Didnt See That Coming / Live-Action Films

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• Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy probably executed this in the most humorously absurd manner. When Burgundy and company start butting heads with another news group, they bring along multitude of weapons. Soon, other rival news groups join, and they all get into one large and epic battle royale. At different times, one person gets killed with a trident, another gets caught in a net and dragged on the floor by two horses, someone gets a hold of a grenade, Luke Wilson's character's gets an arm chopped off, and then his other arm is ripped off by a bear.
  Frank: (after getting his arm chopped off out of nowhere)" Ugh! I did not see that coming!"
• It's an invoked Running Gag in Avengers: Age of Ultron between Quicksilver and Hawkeye that plays to the Rule of Three. The first two times are snarky, with Barton's being an Ironic Echo, and the third is played for drama when Quicksilver saves Barton's life and that of the child he was protecting, making this trope also his Last Words.
• Thanos seems set up to repeat the iconic snap at the climax of Avengers: Endgame, only this time with the intention of destroying the entire universe and then recreate it in his image. Cue the snap and... nothing happens. Tony swiped the Infinity Stones during his final attempt to steal the gauntlet, leaving Thanos to blankly stare at him as Tony snaps him and his entire army to dust.
  • For that matter, Captain Marvel probably didn't see Thanos removing the Power Stone from the gauntlet in order to blast her unconscious.
  • Tony certainly couldn't expect past!Hulk slamming a door open on his face after walking down the stairs.
• In Big Game, Nobody expected that a 13-year-old badass Finn would be going through his Rite of Passage the same day and in the same place the president is being hunted down.
  Chief of staff: Who the hell is that?
• Child's Play 3: Chucky sets up to kill Colonel Cochrane... only for his leaping out of hiding with a knife and screaming to give Cochrane a Hollywood Heart Attack. Chucky's expression shifts from horrific rage to complete disbelief.
  Chucky: Oh, you gotta be fuckin' kidding me!
• The Joker's reaction to the eventual result of his social experiment in The Dark Knight can be seen as an emotive example of this trope. Of course, being the Joker, he's not put off for long.
• In Dogma, the fallen angel Azrael has our heroes at his mercy and tempts Silent Bob to hit him with a golf club he has in his hands. Both Silent Bomb and Azrael are both shocked when Silent Bob caves Azrael's chest in. Once they get free, Serendipity suggests that the golf club that Jay and Silent Bob stole from Cardinal Glick for ignoring their warnings was blessed to give the Cardinal a better golf game, unwittingly turning it into a holy weapon.
• In Ex Machina, Nathan's plot to prove that Ava is truly sentient his real one, that is works flawlessly, and even Caleb's moves to stop Nathan are mostly for naught. Nathan was all set to win, then the one thing he didn't see coming was Kyoko's rebellion and murder attempt on him, which gave Ava the opening needed to kill him.
• The Coen Brothers movie Fargo centers around a slimy car salesman trying to get out of financial trouble by hatching an Evil Plan to have some men kidnap his wife and pretend to hold her for ransom so he could get some money from her wealthy father to pay off his debts. The plan spirals completely out of control and causes the deaths of about five or six people, including the wife. It still falls into Didn't Think This Through territory as he didn't factor in how his teen son might react to his mother being kidnapped.
• In From Russia with Love, Kerim gives a speech on this trope:
  This is a billiard table... And you have hit your white ball and it is traveling easily and quietly towards the red. The pocket is alongside. Fatally, inevitably, you are going to hit the red and the red is going into that pocket. It is the law of the billiard table. But, outside the orbit of these things, a jet pilot has fainted and his plane is diving straight at the billiard room, or a gas main is about to explode... And the building collapses on you and on top of the billiard table. Then what has happened to that white ball that could not miss the red ball, and to the red ball that could not miss the pocket? The white ball could not miss according to the laws of the billiard table. But the laws of the billiard table are not the only laws.
• Played at and ultimately subverted in The Game (1997) when Nicholas invades the building of the organization that's been running his life for the past few days with what one of the lead actors recognizes as a real gun, not one of their props, and she pleads with him that it's all a big surprise party and they're not really trying to kill him and he ends up shooting his brother just as it turns out there really was a cake and it all flies horribly off the rails, driving him to jump from the rooftop... and then it turns out that, no, that was a squib, the gun's loaded with blanks, and even that was all in the script.
