Crazy Prepared / Live-Action Films

Crazy-Preparedness in live-action movies.
Batman movies can be found here.

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• Being prepared for every eventuality (imprisoned under a roof? good thing you got a rope-ladder wound around your body beneath your clothes!) was a trademark of the German pre-World War I movie detective Stuart Webb.
• In Amusement, The Laugh seems prepared for everything the girls might do to escape and has a countermeasure in place to prevent it. He also has fail safes such as keeping a booby-trapped Victrola in the hotel to kill nosy visitors.
• Back to the Future Part II: Doc has prepared for monetary needs in any year with an attache case containing money from several time periods.
  • In Part III, he just happens to have a temperature gauge with color codes matching the burning temperatures of the Pres-To-Logs for no apparent purpose. It seems implausible that he had the time to manufacture it specifically for the train scheme.
• The title character from Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon spends most of the movie showing how he has prepared for his one night of slaughtering horny teenagers.
• The live-action adaptation of Casshern had a slightly amusing sequence in which the Shinzo Ningen (mutants) rise up from the body parts in a pool that was being used to create a new medical miracle in an "unexpected" turn of events. The amusing part comes in when soldiers burst through the door to gun them down and shout something like "Code 27!" Apparently, government forces of the future already have a code specifically designated for zombie/mutants rising up from medical experiments gone wrong, and it's as early as 27 in the code book.
• Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson) from the movie Conspiracy Theory. It's his Crazy Preparedness that actually saves him and the girl when the "Them" really come to his apartment to get him.
• Dark Waters: Tennant has lots of organs and body parts from diseased cows, videos of autopsies, and more evidence of pollution prepared before going to a lawyer. Later, he ends up hiding his tapes under floorboards due to correctly fearing a robbery.
• In The Darwin Awards, Burrows obsession with the Darwin Awards causes him to attempt to be prepared for as many freak occurrences as possible. This includes travelling with a harness to prevent slips when showering in strange bathrooms, and a helium balloon with a long wire to act as extension antenna for his mobile phone. These preparations prove less helpful than he might have liked.
• In Dracula Untold, when Vlad confronts Mehmet near the film's climax, Mehmet has scattered thousands of silver coins all over the floor of his tent, is prepared to fight with a sword made from pure silver, and has dozens of bags of silver coins hanging from the fixtures, waiting to be sliced open at a moment's notice.
• General Joseph Colton from G.I. Joe: Retaliation has a lot of weapons hidden in his kitchen, including a pair of grenades hidden in a bowl of fruit. Although he doesn't seem to be think that it's a good idea to move his home from a fragile old house to something involving hard concrete and no windows so he is a bit more crazy than prepared
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): After freeing Mothra from Monarch's containment outpost in the Yunnan rainforest, Alan Jonah leaves Monarch a false trail to make them think he and his mercenaries are trying to capture Mothra, when in actuality they've already left the region and are moving on to freeing Ghidorah from the containment outpost in Antarctica. Thanks to Mark Russell, Monarch don't take the bait and they catch up to Jonah's mercs before they've finished thawing Ghidorah out — but Jonah was prepared for that happening, ordering his right hand to keep Monarch's G-Team busy in a tone that clearly says "I was wondering whether they'd show up sooner or later", and the ambush that Jonah's mercs set up ends up being deathly effective at decimating the G-Team.
• The Goonies. Data with all his Homemade Inventions is Crazy-Prepared for the circumstances of the story's adventure. Trapped in the darkness? Super-bright flashlights on his belt. Bad guy getting too close? Pneumatic boxing glove hiding in his jacket. Bad guys in hot pursuit? His shoes produce Oil Slicks. Falling down a hole? His "Pinchers of Peril" keep him from going splat. Plus more. Now only if they all worked flawlessly...
• Early in The Green Hornet Strikes Again!, Britt and Kato are on an ocean liner coming back from a vacation when they see the man who tried to kill them in Hawaii. Britt comments that he would give a thousand dollars to be able to suit up as the Hornet. Kato flips open a concealed compartment in one of Britt's suitcases and thanks Britt for the bonus.
• Halloween (2018): In between the barbed wire, floodlights and security cameras, Laurie Strode also installs retractable gates into the doorways of every room in the house (ensuring that if she's searching for intruders, they can't double back to an already cleared room) and outfits her panic room with blades that can close off the entrance to stop anyone getting out, and it and the rest of the house with gas valves — so when they're finally able to seal Michael down there, they pump in the gas and turn the whole place and him into an inferno. The only thing she failed to consider was that a burning house would attract the attention of the fire department, which costs her dearly in Halloween Kills.
• In Harlem Nights, Quick prepares for an evening with a rival club owner's girlfriend by stashing a gun under both pillows of her bed. In doing so, he finds the pistol she's already hidden there. When she pulls it on him afterwards, she finds that he took out the bullets, just in case.
• Help!: The cult dons (sometimes) elaborate disguises and rigs up Scooby-Doo-like traps in places they anticipate the Beatles will wander into.
• In He Walked By Night, Joe Morgan tries to prepare for every possible eventuality, even leaving caches of weapons in the storm system in case he has to escape that way.
• Dr. Robert Neville in I Am Legend has a pistol in every room, seemingly every cubbyhole that can hold one. Sometimes several. This is INSIDE the home that is behind several ranks of mines, wires, and barricades to protect it from attack. And has self-destruct capability along with an escape bolthole. And as we later learn, the infected are so tenacious, all of this is still not enough to stop them!. Although he still decides to stay in a fragile old house instead of moving to something that has, say, hard concrete and no windows, so one can say that he is more crazy than prepared.
• It's partly due to his... inventiveness in using them, but many of James Bond's gadgets arguably fall under this trope.
  • Getting chased by a helicopter on a road next to a lake? Good thing your car (a) converts into a submarine, and (b) has a surface-to-air missile that can fire underwater!
  • Need to make a quick getaway, but bad guys are surrounding your car? Good thing your car can be operated by remote control!
  • Are the bad guys now chasing you in their own cars? Just push the button to drop dozens of caltrops in their path!
  • They're stringing a cable across your path now? Good thing Q put a cable-cutter under the Beemer logo at exactly the right height!
  • Have to drive back through the caltrops you dropped earlier? No worries — your tires are self-inflating!
  • Bond isn't the only one. Pam Bouvier from Licence to Kill brings a shotgun and a kevlar vest to a Bad Guy Bar to meet him. Naturally, she ends up needing both. Later, the unarmed Bond needs her gun, which she removes from a thigh holster and gives to him. After he leaves she rolls her eyes and pulls another gun out of her purse.
  • Though Auric Goldfinger had full confidence in Operation Grand Slam, he thought to wear a US army officer's uniform under his coat in case something somehow went wrong, allowing him to escape Fort Knox when something did go wrong.
  • In Diamonds Are Forever, Ernst Stavro Blofeld has a Body Double, leaving Bond confused as to which guy to kill. So Bond kicks Blofeld's Right-Hand Cat and then shoots the "Blofeld" the cat jumps toward for safety — but it turns out there's more than one cat too.
    Blofeld: Right idea, Mr. Bond...
    Bond: But wrong pussy.
• In Jarhead 2 Field Of Fire, Danielle is carrying around a bunch of ammo, something the other soldiers remark with surprise at. Ends up coming in handy as she ends up being one of the only soldiers in the film that survives.
• In Kick-Ass, the introductory scene for Big Daddy and Hit Girl shows us just how Crazy-Prepared the two of them are. The scene was just awesome enough to be made into one of the trailers by itself.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kingsmen airplanes are loaded with lots of champagne for post-mission celebrations.
• Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) in Law Abiding Citizen. Granted he had ten years in which to plan and set everything up, but constructing a secret entrance into every solitary confinement cell in a prison displays a crazy amount of preparedness.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Each film where Tony Stark has a major role highlights that the guy really did think of everything when designing the Iron Man armour. And if he has happened to overlook something or some weakness, it will be addressed in the next version, which he's more than likely already begun designing.
  • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Hulkbuster satellite ejects spare parts when the main suit is damaged. Certainly necessary when battling The Hulk.
  • In Ant-Man Hank Pym has been carrying a shrunken Soviet tank on a key chain presumably since the 80's just in case he ever needs it.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Subverted. Rocket has all the makings of an improvised atomic bomb in a bag he carries with him as a matter of course, but doesn't have any sort of tape. Rocket sends Peter off to ask every single one of their allies if they have any tape ("Drax, do you have any tape? ...yeah, Scotch tape would work!...What?! Why did you ask that if you don't even have any tape?!"), but none of them do.
    Rocket: Not a single person has tape?!
    Peter: You have an atomic bomb in your bag, if anybody's gonna have tape it's you!
    Rocket: I have to do everything!
    Peter: You are wasting a lot of time!
• Mary Poppins: Mary's bottomless bag contains apparently everything... and more. (Under)played for laughs, but this behavior would still fit the trope.
• The Men in Black have not only a gadget and weapon for everything (rocket car, neuralizer, injection that turns you into a fishman, fishing pole that is actually a gun, etc.) but multiple caches of them hidden throughout New York in random apartments and businesses. Several buildings are actually spaceships, which are a result of a cover-up or placed intentionally, but are nonetheless useful. This trope was played with more in the animated series than the films. In the second film, Agent K neuralized himself to protect the MacGuffin of the film (before retiring and being neuralized again), but left clues in case he needed to find it.
• In Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), both John and Jane are trained assassins who seem prepared for any target and surviving any attack from another would-be killer. Almost. Apparently, neither of them is prepared in the least if the target or attacker is his/her own spouse, and that leads to a problem when the situation arises for them simultaneously.
• Mr. Brooks' secret cache of passports and disguises are a whole extra level of Crazy Preparedness on top of his already intimidatingly meticulous methods.
• In The Mummy (1999), Beni's first encounter with Imhotep ends better for him than most because, as a superstitious little weasel, he just so happens to have a necklace with about a dozen different religious emblems hung on it and has memorized prayers for protection in all of their respective languages. When Imhotep isn't fazed by the cross and a prayer to Jesus, Beni moves on to an Islamic emblem, then a Chinese one, before finally getting to a Star of David and a prayer in Hebrew. Imhotep recognizes the language and recruits him as an interpreter based on that.
• Jason from Mystery Team who manages to create the following disguises: Hobo; Newspaper Reporter; Gentleman; Mexican Plumber; Varsity Athlete; and Lumberjack from things he finds in his backpack.
• Parker. The title character, to the extent that he breaks into his enemy's hideout and hides his own gun in there in case he needs them later.
• The Premature Burial: Guy Carrell is terrified of being buried alive and takes lots of steps to counter this. He wants to be entombed above ground and builds a special coffin that will open if there is any movement from inside. He installs a bell to ring for help and a rope ladder and skylight to escape from the mausoleum. His mausoleum also contains dynamite to blow open the door in case the bell and ladder fail and (should all of that fail) poison to commit suicide with. His wife urges him to destroy the mausoleum, saying it fuels his morbid obsession with being buried alive and harms his mental health.
• To a degree, The Man in Black from The Princess Bride. Besides being a skilled swordsman, wrestler, and strategic thinker, he just "happens" to have spent the last few years building up an immunity to a particular poison, a vial of which he just "happens" to carry around with him should the occasion arise when he must engage in a battle of wits.
  • The poison thing is quite plausible, since being immune to a poison makes it much easier to use it on someone else. You can drink from the same goblet to throw off any suspicion, for instance. And being a Master Swordsman and strategic thinker does make sense for a pirate.
• The Punisher (2004) shows Frank Castle fortifying his apartment in case of attack.
• Saw: John "Jigsaw" Kramer is perhaps the primary Chessmaster among mainstream horror villains, so naturally he is this. While the majority of his plans to abduct, torture and kill people by the dozens while recruiting followers to do the same are made ahead of time and go off without a hitch, he's no slouch when it comes to preparing for situations that weren't explicitly parts of his plans or Spanners in the Works, either. His lairs are filled with Booby Traps, both simple and complex in case of infiltration. In the first film, he's set up someone else's Death Trap in his lair in a manner that he can activate out of arms' reach in case the police arrive and he needs a quick hostage, plus he wears a retractable blade under his cloak as a concealed weapon. When one of his successors, Hoffman, proves too sadistic, John either gives the order for him to be killed at a later date, or provides another accomplice (his wife Jill) with a plan to kill Hoffman at her discretion after John's death, and gave yet another accomplice orders to deal with Hoffman if he survived the attempt on his life or killed Jill.
• Sivaji: The Boss: During the "Athiradi" song, Sivaji is held up at gunpoint during a dance. The arms he was using to dance with were fake. He pulls out two pistols from underneath his coat and fires at the thugs who held him up. And survives.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
  • When Tom's letter from the SFPD arrives, Maddie actually got two celebration cakes ready in case he was accepted or rejected by the letter.
  • Robotnik sends a large, six-wheeled tank drone after Tom's truck when he manages to locate it. Sonic accidentally takes it out with a spin dash, so Robotnik causes a second, car-sized drone to deploy from the wreckage. Sonic disables that one using its own EMP discs, and from that emerges a unicycle drone. When that's taken out, its eye opens up and deploys a tiny helicopter drone with a cutting laser. When Sonic dismantles the thing, its camera is revealed to be a Sticky Bomb that takes them some effort to remove. They manage, but Sonic fails to get clear in time and is knocked out by the blast.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022):
  • Robotnik had thought ahead to provide his lackey with instructions to locate his Badniks and construct a new evil lair in the event he goes missing. He also had several satellites with all sorts of extra gear, including a spare flight suit, for if they were necessary.
