Didnt See That Coming / Live-Action TV

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• In the Babylon 5 episode "Deathwalker", after Jha'dur, the last Dilgar was captured; she managed to get a pardon in exchange for developing her immortality serum. Just before she was about to go to Earth she gloated to Sinclair that the serum can only be manufactured by killing other people and that her capture was actually part of her plan to make the rest of the races just as bad as hers was. What she didn't realize was that the Vorlons were not the enigmatic reclusive weirdoes that they seemed to be, but were actually manipulative Precursors who saw right through her plan and destroyed her ship to stop it. Also, since the Vorlons themselves were forced to act openly and directly instead of manipulating events from the shadows as they usually did, Jha'dur herself could be considered a Spanner in the Works.
• In Blackadder the Third, Edmund is tied up on "an unrealistic grassy knoll" by the highwayman The Shadow, who plans on coming back to kill him later. Just when all hope looks lost, his Bumbling Sidekick Baldrick shows up, wanting to get the Shadow's autograph. Blackadder thanks Baldrick for teaching him an entirely new sensation: being genuinely pleased to see him.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • The Master had planned to kill Buffy, gaining the power to escape his prison and open the Hellmouth, bringing about The End of the World as We Know It. If he thought about Buffy's allies, he dismissed them as powerless. Unfortunately, while his plan to kill Buffy worked, Xander knew CPR. Buffy therefore returns from the dead, and proceeds to kill the Master. Considering the Master has been in a prison for hundreds of years, it's possible that CPR itself was an "unknown unknown" to him. The idea that a human could come back to life through non-supernatural means may well have been completely foreign to him.
  • In Season 2, Spike and Drusilla had a plan to destroy the world. They had resurrected the Judge, a demon who, according to prophecy, could not be killed by any weapon forged. They did not take into account several hundred years of advancement in weapons technology, and Buffy blew away the Judge with a rocket launcher. Given that The Judge was defeated last time he rose up too, they might not have actually expected him to destroy the world (which Spike rather likes), but they were certainly expecting a bigger death toll than two. One of which was one of their own minions.
• Happens a lot to the bad guys on Burn Notice. Notable is one supposedly genius crook who ends up stabbed in the back by an underling who notes "the problem with guys like you is that you're so busy thinking ten steps ahead that you miss what's right in front of you."
• Chuck: Daniel Shaw thinks he won when he killed Chuck's father and captured Chuck, Sarah, Casey, and General Beckman taking them to their doom. After the team is rescued by Ellie, Devon, and Morgan, Shaw's reaction is this.
• On Covert Affairs, Auggie experiences a 4-5 combination when he appeals to his ex-girlfriend Natasha for help on a case, and is somewhat surprised and dismayed when she refuses to help, still angry that he landed her in jail previously. He says the trope name verbatim when she slaps him upon their first reunion...except he means it literally, having been blinded since their last encounter.
• Cutthroat Kitchen: A "cowboy" themed episode had a sabotage where the cowboy/cook was forced to wrangle an unruly "horse" (two stagehands in a costume). The "horse" was instructed to wander off, kick the cook, and otherwise misbehave. The cowboy cook who got stuck with the sabotage was a chuck wagon cook and no stranger to unruly horses. He hobbled the "horse" with kitchen twine and used the twine to hitch the stagehands to the closest post. The look on Alton's face clearly expressed this trope.
• Daredevil (2015):
  • Season 3 starts with Wilson Fisk pulling a massive gambit to get himself out of prison that involves manipulating several FBI agents for years, secretly buying a hotel through several shell companies, and hiring an inmate to shank him to give the illusion he's in danger. Everything in the scheme has been thought through to a 'T'. Except while Fisk is being transferred to the hotel, his FBI convoy is attacked by Albanian gunmen wanting to retaliate against Fisk for snitching on them. Fisk's facial expressions while trapped in his overturned SUV clearly shows that this was something he didn't account for. He only survives thanks to Dex killing the assailants.
  • In Season 3 Episode 4, Matt visits the prison to gain information on Fisk's shanking. However, his plan understandably doesn't account for Fisk having a secret room at his penthouse suite from which he can call the prison, as seen when Fisk has his men drug Matt then try to kill him in a staged riot.
  • In Season 3 Episode 8, Karen makes an impulsive visit to Fisk hoping to get him to violate his parole by attacking her on camera so he'll go back to prison. After trying to provoke him by bringing her visit to his mother, she decides to reveal to him that she killed James Wesley. The only thing preventing Fisk from killing her there and then is Foggy suddenly showing up to thwart her interrogation. The next episode establishes that the FBI agents in the room work for Fisk, so it's likely that if not for Foggy's intervention, Fisk would've likely beaten Karen to death and had his FBI cronies eliminate all evidence of it.
