Spanner In The Works - Television Tropes & Idioms

Death Note has a few:
- Teru Mikami screwed up by going for his notebook when Kiyomi Takada was kidnapped by Mello, which lead Near to the notebook ... If it hadn't been for this one mistake, which allowed Near to successfully replace the notebook with a fake, Light would have won. Unusually for a Spanner, this wasn't a result of stupidity but of Mikami thinking too much like Light: he did exactly what Light would've done in his situation, with the limited information available. In the manga, Light even acknowledges this.
- Misa Amane is a borderline example: she gummed up the works all the time, but without Misa, there'd be no Rem, and then who knows how long Light would be desperately scrambling for a way to push L out of the way to his New World.
- And finally, Shidou, a fairly stupid shinigami, is partly responsible for Mello's escape from the police raid, because he sat still and did exactly what he'd been told to do, rather than taking his Death Note back the minute its current owner died, which would have meant that Mello couldn't have his "give me the notebook" scene.
- While we're at it, we can't forget the damage to Light's plans done by his own dad, whose attempt to bring Mello in the old fashioned way rather than kill him right then and there led to Mello's survival of the police raid, which eventually led to the incident with Mikami described above.
- Mello certainly counts as a non-stupid example. The purpose of adding him to the show was to add someone straightforward and somewhat reckless to wreck the other main characters' quiet, roundabout and complicated plans. There is a simple, unexpected genius in just driving up in a motorcycle, tossing smoke grenades into the crowd and grabbing your target instead of laying an elaborate trap, now isn't there?
This was arguably the secret of the Dirty Pair's "success". In the Dark Fic "The Lovely Angels Forever", Da Chief Goulet explains it this way:
Goulet: When they were thrust into an "unsolvable" problem, the situation was made so chaotic that it could not be maintained, and a solution would present itself.
Similarly, Mihoshi from Tenchi Muyo actually has a distinguished service record with the Galaxy Police, but the backstory indicates it's largely a result of her bumbling in and causing too much chaos for any dastardly plan to hold up.
- In the original OVA it was suggested she actually had had a mental breakdown from being overworked which turned her from a top cop into a comic ditz — as hinted by Kagato's comment about her past exploits. Later versions, though, lack this detail and instead are all just lucky enough to be teamed up with Kiyone, who usually can get the job done in spite of Mihoshi. Yet as evidenced by her enormous reports, Mihoshi still seems ridiculously thorough.
  - Please note that in OVA continuity Kiyone is a completely different character — that is, Tenchi's mom. And her nervous breakdown (if we are really to trust Kagato) was retconned into her impossible luck being Kuramitsus' family trait.
In Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, the only arcs in which the village is safe are Watanagashi and Meakashi because Shion kills Rika in secret, and so the mass gassing can't take place within the time that it would take for the virus to incubate, and by the time they did figure out that Rika was dead, oops, it doesn't look like the villagers are going to kill each other after all. This doesn't really make things better for the main characters, though. After all, most of them are still dead. It does, however, clue a mysterious third party in on what's going on; the one aware of the Groundhog Day Loop.
The titular Irresponsible Captain Tylor is either the dictionary definition of this trope or the most brilliant and subtle Chessmaster in the entire show, depending on how you look at it.
The cat in Code Geass nearly succeeds at exposing Lelouch and wrecking all his plans simply by accidentally getting its head stuck in his Zero mask and wandering off with it. Before long, the entire boarding school has caught wind that Lelouch is chasing a cat across campus and the situation balloons into a race against time as Milly Ashford, the mischievous president of the student council, offers a bounty to anyone who can catch the cat and obtain the "embarrassing secret" she assumes it's carrying.
- Ironically, Lelouch could count as his own Spanner: on multiple occasions, his attachment to his friends (especially Suzaku or Shirley, but especially his sister Nunnally) have caused him to make moves that jeopardize his plans or even the entire rebellion he leads. First occurred in R1 where he abandoned his followers for his kidnapped sister, his trait continued on in R2. This came to the logical conclusion when his Roaring Rampage Of Revenge for the murder of Shirley, carried out against a cult whose members included scientists and children, which ended up being a large part of Prince Schneizel's efforts to turn the Black Knights against him - the centerpiece being the fact that their beloved leader possesses a Mind Control eye and quite possibly forced them all into obedience (he didn't).
- Suzaku Kururugi is both this and a Xanatos Sucker. When Marianne brought him to the Sword of Akasha (possibly thinking he'd side with her out of love for her stepdaughter Euphemia, or because of his friendship with her "vessel" Anya Earlstreim)... he sided with Lelouch instead.
