miserable life. She grants him a single piece of straw which he trades through his travels until fortunate circumstances lead to the hand in marriage of the daughter of a millionaire.

* There're two stories from [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|The Brothers Grimm]], both about a boy named Hans; in one, he trades all the way up to marrying a Princess (if memory serves correctly); in the other, he trades all the way down to nothing (but is still happy, because the last thing he traded for was a freaking huge millstone that did nothing but weigh him down).

{{quote|'''Old Woman:''' Cat, kill rat! Rat won't gnaw rope, rope won't hang butcher, butcher won't kill ox, ox won't drink water, water won't put out fire, fire won't burn stick, stick won't beat dog, dog won't bite pig, pig won't jump over the stile, and I shan't get home tonight!}}

* In a Russian fairy tale a rooster choked on a bean. His hen hurried to the housewife asking for some butter to lube rooster's throat, but the woman needed some milk from the cow, who needed the farmer to cut some grass for her, but the farmer needed a scythe from the blacksmith, so the hen ran to the smith, got a scythe and unwound the sequence. Naturally, cynical Russians spoofed the story, so when the hen reaches the blacksmith...

* ''If You Give a Mouse a Cookie'' is about the chain of deals that will result if you do what the title says.

* Francis Spufford's [[Alternate History]] novel ''Red Plenty'' has a Soviet black marketeer whose entire business is built on these kind of arrangements.

 

== Live Action TV ==

 

** By contrast, the episode "The Long John Flap" features a ''series'' of separate exchanges involving a pair of Long Johns, but there's no chain to be unwound.

* In ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'', this is the B-plots of the second-season episode "Progress," notable for containing the first mention of [[Running Gag|self-sealing stem bolts]], and the fifth-season episode "In The Cards". In the seventh-season episode "Treachery, Faith, and the Great River", we learn that such chains are a tenet of Ferengi philosophy - the "[http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Great_Material_Continuum Great Material Continuum]".

== Music ==

 

** A bucket is required, but there's a hole in it. A straw is needed to fix the bucket, but the straw is too long. An axe is needed to cut the straw, but it's too blunt. A stone is required to sharpen the axe, but it's too dry. Water is needed to wet the stone, but it needs to be carried somehow. A bucket is needed to carry the water, but there's a hole in the bucket...

 

* ''[[Ogre Battle]]'' has at least one of these in the series. The original SNES game, Episode IV, [[Queen|March of the Black Queen]] had several. The first you see is the powerful Ring of Undead, held by a wizard early in the game who would trade it for a Lexicon of Undead. And then there is the Diaspola chain. You start with some pirates with a copy of The Saga who are looking for a Map, which is in town with a man who is looking for Amatsu that can be found in the trade shop of neighboring town who only buys Furs which an underhanded sneak has and will part ways with if you give him all you money or return his stolen goblet held by bandits who want to hear a Foul Tome you received from a previous stage. Each of these items is worth progressively more than the previous.

* The desert monkey cave in ''[[EarthBound]]'' is basically a Puzzle Chain of Deals. With some lampshading thrown in ("amongst all these doors..."). Thankfully it's [[Rule of Funny|funny]]. Some players still consider it the most frustrating part of the game, mostly because ''every room looks like every other room'' and one item turns into something else (thus rendering it useless) after too much time passes. Fortunately, the player's guide (which was originally packaged with the game) eliminated most of the frustration by providing maps.

* ''Secret of Evermore'''s greek market blatantly uses this, though it's entirely optional. It's even pretty complex, with multiple traders giving the same item for different exchanges, but the rewards you can get through it are items that permanently boost your abilities, so it's worth your time and resources.

* ''[[Romancing SaGa]]'' involved a large trade quest kicked off when Strom (Water Elemental Lord) demands the "Raincloud Armlet" in exchange for a captive princess. It's in the possession of Adyllis (Earth Elemental Lord), who will only give it up if you give him the Cyclone Shoes, which you can only get by trading the Ignigarde Helmet to Avi (Wind Elemental Lord) by acquiring the Ice Sword for Pyrix (Fire Elemental Lord) in which you must plunk down 20,000 gold or by killing a recruitable character. At any point in the chain, you can decide to brute-force the whole thing and just beat the crap out of the dragon, though and you get an awesome shield as a [[Randomly Drops|Item Drop]]. However that does have some repercussions, by killing Strom you cannot get the optimal amount of jewels for doing the quest normally, are unable to do his Ecology Quest and also getting the chance to fight his Corrupted Form; Slask ([[Randomly Drops|Item Drop]] is the Chaosbringer; A powerful 2 Handed Axe that gives an Intellect boost). {{spoiler|This also bars you from exploring his temple later, meaning that you can't get the items inside -- including the Water Spirit, which is required for ''another'' quest with ''fantastic'' rewards.}} Also there is a trading ability for you to use in which you can trade items with monsters; so a mini Chain of Deals is possible; [[Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer]] indeed...