  • Speaking of that, season 3 episode 9 sees Ray Nadeem decide to take what he and Matt have learned about Dex's treachery to his boss Tammy Hattley, hoping to blow the whistle. But based on the reaction when she abruptly kills another agent with Nadeem's gun, then Felix Manning shows up and threatens him, he clearly didn't expect that Fisk would've dirtied more agents than just Dex.
• Doctor Who: In "Journey's End", no one saw the biological metacrisis that created the half-human clone Doctor and the Doctor-Donna coming, thanks to the Doctor using his spare hand as a receptacle for regeneration energy. The latter especially is the one who saves the day.
• The Flash (2014):
  • Captain Cold says this line after Flash tricked him and Heat Wave into making their freeze ray and flamethrower's beams collide, which cancelled them out.
  • Eobard Thawne admits that he didn't anticipate how much he would come to care about Barry, Cisco and Caitlin. Unfortunately, he refuses to let his love for the three of them interfere with his plans.
• Played for Laughs in Friends when Rachel tries to teach Joey sailing, but finds herself turning into her father in the process; when she figures it out, she laments that she was trying so hard to not become her mother that she never saw this coming.
  • After she gets engaged Monica's parents admit they'd already spent the money they'd been putting aside to pay for her wedding and didn't bother restarting the fund because they didn't think Chandler would ever propose to her.
• Fringe: In the third season, Olivia is trapped in the mirror universe and conditioned to think she's her doppelganger from this world. In the episode "The Plateau", she hunts Milo, a man who, thanks to various experimentations, is able to see the hundreds of outcomes of any action, allowing him to kill people via wild "accidents". When Olivia gives chase, Milo leads her into an alley and pauses as he's "seen" that because the air in this area is bad, Olivia will pause to grab a respirator and that will cause her to be crushed by a load of bricks. But because Olivia isn't actually from this world, she doesn't know what the warning sign means and instead avoids the bricks to charge Milo. Milo is literally frozen in shock as, for the first time ever, something has happened that he never saw coming.
  Milo: That... isn't supposed... to happen...
• Game of Thrones:
  • It's hard to tell who is more surprised when Sam manages to kill a White Walker.
  • No one expected Walder Frey would stoop so low as to violate Sacred Hospitality, not even Catelyn Stark who knew fully well that he was a "dangerous man to cross".
  • Littlefinger planned to marry Lysa anyway but clearly didn't expect to marry her immediately.
  • Despite being a chessmaster, Varys has dropped the ball many times. The High Priestess Kinvara eventually calls him out on this, mocking him for being a Know-Nothing Know-It-All. His original plan with Illyrio was to bring Khal Drogo and his Dothraki across the Narrow Sea with Daenerys as his bride and Viserys as King, even arranging a botched assassination attempt to trigger Drogo. This backfired when Drogo died and then Dany hatched three dragons. Dany chews him out about this in Season 7, noting for all his "For the realm" talk, his plan was to replace a lazy but functional and basically competent king with someone who would have been another Aerys II, and that whatever his plans were, it certainly didn't include her. He was also caught off guard by Ned Stark's execution, the outbreak of the War of the Five Kings and Joffrey's assassination. Likewise, going on the lam with Tyrion was never a real part of his plan but he eventually adapts to his situation, anyways. Indeed, most of Varys' actions since the start of the series has been improvising and surviving, since his original plan, to bring Viserys over with the Dothraki hit a huge snag.
• In Grange Hill, the pupils are delighted to learn that there will be a naked model at the after-school art class — but they did not expect the model to be an elderly man.
• In Grimm this happens several times throughout the series-given the many plans and secrets that abound. One Season 6 episode, "Blind Love" has two-someone kidnaps Diana not knowing she's far, far more dangerous than she looks. And the villain who makes a Love Potion specifically to tear the group apart by causing a pile up of all-powerful unrequited love doesn't realize Rosalee is pregnant which causes her to not drink the dosed wine and remain unaffected while everyone else is hopelessly affected.
• The Volume Four finale of Heroes, "An Invisible Thread" involves Peter having used Sylar's shapeshifting power to impersonate the President, heading off Sylar's attempt to shapeshift into the President and become him. From Peter's dialogue, it is clear that Sylar probably knew that Peter had replicated one of his powers, but wouldn't have expected him to have taken something so mundane.
  • In Volume Four, Danko, having rounded up most of the specials and put them on a plane to a detention facility, agrees to free Claire in order to mollify Nathan Petrelli (her father). He admits that her power (regeneration) doesn't make her a threat to society. However, he didn't know that Nathan has no real control over Claire, or that being immortal and all but immune to pain means that she can and will carry out acts normal people would consider suicidal. Claire escapes from Nathan, gets on the plane via the landing gear, frees the captive specials, and ends up causing the plane to crash. Now the government has to round up the specials all over again, only this time they're actively evading capture.
