History Main / StepThreeProfit

* Buried under half a dozen {{plan}}s in VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'s official manga ''Silent Sinner in Blue'' are two protagonists and one vampire who have unabashedly embraced the StepThreeProfit:

* Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman [[InvokedTrope explicitly mentioned]] this [[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/steve-roach-goes-batty/ in his blog]], referring to [=MorganStanley=] Asia Chairman Steve Roach's critique of his ''[[AmericanNewspapers New York Times]]'' op-ed earlier that week.

* The Underpants Gnomes from ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', as seen in the image (and thus are the TropeNamer). They go around at night collecting vast quantities of underwear, which they will use to profit. Somehow. As shown, the chart has become a MemeticMutation.

-->Step Two: Use it to... Test another, slightly-less-world-changing technology.
-->Step Three: Apply the second technology in completely implausible ways (Speed Gel: a food additive that makes it slide through too fast to digest; weight loss!)
-->Step Four: Continue spending time and money "testing" things in more and more unnecessarily elaborate ways.
-->Step Five: Sell other, "lesser" products (that still serve a primary function as part of the testing process.)

** Bonus points for step seven: using hyper-advanced, brain-mapped (and dangerously [[AIIsACrapshoot unstable]]) AI and robots not to make money, but to ''eliminate the need to hire more humans you can't afford to keep replacing because the tests kill them''.
*** Step eight, by the way: Shower curtains. Yeah. Aperture started out producing shower curtains and never officially changed it's business model. Cave Johnson was convinced that eventually every last thing, from mobility gels to quantum tunneling to mantis men, came back to shower curtains.

** Presumably their Phase 2 was to show Giovanni how Ash's Pikachu was stronger/better than one's average Pikachu. More fitting would be their kidnapping of Togepi. When they present it to their boss, the first thing he asks is what it does. The two have no idea, eventually settling for the rather unimpressive "It would make an excellent paperweight!"

'''NoRealLifeExamplesPlease.'''

->''We have it all figured out! Step One: we land the Exodar. Step Three: we defeat the [[LegionsOfHell Legion]] and go home. There is only one detail missing....''\\
-- Male draenei joke from ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''

* As [[http://www.cracked.com/article_18643_6-evil-corporations-in-movies-with-terrible-business-plans.html this]] Website/{{Cracked}} article shows, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation continuously has some plans involving the ''Film/{{Alien}}'' - a killer machine which can never be controlled, and usually escapes traps. What are they intending to do?!
** Subverted in the fourth film, where one character mentions numerous applications, such as the BizarreAlienBiology being used to create vaccines, etc. [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong Also, military applications.]]

** This troper was under the impression that by the time of First Contact there wasn't that many poeple let to unite. Did they mention something contradictory to this in the novels?

* Lampshaded in DragonAge2 when the Champion calls Isabella out on not having a plan to find Castillon, she responds that the plan was 'step 1, find his henchman, step 2, something exciting happens, step 3 profit'

An ill-conceived GetRichQuickScheme that lacks the "[[ZanyScheme scheme]]", or at least a well thought out one. Often, it's not even clear how the plan is supposed to work -- but the planner thinks it's [[CrazyEnoughToWork such a good idea]], it ''has'' to make money ''somehow''.

** The internet dot com bubble basically ran on this exact plan, pets.com being the poster child of an ill-defined business plan relying on the mystical powers of the internet to make money when conventional business savvy dictated to look elsewhere.

**** Those who are ignorant about the nature of AIDS can not only create fear and confusion in the society, which leads to innocent suffers being branded as a threat (which was the admittedly ham-handed Aesop of the episode), but their ignorance can make the disease spread faster either due to inaction (not using protection, not getting tested etc...) or mis-action (wrongly believing that old wives remedy can cure them or render them immune). If you add some FridgeHorror, the villain's plan in that episode was actually quite horrifying.

* This comment to a Youtube [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy639NFMngM video]] about how gay marriage will ruin America:
-->1: Adam and Steve
-->2: ????
-->3: [[MadMax Mad Max: Escape from Thunderdome]]

* One Dean Chambers, proprietor of the website unskewedpolls.com began his analysis of the 2012 USA presidential election attacking a statistic that predicted Obama will win this way: ''Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the ‘Mr. New Castrati’ voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program.'' Unintimidated, Silver responded sarcastically via twitter:
-->''Unskewedpolls argument: Nate Silver seems kinda gay + ??? = Romney landslide!''

*** The plan was to spread misinformation about AIDS, which would make it spread and thus weaken humanity. Which suffers from a lot of FridgeLogic, since he was spreading misinformation about it being ''easy'' to catch--if people are convinced even touching somebody could give them AIDS, how are they going to put themselves into a position where they could ''actually'' catch it?

*** Presumably their Phase 2 was to show Giovanni how Ash's Pikachu was stronger/better than one's average Pikachu. More fitting would be their kidnapping of Togepi. When they present it to their boss, the first thing he asks is what it does. The two have no idea, eventually settling for the rather unimpressive "It would make an excellent paperweight!"

* Not about profit, but in ''Literature/PrisonersOfPower'' by The StrugatskiBrothers (aka ''Inhabited Island''), Kammerer's plan to deal with situation arguably goes like this:

* Not about profit, but in ''Literature/PrisonersOfPower'' by BrotherStrugatski (aka ''Inhabited Island''), Kammerer's plan to deal with situation arguably goes like this:

* ''EdEddNEddy'' parodies this trope by having Eddy start a smalltime corporation with the cul-de-sac kids that was only focused on "going up". Once people realize that the corporation was basically doing nothing, and that everybody was working without pay, everybody left except the Eds (which of course, is TruthInTelevision).

* The villain of ''PoundPuppies and The Legend of Big Paw'' takes this to an extreme: