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Magnetic Plot Device
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Peter Venkman: What? I guess they just don't make them like they used to.
Ray Stantz: No! Nobody ever made them like this. ... The whole building is a huge super-conductive antenna that was designed and built expressly for the purpose of pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence. Your girlfriend lives in the corner penthouse of Spook Central.
— Ghostbusters (1984)

A normal person living a normal life will likely not get involved with adventures week after week. We need a storytelling device to explain why fate won't leave this guy alone, something attracting weirdness. Without this magnet, Fridge Logic will start to kick in with viewers, creating suspicions of Contrived Coincidence.

Typical versions include:

Not to be confused with the Magnetic Hero, who's especially good at making friends and allies.

Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The Brand of Sacrifice borne by Guts in Berserk draws demons to him like a lightning rod, making his life (and the life of his lover Casca, who also bears the Brand) a literal living Hell. The two of them are only alive because Guts is an unstoppable demonslaying badass (and because the Skull Knight has a vested interest in making sure they live to oppose the Godhand).
  • The main character himself in Bleach, who attracts the enemies he fights due to his exceptionally strong spiritual presence, as well as Karakura City itself, which for whatever reason has an unusually high concentration of spiritual energy. It also helps that Ichigo does such a bad job of containing said spiritual power that he ends up Super-Empowering a lot of the people who hang out around him.
  • The Dragon Balls in Dragon Ball always draw a lot of characters essential to the plot together; they are useless apart, so any character with one will look for whoever has the others. For example, Bulma first meets Goku because she is searching for a Dragon Ball that he owns. It wasn't until the Android Saga, mid-way through Dragon Ball Z, that they had an Arc Villain whose plans did not involve the Dragon Balls in any way.
  • The shattered Four Souls gem in Inuyasha. At least in the beginning, Inu-Yasha and Kagome are trying to collect the scattered shards of it... and running into a lot of monsters and assorted beasties who are also trying to collect the shards.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the Stand-creating Arrow is attracted to potential Stand users. Similarly, Stand users apparently attract other Stand users. How or why this happens is never explained, but fate is a tangible force in JoJo; make of that what you will.
  • In Kekkaishi, there are spiritual hot-spots (like Karasumori) that attract Ayakaishi (demons) who are hungry for power. In the beginning, this was the source of almost every Monster of the Week.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Tokyo-3 was built over the Geofront to act as a fortress to protect a MacGuffin the Angels seek out, since if they ever found what they were looking for, it would wipe out all life on the planet. What the Angels are after isn't where they think it is, but explaining the truth is too complex to do here.

    Comic Books 
  • The Defenders: The arc of the 2012 title focuses on Concordance Anchors, devices that pinpoint miraculous events in parallel universes that create superhumans and rewrite them to occur in their home reality. This justifies the immense weirdness and sliding timescale of the Marvel Universe, as the heroes are meant to fend off cosmic threats to the very existence of reality.
  • The protagonist of Major Bummer is a slacker who received super-powers when aliens sent him an "Extreme Enhancement Module" by mistake. The EEM is designed to attract trouble (and other EEM-enhanced supers), so that superheroes won't run out of villains to fight or crises to avert — much to the protagonist's annoyance.
  • The Endless of The Sandman (1989).
    Delirium: The things we do make echoes. S'pose you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning. For ages after people will stop on that corner, stare up at the sky, they wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning. Some of them might be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe.
  • Star Brand: The Star Brand is a Weirdness Magnet and a weirdness generator all in one. It's the Meta Origin of Paranormals... and it blows up cities if you mishandle it.
  • In Supergirl (1996), Supergirl moves to a small town. Naturally, crazed supervillains follow. This is partly explained by a mystical river that runs underneath the town and attracts oddness like deer to a salt lick.
  • In Supreme Power, the various parts of the spacecraft that brought Hyperion to Earth tend to catalyze plot-significant events, as well as providing a Meta Origin for most other superhumans.
  • Witchblade: The chance of a quiet sane life for a Witchblade wielder is zero. It attracts unfriendly attention as a powerful artifact, and possibly itself tend to choose ladies already with predisposition to be Weirdness Magnets.