• JAG: In first season episode "Sightings", Colombian drug smugglers use the underground facilities of a supposedly abandoned navy base in Texas where they have a cocaine processing facility without the locals knowing anything about it. Obviously, they didn't foresee that the disappearance of a young local girl would lead the Navy to send two of its most resourceful investigators and foil the whole operation.
• In Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, former The Dragon Damaras has defeated the Gokaiger, capturing Captain Marvelous for execution, killing the others, and letting Lovable Coward Don live out of mercy. Then his plan gets completely derailed when Don actually comes back to mount a rescue, relying upon their little-known Team Pet to rescue Marvelous while he distracts everyone else (and is lampshaded by Marvelous' Evil Former Friend Basco outright saying the trope's name when Don first shows up). And then we find out that Basco only faked killing the other Gokaigers, which he reveals as he literally backstabs Damaras.
• In the Kamen Rider Decade movie All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker, the Big Bad Shadow Moon has Decade and Kuuga right where he wants them when Kamen Rider Double comes out of nowhere for a Curb-Stomp Battle ending with Shadow Moon embedded in the wall of his own castle.
• Midnight, Texas:
  • Played for laughs as the gang are trying to rescue a kidnapped friend. As they argue, seemingly normal bartender Joe strips off his shirt and allows a pair of angelic wings to burst out of his back. He takes off flying as the group (comprised of a psychic, a witch, a werewolf, a vampire and a hitwoman) just stare in shock.
    Manfried: Was I the only one not in the loop?
    Olivia: Nope.
    Fiji: Did not suspect that.
    Lem: Well, that explains a few things.
  • Happens again later in the show when Olivia's cat, Mr. Snuggles, reveals he can talk.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Death of a Hollow Man", Kitty attempts to blackmail Tim Young into providing her with financial support, threatening to tell his lover Avery the details of their affair. Confident that this will work, she heads straight for Tim and Avery's bookshop... only to find that Tim has already confessed everything to Avery, and though Avery is in tears, the two appear to be staying together. Realizing that her plan has gone down the u-bend, Kitty sheepishly walks away.
• In Mystery Science Theater 3000, Crow did know that breaching the hull of the Satellite of Love would result in dangerous decompression... yet he still somehow thinks tunneling back to Earth is a good idea and is taken by surprise when it doesn't work.
  Crow: Whooooooooooa I didn't expect this! [...] Wow, this is confusing! Mike! You wanna hand me me my calculations? [The wind happens to blow Crow's calculations right into his face.] Thank you. [Reading.] Well, look at that. "Breach hull—all die." Even had it underlined.
• In The Office (US) every time Dwight tries to do something manipulative it falls prey to this. He even lampshades it.
  Dwight: Just once, I would like to be a puppetmaster and have nothing go wrong. Just once.
• Our Miss Brooks: This happens several times in Our Miss Brooks, and causes a Zany Scheme or a well-intentioned plan to help someone go awry. A few notable examples:
  • In "Head of the Board", Miss Brooks sends Stretch Snodgrass to get an old man from the park to impersonate Mr. Hewitt, the Head of the State Board of Education. Mr. Conklin has ordered Miss Brooks and Mr. Boynton to help him clean the school the week before the start of term. By a Contrived Coincidence, Mr. Hewitt happens to be visiting in town, sitting in the park, and chosen by Stretch Snodgrass to impersonate himself. Hilarity Ensues, as well as a "Fawlty Towers" Plot.
  • In "Red River Valley", Miss Brooks, Mr. Boynton, Walter Denton and Mr. Conklin practice a hillbilly routine to get a $500 a month summer job working with Deacon Jones' square dance troupe. It so happens that Matthew Jones, Inspector from the State Board, chooses that day to visit Madison High School.
  • "Fargo Whiskers" sees Mr. Conklin and Mr. Boynton think Miss Brooks have taken leave of her senses. They wish her to take a week off before another school official; when Miss Brooks refuses, Conklin and Boynton have Walter Denton impersonate the official. Unfortunately, Mr. Fargo arrives a few days early and Hilarity Ensues.
• Power Rangers in Space: Astronema's plans to turn the Rangers and the kidnapped citizens of Angel Grove into datacards would've gone off without a hitch...had the vengeful ghosts of the Psycho Rangers not entered the machine and rematerialized themselves; this sent the entire plan off the rails, resulting in the destruction of Astronema's Secret City (the Rangers evacuate all the citizens in time after re-converting them). Ecliptor even apologizes to Astronema afterwards, explaining he had no clue the Psycho Rangers would return and screw everything up so badly.