• Near the end of The Godfather Vito Corleone has died not long after capitulating in the mafia war and handing the reins of the enervated Corleone Family to his son, Michael, who aggravates his Capos by his refusal to defend their interests as the other families muscle in. The other families plot to unceremoniously assassinate this 'weak' Don, who instead has every one of them killed first, concurrently, while standing as godfather at his nephew's baptism. The relative ease of all the hits and lack of protection on the targets show just how little they thought of Michael and how unexpected his decapitation strike really was.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The eco-terrorist Emma Russell wants to stop humanity from completely destroying themselves and their world by forcibly awakening and releasing the hibernating Kaiju around the world to restore the damaged ecosystems with their unique vegetation-producing radiation. However, the main reason why her plan goes off the rails is because she doesn't count on one Titan in particular, Ghidorah, being a hostile alien who has neither the ability nor the intention to heal the planet in any way, and he instead wants to destructively terraform it in a way which will destroy humanity and could thoroughly clear off all life that isn't him. The specifics of Ghidorah's true nature and why he isn't at all compatible with the Earth's natural order make him an Outside-Context Problem that none of the cast were expecting.
• Played With in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York—Harry predicts that Kevin will reuse the paint can trap from the first movie, and he and Marv successfully dodge the attacks. They just don't count on Kevin actually taking that bit into consideration, and dropping a sewer pipe on them when they think he's out of tools.
  Marv: Oops.
• The Hunger Games: In universe. There's only one crown for the victors. Katniss wears it.
• Invoked in the opening sequence of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. After the sheriff handcuffs Reacher, Reacher tells him he's about to be arrested himself, for kidnapping illegal immigrants on land owned by the U.S. Army. When the M.P.'s arrive, the sheriff knows it's for real.
  Wood: "Who the hell are you?"
  Reacher: "The guy you didn't count on."
• Said verbatim by Griffin in Jumper after Roland escapes through a jump scar and takes Millie with him.
  Griffin: Well... crap. Didn't see that coming.
• In Kick-Ass, Frank D'Amico never imagined that by framing the cop who refused to take his bribe, he would turn him into something far more dangerous. Big Daddy was so ridiculously efficient in destroying D'Amico's operation that if Kick-Ass wouldn't have accidentally provided him with a lead, D'Amico probably wouldn't have realized who was after him until he was about to die.
• In the climax of Logan, Wolverine has spent the last of his energy (and the super serum) attacking the Transigen troops and is clearly running on fumes. Cue Dr. Rice emerging from his vehicle with gunmen in tow, standing a safe distance from Wolverine's claws. He cheerily gloats, knowing that Wolverine can't bridge the gap and successfully charge him. And of course neither he nor the audience expect the Wolverine to pull out a gun and gun his opponent down.
• Played for Laughs in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Despite being told by both Mike and Tom to not try tunneling out of the Satellite of Love, Crow shouts out "I didn't expect this!" once he breaches the hull. Then, it turns out he did expect this ("Oh, wow, look at that: 'Breach hull, all die!' Even had it underlined!"), he knew what he was doing!
  Crow: Oh, believe me, Mike, I calculated the odds of this succeeding against the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid and... I went ahead anyway.
• Once Upon a Time in Mexico's Agent Sands had a nice Chessmaster scheme going. A number of things went wrong, including Cucuy going Face–Heel Turn and Mariachi and crew deciding to help the President instead of letting him die, but the one hitch that Sands truly did not see coming was Ajedrez turning out to be not only The Mole, but Barillo's daughter. Ajedrez even lampshades it: "You never saw it coming, did you?"
  • Which makes for a nice bit of irony (or something) as he shortly after loses the ability to see ANYTHING coming in an Eye Scream moment.
• Played for Laughs in Phone Booth where The Sniper threatens to kill Stu if he reveals who he is talking to. When Stu claims he's talking to his psychiatrist The Sniper bursts out laughing, seeing the move as inspired and preventing the police from listening in.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • No one (possibly including himself) knows what Jack Sparrow's going to do next.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: A Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering Pirates are voting on who will be their leader. Naturally, they all vote for themselves.
    Elizabeth: Elizabeth Swann.
    Barbossa: Barbossa.
    Jack Sparrow: Elizabeth Swann.
