History Main / IndyPloy

* HoratioHornblower is guilty of both this and XanatosSpeedChess. Although, being a Napoleonic Wars-era Naval officer, and the timing of military operations being dependant upon friction--wind, rain, sea conditions, road conditions, partisan attacks, the idiot who got drunk last night, et cetera--he has no way of predicting for certain the movements of his enemies, even if he knew what they intended to do. And he's generally brilliant at it, so we're not complaining.

* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'': Harry Dresden will often start out with a general plan, but seeing as how the entire universe appears to hate him violently, this usually goes to hell fast. Thus we get a lot of plans that amount to "arrange for some backup, confront the villains, and wing it from there," and in one case even "get [[MeleeATrois everyone]] in the same place and see what happens." It gets to the where it's a real surprise when, in ''Changes'', his elaborate scheme to break into a building and steal information goes off without a hitch. Some examples of his make-it-up-as-I-go-plans:

** Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork combines {{Indy Ploy}}s and ThePlan to devastating effect. It was once stated that, since you can't plan for every eventuality, Vetinari doesn't. When in doubt he will order Vimes '''NOT''' to get involved with it. Say what you will about Vetinari, he knows how Vimes will follow this trope for him. Vimes is too vimesy to use ThePlan so one could cal him him Vetinari's laser-guided Vimes.

* In ''{{Stripes}}'' John has gotten them into the Soviet camp in Czechoslovakia. When asked what now, he says 'Working on it."

** Sam probably gets this from his father, Kevin, who did it all the time in ''{{Tron}}''. Trapped in a lightcycle arena? Well, let's [[OffTheRails make a run for that glitch on the wall]] and hope it doesn't kill you. Lacking transport? Hot-wire a freaking Recognizer ([[DrivesLikeCrazy and crash it in the middle of downtown]]). Running around in a huge city with only a vague idea on where your new [[HeterosexualLifePartners best friend]] is heading? Mug a {{Mook}} and [[DressingAsTheEnemy change your]] TronLines to blend in. Then there's re-routing a massive amount of power using his own body as a conduit and having no plan whatsoever at the endgame other than "kiss your pal's girlfriend and jump into the monster."

* Let's face it, this is generally the M.O. of just about every comic book superhero, since supervillains have a tendency to attack without warning at any time. But while most of them do at least fight according to plans thought out in training or, on the rare occasion, when they're the ones tracking a bad guy instead of the other way around, the Avengers change their line-up so frequently that they can't even plan for their own team, let alone whatever they're up against. Winging it is what they do best.

* Parodied in the original ''ShanghaiNoon'', where Owen Wilson's character - at this point a train robber - comes up with an elaborate and well-timed plan to stop the train and get the money seamlessly. His men - who [[{{Mook}} aren't the brightest of the bunch]] - stare blankly and Owen reluctantly agrees to "wing it."

* In ''[[OceansEleven Ocean's Twelve]]'', half the crew is jailed and the remaining half tries an Indy Ploy to achieve the mission, including having [[spoiler:Julia Roberts try to pretend she's Julia Roberts]]. The plot fails, but anyway [[spoiler: everything was a GambitRoulette from the beginning.]]

* In the old Snarfquest comic that ran in ''{{Dragon}}'' Magazine, Larry Elmore plotted out the next step for the characters to be then threw it out and literally made up the craziest possible way to gere there from the last stopping place. Best Example: ''"You Shot My Tower!!"'' Snarf DID.

* At the ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode ''[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriesTheClockKing The Clock King]] this trope complies with the RuleOfDrama and works for Batman because he is a hero, but it backfires on the ClockKing, because he is a villain. When Clock King mentions that he knows Batman throws punchs at 1/20 of second, Batman throws a kick. ClockKing tries to kill Batman with his sword, but manages to provoke a CollapsingLair.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect'': Most of Commander Shepard's adventures, due to the fact that s/he has no access to trustworthy intelligence on what is happening and is constantly thrown into situations with no idea what is going on or what s/he is going to do about it. The final mission of ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' is inherently unplannable, as nobody has ever seen what is on the other side of the Omega-4 Relay and returned to tell the tale.
** And then there is this line taken from the E3 trailer for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'':

* There was a 90's movie, ''Presumed Innocent'' which had an "Indy plot" bordering on an IdiotPlot where the whole plot goes random and every character has to make shit up off the top of his/her head at the moment. All the best laid plans turn the plotters into [[UnwittingPawn Unwitting Pawns]]. [[spoiler:The wife was the murderer, and she just wanted to get her husband's attention, who would cover it up. When he got on trial, she wanted to confess, but there was no evidence against him. He's struggling the whole movie to get the evidence, only for it to be right in front of his nose, in the desk of a cop friend of his. And the whammer? The judge was at the end of a ParanoiaFuel not-at-all-subtle attempt at blackmail ''by the defense attourney'', judge who despite all odds stoically refused to succumb to it. The accused only escaped not because he was innocent, but because ''he seemed innocent'' because there was no evidence. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Oh yeah]], and there was [[RedHerring no conspiracy]] to frame him, as stated above, on the contrary.]]

