A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.

A. E. van Vogt used the idea as a plot device in his story " M33 in Andromeda " ( 1943 ), which was later combined with the three other Space Beagle stories to became the novel, The Voyage of the Space Beagle.

At least one work of fiction, the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, uses Gaia philosophy as a central point to the plot, and may arguably represent a fictional parallel to Sir James Lovelock in the character of Dr. Cid, who is met with skepticism from the scientific and social community when he promotes the idea of a " living Earth ".

All they needed was an idea for a plot.

Over time, a few Marvel Comics writers lobbied Marvel editors to incorporate the idea of a Multiverse resembling DC's parallel worlds ; this plot device allows one to create several fictional universes which normally do not overlap ( see below or Multiverse for more information ).

When Bin Laden committed to the September 11 attacks plot idea, he assigned both Mihdhar and Hazmi to the plot.

In the wake of Snuff, numerous films explored the idea of snuff films, or used them as a plot device.

But our thoughts can contain only one idea at a time, so if the plot is " hero runs after murderer " and our reflection is " he was foolish to trust the villain ", our thought is something like " hero foolish trust run after murderer villain ".

The theory professes to explain why a subset of action movie fans are willing to accept the idea that, for example: The good guy can get away with shooting guns in public places ( without getting in trouble with the local law-enforcement himself ), never running out of ammunition ( Rambo movies ), or that cars will explode with a well-placed shot to the gas tank ( numerous action movies use this cliché / plot element ).

Kanin saw great potential in the idea of married lawyers as adversaries, and the plot for Adam's Rib was developed.

According to Unknown Chaplin, Chaplin developed the idea of the tramp and Purviance's character being immigrants when he realized he needed more plot to justify the restaurant scenes.

Such elements include the essential idea of narrative structure, with identifiable beginnings, middles and endings, or exposition-development-climax-resolution-denouement, normally constructed into coherent plot lines ; a strong focus on temporality, which includes retention of the past, attention to present action, and protention / future anticipation ; a substantial focus on characters and characterization which is " arguably the most important single component of the novel "; a given heterogloss of different voices dialogically at play – " the sound of the human voice, or many voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms and registers "; possesses a narrator or narrator-like voice, which by definition " addresses " and " interacts with " reading audiences ( see Reader Response theory ); communicates with a Wayne Booth-esque rhetorical thrust, a dialectic process of interpretation, which is at times beneath the surface, conditioning a plotted narrative, and other at other times much more visible, " arguing " for and against various positions ; relies substantially on now-standard aesthetic figuration, particularly including the use of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony ( see Hayden White, Metahistory for expansion of this idea ); is often enmeshed in intertextuality, with copious connections, references, allusions, similarities, parallels, etc.

In a Procrustean solution in statistics, instead of finding the best fit line to a scatter plot of data, one first chooses the line one wants, then selects only the data that fits it, disregarding data that does not, so to " prove " some idea.

There is general agreement about Resnais's attachment to formalism in his approach to film ; he himself regards it as the starting point of his work, and usually has an idea of a form, or method of construction, in his head even before the plot or the characters take shape.

The Green daughters conceived the idea of collecting all the bodies and re-interring them in a plot of land to be known as a Confederate cemetery.

In the autumn of 1887, after another attempt to interest his collaborator in a plot where the characters, by swallowing a magic pill, became who they were pretending to be ( Sullivan had rejected this idea before ), Gilbert made an effort to meet his collaborator half way.

This storyline is a continuation of a plot idea that originally began in the fourth season, when the Douglases visit Scotland on the pretense of having been told they had inherited a castle in the highlands.

The idea of a parallel universe and the concept of deja vu was a major plot line of the first season finale of Fringe, guest-starring Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek.

Algis Budrys found the novel's premise appealing, praising Brin's " really first-rate SFnal idea ," but its execution disappointing, leaving little of interest but plot details once the central mystery was explained at the novel's midpoint, " and as a plotsmith Brin is just another guy.

Schönberg considered this mother's actions for her child to be " The Ultimate Sacrifice ," an idea central to the plot of Miss Saigon.

Such elements include the essential idea of narrative structure, with identifiable beginnings, middles and ends, or exposition-development-climax-denouement, with important inciting incidents, normally constructed into coherent plot lines ; a strong focus on temporality that includes retention of the past, attention to present action and protention / future anticipation ; a substantial focus on characters and characterization which is " arguably the most important single component of the novel " ( David Lodge The Art of Fiction 67 ); a given hetergloss of different voices dialogically at play, " the sound of the human voice, or many voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms and registers " ( Lodge The Art of Fiction 97 ; see also the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin for expansion of this idea ); possesses a narrator or narrator-like voice, which by definition " addresses " and " interacts with " reading audiences ( see Reader Response theory ); communicates with a Wayne Booth-esque rhetorical thrust, a dialectic process of interpretation, which is at times beneath the surface, conditioning a plotted narrative, and other at other times much more visible, " arguing " for and against various positions ; relies substantially on now-standard aesthetic figuration, particularly including the use of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony ( see Hayden White, Metahistory for expansion of this idea ); is often enmeshed in intertextuality, with copious connections, references, allusions, similarities, parallels, etc.

Ancient astronauts have been widely used as a plot device in science fiction.

The reference to resurrecting dead on planet Jupiter could be a reference to the plot of the film 2001, in which hibernating astronauts who had secret training were to be revived upon arrival at Jupiter.

The couple decided to base the plot on the American-Soviet " Space Race ", in particular the 1960s contest to land astronauts on the Moon, but adapt this story for the futuristic Thunderbirds universe by changing the destination of the mission to Mars.

The plot centers around two astronauts, Tyberius " Ty " Walker ( Flex ) and Morris Clay ( Bell ), who flew around the universe in a winged car in the 23rd century.

* My Sister's a Pop Star ( 2006 ), I'm SO Not a Pop Star ( 2008 ), and the third book in the series, My Life on TV ( 2010 ), by American author Kimberly Greene, use blog posts to move the plot along and introduce key changes in the protagonist's thinking.

Mayerson is to inject himself with a virus after taking Chew-Z in a plot to deceive the UN into thinking Chew-Z is harmful and cause them to ban it.

In the 2007 sequel, Sandworms of Dune, the thinking machines have unleashed decimating viruses on planet after planet, while Face Dancers infiltrate human civilization in their own insidious plot to take over the universe.

Emilda Kleist, meanwhile, has followed Alan to the meeting and, thinking that he legitimately wishes to become a dictator, begins to plan his assassination, and enlists the aid of Sarah in the plot.

He outlined his thinking on the issues of continuity between the stories by stating that he " started writing Final Crisis # 1 in early 2006, around the same time as the 52 series was starting to come out, so Final Crisis was more a continuation of plot threads from Seven Soldiers and 52 than anything else.

At first Louis does not appear to remember his prison friend, but takes him into his office, thinking this is an extortion plot.

The New Death is the old Death's replacement as a result of the plot by the Auditors to rid the world of sloppy thinking.

This genetic material is used by the Face Dancer Khrone to create a ghola of Paul, named Paolo, as part of the thinking machine plot to dominate humanity.

The episodes included songs as part of the plot development, the character ( s ), generally Johnny, would sing a song about what he was thinking or feeling about something going on in his life, from things that made him happy to anxiety about girls.

Gabriele Rico in Writing the Natural Way advises aspiring writers to practice a form of webwork, which she calls " clustering ", to encourage associational thinking which can be used to create characters and plot lines.

On the Enterprise, Commander William Riker and Lieutenant Worf covertly establish a plot with La Forge to amaze the Pakleds into thinking they are no match for the Enterprise.

*" I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained.

Sean Bean was cast to subvert his typecasting as a villain, and mislead audiences into thinking he was part of the villainous plot.

The episodes were scripted by first thinking of a title and writing a plot around it.

They plot the open interest curves, rainfall curves, and they even divide Democratic congressmen by Republican congressmen.

They might, for example, plot it exactly as is, or they might make ten day moving averages of it, or longer moving averages, or they might simply plot the ratio of odd-lot purchases to odd-lot sales.

So the driver started to curse at both of them as if they had been in a plot together to ruin his safe-driving record.

Anna then protested that the family was in fear for their lives, her sons were loyal subjects ( Alexios and Isaac were discovered absent without leave ), and had learned of a plot by enemies of the Komnenoi to have them both blinded and had, therefore, fled the capital so they may continue to be of loyal service to the emperor.

However, they heard of a plot to ambush them by the people of Plymstock, at a bridge over the River Tavy.

Cortés wrote that the other lords would be too frightened to plot against him again, as they believed he had uncovered the plan through magic powers.

Even if they do not mean to, advertisers, reviewers, scholars and aficionados sometimes give away details or parts of the plot, and sometimes — for example in the case of Mickey Spillane's novel I, the Jury — even the solution.

Nevertheless, they found a readiness for critics to " seize upon " key statements and portray punctuated equilibrium, and exercises associated with it, such as public exhibitions, as a " Marxist plot ".

The plot centers around a war between Earth and its colonies in space ; however, in contrast to the Universal Century continuity, the Gundam pilots of Gundam Wing are more closely allied to each other than they are to any particular side in the conflict unfolding around them.

Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude that of virtually all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot.

Margarete sold her share of the clinic and used the proceeds to buy a plot of land in Waldtrudering, near Munich, where they put up a prefabricated house.

The horizontal resolution of the plot fails to make clear that the maxima of the curves are not at 45 ° but calculation shows that they are within a few arc minutes of 45 °.

Two months later, Gaddafi asserted that he wanted his agents to assassinate dissident refugees, even if they were just on pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca — in August 1984, a Libyan plot in Mecca was thwarted by Saudi Arabian police.

One of the undercurrents of the plot is Daniel and his family's relationship to Jed, Daniel's younger brother who died in a boating accident while they were children.

The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate " production numbers ".

At some point on the plot, another character elaborates: " We have lost the element of surprise and they do not fear us.

If MNT were realized, some resources would remain limited, because unique physical objects are limited ( a plot of land in the real Jerusalem, mining rights to the larger near-earth asteroids ) or because they depend on the goodwill of a particular person ( the love of a famous person, a live audience in a musical concert ).

This plot is thwarted when the expectant mother informs her confessor Blaise of her predicament ; they immediately baptize the boy at birth, thus freeing him from the power of Satan.

However, when he became aware of the plot between the cardinals and the Norman princes to force the papal tiara on him, he would not enter Rome unless they swore to abandon their design.

A reviewer for Home of the Underdogs lauded the game's excellent writing and the " superb " English translation patch, noting that the " interesting plot " would appeal to fantasy fans if they could stomach the limited interactivity.

Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and they have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows.