Crossovers
- All For Luz:
- All For One admits to Luz that he didn't expect that his brother already had a Quirk, or that the "Stockpile" Quirk he gave him would merge with it, creating One for All, the Quirk that would eventually be used to kill him by All Might, himself.
- When Stanley firmly rejected Kennedy's offer to hand over his team leader, Luz, for a cut of the prize money, he didn't foresee his Evil Former Friend retaliating by having half his team brutally murdered.
- Kennedy honestly thought he and the combined might of teams Heaven's Devils and Foxtrot, making up to 21 member,s could take down Luz after slaughtering half her team. What he didn't account for was that her Quirk is being Power Parasite, giving her the means to fight back and get stronger that has been Gaining the Will to Kill before they found her. Luz ends up killing all but one of the superpowered teens to avenge her dead camper friends.
- Not long afterwards, All For One admits he did not think that Luz's Roaring Rampage of Revenge would've escalated quickly to the point that Luz would steal more Quirks than her body can contain and suffer a bloody Heroic RRoD. He tells her she'll have to get rid of more than half of them to reach a safe level.
- When Tyler Wittebane is about to pull a You Have Failed Me on Riley and Millie for failing to assassinate Luz, Riley defends herself by saying that the only reason the All For One user survived her Quirk was because she recently stole Derreck's superpower and combined with her Healing Factor. This gets Tyler to stop his rant as he didn't expect Luz to be able to hold more powers now and decide he'll need the two alive to try again with the rest of the team.
- A Young Girl's Guerrilla War: Tanya is killed by a lucky Francois artillery strike mere hours before Operation Revolving Door, far earlier than the non-omnipotent Being X had ever intended. The aforementioned deity is left chagrined and opts to grant Tanya a second chance at life to test her faith and resolve – in the universe of Code Geass.
- Child of the Storm:
- Sinister is a walking blind spot in Strange's extremely powerful abilities as a Seer, meaning that he's pretty much a living example of this to Strange, who has to resort to frantic Xanatos Speed Chess to try and get on top of things again. However, the fact of this is an even bigger case to the cast, who had got used to the concept of Strange being a nigh-omniscient Chessmaster who was never caught off-guard - he might be irritating, he might attract a number of speeches on the theme of What the Hell, Hero?, and rightly so, but like him or not, it's generally acknowledged and assumed that he's always on top of things. The revelation that he's not triggers a massive Oh, Crap! in the heroes as a result.
- Harry tends to be a living example of this trope to most villainous organisations, through his tendency to function as a Spanner in the Works due to his unpredictable planning/tendency to make it up as he goes along. Unfortunately, this tendency means that the good guys find it just as unpredictable, and he's even been known to put big holes in his own plans. As a result, this backfires horribly early in Book II, during the Forever Red arc, leading to a Trauma Conga Line that nearly drives Harry insane.
- Jor-El is revealed in the sequel to have been absolutely Crazy-Prepared, building as many redundancies and back-ups into his plan as were conceivably possible. However, he didn't predict Clark's ship dragging a lot of debris from Krypton's wreckage with it, causing the Smallville Meteor Shower and making the landing a much bigger event than he'd hoped (making it harder to completely conceal Clark), and creating a much bigger problem for Clark in terms of 'meteor freaks' and the fact that Kryptonite Is Everywhere.
- Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron:
- While the possibility of the Paladins not being able to be one in mind did not elude Coran, he's completely flat-footed when the mind-meld fails due to Lelouch thinking about the assassination of his mother, as this had never happened before.
- Charles' plan to capture Lelouch using Nunnally gets totally derailed due to several of these factors, specifically the Unknown Knowns: first, he wasn't anticipating all of the Paladins to show up, second, he didn't know just how versatile the Lions were, third, he had no way of knowing that the Lions have an empathic bond with their Paladins and could move on their own power if necessary, and last but not least, he didn't know that Lelouch's friends would be able to convince him not to go after Nunnally without a plan in mind.
- Nebiros was royally taken by surprise when he learned that the Lions could No-Sell his Geass.
- In Deltatraveler, Flowey declares that since Susie is a monster, she has to fight the human Kris. He's completely caught off-guard when she rejects this, defying his attempt to force her to his side to the point of breaking the battle system in order to fight alongside Kris.
- The Dragon and the Butterfly: Hiccup gets this reaction from others when he reveals that Toothless is a dragon (as the people of the Encanto believed that dragons were simply fairy tales). He later has this reaction himself when he sees Luisa lift a building with her bare hands (leading to Mirabel explaining the Madrigal family history)
- In Freedom's Ring, pretty much every player in the Gambit Pileup that is Attack on Titan were caught completely off guard with the sudden appearance of a Gate in Paradis that connects the island to New York City in modern Earth, which was summoned by none other than the ascended Rory Mercury. This completely unforeseen phenomenon resulting in chains of events (including the swift retaking of Shiganshina at the second chapter) that turns these schemers' plans completely on its heads. Reactions ranged from resigned acceptance that there's no point in continuing (The Warriors Trio and Zeke) to resorting to drastic measures that led to even worsening the situation they already had (Rod Reiss and the Tybur family). In fact, the only major players in the series whose plans and goals actually benefitted from the Gate would be Erwin Smith and Hizuru.
- If Wishes Were Ponies: Dumbledore gets this again and again. First, he learns that Harry is no longer living with the Dursleys, but with a sextet of very powerful magic-users who can outclass most of the wizards he knows. Then he learns that these same women have taught their siblings, Harry, and the Weasley children how to become Animagi in one day (a process that usually takes over a month). Then he learns that these people are Atlanteans with incredibly powerful magic (although he turns out to be wrong about this one). Finally he learns that the Equestrians come from another world entirely, that their pony forms are their true forms, and that Harry has been adopted by Twilight Sparkle and is now considered a member of the Equestrian royal family (which he realizes will be a political nightmare if revealed to the Wizarding World).
- Infinity Crisis:
- Said verbatim by Quicksilver when he returns to life before a stunned Clint and Natasha.
- With the heroes and villains all restored, Arrowverse-Barry travels back to his Earth with his Justice League counterpart, reasoning that his other self is the ultimate twist that even DeVoe could never have seen coming in advance; they directly quote the line in Legacy of Lightning after 'Barry-Blue' disables DeVoe's equipment while Barry-Red distracts their enemy.
- Subverted when Pietro notes that Northstar actually did see that coming when the Avengers join the X-Men to save Logan from Alpha Flight.
- Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: At the climax of the Ninjala Car, Dr. Yung thinks that victory is at hand, as his Mirage Pokémon cannot be destroyed and he's programmed them to kill Chloe Cerise (a ten year old girl) because she badmouthed him. Nothing can be done, and she's about to have her last stand while numerous attacks will kill her. But what no one finds out at the time, is that when Chloe focused on the love and hope of seeing Yamper again as her last wish before her death, the cloak she wore not only absorbed the attacks but also unleashed a Rain of Arrows that created a wave of hope and love from her wish to see Yamper again, freeing the army from Yung's commands. Yung himself is horrified to see Chloe not only alive, but also riding on top of one of his mirage Pokémon.
- J-WITCH Series: Jade's shadow powers being able to negate the Quintessence animating the Annihilators catches Drago completely off guard.
- Lighting Candles: Tadashi seems to have this reaction every other chapter, as he did not expect to meet the Sandman, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, or Jack Frost, and he certainly didn't expect to be turned into a spirit, specifically a kitsune. To his credit, he gets used to it semi-fast.
- The Twin Empeors of Ahn'Qiraj in Metagaming?
are easily killed, to the surprise of everyone present, because Vek'nilash charged into a stream of napalm, thinking it magic which he is immune to. Since both brothers share the same life force, both of them burn alive before the fight even truly begins. - New Stars: The Orville has seen a lot over it's time in operation (robot invasions, time traveling, having an untold amount of the crew turned into spider-people, the ship almost crashing due to a porn virus, etc). The crew still manages to be surprised, however, when they meet a cloned human from another galaxy.
- The Night Unfurls:
- Kyril Sutherland himself is such an Outside-Context Problem that every party in the story (the antagonists moreso) are subjected to this trope. The most common instance of this trope in action is how his enemies do not expect the Hunter to be that strong, as result of thinking that he's Just One Man. And then there's the two Unknown Unknowns — his Resurrective Immortality and his true nature as an Eldritch Abomination... yeah.
- The Seven Shields of Eostia does not expect the most renowned PMC group, the Black Dogs, to turn on them, kicking off the majority of the plot with a bang.
- The Eostian military have fought orcs and mercs, but not mutants that look horrifying, with the abilities to match. Thus, regular Red Shirts find themselves to be at a disadvantage when encountering them. Nevertheless, this element is slowly mitigated over time as morale is restored, thanks to Kyril's prowess in fighting them, his relentless advance, as well as the troops themselves gaining more experience.
- The plot thickens during the Rebel Scum Arc because of Celestine giving the order to quell the rebellion in the capital, a move that no one, not even Kyril, can see coming. They assumed that she, being The High Queen, would opt for the more peaceful option. The result is that the rebellion, sponsored by Mandeville, ends in one swift stroke, courtesy of Kyril and his forces setting Grishom's cathedral aflame to smoke out every rebel. Cue Oh, Crap! from Grishom.
- The guards under Mandeville's payroll attempt to kill everyone in Celestine's personal estate when Kyril is away. They do not account for the skeleton crew that Kyril has set up there in case something like that happened, together with an animated doll that rends things as she wills.
- Raise Your Voice Against Liars: The simple existence of Persona users completely derail several of Hawk Moth and Mayura's plans. Not only are they an Outside-Context Problem, they weren't even aware of their existence.
- Shadows over Meridian: In Chapter 20, Jade is utterly shocked to find that Elyon has ordered her northern army to withdraw from besieging Snowpoint, having expected them to keep trying to assault the fortress.
- In Shinji's Nightmare, Gendo's scenario goes flying Off the Rails when Shinji returns from his month inside Eva as an alicorn, specifically a male version of Nightmare Moon.
- In A Special Kind of Magic, the Queen's Shadows are left flat footed when Naofumi is able to find them with ease, especially since they are using magic to augment their stealth powers. This is because Naofumi can sense the fact that they are using magic at all, meaning that their stealth magic might as well be them waving a banner with their names on it to Naofumi.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man: Lost In Gotham: The Bats (and Gotham) knew very little about Spider-Man when he first appeared. So seeing him stop a runaway train with nothing but his webs and strength is this trope for pretty much everyone.
- Thousand Shinji: Tzeentch's failure to see the C'tan plans coming was what forced the canon!40k gods to work together.
- Touhou Galaxy: This happens many times in the various stories with one big example being In the climax of Chapter 17 of Dream Team, Kamek is confronted by several angry people from the author's Kingdom Hearts-verse who he had just spent the fight with Marisa and Reimu insulting (along with Yang who's upset because Kamek insulted Ruby and Marisa who's just here because she doesn't like Kamek.) They proceed to beat him up and then the two Marisas Final Spark Kamek into defeat. Then, the climax of the final chapter has Marisa showing up with a group of heroes from her universe and they save Mario and the gang from Dreamy Bowser and beat him up.
- In With Stars in Her Eyes, neither the angels or the demons expected that the Doctor and Rose Tyler would invite Jessica Moore on a trip in the TARDIS the day she was meant to die, and since Brady decided to claim she was dead when he couldn't find her, to date all concerned parties assume that the fact that they haven't found her in Heaven or Hell is just a minor detail.
- In Xander and Yet ANOTHER Demon, Stargate Command has numerous cover stories for various scenarios, such as playing Anise off as a psych patient off her medication. What they never expected was that someone like Xander would pick apart each cover story as he hears it. Anise is a psych patient? Nope, too lucid and her eyes flash white when she changes between Anise and Freya. Teal'c is from Mozambique? Sorry, Xander's been there and knows Teal'c neither looks or speaks like anyone from that country.
- The biggest example however is that the New Watcher's Council never expected that aliens existed nor did SGC realize that demons and vampires were real, leading to much initial confusion on both sides.
- In Fade In, Fade Out, Diaz's plans are ruined when Earth-2 Laurel brings her counterpart back to life with the goal of 'tapping out' of public life and leaving the original Laurel to draw attention. When Diaz 'abducts' Laurel to talk with her about their upcoming plans, still believing her to be her other self, the metahuman blocker he gave her doesn't work on Laurel the way it did for her Earth-2 counterpart, allowing Laurel to destroy basically all of Diaz's allies with one Canary Cry.
- The Dilgar War has a few of them, on all sides, but the most notable are Earthforce actually being able to take on the Dilgar best and not only win but utterly annihilating them with an absurdly high number of nuclear weapons and Jha'dur's attempt at exterminating Earth's population with a plague being ambushed in the form of a Minbari fleet led by Chosen One Dukhat in person who acted on information of the Vorlon.
- In A Fighting Chance, the Minbari gets a major Oh, Crap! when they realize that Earthforce has broken their stealth. The backstory of this fanfic the Dilgar had already did it once (and in fact they were the ones who sold Earthforce a few dozens of the stealth-breaking sensors complete with blueprints), but that happened to the Windswords who apparently never told anyone else.
- In Deadly Nightshade, Poison Ivy stealing a bit of Bruce Wayne's DNA immediately made Batman paranoid about the possibility of her figuring his Secret Identity out. Then he corners her son to validate his hypothesis, only for the kid to reveal Ivy wanted the DNA for a paternity test. And yes, it was positive.
- When the heroes book a hotel in Seven's A Crowd, they're very careful to only book 3 rooms, so that Leo (who they're all interested in) will be forced to room with one of the already established couples. What the group did not take into account, however, is the gesture making Leo feel left out and forgotten.
- Icarus:
- C.C. assumed that Lelouch would become a rebel leader, and is excited upon seeing that he decided to reclaim his position as a prince again, wondering how else he's going to surprise her.
- Rai didn't anticipate Lelouch coming forward as a prince, either.
- During the Rising Sun Rebellion, Suzaku, C.C., Cecile and Lloyd are all surprised to see that both Viletta and Jeremiah are still alive.
- Kallen Stadtfeld, Countess of Britannia: After seemingly convincing Charles to have Marrybell replace Clovis, everyone is surprised when he instead names Euphemia the next viceroy of Area 11.
- Pops up left and right in Tiberium Wars, to both GDI and Nod. After all, GDI never saw the initial Nod assault coming, nor did Nod ever see Havoc's mini-guerilla war, fifty thousand GDI Marines, or a division of Mammoth Tanks coming.
- Hope on a Distant Mountain: While trapped in the supposedly unwinnable D-Course simulation, Makoto decided against presenting the evidence implicating Kirigiri. This proved to be a critical turning point, as the Mastermind AI running the game had never considered that as a possibility.
- or did it eat the little girl?: Korekiyo's plan completely falls apart when Tenko doesn't follow his instructions to the letter and looks up at a critical moment. He's left at a total loss afterwards.
- In Where Talent Goes to Die, the first murderer's plan to frame the protagonist by making it seem as though the victim wrote her name in his blood runs into a few unexpected complications. First, the Monokuma File proves that the victim died instantly, and couldn't have written Miura's name. Second, Miura has an alibi for the time of the murder. Third, someone else is using the laundry room, preventing the killer from washing his bloody clothes.
- In What If Krillin Became a Saiyan?, Vegeta steals Krillin's bag of Senzu Beans as part of a plan to overpower Freeza by outlasting him, letting Freeza repeatedly beat him up and healing so that he can benefit from the zenkai boosts. Unfortunately for Vegeta, he wasn't aware that Freeza could transform, allowing the tyrant to easily outpace his growth.
- This trope comes in The Fourth King when Kariya summons freakin' Godzilla as Berserker. Oh, Crap!, soiled underwear and Hilarity ensued for everyone but Kariya and those protected by him.
- In Something Always Remains, The Smiling Man could account for employees being at Freddy's after-hours. He could account for strange happenings and unreliable programming since he disabled the animatronics so they couldn't assist Mike or turn on him. He could even account for Spring Bonnie being haunted. What couldn't he - or anyone else for that matter - account for? That Spring Bonnie was haunted by two ghosts.
- In Erika the Radical, the titular commander has made several radical changes to the Kuromorimine doctrine, exchanging the rigid, heavy tank tactics to more diverse range of light/medium German Panzers and more importantly, independent initiative for each crew. This massively throws off all rival schools who were expecting to overcome a Mighty Glacier army, instead getting a full throttle of blitzkrieg, as promised by Erika. Even Assam was surprised to see them execute their newly acquired doctrine quite effectively.
- This tends to happen to heroes of Peggy Sue fanfics when the changes they make to the timeline come back to bite them in the ass. An excellent example of this occurs in Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past; Harry rants to Dumbledore about his living conditions with the Dursleys at one point, and Dumbledore responds by using memory charms on the Dursleys in an effort to improve the situation. When an unknown third party later removes the charms and Vernon remembers being charmed, Harry's already-rocky relationship with the Dursleys turns downright venomous, culminating in a savage beating during the first year/second year summer break that leaves Harry in critical condition.
- Besides the usual Peggy Sue results of upsetting an entire war in Wind Shear, Harry Potter also causes a lot of confusion for Andromeda Black due to his actions changing her family's beliefs on blood purity. Since all three lords in the brewing war are halfbloods, they relax their stance on blood purity, especially after Voldemort attacks them once they've declared neutrality in the war. Later, Ted Tonks nearly dies saving Andromeda's and Bellatrix's lives, causing the family head to not only insist on paying his medical bills but also giving his blessing for Ted and Andromeda to marry (though insisting Ted takes her last name). Andromeda spends roughly half the story trying to figure out when her family changed their tune so drastically.
- In The 75, District 4 victor Jordano is excluded from the rebellion due to his standoffish nature and has this reaction during the Quarter Quell once he finally realizes what's going on.He watched the Games unfold. Saw the Victor-Tributes unite as one during the interviews. Saw the Victor-Tributes kill each other the next day. Mags die. His neighbors pack their things and leave. The Capitol raid the Victors' Village the first time only to find an elderly man sprawled out in his underwear. The star-crossed fools from Twelve play kissyface. The star-crossed fools break out of the arena with Odair.
Well that was unexpected.
- Gaz's Horrible Halloween of Doom: Samhain manipulates events so Gaz has to dress up as a fairy and gets kidnapped after being mistaken for a real one by Bill, intending for her to be humiliated by being put on display in a paranormal convention, but he doesn't realize that she would be strong enough to break out of the truck that Bill shoves her in. So after she escapes, he has to improvise more events to throw at her to finish ruining her night.
- Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends: Zim is dumbfounded when Minimoose catches Tak during her attack on Zim's base, only for some reason to then let her go with an Affectionate Gesture to the Head. He's very confused by this, and determined to figure it out later.
- Re: My Hostage, Not Yours: During the climatic battle, Gaz manages to overpower the Crone and hold a PAK leg against her spine, threatening to kill her if the Valkians don't let the captive Zim go. The Queen calls her bluff, thinking Gaz is too weak-willed to go through with it... and is stunned when Gaz proceeds to do exactly that.
- In Stardust Crusaders:Diamond Days, DIO's minions have six-years-old Josuke Higashikata, Joseph Joestar's illegitimate son, captured, and during the events at her hotel Enya uses him as a hostage against Jotaro. While he does hesitate to finish her off immediately in as she expected, Enya is blindsided when she hears that Jotaro has no idea who Josuke even is, thinking the boy as a random kid that Enya kidnapped to be her hostage.
- In Game Theory, Precia's carefully laid plans repeatedly get hit with unexpected elements that screw up her strategy, but she manages to adjust accordingly. Only it turns out that one of the aforementioned Spanners In The Works actually opened up the possibility of pursuing a better plan, making it an inversion.
- Black Widow sneaks into Wakanda in Nobody's Heroes to rejoin with Team Captain America. Not only did she not anticipate facing multiple fighters who were superior to her, she really didn't expect that T'Challa wouldn't let her stay and instead tells Natasha she'll be taken to an airport where a plane will take her to a destination of her choice.
- In First Contact, the Batarians attack the newest race on the scene (humanity), confident the Citadel will only give them a slap on the wrist via sanctions like they always do. Instead, the Council demands that the Batarian Hegemony either surrender immediately or go to war against the entirety of the Citadel.
- In All's Fair in Love and War (And Turnabout's Fair Play), Lila sincerely believes that 'friendship' is merely a social construct, that nobody actually cares about others beyond what they can get out of them, and that other people are generally just as self-absorbed and selfish as her. Despite this, she also assumes that Adrien is just as naïve and trusting as he seems, and is thusly caught completely off-guard when he decides to strike back, using her own actions to destroy her reputation in one fell swoop.
- BURN THE WITCH:
- When Lila reveals that Marinette keeps track of Adrien's schedule in order to make her out as a Stalker with a Crush, she's stunned when Adrien doesn't see anything wrong with that. After all, his father does keep him busy; in fact, Nino does the exact same thing so they can coordinate and get together more often.
- Lila then reveals that Marinette has planned out what kind of gifts she's going to give Adrien for future birthdays and holidays... but since Adrien still isn't aware that she was the one who made the scarf his father "gave him", he assumes she's guilt-ridden over "forgetting his birthday" before. Even their friends who know about her crush think it makes sense; Alya privately notes that given how much bad luck Marinette's run into with past gift-giving attempts, it's only logical that she'd try countering that by planning ahead.
- Burning Bridges, Building Confidence:
- Lila's constant claims that she and Ladybug are besties work especially well on Alya. So well, in fact, that when the latter gets akumatized into Rena Rage, she promptly takes her as a hostage out of the belief that this will make Ladybug respond faster.
- During an akuma attack, Vexxin makes a Mirage of Marinette to serve as a distraction. To both her and Ladybug's surprise, Adrien goes chasing after the mirage, making matters much more complicated.
- Cheshire: Misterbug manages to defeat Black Queen by himself, much to everyone's shock. Misterbug is also taken aback when he sees that Pollen is among the kwami Cheshire has gathered.
- The Cosmos:
- While she expected Lila to try luring her to her side, Rose is completely caught off guard by her methodology, as Lila attempts to send her into a panic attack by stomping on her Trauma Button regarding her parents rejecting her when she came out.
- The Cosmos are also repeatedly surprised by the sheers depths to which Lila is willing to sink in her efforts to take them down. Including kidnapping and threatening to murder one of their own.
- Lila gets a taste of this herself when she tries blackmailing Adrien into staying silent by threatening to have his father pull him out of school. When she shows him that she's got Gabriel's number on her cell, Adrien responds by pressing the button, then snatching the phone right out of her hand and calmly informing his father of her threats and harassment, asking him to cut all ties with her. Gabriel agrees.
- Cut My Life Into Pieces, This Is My Last Resort
- Marinette gets the idea of faking her death in an Akuma attack and become Ladybug 24/7 until Hawk Moth is defeated. Nino eventually chews her out by telling her that she threw Adrien into a bout of borderline suicidal depression.
- Gabriel naturally doesn't expect Marinette to not actually be dead, which results in him not being able to Akumatize Chat Noir, as she's able to calm him down before he can.
- Dad Villain AU:
- Gabriel arrogantly assumes that making a Wish makes him untouchable, since reality itself is rewritten as a result, and he specifically requested that he would be the only person with Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. Among the things he fails to consider is the existence of kwami and sentimonsters; since he doesn't regard beings of either type as "people", they also retain their memories of the original reality. In particular, he regards Nooroo as nothing more than a helpless victim, a complete slave to his will; this underestimation is precisely what enables Nooroo to eventually escape the Agreste Manor.
- Following his escape, Nooroo goes straight to the Dupain-Cheng bakery, assuming that she'll still be Ladybug in this new timeline. Not only is this not the case, her father finds him first, resulting in the creation of Viceroy.
- Rolland decided to use Sabine's illness and hospitalization as an opportunity to force Marinette to follow his recipes instead, while insulting her parents and implying he didn't believe her mother was really sick. He didn't anticipate his granddaughter standing up to him or pointing out that it didn't matter what he thought was better; their customers expected bread made with rice flour, not wheat.
- Dread String of Fate revolves around Luka trying to prevent Marinette from being Strangled by the Red String, as he can see that the Red String of Fate tying her to Adrien is literally wrapped around her neck. He's completely blindsided when Sass informs him that Marinette is forming a new bond by choosing to tie herself to him.
- Feralnette AU:
- Lila gets blindsided by a triple combo of this during Birds of a Feather. First, she learns the hard way that Everyone Has Standards when Alya, who's unquestioningly supported her up to this point, turns upon her for threatening to Blackmail Felix with their own gender identity. Then she's caught off-guard again by Marinette willingly Taking the Heat for Alya, and is even more stunned when Principal Damocles plays a Reasonable Authority Figure for once... mainly because Chloé forbade him from expelling Marinette again on threat of getting her father involved.
- While dealing with the akuma of the week, Marinette takes advantage of being snared by their ribbon-tendrils by intentionally getting pinned under wreckage, enabling her to hold them back. To her shock, the akuma reveals that they can completely unravel their whole body, untangling themselves from her.
- Kill count is set in a world where machines called Karmic Balancers can tell how many lives somebody has taken. This includes temporary deaths, like those reversed by the Miraculous Cure. Gabriel uses his resources to rig the Karma Balancers at all the places he frequents so that they won't show any suspicious readings; however, this deception is revealed when his son gets scanned at school, revealing the abnormally high number he'd racked up while akumatized into Chat Blanc.