  • Also, despite having just built it using the power of the Master Emerald, Robotnik had the foresight to give his Death Egg Robot an alternate power source and control scheme in the event he lost the Master Emerald.
• Star Wars examples:
  • The Clone Troopers had one hundred and fifty contingency orders for a number of situations. Here's the known ones:
    • (unknown) Implement Base Delta Zero (that is, Orbital Bombardment until all resources are destroyed. Said resources include industries, cities, population, agricultural production, top soil, atmosphere, and the planet's crust itself) on an allied world that has switched sides;
      Order 4: if the Chancellor, who is also the supreme commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (the Clones) is incapacitated, the Vice Chancellor will fill in until a successor is appointed or an alternative authority is found;
      Order 5: if the Chancellor is declared unfit to issue orders (that is, he's gone crazy, traitor, or has been subverted), the Chief of Defense Staff will fill in as the supreme commander until a successor is appointed or an alternative authority is found;
      Order 37: there's someone to capture by mass arrest and threatened execution of civilians. Follow-up directives include scenarios for body disposal of civilian casualties and suppression of communications;
      Order 65: you've received an authenticated order saying that the Chancellor has been declared unfit to issue orders, detain him. Lethal force is authorized if necessary. See Order 5 for who is in charge now;
      Order 66: The Chancellor, using special authentication, says the Jedi have betrayed the Republic and are to be killed immediately.
    • Turns out most of the contingency orders are there to justify Order 66, which Palpatine will use to exterminate the Jedi after tricking them into giving him an excuse. And yes, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine put Order 65 there himself.
    • Even the secret of Order 66 itself has several contingencies planned into it. Namely, several of the Kaminoan Cloners knew of its intended purpose so they would help with resolving any issues that might arise in drilling the orders, bio-chips were installed in the Clone Troopers to ensure they would enact it, and several contingency plans were in place if any clone suffered a bio-chip malfunction. The other Orders themselves were also made so that they had to go through the bureaucracy of the Republic to be enacted, while only Order 66 can be enacted independently of the Republic and the rest of the Army.
  • The Naboo people were pacifists with no enemies. They maintained a decent military, which included mobile forces with anti-tank weapons (and we actually see those in action) and a surprisingly effective hyperspace-capable starfighter design equipped with capital ship-killing proton torpedoes. Both are Justified: the fighters exist because Naboo's economy heavily depends on trade and heavily armed starfighters are a good deterrent against Space Pirates and, if necessary, can wipe them out, and the Naboo had a tense relationship with the Gungan, who live in waters infested by Kaiju and, in Star Wars Legends, fought against in at least one war.
    • The Naboo weren't even sure the Gungan had an army anymore until the Trade Federation invasion got the Gungan to mobilize their troops. Meaning the Naboo heavily armed their "Royal Security Forces" just in case.
    • While the N-1 starfighter is a recent development intended specifically to take on the Trade Federation (the previous king had been opposing them politically and realized it could cause a military confrontation, though he heavily underestimated their sheer numbers), they still had a far-better-than-average capable starfighter in service. Just in case.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, a Separatist Frigate tries to fly under one of the Venator class star destroyers, only to get blown up. It turns out Anakin had SPHA walkers placed in the hangar bays of Venator ships, just in case the Separatists tried to aim for their weak underbelly.
• Played for laughs in Surf Ninjas when the gang is surprised Spence managed to escape his handcuffs.
  Spence: I had a key.
  Johnny: Where? We searched you!
  Spence: I swallowed it last Tuesday.
  Johnny: How'd you know you'd need it?
  Spence: I swallow it every Tuesday.
• In Superman Returns, when Superman is in the hospital, the camera shifts to a newspaper headline declaring "SUPERMAN DEAD." Then it pans out to show the paper lying on a table next to one that says "SUPERMAN LIVES."
  Richard: A little morbid, don't you think?
  Perry: I like to be prepared.
• Synecdoche, New York has this with Caden's psychiatrist Dr. Davis, as his conversations with her lack a Beat between his speech and her response (like she knows what he'll say beforehand). Even taken up to eleven when he sees her in public and ignores her sexual advances; he returns to reading a book she wrote, only to discover the rest of the book is blank pages following a message of "I offer my flower to you, and you deny it. This book is over."