Mireille Bouquet of Noir may be the least deadly of the assassin girls in the series (which only means that she has to obey the laws of physics), but her ability to tell the Ancient Conspiracy that it can go screw itself and her surprising faith in her partner brings down a major portion of it.
Midori Sugiura from Mai-HiME threw a big wrench in the Big Bad's plans to take over/destroy the world through the "winner" of the battle royale by enlisting the help of the most unlikely of characters: Miyu the Robot Girl, whom she rebooted.
The Movie of Yes! Precure 5 has the Big Bad steal the fully-charged wish-granting device from the heroines (considering that its completion was the entire plot hook of the story, it's best not to think about why the heroes didn't use it the second they got the last MacGuffin needed to power it) and use it to try and take over the world. Nothing can stop her now... except Urara completely forgot to add the last of the Mac Guffins to the device, meaning that it's not complete and therefore doesn't work. Oops! The scary part is that the villain, by all accounts, would have won if Ms. Cure Spanner hadn't messed everything up.
- Cline's zeal to get rid of those he deems useless to the cause of Labyrinth in Fresh Pretty Cure only failed once, and that's because the Akarun brought Setsuna Higashi (his first target) back to life and transformed Setsuna into one of the Cures.
In the manga version of Chrono Crusade Aion admits that his plan failed because he didn't take Rosette Christopher into account. "No one could predict the actions of such a foolhardy young woman!" Of course, in the anime adaptation the main characters are closer to being Xanatos Suckers...
Monster. The perfect suicide that Johan planned as the end of his Xanatos Roulette is ruined when an alcoholic townsperson angrily shoots him in the side of the head before Dr. Tenma can kill him.
Heroic Gambit Example: Between them, Heiji Hattori and Ai Haibara screw up a plan Detective Conan had worked out to get information on the Men in Black. Haibara, despite being an otherwise intelligent and calculating person, felt enough of an obligation to Conan that it made her insistent on going to Conan. She showed up just as the plan was going his way, and when her presence opened the door for everything to get shot to hell. Heiji's role in the Gilligan was in deliberately leaving Haibara the means to locate Conan in the first place in case she chose to do exactly what she did.
Hot Blooded Badass Normal Sanosuke Sagara from Rurouni Kenshin once threw a wrench in Magnificent Bastard Shishio's plans by sneaking close to his battleship and wrecking it with some bombs given by his friend Katsu, an explosives expert. This prevented Shishio from bombing Kyoto.
Rune Soldier: The idiotic sorcerer Louie ruins the Secret Weapon when he takes a leak in an unusual spot. After that he punches his way through a impenetrable barrier ruining Plan B as well.
In Basilisk, Tenzen's perfect plan to become the last man standing is ruined when the princess Oboro, whom he broke mercilessly throughout the series, regains her sight and uses her power to prevent his last revival and make his head explode..
- This after Oboro has already put a serious kink in his plans by sealing her own eyes in the first place.
Ashita No Nadja has a huge Spanner situation. When their Smug Snake boss Hermann betrays them, Rosso and Bianco ruin his plans as they let a kidnapped Nadja escape and tell her where to find their reports, which is ultimately Hermann's perdition.
Naruto example: Big Bad Uchiha Madara outright calls Naruto one of these here after he defeated Pain and convinced him and Konan to turn against Akatsuki. Thus depriving Madara of Pain's resurrection technique, Amegakure's support, and the technique needed to seal the remaining two tailed beasts Gedo Mazo. Killer Bee also threw a Spanner in Akatsuki's plans when he kicked Sasuke's ass and faked his own capture to go on vacation.
Three of the 12 Sisters in Coyote Ragtime Show, Oct, Nove, and Diesse, accidentally sent an enemy ship flying into a bomb capable of an Earth Shattering Kaboom... and nothing happens, revealing the bomb above the planet Graceland to be a fake. Spannered further by the militants who act on this information, who are unaware that the fake bomb was a distraction to keep people from finding the real bomb, which is already on the planet and was moments away from being disarmed before they killed the people negotiating for it.
Katekyo Hitman Reborn has a mid-level mechanic incidentally named Spanner that preforms a Heel Face Turn along with Irie in an effort to take down the Future Arc's Big Bad Byakuran using his technical knowledge of the base and Millefiore. It would have slightly more effective if Byakuran wasn't an ultimate Chess Master and the in-series King of the Xanatos Gambit, forcing the epic battles, struggles and hardships just for his own amusement.