- Long Con: Lila isn't especially worried when her classmates finally confront her for how she manipulated them for months. After all, as she gleefully points out, their teacher is a hopeless enabler who refuses to punish any of her "problem students", instead pressing their victims to "lead by example" and forgive all their crimes. However, she's caught off guard by how her classmates took this into account and decided to deal with her by telling their parents everything that was going on, resulting in her mother getting involved. Once this is revealed, Lila can only stammer in shock.
- Recommencer: When Lila attempts to slander Marinette by claiming she'd been bullying her online, she's shocked beyond belief when Lina steps forward and falsely confesses that she was behind it. The idea that anyone would not only counter one of her lies with another lie, but take the heat for a crime that doesn't even exist completely floors her.
- Implied in Unmasker Unleashed, when the butterfly mask disappears from Unmasker's face when Cat Noir brings up Marinette having been in love with Adrien. Monarch wasn't likely expecting to have akumatized someone who had been in love with his son.
- Dekiru: The Fusion Hero!: Izuku's Quirk lets him fuse with others, which tends to catch their opponents completely off-guard.
- Deku? I think he's some pro...:
- The underground heroes assume that "Deku" is a retired Pro Hero. Finding out that he's actually a Quirkless teenager leaves them all shocked. Even Nedzu is taken aback upon learning this.
- Nedzu winds up choking on his tea when Izuku informs him that Endeavor is an Abusive Parent, detailing everything he's learned about Shouto's home life.
- All Might wasn't aware that One For All could pass on the Quirks of past holders, assuming that it was a simple strength stockpiling ability. So he's completely taken off-guard by that aspect cropping up out of the blue.
- All For One never anticipated that Shigaraki and the League might turn on him, much less that they'd be able to take him down so swiftly.
- Failure to Explode: For years, the staff at Aldera let Katsuki get away with his Barbaric Bullying, assuming that his powerful Quirk meant he was practically guaranteed to get into U.A., enabling them to ride his coattails. They're completely blindsided when Katsuki doesn't get in, while his favorite victim Izuku does — meaning their only alumni who made it into the prestigious academy won't have anything good to say about his middle school.
- Haigha: All of Nighteye's plans to mold Mirio into his ideal successor for All Might's power are derailed by one simple, tiny detail: he never bothered telling Mirio about his intentions. As a result, when All Might offers One For All to him, Mirio turns it down, reasoning that his own quirk has already proven tricky enough to master and wanting to succeed using his own power. When Nighteye learns about this and flips his shit, he completely ruins Mirio's former regard for his mentor.
- Personality Swap AU:
- Sir Nighteye deliberately plans his first meeting with Izuku to break the boy just enough that he'll give One For All to Mirio. However, the man's information on Izuku was months old so he didn't know about Izuku's new skills and confidence. Not only does Izuku pass Sir Nighteye's test, he's so angered by the man's attitude that Izuku refuses to intern with him and simply leaves.
- This is also how the AU begins. Aizawa assigns the 1-A students to impersonate someone else in the class of his choosing for the next school day. What no one realized was that Izuku was an extremely talented actor, proven when he not only perfectly pretended to be Bakugou, but also copied his fighting style. An impressed Aizawa decides to have Izuku impersonate him... and then the other staff in UA, bringing chaos and mayhem to the school. Aizawa, and later Nedzu, nurturing his acting and analytical talents changes many things, one being the Sir Nighteye moment mentioned above.
- Viridian: The Green Guide: Rock Lock brushes off Izuku's attempt to get him to follow him to a robbery, seeing no point in chasing after some punk who threw a rock at him. Luckily, Amplifier [who had met Izuku before] was with him and knows Izuku is trying to lead them to a crime.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Discord's New Business: Both In-Universe and Out-of-Universe, Discord reacts this way when Rarity asks to become a Diamond Dog.Discord: ...Congratulations. You're now one of the only beings in the history of EVER who've caught me off-guard.
- Naruto in Eroninja runs into an unexpected snag while seducing Anko when she actually recognizes the jutsu he's using and promptly ties him up and drags him before Tsunade as an attempted rapist.
- After things are explained to Anko, she's used as a willing test subject for how long the jutsu's effects last if the user and subject don't have sex. While she initially shows increasing resistance to the jutsu, eventually she snaps and becomes crazed in her need to have sex with Naruto.
- Escape From The Hokage's Hat:
- The corrupt Council members try to force Tsunade to banish Naruto by manipulating things so that she's forced to choose between banishment or execution. They're completely caught off-guard when she decides to go through with the banishment, but in a way that ruins their plans.
- Danzo also didn't expect that Jiraiya would ever storm his base with an ANBU team.
- Kitsune no Ken: Fist of the Fox:
- During the final arc, the only thing that prevents LOVE's plan to massacre Naruto's friends in Konoha Town from succeeding is Darui, Zabuza and the Tiger Dragon gang defecting. None of the heroes or villains anticipated such a move.
- Gaara isn't surprised by Minato figuring out that the four orbs Kankuro built and distributed were secretly beacons for the homing missiles he intended to use to murder their recipients. Nor is he surprised that Minato took steps to collect the orbs for himself. What does take him off-guard is where the orbs ended up: with Yashamaru. This triggers a Villainous Breakdown.