• Her earlier experiences made Sarah Connor vigilant and just a little paranoid. Terminator 2: Judgment Day also shows that it made her crazy prepared. She pulls into a friend's place on the Mexican border and tells him she needs her "things". This turns out to be a years-buried cache of weapons including a freaking minigun. It's even alluded to that she spent John's childhood arming him with Chekhov's skills.
  • In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the "supposed" resting place of Sarah Connor is yet another small weapons cache, complete with bullet-proof coffin. She didn't even tell her son.
  • In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it is revealed that when she and John move into a new house, every single time that they move, she has a piece of furniture lined with kevlar and the wall behind hollowed out and stacked with guns (creating an effective fortified firepoint in-house), in addition to cases of guns under every bed.
• Totally Killer; Pam has spent 35 years training herself and her daughter in martial arts in case the killer comes back while also having guns, knives, pepper spray, and alarms hidden around her house, refusing to let Jamie go to concerts unsupervised, and even keeping a psychic good luck crystal around as a last resort.
• From The Transporter, you have the transporter. When he breaks the rules and looks in the package, the bad guys blow up his house. That turned out to not be the problem you might think, because he and the devoid-of-personality love interest end up in a tunnel under his house with access to the ocean. Can't get back out of the tunnel? No problem, because he happens to have scuba gear down there. For two people. Even though he's been a loner for years.
• Burt Gummer from the Tremors movie series maintains an enormous collection of firearms and survival gear for any contingency, even before giant, subterranean killer worms invade his town. One exchange in Tremors 3: Back to Perfection sums up his existence well:
  Jodi: Uh, but do we have a lighter?
  Jack: Burt does.
  Burt: How do you know?
  Jack: Well, 'cause you're... Burt.
  (Beat)
  Burt: (presenting lighter) Damn right I am.
  • Made even funnier because, if you watch closely, Burt BORROWS a lighter every time he needs one prior to that point.
  • Burt Gummer's character is firmly established in the first movie when the other residents hear Burt and his wife scream over the radio as the Graboids (the killer worms) burst into Burt's underground bunker. But when the camera switches back to Burt, instead of being messily devoured as the viewers expect, Burt and his wife instead run to the back wall, which reveals an absolutely massive Wall of Weapons which they use to attack the Graboid.
  • Burt's preparedness is subverted in the second film — he arrives extremely well prepared to fight Graboids as he knows them. Unfortunately, what you need to fight them in the worm/Graboid stage of their lifecycle is distinctly different to what you need to fight them in their Shrieker stage, with the result that his weapons are overpowered to the point of being counterproductive and have much too little ammunition available.
• Marion from Undead is a 'by the book' example of this trope. His preparedness is explained by his previous experience of alien abduction and contact with zombie fish (?). Everyone thinks that he's crazy, until one day...
• Undercover Brother. Undercover Brother is always ready for action.
  • At the beginning of the movie, before he goes into the bank he wears a parachute under his shirt so that if he has to jump off the top of the building to escape, he'll survive the experience.
  • He wears two combs in his hair, which he throws at the security guards at the golf club to pin them to the wall.
  • At the end of the movie, he has to jump off a cliff to avoid being blown up. Sista Girl says "he forgot his parachute", indicating that he will be dashed on the rocks below. However, he deploys mini-parachutes from his pants, saving himself.
• Unknown (2011) features Section 15, a secret organisation of hired killers, who are so efficient that when one of their operatives is apparently lost before his next mission they are able to substitute a new operative with sufficient grounding in the cover story to take on his colleagues' role with only a few hours' notice. While they fell victim to the Villain Ball when dealing with the "original" Martin Harris (who suffered from Amnesiac Dissonance after a car accident where he believes his cover identity is his real self), Section 15 deserve credit for reacting so quickly to compensate for such a random accident.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: Unlike Charles, Hank doesn't believe that human-mutant relations will always be smooth, and he has spent the past decade building a new model of the Blackbird (and presumably equipment, combat uniforms, etc.) so that the X-Men will be ready should things suddenly go south. As Nicholas Hoult puts it:
  "Hank, since the last movie, still believes that the world kind of needs the X-Men, and that even though there's peace between humans and mutants at this point, he senses trouble and has kind of been building this jet war plan and kind of preparing for the worst."
• The film noir by Fritz Lang You Only Live Once: A newspaper indicates which of three already-prepared headlines is to be used - the one where the protagonist is declared guilty, not the one of him being declared innocent or the one with "Jury Deadlocked". Newspapers do this in real life when circumstances are such that they know a major story will break soon but don't know which way it will go.

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