    Films — Animated 
  • The Bad Guys (2022): The Love Crater Meteorite, which crashed into Los Angeles a year prior to the events of the film and formed a huge crater. Marmalade's actions in the disaster's aftermath put him in the spotlight, leading to him being given the Good Samaritan Award and setting the events of the film in motion. More importantly, it's an energy source unlike anything on Earth, and Marmalade creates a plan to steal it to use in his own crimes and set up the Bad Guys — who had no interest in the meteorite prior — to take the fall for him.

    Films — Live Action 

    Literature 
  • At one point in The Chronicles of Narnia, a character points out that Narnia always seems to be undergoing some crisis or other. Aslan corrects him: Narnia regularly undergoes centuries at a time of peace, it's just that he only brings children from our world to the time and place that they're most needed.
  • In The Cloakmaster Cycle of Spelljammer novels:
    David Shepheard: There is a lot of interesting stuff that happens to Teldin Moore in space, but it all boils down to three basic facts:
    1) He is stuck with an Ultimate Helm,
    2) Anyone who has come into contact with the Ultimate Helm wants to get hold of it and
    3) The Ultimate Helm wants to get onto The Spelljammer.
    The cloak is the ultimate railroading device. You could give the Cloakmaster Cycle one book, three books, six books or nine books, but you would still end up with the end of the adventure being set on The Spelljammer and Teldin's cloak trying to turn him into its next Captain.
  • Discworld: In the early novels, Rincewind is a walking magnetic plot device due to being possessed by one of the most powerful spells in the world. He's rid of it at the end of the second book, The Light Fantastic, after which... he's still a magnet for everything weird that Terry Pratchett wants to throw at him. A later book establishes that the Lady — implied to be Lady Luck, although the books takes the same effort to avoid saying her name as the characters do — has taken an interest in Rincewind, and sometimes uses him as a pawn in her games with Fate. If it ain't broke...
  • Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champion" (in his various incarnations) is always being summoned to do battle in various worlds without rest, so he is always in an Adventure Town.
  • It is frequently said throughout the course of the Liaden Universe series that "the Luck" moves strangely about Clan Korval — hence the clan is one great big Coincidence Magnet. It is never explained why exactly this is so, but everyone who believes in "the Luck" seems to regard it as an immutable fact of life. Also, it is shown to be every bit as genetically heritable as the famed Clan Korval piloting ability, regardless of whether its inheritor is officially in the clan or not.
  • The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings, as the Nazgûl are constantly searching for it and it calls out to servants of the Dark Lord to try and get back to his hand. Also, the Silmarils in The Silmarillion for more temporal reasons — everyone seems driven mad with the desire to possess them, meaning anyone who holds one can never rest easy. Even if he's Morgoth.
  • Malazan Book of the Fallen: "Power draws power." It is a fact of this setting that whenever important things are happening in roughly the same and area, they all tend to converge in one place. Some characters are aware of this tendency and exploit it.
  • The Caves in The Quentaris Chronicles. They connect the City of Adventure to alternate universes, and are a large source of profit as well as danger as adventurers go questing for treasures or random monsters come and attack the place.
  • Teela Brown from Ringworld is a rare science fiction take. See what the luckiest girl ever can do! (Particularly her ending...)
  • The Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series runs on a Background Magic Field called the Tradition, which not only 'knows' the basic fairy tale plots but tries to reenact them. If you happen to fit the mold of, say, a heroic dragon-slaying knight, the Tradition is going to send dragons your way... even if they're not particularly monstrous and you don't even want to slay them.
  • In The Wheel of Time, the main characters are ta'veren — people who inexplicably create outrageous coincidences and shape the world around them simply by existing.
    • On one ordinary day while Rand is in the city, a baby falls out of a high window onto cobblestones and crawls away unhurt; a freak wind blows a tiny feather into a man's open mouth and suffocates him to death; and a basket of roof tiles falls off a tower, shatters into a million pieces, and its shards happen to randomly (but perfectly!) form the image on the city's new flag.
    • This becomes really important in Mat Cauthon's development. Since he's aware his presence skews probability, Mat takes bets on being able to do impossible things, and then does them— such as when he throws a knife into a tiny block of wood in midair, a long distance away, while blindfolded.
  • In Worm, powers are granted by a passenger, which seems to be some kind of alien being with a will of its own that subtly drives superhumans to conflict with each other, explaining in part why most people with powers become superheroes or supervillains getting into conflict instead of just living normal lives. The other reason for this is societal pressure for people with powers to become heroes and initially treating "rogues", people who don't use their powers for fighting, as undesirable.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffyverse:
    • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
      • The main characters only actually go into the Hellmouth in the first and last seasons, but everything in between is still blamed on it, as it shoots out enough evil-ness to attract demons from miles around. Plus, the town was built expressly for demons to come and eat the squishy humans. Numerous villains also plan to open it, which would cause The End of the World as We Know It.