- In Vapors Tsunade is The Chessmaster, and easily out gambits both Danzo and several of the other kages at a few points. But while she knew Aiko was planning something as part of their plan to take out Danzo, even she was caught flat-footed when Sai walked into her office and announced his desire to defect from Root.
- What You Knead: Orochimaru's plan to turn Sasuke to his side with the Cursed Seal fails due to two factors he failed to foresee. First is that Sasuke suffered from Power Incontinence when he first unlocked his Sharingan, causing him to unintentionally commit several of his experiences with Team Seven to photographic memory. Said memories help fuel his Heroic Willpower and help him resist the Cursed Seal's corruptive influence. Secondly, Jiraiya was actually in Konoha at the time and could immediately help treat the seal.
- Evangelion 303: Expecting proving everybody that she was the top pilot in the Base, Asuka challenged Shinji to a duel. She thought she could easily beat him, since there was no way that rookie could get as much out of his ship as she could, and no trick of his could surprise her. Then he flew backwards in midair while she was chasing him and flying right behind him. Everybody's faces show that NOBODY saw that coming.
- HERZ:
- The American troops' reaction when their anti-Eva satellites got taken down.
- This is SEELE's reaction when they are trying to retrieve the Lance and it suddenly flies away and towards Earth.
- And again when they deploy the second generation of MP-Evas and the Children hijack them easily.
- In Role-Playing (Evangelion), Asuka talks her fellow pilots into roleplaying moments of Nerv's past. As they spy on the Children carrying out complex reenactments day after day, Gendo and Fuyutsuki wonder about Asuka's real motive driving her actions. When it is revealed that she was building a scenario where she could confess her feelings to Shinji, the Nerv commanders' reaction is a blend of amazement, puzzlement and amusement.
- The Second Try: SEELE has this reaction to Toji appearing by piloting Jet Alone and the death of the first MP-EVA. Their following argument gets so heated that they don't even notice that his leader is dying.
- All Mixed Up!: Otto, being a Cornered Rattlesnake, decides to charge at Mariana Mag despite her being armed with a stun gun. She's so taken aback by this unexpected display that she ends up distracted enough for Otto to turn Oscar back to normal by pressing the Backspace key on her keyboard.
- Big Mom in Big Mom's Daughters and Luffy drugs most of her daughters with a Love Potion to make them fall in love with Luffy so she could have an alliance with the Revolutionary Army. What she didn't expect was that instead of one of them marrying Luffy and bringing him into the family, they'd all marry him and defect from her crew.
- In True Grit, Yusuke escapes the pursuit of Akihiko, a famous boxer, by toppling a gargantuan Jack Frost doll onto him. Eventually some helpful passersby lift the doll off, but by that time Yusuke is long gone.
- Common Sense: When Team Rocket attempts to steal the Pokémon in the P1 Grand Prix, their plans are foiled when the crowd unexpectedly joins in the efforts to drive them away.
- In Jessica, Cameron gives his Pikachu in Pokémon Black a Thunderstone, and she refuses it.
- Instances are littered throughout Pokémon Strangled Red:
- The realization that the game found in the trash was not an unaltered copy of Pokémon Red.
- Not being able to continue the game with the previous save file.
- Not being able to enter Pokémon Tower when Steven first reaches Lavender Town.
- The loud snap sound that interrupts Steven's trade of Miki to Mike.
- Steven's appearance and circumstances after this point.
- The use of the phrase "Screw them" when the narrator tries to direct Steven into one of the houses in Pallet Town when he leaves home at night.
- In With Strings Attached, the completely unexpected appearance of mobs of skahs in Ehndris diverts the baddies' attention and gives John and Ringo the chance to avoid a head-on confrontation with the Raleka as they race to get into the warehouse.
- Also, no one was expecting Kerrun to have a Villainous Breakdown and declare the skahs to actually be Idris (the mortal enemies of the Raleka), shifting the focus of the Raleka away from John and Ringo.
- Talk About a Role Reversal: Cinder convinces the White Fang to cooperate with her scheme to infiltrate Beacon, but is caught off guard when they go rogue after retrieving a shipment of stolen Atlesian Paladins.
- The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Maggie Walsh was very thorough in preparing a trap for Terawatt, with countermeasures for telekinesis, electricity, silver morphing, distress calls, and seven different types of escape plan, plus a backup bomb linked to the doors — but she didn't anticipate Terawatt turning up the fuel concentration until it was no longer in the explosive range, then cutting through the less resilient floor.
- In Dragons of Ice and Fire, Ser Shadrich very successfully executes a high-risk kidnapping, escapes a castle, treks through the mountains, avoids the mountain clans, and single-handedly beats Ser Jorah down to escape. And then Sansa Stark snatches his dagger up and jams it into his back. "Oh".
- The Raven's Plan:
- In general, the time travel ritual was only supposed to work on a select few people. It backfired, sending the consciousnesses of thousands of people from after their deaths back to a few days after Jon Arryn's death. This throws the heroes' plans, and everything else for that matter, extremely Off the Rails.
- Barristan Selmy was shocked to find out that Jaime Lannister is now backing House Targaryen (i.e., Jon Targaryen).
- When Renly holds Cersei hostage and demands that Jaime and his group surrender in exchange for her life, Jaime's reply shocks both Renly and Cersei:Jaime: Slit her throat and rid us all of her madness.