Luffy from One Piece honestly doesn't care about the World Government's despotic and corrupt rule, or for that matter any of the Big Bads he faces. He just won't let anyone he cares about get hurt and will go to any lengths to protect his Nakama. Hence his defeat of two out of Seven Warlords of the Sea, the destruction of Enies Lobby, and the assault upon the most powerful jerkasses in the world. And now the first successful mass-jail break from Impel Down and his assault upon the Marine HQ are just to save his big brother from being executed. The surrounding politics and larger conflict don't enter his mind at all.
Dennou Coil protagonist Yasako is revealed to be this in the final episode. When Yasako was about seven years old, she stumbled into a hidden Space being used to help a girl her age, later known as Isako, cope with the death of her older brother. Yasako encounters a simulation of this brother and her affection towards him sparks Isako's insecurities and fears of losing him, resulting in the creation of Miss Michiko, which is the cause for many problems throughout the series.
Akiyama sees Nao Kanzaki as this in regards to the Liar Game. The Liar Game's producers break even by collecting on the players' debts, and profits when the winning contestants forfeit half of their winnings to Opt Out of the game. Nao, however, has consistently been using her winnings to pay off other players' debts while increasing her own as a result. Akiyama believes that Nao has the potential to completely bankrupt the Liar Game by doing this since by the end, her personal debt will have gotten so high actually collecting would be impossible.

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In IDW's Transformers series, Ramjet sets into motion a fairly convoluted plan that would allow him to damn near take over the universe. Unfortunately, he failed to provide a contingency for a simple problem: How to keep Megatron from tearing you to pieces if he found out before you could enact it.
- Same with Shockwave, plaing to seed dozens of worlds with super energon so Cybertorn wouldn't be mined hollow and die, is attacked by the Dynobots looking for revenge.
In the Mad Thinker's original appearance in Fantastic Four, he manages to overcome all the defenses of the Baxter Building, take control of it, and trap the heroes. His plan fails to account for their mailman, who cuts the power.
- This is actually the Mad Thinker's hat, in a way - He's able to create amazingly complex, unassailable plans at the drop of a hat, however there is always some random variable (what he calls the "x-factor") that doesn't take into account and buggers up his calculations.
  - Marvel Adventures Spider Man once established that the Thinker hates Spider Man because his precognitive spider sense makes him the one person on Earth who can effortlessly derail the Thinker's schemes without even deliberately trying.
Zayne Carrick in the Knights Of The Old Republic comics basically sets in motion the Self Fulfilling Prophecy of the Jedi — the one that they were trying to escape by killing their Padawans — when he (unintentionally) misses the knighting ceremony and then escapes. He continues to thwart their plans, intentionally or not, ever since.
- He also thwarts Arkoh Adasca's plan (with the help of Lucien and Alek) by tricking the Mandalorian leader into thinking Adasca is working with the Republic to trap him, which results in a three way brawl which culminates in Adasca's ship getting eat by giant space slugs.
Runaways often sees villains' perfect plans ripped to shreds by Badass Normal Chase Stein, who claims to be street smart but as a fellow team mate inquired, "What street? Sesame?" It should be noted that he did find the first base and the unassuming white van he drives was requested by him for his first car (over fast sports cars that his parents could afford) because he had paid attention to the DC beltway sniper incident (which went on as long as it did because cops were looking for a car that wasn't involved) so he isn't inept.
In DC Comics, the Challengers of the Unknown are a team of adventure-seekers who miraculously survived a terrible plane crash, and therefore decided that they would willingly face any danger because, as they always put it, they were living on "borrowed time." It has recently been revealed that this is literally true: because they did not die on their appointed death date, the Challengers are the only people in the world whose fates are not recorded in the Book of Destiny. They can freely disrupt predestined events that would otherwise be literally inevitable, making them the ultimate example of this trope.
Subverted in the Dan Dare series Reign of the Robots, wherein the only person that the Mekon paralyses after capturing the group is Dare's bumbling aide Digby, on the grounds that "he has no brain, therefore there is no predicting his actions".
Groo The Wanderer is this trope incarnate. One of his more memorable derailings involved him going up against a mind-reading sorcerer. Groo fights his way to the sorcerer's throneroom, is confronted confidently by him... followed by a full page of the sorcerer making strange faces at Groo while the latter stared at him in befuddlement until he finally screamed "There's no mind to read!" and ran away.
In Cerebus, the title character is also this trope incarnate, as he possesses a "magnifier" quality that influences everything and everyone around him to varying degrees. This causes the plans of everyone who tries to do anything that directly involves Cerebus to succeed wildly then crash spectacularly.
Deadpool is frequently seen as such a rogue element that the guy who can copy someone's fighting style completely (Taskmaster) was still surprised by him.