      • The title of Slayer. Demons sometimes run off to see how they would match up against the legendary demon killer, à la Spike. The Origin comic introduced the concept that the Slayer is a "creature of destiny", which is sort of an inversion of this trope. The reason Buffy could never escape her destiny is not because supernatural stuff is attracted to her, but she is guided by destiny to it. That's why her high school in Los Angeles was attacked by Lothos, why she encountered a demonic cult at the mental hospital she spent a few weeks in, why she ended up moving to Sunnydale after leaving LA, and why she stumbled upon a demonic labor operation when she spent a summer there trying to hide from her destiny.
    • Angel:
      • Wolfram and Hart is a multi-dimensional demonic law firm. The possibilities practically drip off of that sentence.
      • Similar to the Slayer, Angel has 200 years of old enemies to deal with — and the Powers That Be got directly involved with Angel's life to ensure that it was never calm.
      • When trouble doesn't come to Angel, Doyle/Cordy's visions will help to bring it.
  • The Nexus in Charmed (1998). The status of the Charmed Ones also makes them a frequent target for nefarious plots.
  • Immortals in the Highlander series are always drawn to each other because of the Quickening and The Game.
  • A big criticism towards House is the number of medical mysteries that get thrown House's way, mentioned at being about one a week. The show has made some remarks in that regard, giving most patients a unique set-up as well as doctors all around the region would send patients to House because he was just that good.
  • In Lost, it's the island itself. Literal magnetism is involved as well. A huge magnetic discharge from the Swan station caused Flight 815 to crash.
  • The Lost Room: All of the objects attract one another. One object-wielder eventually got tired of being targeted by collectors and gave his up willingly to the hero.
  • The two main characters in Merlin (2008) are examples of this — Arthur, being Crown Prince of Camelot, is the target of numerous assassination plots and is expected to go forth and smite various evil creatures with mighty smitage; Merlin is an incredibly powerful sorcerer, which in itself attracts some opposition.
  • The anomalies in Primeval.
  • For Smallville, the Magnetic Plot Device is not the Green Rocks, but instead is the Kryptonian influence of Jor-El. The Green Rocks were just a side effect of that.
  • Stargate-verse:
    • The Stargate and everything else in Stargate SG-1. Understanding the Stargate's potential for weirdness, the military installed the iris to limit what could come through.
    • The city of Atlantis in Stargate Atlantis. There always seems to be some Ancient experiment that they discover that messes with the team from time to time. Earth is also this, being the object of pursuit of all the Wraith in the Pegasus Galaxy.
  • Star Trek:
    • The actual ships in the various series. It allowed them to find a Planet of Hats and a Negative Space Wedgie.
    • The holodeck. A lot of fans have wondered that with the holodeck so prone to malfunctions and become dangerous, why is it left on? Even besides its tendencies to malfunction, the holodeck allowed for almost any story to be told. Film Noir, sure. Sherlock Holmes, why not? The Wild West, yippi-ki-yay!
    • The Celestial Temple/Bajoran Wormhole is responsible for everything that goes on in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
    • The non-canon Next Generation novel Q-squared lampshades the Enterprise D's constant encounters with time travel and other anomalies and attributes all (or, at least, most of) their problems to Q messing with them.
    • Star Trek: Enterprise introduced the "Temporal Cold War" story arc to both stir things up with the ship and crew but also to make things a little more surprising for the audience because the show was a prequel. The fact it was a prequel and people in the future knew of their importance in history made them a target.
  • Stranger Things: The Hawkins Lab experiments is the ultimate source of every problem in the series, although it continues after they cease operations and even become more friendly with the protagonists. Their efforts exploring the Upside Down is what breached the barrier, more specifically Eleven's psychic powers. That one event triggered later problems, and in season three it's specifically said that the Russians HAD to re-open the barrier in Hawkins because it was weaker in an area it was previously breached.
  • Teen Wolf doesn't have one to start with, but at the third season break the writers evidently felt they needed an explanation for why things will continue to show up, and they create one by having the main characters activate the Nemeton, which is said to draw supernatural creatures to it.
  • Whoniverse:
    • The TARDIS from Doctor Who. Seriously, how often is the Doctor actually looking for the plot of the episode? Nearly every time, he trips over the plot while sightseeing. The TARDIS was ancient and obsolete even back when the Doctor stole it in his first incarnation, so it doesn't always land where it is supposed to land. Naturally, it sometimes lands in the middle of trouble. It has been suggested in the show that it does land where it is supposed to land, but not necessarily where the Doctor intends it to land. The TARDIS to some extent takes the Doctor where he needs to go/is needed. The TARDIS is stated multiple times to be alive and can sense things in the timeline. In "The Doctor's Wife", the TARDIS herself claims that she lands wherever the Doctor needs to go.
    • The Rift, introduced in the 2005 series of Doctor Who, is the focus of the first two seasons of Torchwood. It provides the team with all manner of time/space weirdness to deal with, and occasionally draws the Doctor back there when he uses rift energy to refuel the TARDIS.
    • In Class (2016), the Doctor explains that Coal Hill Academy is now a target due to time having worn thin at that location; the teenaged students present immediately recognize this as similar to the premise of multiple television shows, starting the list with Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Hellmouth.
  • Inverted with The X-Files. The files are a constantly growing folder of the unexplained, meaning the characters themselves are searching out the unexplained. This in turn adds to the X-Files.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The eponymous places of power of Feng Shui, which are always being fought over by one faction or another.
  • This tends to happen in Scion, because the player-characters (and any entity with high enough Legend ratings) distort Fate around them and bring weirdness to them.