- After Sam reveals to his family that his father threatened to have him killed unless he took the Black, his father gets a slap from his wife, in total opposition to her usually submissive attitude, shocking everyone.
- Daenerys didn't expect Viserys to be shocked back into sanity by her growth in a Young Conqueror.
- Robert and Renly are dumbfounded when Stannis finally stumbles into the Red Keep, absolutely drunk out of his skull. It gets worse when he reveals he's been trying to numb the pain of having made a Human Sacrifice of his own daughter in the old timeline.
- The last thing Qyburn expected when he was caught by Gregor Clegane was for the Mountain to tell him that he liked being undead, and that he wants to be changed back into the monster that Qyburn made him in the old timeline... just with his own free will this time.
- Despite the time-travel element, neither Robb nor Jon were honestly expecting that Ned Umber and Lyanna Mormont would retain their adult minds in the bodies of infants.
- Qyburn showing up in Winterfell with the Mountain's severed head, an offer to treat Shireen's greyscale scars, and a cart full of books was quite unexpected for Sansa, Catelyn, Arya, and Davos, and it leaves them wanting quiet time.
- In Robb Returns, Robb became very surprised with the fact that Hodor has become Walder and has not lost his wits.
- In Winter Thorns of Highgarden, all of Westeros' nobility is left flabbergasted by Willas Tyrell's sudden decision to abduct and marry the bastard Lyarra Snow.
- In Sonic X: Dark Chaos, Maledict is a Chessmaster who created an extremely elaborate Gambit Roulette to defeat the Angels and conquer the universe. However, he didn't expect Sonic the Hedgehog to get pulled into the fray by mistake. Nor did he expect his gambit to create a malevolent Eldritch Abomination by mistake.
- Supreme Chancellor Obi-Wan Kenobi: Palpatine is completely blindsided when a minor Senator calls for a Vote of No-Confidence on him and has Obi-Wan installed in his place. More generally, it's clear that Palpatine was never prepared to lose his position as Supreme Chancellor. While he didn't leave any evidence just sitting around, someone with the Chancellor's authority is able to quickly go over recent bills and laws and discover hints at all the things Palpatine has been doing. In particular, Obi-Wan discovers that someone has been altering mission requests before they get to the Jedi, requesting specific Jedi be sent out for missions they weren't actually requested for. This is why Obi-Wan was gone for most of Anakin's childhood, leaving him open to manipulation by Palpatine. Discovering this heals most of the damage Palpatine did to their relationship.
- The Unabridged Memoirs of Darth Plagueis the Wise: The titular Sith Lord is a master chessmaster, who's always several steps ahead of everyone else, something he's happy to go into detail about in his narrations. However, he's caught totally off guard when Dooku nominates himself as interim Chancellor, which is something he didn't even think to consider in all his planning.
- Wilhuff Tarkin, Hero of the Rebellion posits that the main galactic civilization, and by extension the Galactic Empire that rules it and the Old Republic before the Empire, is ready for an insane amount of events, to the point that a junkyard planet turning out to be a planet-sized Killer Robot and biscuits mutating into giant monsters are treated as recurring annoyances (they actually have standard procedures for both events). Thus Tarkin is legitimately surprised when he finds out from Thrawn there's a second planet, let alone multiple, whose condition is so vile the Death Star is the pragmatic solution.
- In Paragon (Kitsune Heart), the Diamonds were in no way prepared to find out Steven existed, let alone that he was also a Diamond and capable of stopping Corruption.
- Selaginella Lepidophylla: Garnet admits that her Future Vision never foresaw anything that suggested Rose might return, catching her completely by surprise.
- In One step forward, two steps back, after Nishikata loses yet another contest, Takagi offers him the choice between taking her on a public date to the mall next Saturday, or kissing her privately right now: "So basically, you can choose to do something you might call embarrassing in front of a lot of people, or you could do something that you would think is drastically more embarrassing, but no one would know unless you tell them." Nishikata blindsides her by choosing the latter, which, as much as she appreciates it, ends up derailing her actual goal of setting up a double-date to help Sumire get close to her crush. She ultimately has to ask him directly for help with the double-date, which he agrees to despite his annoyance at her not doing so in the first place.
- Jewel of Darkness: Midnight's plan, to torture Robin into insanity in order to force the Titans to disband, ultimately fails because she had no way of knowing that Ai was possessed/working for Trigon, was plotting against her, and would ultimately sell her out to the Titans. Robin also suggests that the plan would have failed anyway, because even if she had succeeded in breaking him, he has faith that the team would be strong enough to withstand it.
- From Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness: Yukari Yakumo, Gensokyo's resident Chessmaster, admits as much when the moon is damaged in the wake of Coop and the Glorft's latest battle. Megas's unexpected teleportation into Gensokyo later sidelines her for most of the story.
- A Reach Assimilation Specialist in With This Ring attempts to hold a planet hostage with a Dead Man's Switch that will kill every infant on the planet if she's harmed or simply decides to set it off. Paul acknowledges that there are too many linked triggers for him to disable her without setting it off, but by reaching out to the Ophidian and connecting to the desires of all the parents on the planet, he's able to simultaneously shift every baby into a different plane of existence, watch the fireworks, then bring them back in batches after rebuilding the destroyed facilities.