• In Pumpkinhead, Ed Harley wants revenge against the kids who accidentally (and carelessly) kill his son. He has an old backwoods witch, Haggis, call upon a demon to do so. But he didn't count on enduring his victims' death agonies every time "Pumpkinhead" makes a kill. Or having his soul condemned to hell for invoking a demon to murder for him.
• Richie Rich fits this trope as the Riches do in fact keep a vast vault filled with valuables, but it's all family memorabilia and things with sentimental value. Their money, rather sensibly, has been invested and isn't vulnerable to just being swiped.
• The Italian movie Scialla has the protagonists Bruno and Luca survive the mob thanks to this trope. Luca had stolen drugs and money from the mob boss' own home, and was so pissed that not even Luca's father Bruno giving him back everything as soon as he found out calmed him. The boss was about to make an example of them... Then realizes that Bruno was his favourite high school teacher that he still adores, and lets them go. The boss' underlings and Luca even lampshade this.
• Serenity (2005):
  • Mentioned as par for the course with the film and the series, with this early exchange:
    Jayne: [on the fact that he's armed to the teeth] I get excitable as to choice. I wanna keep my options open.
    Mal: I don't plan on any fighting taking place.
    Jayne: Well what you plan and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar.
  • This trope comes in when the Alliance releases the Pax. No one could have foreseen the Reavers' creation. Of course, their failure to do so is a classic case of the Idiot Ball, as what kind of a moron doesn't run proper clinical trials before dosing an entire planetary population.
  • This trope also comes in later in the movie when the Alliance's trap is derailed as Serenity charges at them with an army of Reavers.
    Zoe: You know they're gonna see us coming.
    Mal: No. They're not gonna see this coming.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic, Tom and Maddie are cornered on the top of a building, surrounded by Robotnik's drones set to open fire on them. The protagonists note that while Sonic is fast enough to avoid them, his friends aren't. So Sonic's solution... is to push them off the building ^note Don't worry, he saves them with a ring as seen in the first initial trailer.. Even Robotnik notes he wasn't expecting that.
  Robotnik: I was not expecting that... but I was expecting not to expect something. So it doesn't count.
• The Spanish Prisoner: Almost everything that happened was planned out, but the plotters didn't predict that Joe would just happen to hang on to a book that one of them left fingerprints on.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Khan launches a surprise attack against the Enterprise, severely damaging her. Kirk, however has an ace in the hole: an identification code that would enable the Enterprise crew to remotely command Reliant to lower her shields then lock them out while they open fire.
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Scotty sets up the stolen Enterprise to run on automation, adding "A chimpanzee and two trainees could run her.". When they arrive at the Genesis world, they find themselves having to fend off a Klingon bird-of-prey. After initially subduing the bird-of-prey with a torpedo barrage, they try to raise shields when the Enterprise's computer overloads, with Scotty saying he didn't expect to go into combat, allowing the Klingons to recover and fire a shot that knocks out their automation and leaving them helpless. Kirk's only alternative is activating the ship's Self-Destruct Mechanism, taking out most of the Klingons who try to seize it.
• Star Wars:
  • When Luke and Obi-Wan got Han to take them to Alderaan, the sole plan was to drop off the droids as instructed. They has no way to predict that Alderaan would no longer be there or that they would be captured (along with Leia, already a prisoner) by the moon-sized Space Station that destroyed it.
  • Emperor Palpatine thought it impossible that the natives of Endor (human child-sized savage creatures) might be able to take advantage of their native terrain against the Empire's finest troops (though said natives did have help from a Jedi, a droid who could hack anything, and several crack shots). And he apparently never considered that a guy who turned to the Dark Side to save his wife might turn from it to save his son. If you take that plot from the EU, you could say that he did have a plan to survive the latter... but not for the Rebellion succeeding in blowing up the Death Star.
• Tremors 2: Aftershocks: The Shriekers break all the previously established "rules" of Graboids, being smaller, faster, much more numerous, and hunting above-ground through infrared rather than below using sound. And that's before taking into account their reproductive cycle or capacity for further mutation, which sequels would explore. So naturally when first introduced they catch their would-be hunters flatfooted. Burt sums it up best with this line:
  Burt Gummer: I feel I was denied... Critical... Need-to-know... Information.
• This is the whole plot of Under Siege with Steven Seagal. Who would have thought that this annoying cook could be a threat to the very well conceived plan executed by the bad guys.

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