    Video Games 
  • Baldur's Gate: Why do bloodthirsty warriors, powerful wizards, creepy vampires, braineating aliens, demons, dragons and god knows what else all come to the protagonist? Well, because he/she is the child of the vanquished god of murder, Bhaal, and thus he/she has divine blood in his/her veins and a powerful taint in his/her soul, attracting people who want to exploit him/her for their own goals or kill him/her to counter a possible menace to their plans... or they simply want to challenge the ability of a demigod for fun.
  • It is eventually revealed in Dragon Age II that Kirkwall is the setting's equivalent of the Hellmouth. The Veil between the physical world and the Fade is very thin, and the city's history and evil supernatural influences conspire to make it the Wretched Hive it is. Three super-powerful demons are imprisoned there; vast blood sacrifices were carried out when it was the hub of the Tevinter slave trade, leaving lakes of blood under the city; all the uber-demons, unholy rites, and suffering and death ripped the Veil wide open; and ever since then its history of violence, oppression, and demonic rites has just made the problem worse and worse. Oh, and Kirkwall or someplace very close to it is also where the magisters entered the Golden City, corrupting it (unless it was already corrupted, which it may have been) and bringing the Darkspawn into the world....and one of the most powerful of these magisters-turned-darkspawn is sealed in stasis in the mountains nearby, where his dreams leak into the world, inspire creepy cults, and drive people mad.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Every single object or person of magical power is a Magnetic Plot Device. Dark Force's commanders and their armies seek out these sources of magic power for Dark Force's nefarious machinations, and the heroes either are in possession of a magical object/include magical teammates, or track down sources of magic to beat the Dark Force invasion to it. As such there is always a conflict waiting to occur when the two parties interest, or when a new source of magic introduces a new character or faction with their own plot weaving through.
  • The Artifact from Freelancer. Everything that happens in game, is because of it. Justified as it is the only thing that can kill alien invaders, and they know it.
  • In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, it's revealed that Ivo Shandor, the cult leader/architect who rigged the apartment building, also rigged the library and hotel from the first film, and the museum from the second, as nodes for this city wide apparatus meant to fuel Gozer's Destructor form, with the apartment building being the door. His old estate was a castle/laboratory where the slime river was first made before it was pumped into the sewer. It's also revealed that one of Ivo's henchmen killed Eleanor Twitty, who became the librarian ghost.
  • Mass Effect: The first game starts with Shepard, a distinguished human veteran, enter in contact with an ancient relic of a long dead alien race. By touching the Ancient Artifact, he or she creates a mental connection with the device and gets a vision of war and destruction. The motivations behind this vision set in motion the events that lead to the conclusive final battle and establish the premises of the following games, including being the target of the ultimate enemy that triggered everything and mankind's greatest hero tasked to lead the war against said enemy.
  • Planescape: Torment: The Nameless One wears the Symbol of Torment on his skin, and it attracts tormented and conflicted individuals. Hence how he's never short of companions, even when they often meet terrible ends.
  • Super Robot Wars: Original Generation eventually offers up an explanation for why Earth is suddenly being invaded by three or more different groups of alien invaders every six months: the Big Bad of the game has orchestrated all of the events of the past four games by using his ability to retain memories from previous cycles of the universe, and as part of this, laid a trap in the plans that Shu Shirakawa would use to create the Granzon's Annihilation Engine: the black hole that powers it skews probability to make such a preposterous series of events become extremely likely to happen. Shu discovers and fixes the flaw, but notes that it's probably too late at this point to actually stop more invasions from happening in the future, especially as Earth has already caught the attention of every major galactic power.