* This happens all the time on ''TeenWolf''. Especially Scott and Stiles tend to end up just winging it.

* {{Batman}}, despite his reputation for [[CrazyPrepared intense planning]], actually owes most of his victories for [[AwesomeByAnalysis noticing every detail of his situation]] and then making a plan to take advantage of it on the spot.

* The ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' team learn this as their first lesson from {{Batman}}: when the plan goes south, good heroes make do.

* {{Spider-Man}} does this every now and again, often against enemies that outclass him in terms of power. One notable instance involved him defeating Nitro (yes, [[MarvelCivilWar that Nitro]]) by luring him into a chemical warehouse full of tear gas and webbing a tank of it to Nitro's body. When Nitro exploded, he vaporized the tear gas, which then mixed with his gaseous form and left him too sick to stand up, much less explode again, when he reformed. It's even {{Lampshaded}} by Spider-Man when he realized he had all of five seconds to stop Nitro before the villain exploded again.

* Luffy of ''OnePiece'' did this once or twice. At one point the main characters were making a minutely-detailed plan to invade a government-owned island. Luffy, being the IdiotHero that he is, [[LeeroyJenkins charged in at the soonest possible moment]], leaving his allies to beat a hasty path in after him. Not that it really mattered. They used the same plan to get the rest of the Strawhats in and it worked. Luffy just got in early and defeated the first CP9 member.

** Subverted in the fourth movie, Jack drops a napkin minutes before using it as his exit strategy, making one wonder just how Indy Ploy he really is

*** In their first live battle, Wraiths four and five, plus two A-Wings, manage to trick an Imp Star Deuce into following them, by pretending to be the Millenium Falcon. How they do so involved precision flying, wavery shields, and a bad imitation of Leia saying that Han was up to his elbows in the remains of the hyperdrive and couldn't talk right now. Just to top it off, they later ended up in the command of the inimitable then-General Han Solo himself. The loonies are running the asylum, and damn if it ain't fine.

** This also extends to his actor, who changed a swordfighting scene to Indy just shooting the guy after the latter's performance with his scimitars. The reason? Ford was suffering from an intestinal problem and couldn't do acrobatics, so they changed the scene; and a new trope was born.

* Inverted or Averted in ''Push'' where the only way to conceal a plan from an enemy with mind reading powers is for the hero of the group to make a plan, write it down in the form of about a dozen instruction envelopes, and have his mind wiped. They are effectively flying blind as if they were making it up as they go, but they end up following the plan and succeeding. This also follows the guidelines of the [[Unspoken Plan Guarantee]] because even as the characters read their instructional envelopes, the audience is kept in the dark.

* During the first level of ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank Future: Tools of Destruction'', the city is under attack, and every attempt Ratchet makes to get where he's going is inevitably blocked by destruction or a large and dangerous robot.
--> '''Clank''': Ratchet, do you know where you are going?\\
'''Ratchet''': I'll be honest, I'm kinda wingin' it at the moment.

-->The third game really seems to show the pitfalls of this as the defense council then proceeds to die about a dozen seconds after that little exchange and Shepard nearly gets flatten, so maybe a bit of a plan would have been useful.

Maybe the FiveManBand has lost TheSmartGuy, or maybe TheLeader has the attention span of [[AttentionDeficitOOHSHINY a distracted goldfish on caffeine]]. Maybe the [[ThePlan elaborate plan]] our heroes were relying on was [[LeeroyJenkins utterly trashed]] and they're forced to wing it. No matter the reason, they are now executing an Indy Ploy.

An Indy Ploy is also a surefire way to invoke an UnspokenPlanGuarantee. Since Indy's course of action is unknown even to Indy himself, and therefore unknown to the audience, Indy is actually ''more'' likely to succeed than if he had spent time planning on-screen.

