| abstract
| - This trope is where a character states a relationship with someone else through a long and indirect chain of connections. The chain can be simple (I know this guy who knows this guy) to elaborate (My uncle's drinking buddy's doctor works with this guy whose brother's fiancee...). And yet the person acts as if he or she knows the person really well. Usually the elaborate case is used as an hope/promise for a plan, which very rarely delivers. Examples of Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy include:
* SpongeBob SquarePants: Spongebob tries to warn Squidward. "Sea Bears are no laughing matter, why, once I met this guy who knew this guy, who knew this guy, who knew this guy, who knew this guy... who knew this guy, who knew this guy, who knew this guy's cousin-"
* In "The Suds", Patrick tells SpongeBob of the horrors of the doctor's office which he knows because "I know a guy who knows a guy who went to the doctor once".
* Totally Spies: When asked how Clover was able to get tickets to an event, she says:
* From The Emperors New Groove:
* This is how Six Degrees of Separation works.
* Spaceballs: Dark Helmet is Lone Starr's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
* From Ferris Buellers Day Off:
* Animaniacs: Yakko explains in song why he is now the king of Anvilania:
* Urban Legends are often purported to happen to such people.
* Rogue in Eight Bit Theater has "I know a guy" as his catchphrase. One of said guys is even Thief.
* SyFy's Alice has:
* In Life the Universe And Everything, Effrafax of Wug got rid of the mountain he was supposed to render invisible with the aid of "his friends, and his friends' friends, and his friends' friends' friends, and his friend's friends' friends' friends, and some rather less good friends of theirs who happened to own a major stellar trucking company".
* A note found in The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim is from a bandit who claims that he "knows a guy whose cousin knows a guy" that could set them up for life, if they steal more than their take from the bandit leader. By the way, you also find his corpse later.
* Tom Lehrer's song "Lobachevsky" has an exaggeratedly long one of these: Then the next verse runs through the whole thing again backward.
* This is how Saul arranges a meeting between Walter White and Gus Fring in Breaking Bad.
* From Cheers:
* From Hot Fuzz: "That's Auntie Jackie's sister's brother's boy". That he doesn't just say 'my cousin' suggests complicated relationships... or just Rule of Funny.
* In Burn Notice, Sam's key role is being "the guy who knows a guy". The amount of contacts he has is absurd.
* This is the only explanation for where the martial artists of Power Rangers Jungle Fury got their hands on high tech morphers. Y'see, the substitute mentor knows a guy who knows a guy who has an uncle...
* In The Order of the Stick, Belkar suggests selling some captured enemies to slavery, adding that he "know[s] a guy who knows a guy" to contact for this.
* Much later, we meet the guy in question, Buggy Lou. His best supplier on the Northern Continent was pals with Belkar.
* In Exterminatus Now, Eastwood knows a guy who knows a guy that can examine the artifact that a bunch of heavily armed mercenaries tried to steal from them. He forgot exactly which friend he knew this guy through, though...which bites him in the ass since said friend turns out to have been Silas Morth, who is behind the whole operation.
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