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 
  • In Ben 10, as soon as Ben gets the Omnitrix a lot of aliens show up specifically to take it from him.
  • Code Lyoko's entire plot is about the Supercomputer and XANA's plottings. The computer is near magical enough to make whatever story you want to tell happen.
  • The ghost portal in Danny Phantom keeps releasing ghosts into the human world, at which point Danny has to deal with them. It's also the source of the Freak Lab Accident that made Danny half-ghost.
  • Firehouse Tales: The team's sirens go off right after receiving their distress signal.
  • Gargoyles has an inversion of this during the World Tour arc. According to Tom, the magical island of Avalon does not take you where you want to go, it sends you where you need to go. Thus Goliath, Eliza, Bronx, and Angela travel all over the world saving the day. At one point they are even sent right back to Avalon. Even when they finally return to New York, it's only because Avalon knew they would be needed there to stop Oberon from kidnapping Baby Alex.
  • Discussed in Gravity Falls when Ford shows Dipper the massive alien ship under Gravity Falls. He admits that he isn't sure if it's what attracts all the weirdness in the town or if it showed up because it was drawn there itself. Word of God says it's been there for millions of years, though.
  • Jonny Quest: Dr. Benton Quest is a scientific genius and professional Magnetic Plot Device.
  • Megas XLR: Megas is either used to transport the characters to alien places, draws aliens to it, or causes major problems, justifying why two guys from New Jersey encounter so many aliens.
  • In Milo Murphy's Law, the title character himself causes most of the plots because of his terrible luck.
  • Season 5 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic introduces the "Friendship Map", first shown in "The Cutie Map", which is an offshoot of the Tree of Harmony. It can summon all — or any — of the Mane Six or their friends to deal with friendship crises anywhere in Equestria by making their cutie marks shimmer and vibratenote  (or other parts, like Spike's spikes) and pointing out their destination on the map, and it sends a different signal to their marks when they've solved the problem. Sometimes the ponies summoned question why they were called over somepony else, but they always end up being exactly the right pony for the job.
  • The Real Ghostbusters: After capturing so many ghosts, the Ghostbusters eventually have ghosts coming to them, for better or for worse (the "worse" usually being freeing some other ghosts from the containment unit).
  • In Steven Universe, the Crystal Gems go on missions all over the world (and sometimes beyond), but Pearl mentioned in "Rising Tides/Crashing Skies" that the Temple attracts Gem monsters, which is why so many show up around Beach City.
  • Team Umizoomi: Bot has his "Umi Alarm" which beeps whenever a child needs help somewhere.
  • Transformers:
    • Beast Wars had the presence of the Vok, aliens with some vested interest in the planet. The Maximals and Predacons stumbled upon a lot of ancient artifacts and called attention to themselves. This mostly provided a third party to mess around with things, including leaving around bizarre technology and including having a doomsday weapon that eventually led to the transmetal upgrades.
    • The Allspark from Transformers: Animated. Even with its Gotta Catch Them All status, it certainly keeps things interesting for everyone.

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