Contrast XanatosGambit (a plan where all reasonable outcomes are benefical) and BatmanGambit (where the preferred outcome is the most likely one). Between them and this trope lies XanatosSpeedChess, where the grand plan, generally more complicated than "survive and don't get caught", is continually adapted to circumstances. This can lead to a SpannerInTheWorks where they cannot be predicted ''because'' they don't do anything that makes tactical sense.

* The "wizzard" Rincewind from Terry Pratchett's ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels is not as concerned about where he's running ''to'' as what he's running ''from''. He notes this on several occasions. "Run!" "Where to?!" "From! The key word is from!" Which invariably leads to more running. By ''Discworld/TheLastHero'', this is what he states as his religion (main tenet: whatever happens, you can run from it).
** However, when running away is not an option, Rincewind does come up with some clever plans, like in ''Discworld/InterestingTimes'' having the local Dibbler clone spread a rumor that the rebel forces are NOT bolstered by [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial 3,200,009 vampire ghosts]], nor by the vast and invincible Red Army. [[spoiler:The vampire ghosts part is false. The Red Army turns out to be true, though mostly by an accident on Rincewind's part.]] Rincewind spreads such a bizarre rumor upon realizing that while telling someone that an enormous army is coming ''does'' frighten them, it's even ''more'' effective to tell them what they ''won't'' be facing and have the ''rumors'' spiral out of proportion.
** A more heroic, for lack of a better term, Indy Ploy is the MO of Moist von Lipwig in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Discworld/GoingPostal''. Near the end, he makes a bet with the MagnificentBastard BigBad Reacher Gilt, and he has no idea how he'll win at first ... In his second appearance in ''Discworld/MakingMoney'', he outlines a grand if somewhat vague vision of the future of currency, and wonders if he should write it down so he can work out what he's talking about later. In both books the apparent confidence with which he enters such things lead everyone else to conclude he had it all planned out.
*** This, apparently, is how good serial television works.
*** It is worth noting that not only does Moist NOT win his bet with Reacher, he very DELIBERATELY doesn't win it. He's just using it as a ploy to get everyone he needed into the same room for his {{Jaccuse}} moment. [[spoiler: The best part being that the {{Jaccuse}} is the message he arranged to replace the real message with.]]
** Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork seems to combine {{Indy Ploy}}s and ThePlan to devastating effect. It was once stated that, since you can't plan for every eventuality, Vetinari doesn't.
*** When in doubt he will order Vimes '''NOT''' to get involved with it. Say what you will about Vetinari, he knows how Vimes will follow this trope for him. Vimes is too vimesy to use ThePlan. I guess you could call him Vetinari's laser-guided Vimes.
** In "Mort", the narrator comments the scythe is a good weapon because, "once it gets spinning, nobody, not even the wielder, knows exactly where it is going to go."

* Most of Literature/HarryPotter's plans fit into this trope, mostly due to a lack of time and/or information to plan ahead. Actually, things don't turn out much better when they do plan ahead.

*** And when they ''do'' make a meticulous plan for how they're going to break into the Ministry of Magic, it goes wrong from the start, and they have to wing the whole thing.
*** Ditto the Gringotts break-in. They were not anticipating flying away on a dragon.

**** ''Deathly Hallows Part 2'' even has Harry himself lampshade it by saying there's no need for a plan: "We make a plan, we go in, all hell breaks loose!"

*** Well it helps that Wraith squadron was formed by Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson, who, being from Rogue Squadron, are already pretty good at this.

* ''{{Psych}}'': Pretty much the concept of the entire series

* Let's face it, this is generally the M.O of just about every comic book superhero, since supervillains have a tendency to attack without warning at any time. But while most of them do at least fight according to plans thought out in training or, on the rare occasion, when they're the ones tracking a bad guy instead of the other way around, the Avengers change their line-up so frequently that they can't even plan for their own team, let alone whatever they're up against. Winging it is what they do best.

---> '''The Doctor:''' No, I have a thing. It's like a plan, but with more greyness.

* The Doctor in ''Series/DoctorWho'' has a tendency to play things by ear -- [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] several times in the series, in moments where he's been just as surprised as everyone else that a plan of his has actually worked, or worked for the wrong reason.

->'''Indy:''' "Get back to Cairo. Get us some transport to England: boat, plane, anything. Meet me at Omar's. Be ready for me. I'm going after that truck."
->'''Sallah:''' "How?"
->'''Indy:''' "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go."

* Roland Deschain of Creator/StephenKing's ''TheDarkTower'' series is a great advocate of Indy planning. He prefers them to totally thought out rigid plans because rough spontaneous ones leave room for improvisation, something he does very, very well indeed.