* The ''[[Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron|Spirit]]'' game, ''[[Long Title|Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron: Forever Free]]'' features one near the end. In exchange for a horse's freedom, someone wants a wheel to fix their cart, the blacksmith who has a wheel wants a blanket from Little Creek, Little Creek in turn wants an axe to chop wood with...and said axe can then be <s>stolen</s> taken from Snakefinger.

* This can happen between three or more players in ''[[Heroes of Newerth]]'''s and other ''[[Defense of the Ancients]]'' clones' Single Draft mode where every player is given a choice from three random heroes that can be swapped between other players in your team.

* An obscure point-and-click adventure entitled ''[[The Day The World Broke]]'' has a doozy of a chain. To get Carbine the half-Lizard, half-camera (all the non-human characters are half-animal, half-machine) to stop standing in the path of an element valve, which is causing chaos across Earth's surface, you need to fix his lens. The only place to get a lens is the Glass Works, where Carbine doesn't have the best reputation. That's a moot point, though, as the Glass Works is too busy filling orders for new glassware for Lugnut the bartender. So you need to get a note from Lugnut, who'll give it to you in exchange for getting rival bartender Decanter to part with rare bottle of sludge. In order to get that, Decanter wants a recording of a song his mother used to sing him, which requires an instrument that's notoriously difficult to find but fortunately is in the hands of one of Lugnut's customers, Ratchet, who will trade it to you for another instrument which ''actually doesn't exist'', so you need to enlist the help of Phlange, who will help you make something that could pass for it, but in order to get Phlange to help you, you have to get her to stop standing in a different element valve. To get her to do this, you have to call Julius and Bud at Mission Control, who will finally convince her to leave, allowing you to get her help to make the instrument to trade for the other instrument to trade for the recording to trade for the sludge to trade for the note to trade for the lens. ''Whew.''

 

* The first ''[[Skin Horse]]'' storyline featured an increasingly absurd chain as main character Tip tried to deal with an increasingly bizarre string of escaped/lost sentient lab experiments.

** Which proved to have some consequences, since he {{spoiler|ended up screwing up the whole chain of deals his boss was ''used'' to dealing with - which resulted in her having to find out if the new leadership down in the basement is amenable to talking with the folks upstairs.}} Lampshaded at several points during the whole chain.

 

== Web Original ==

* An episode of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' had Jimmy go through one to get Beezy's [[Collector of the Strange|collection of chewed gum]] back.

* One episode of ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]'' featured the main characters getting caught on a ridiculous looping Chain of Deals: they were A, they needed to pay D, so they went to collect money B owed them, but B couldn't pay them because C owed him money, and C couldn't pay ''him'' because D owed him, and then D couldn't pay because the main characters owed ''him''. It was eventually resolved by passing a cheque around in a circle, followed by [[Rule of Funny|singing a song about an egg named Steve]].

 

== Real Life ==

* Interestingly, electrical power systems are often ''protected'' by a chain-of-deals-like system. In interlocking, you must satisfy certain conditions in order to operate an item of equipment (disconnectors, earth switches, access gates etc.) which involves following prescribed sequences of opening/closing switches to obtain keys to access other sequences to obtain another key that opens the shutter to the hand crank you need to operate the item of equipment you were interested in the first place. For added super-bonus fun, on offshore windfarms certain steps entail ''sailing'' between ''individual turbines'', key clutched in hand. The reason for this intentional complexity is to ensure that all equipment is made safe before anyone gets anywhere near it, and that there is no danger of damaging the main grid.

* Steven Ortiz received a used cell phone as a gift, used Craigslist to trade it for other things, and ended up with a 2000 Porsche, according to ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s [http://www.cracked.com/article_21500_the-6-most-amazing-things-ever-traded-pointless-crap.html The 6 Most Amazing Things Ever Traded For Pointless Crap].

 

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