History Main / PlanningWithProps

* The Disney made-for-TV movie ''Film/LittleSpies.'' The group of preteens has assembled a Franchise/{{LEGO}} model of the target (think Doc Brown's models in ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture.'') Too bad there are only a few pieces available that are actually of people, everyone else must use toy animals. Squabbling ensues. Finally the leader must ask the girl character (and his ToyShip love interest) if she would settle for being the cow (use a cow as her piece, that is). Priceless moment and meaningful glare before she acquiesces.

* ''Series/TheCrown2016''. Prince Philip uses cutlery to explain why highly trained pilots are necessary to navigate the Suez Canal. He has to stop a footman from removing some of the props in the middle of his exposition.

* ''Series/{{Copper}}'': In "Arsenic and Old Cake", Corcoran and Maguire use a shot of whiskey and a tankard of ale to illustrate to Detective O'Brien the convoluted path of a poisoned fruitcake: the poisoner, attempting to kill his wife's lover → the lover, who put it in a different box and gifted it to his landlord → the landlord gifting it to the poisoner, [[TooDumbToLive who failed to recognize it as the cake he had poisoned and ate a generous slice]]. Maguire pours the whiskey into a shot glass to signify the poisoning of the cake, then dumps it into the ale to signify the repackaging of the cake into a different box, then takes back the tankard before O'Brien can drink from it to signify the gifting to the dentist (much to O'Brien's annoyance).

* The Disney made-for-TV movie ''Film/LittleSpies.'' The group of preteens has assembled a Franchise/{{LEGO}} model of the target (think Doc Brown's models in ''Film/BackToTheFuture.'') Too bad there are only a few pieces available that are actually of people, everyone else must use toy animals. Squabbling ensues. Finally the leader must ask the girl character (and his ToyShip love interest) if she would settle for being the cow (use a cow as her piece, that is). Priceless moment and meaningful glare before she acquiesces.

* Doc Brown manages to pull off this trope twice. First, in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'', he creates a scale model of Hill Valley to demonstrate his plan to send Marty back to 1955, then does so again with crude but effective models in ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII'', only this time it's to lay out their plans for both of them to get home.

** "Why am ''[[EverythingIsRacist I]]'' [[SaltAndPepper the pepper]]?" asks [[TokenBlackFriend Bob]]. Jim TheChessmaster needs [[{{Beat}} a couple of seconds]] to figure out [[MistakenForRacist what Bob meant]] and meekly switches the pepper with the ketchup.

* ''Series/{{Loki|2021}}'': In Episode 2, when Loki goes to tell Mobius his revelation about how the Variant is hiding, Mobius is at lunch, so Loki uses various bits of tableware along with Mobius's lunch and then part of Casey's lunch to illustrate his theory.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Anyone doing any sort of planning will often resort to this. It is most common with members of the military, or people doing military simulation of any kind, to just grab sticks, rocks, or anything they can find to create their plan. The military also takes this a step further when creating sand-tables of the battle area by using children's toys (typically plastic army men) to represent everything the soldiers will see in the field, and then use strings or sticks to show directions.
[[/folder]]

** "Why am ''[[EverythingIsRacist I]]'' [[SaltAndPepper the pepper]]?" asks [[TokenBlackFriend Bob]].