MacGuffin Delivery Service: Difference between revisions

The [[Adventurer Archaeologist]] has gone through all manner of [[Death Course]] hazards and exhausted himself [[Always Close|narrowly escaping]] from certain death, but he has succeeded in retrieving the [[MacGuffin|idol]]! ....except that he emerges to find his [[Arch Enemy|arch-nemesis]] aiming a gun point -blank at him, casually ordering him to hand it over.

[[The Hero]] has collected a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|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 [[MacGuffin|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, [[Mobile Menace|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 [[MacGuffin]] for ''us'', this time?!" Ah, the magic of [[Genre Blindness]]. (This ''could'' make sense in the event that the [[Big Bad]] only [[Cosmic Keystone|needs to get his hands on the MacGuffin for an instant]] in order to triumph; but of course, that's never the case in a story involving a [['''MacGuffin Delivery Service]]''', since the plot would end rather abruptly if it were.)

This is one of the rare cases in good vs. evil where [[You Can't Thwart Stage One|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 [[MacGuffin]] you managed to hang onto, preventing him from [[Gotta Catch Them All|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 a hold of it, [[Hostage for McGuffin|expect it]] to [[Inescapable Ambush|to leave his hands]] before they can use it, getting us back to the start of the trope. Often a [[Xanatos Gambit]]: if the hero doesn't ''try'' to get the Maguffin before the villain than there's nothing stopping the villain from getting it first. Likewise, the whole scenario can be a [[Batman Gambit]] by a [[Big Bad Friend]] or treacherous leader to manipulate the heroes into ''willingly'' giving them the [[MacGuffin]]. You can expect these villains to enjoy some [[Evil Gloating]], asking "[[Did You Actually Believe?]] all that tripe about '[[The Power of Friendship]]'?" Or most frustratingly of all, the villain [[Villain Teleportation|may just teleport behind the hero and yoink it away.]] If something is promised in exchange for the [[MacGuffin]] and the villian goes back on his word, it's a case of [[The Cake Is a Lie]].

This is a subtrope of [[Unwitting Pawn]], where the villain's goal is unknown to the heroes. In a [[MacGuffin Delivery Service]], the heroes know the villain wants the [[MacGuffin]], 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.

* Averted in ''Chouja [[Reideen]]'', where the heroes are completely unaware of the [[MacGuffin|MacGuffins]]s' existance until late in the series.

* In ''[[Captain America (comics)]] Annual'' #13, the [[Red Skull]] is after Hitler's Strongbox. The Skull learns the strongbox is located in the castle of Albert Malik, the Communist who impersonated the Skull in the 1950s. The Skull, knowing that Captain America will not resist attempting to stop him, issues a challenge which contains the strongbox's location. Cap makes his way through Malik's booby-trapped dungeon to the vault. At which point the Skull comes up behind Cap, death ray in hand, and tells him "I must thank you for activating all the many defenses Malik devised to protect the true strongbox." When an angry Cap declares "So you didn't arrive here first! You maneuvered me into being your stalking horse!" the Skull responds "You should feel flattered. I had so much faith in you surviving Malik's death traps, I followed hard on your heels."

* ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons (film)||Dungeons and Dragons]]'', if it weren't enough of a [[Cliché Storm]] already.

** In ''[[Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (novel)|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone]]'': Harry plans to get to the Stone before Voldemort. His actions in trying to do so simply make it easier for the Villain to almost succeed.

** In ''[[Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (novel)|Order of the Phoenix]]'', Harry breaks into the Ministry of Magic based on visions (from Voldemort) which everyone he tells about urge him to block in order to get the prophecy for Voldemort, as he's one of the few that can. It's two tropes in one; a pretty case of a [[Batman Gambit]] by Voldemort that results in Harry almost serving as a [[MacGuffin]] Delivery Service

* [[Tad Williams]]' trilogy ''[[Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn]]'' turns out to be a giant [[Kansas City Shuffle]]: the [[Dreaming of Things to Come|prophetic dreams]] many of the protagonists have are [[Prophetic Fallacy|actually sent by the villain]], in order to get them to [[MacGuffin Delivery Service|bring the three titular swords together]].

* Subverted on ''[[Blake's Seven7|Blakes Seven]]'': The crew of a prison ship find an abandoned space ship in the middle of nowhere and decide to have a few of the convicts go on first to find booby traps. The convicts are the heroes and they take the ship as their own.

* ''[[Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door]]'' has a double example. When you fight [[The Dragon]] who has the last of the [[Plot CouponsCoupon]]s, 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 CouponsCoupon]]s to the final area.

* ''[[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.

*** And subverted by the fact that Crash wins those battles. It's even more grandiose in the [[Hundred-Percent100% Completion]] boss fight, where Uka Uka gloats that he'll be able to achieve ''ultimate power'' with both the crystals and the gems.

* The basic '''plot''' of '''all three''' ''[[Uncharted]]'' games.

* ''[[BioshockBioShock (series)]]'' has the end-of-second-act plot twist where {{spoiler|Andrew Ryan shows that the player was being mind-controlled into doing Atlas' bidding through the whole game, and orders the player to kill himself, after which he pilfers Ryan's body and delivers the Genetic Key to Atlas, who reveals himself as Frank Fontaine, Ryan's biggest rival}}.

* In ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'', Lloyd and his friends end up playing this role during {{spoiler|the Journey of Salvation}}, when they end up powering the [[MacGuffin]] ({{spoiler|[[MacGuffin Girl|Colette]]}}) and unwittingly hand it right over to [[The Dragon]] (luckily, [[Enemy Mine|Yuan]] intervenes). They end up doing ''the exact same thing again'' when {{spoiler|they cure Colette's crystallization sickness only to ill-advisedly attack the [[Big Bad]]'s lair, who was of course expecting them and instantly recaptures Colette.}}

* Inverted in the [[Web Comic]] ''[[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.

* Happens often in ''[[Jackie Chan Adventures]].'' In fact, all seasons end with the villain getting what they wanted, but of course they still lose to the heroes. Both sides constantly run into each other throughout the series. Even Valmont pointed out how it was sometimes easier to have Jackie do the work for him of getting the [[MacGuffin]].

** An interesting variant happens in the season four where the heroes and villains race to collect the masks that contain the spirits of [[Big Bad|Tarakudo]]'s generals. {{spoiler|In the end, it does not matter which faction collects all the mask as long as they are collected together, making this [[Failure Is the Only Option]] as far as preventing Tarakudo from rising again is concerned}}.