• Press Your Luck: During the infamous Michael Larson two-parter, Larson (through memorizing the board patters) had racked up over $102,000 in cash and prizes by the time he passed his final four spins to second place player Jainie Litras. What Larson clearly didn't count on was Litras using the show's most infamous stratagem: The spite pass. After racking up nearly $10K in cash and prizes, Litras passed her remaining four spins back to Lawson, counting on an ill-timed Whammy to knock him down past the point where he could retake the lead. And by the rules of the game, he had to take every passed spin.^note Barring hitting a Whammy, where the remaining passed spins moved to the "earned" column At that point, Lawson had stopped paying attention to the board pattern, so had to play it straight for at least one spin and risk his then-record setting haul. He earned another 8K before passing two earned spins back to Litras, who didn't Whammy but also didn't gain another spin to use against Larson. The rest is game show infamy.
• Salem: Rose claims that she has seen and manipulated everything that has happened, including Mary killing Mercy. Turns out Mary turned Mercy into a witch, and Mercy then swiftly beheads Rose.
• The Shadow Line:
  • Gatehouse gets this in his first encounter with Glickman, when he realises that Glickman knew he was coming in advance and prepared countermeasures; namely, a large bomb, which destroys his shop and almost kills Gatehouse.
  • In the next episode this happens to Glickman himself. He contacts his girlfriend not knowing that she's working for Counterpoint. She then stabs him to death.
• Stargate SG-1: After capturing SG-1 on a planet he recently conquered, Cronos decided to publicly execute them so that the locals would see how foolish it is to try to resist him. Unfortunately for him, during the execution it was revealed that they were actually SG-1 robotic Doppelgangers. Kind of hard to keep claiming to be an all-knowing god when you can't even keep your jaw closed.
• In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Sins of the Father", the Klingon High Council blames Worf's deceased father, Mogh, for betraying the Khitomer colony to the Romulans to cover up the fact that the real traitor was Ja'rod, father of Councilor Duras. It seems guaranteed to work — Mogh is dead, so he can't defend himself; his (unnamed) mate is dead, so she can't defend him; and their son is on the Enterprise flying around Kirk-knows-where, so he won't hear of it. Unfortunately for them, several factors end up ruining it all, starting with the fact that Mogh has a second son who was raised by a family friend. When he hears of the conspiracy, he alerts Worf, who tells Picard, who brings the Enterprise to Qo'noS to deal with things. They then discover another survivor of the Khitomer massacre: Kahlest, Worf's nurse, whose mere presence shakes the truth loose.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • In "Civil Defense", O'Brien accidentally triggers a failsafe on the space station meant to prevent any possible insurrection from the Bajorans. As those in Ops accidentally keep triggering more and more levels, Gul Dukat is notified and he comes to the station for some Evil Gloating, wanting them to sweat in the hopes of forcing them to allow a Cardassian garrison onboard the station. However, when he attempts to transport back to his ship, it turns out he tripped a subroutine where his former commanding officer gives him "The Reason You Suck" Speech for attempting to abandon his post, not realizing that he would have done such a thing in that case. He's quite shocked and utterly frustrated by this. Garak accuses Dukat of not thinking that far ahead.
  • The episode "Statistical Probabilities" features a group of hyper-intelligent, genetically engineered "friends" of Dr. Bashir's, who, upon thinking on the Dominion war situation, decide that it's in the best interest of all involved if the Federation surrenders or is defeated quickly and the Dominion wins (which would save billions of lives in the long run, and end in a galaxy-wide rebellion to overthrow it). They restrain Bashir so that he can't intervene and go to give the Dominion some classified Starfleet tactical data, but one of their own foils the plan by releasing Bashir, allowing him to stop them. Dr. Bashir then points out that if one person can uproot their brilliant plan, then maybe their predictions aren't as perfect and inevitable as they think.
  • A very subtle double example, as the payoff is in an earlier episode: the Dominion had already worked out the exact same projections, and had a counter to it: When they won, they were going to purge Earth, as an example.
• In an episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles a local gangster discovers that Sarah is a fugitive and tries to blackmail her. To make sure she would play along, he sends one of his henchman to kidnap her children. Since Sarah's "daughter" is actually a killing machine from the future, that plan goes really bad, really fast.
• Torchwood:
  • In "Small Worlds", a paedophile tries to force a little girl into his car. He really had no way of knowing that fairies were interested in the girl and that they were not the Disney kind...
  • In Children of Earth, Jack Harkness knew that the 456 were capable of curing viruses deadly to humans, but it never occurred to him that they could create and instantly release one if anyone tried to resist their demands. And he learns this in the worst way possible.

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