- There's another event (context is unknown) in which a genius tactician of some kind is countering the moves of every other hero in their attack on his base, but none of his predictions of where Deadpool is are accurate; turns out DP took the "Super Mario strategy" and went through the sewer pipes.
  - I don't remember the context either, but it had an army of dinosaurs in it.
Cyclops in the Ultimate X-men arc Return of the King. Let us recap the situation so far. Magneto has regained his memories and is going on a rampage across the world with his acolytes while he waits for Forge to get his Doomsday Weapon ready. All the X-men are either captured, killed, or on the run and still have no idea where Magneto's base is. It looks like all hope in lost, when Cyclops, who everyone thought was killed by Wolverine a few issues ago, is taken into Magneto's base as an injured mutant in need of healing. After recovering Cyke busts his way out, clues the other X-men in on where the base is. All of this leads to a truly epic smackdown against Magneto and saving the world.
In one week-long Fox Trot series, Jason finds it impossible to beat one guardian monster in a video game, as it instantly squashes his character every time he tries. Paige, who almost never plays video games, takes the controller and gets by the guardian by simply walking around him'.
Snively describes Sonic as this in the Archie Comic's 200th issue after the blue blur defeats Eggman yet again, causing the doctor to go mad.
Snively: Eccentrics aside, he really is a genius. He can build the most amazing things and plot a hundred steps ahead ... And then there's you. All the building, calculating, and planning in the world couldn't beat you.
Cebolinha/Jimmy Five from Brazilian comic Monica's Gang is known for "infallible plans" against Monica. They usually work up until a certain point, when "accomplice" Cascão/Smudge screws up, usually by revealing it was a plan.

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The ending of the film Layer Cake has the protagonist outclassed not by dumb luck, but by being shot. Because while he was really successful in tricking clever criminals in his Xanatos Gambit, he ends up shot (and possibly killed, it's a little vague) by a guy whose girlfriend he stole and whom he considered of little importance.
- Carlito's Way ends in a similar fashion, after outsmarting all his enemies by the skin of his teeth Carlito ends up getting killed by some random lowlife he mistreated earlier in the film.
The Ewoks in The Return of the Jedi, while not total idiots, are the one tiny overlooked factor that bring the Emperor's entire grand scheme crashing down.
- That and Luke just happening to wound Vader in the same way Vader wounded him, thus making Luke realize what he had almost become.
  - The Emperor wasn't helping his own cause, either.
- The Expanded Universe has the entire Imperial Fleet artificially boosted by the Emperor's force powers. The Emperor's death ended up causing the imperial officers to lose control of the situation, preventing them from shooting down the Millennium Falcon before it could destroy the Death Star 2.
- There's also Jar Jar Binks, whose clumsiness is more than a match for several tanks.
The scheming husband in Dial M For Murder is undone because he underestimates the intelligence of Swann/Lesgate, the thug he hired to kill his wife. This editor forgets the details, but it was to the effect that Swann was smart enough to hide the key to the apartment he had been given, something his employer had not expected.
- It was more of put it right back after using it, instead of keeping.
In the recent adaptation of The Pink Panther, it seems like Inspector Clouseau, a seemingly Inspector Oblivious is one of these until the very end, where he reveals that he was a Chessmaster after all.
- According to Peter Sellers, the original Clouseau qualified as well, but he knew he was a buffoon deep down. Strikes Again had killers from all over the world come after him. He bends over to tie his shoes at the exact right moment...
Sweeney Todd would have killed Judge Turpin and ended the movie right there and then in the middle had Anthony, who had recently talked to Sweeney about his plan to elope with Johanna in order to get her away from Turpin, not busted into his shop with the judge right there in the room in order to inform Sweeney that he has found Johanna and that she has agreed to the plan. Needless to say, this ends up blowing both the aforementioned plan and Sweeney's attempt to kill Turpin straight to hell.
All throughout Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack repeatedly plots for the most favorable outcome (for himself), but stubborn fool Will Turner and arrogant jerkass Captain Barbossa assume they know best how to get things done, and nearly screw themselves out of their goals frequently. If Barbossa had wanted to cut Elizabeth's throat instead of her hand, Will would've been too late to save her on his own, and if Will had died like he should've when Barbossa ordered the Interceptor scuttled with Will trapped below, Barbossa would never have gotten Will's blood to pay Bill Turner's debt. Near the end of the film before the climactic battle, Jack has everybody where he wants them, but because Barbossa and Norrington don't trust him at all, his plans almost fall apart.
- That's what Jack WANTS you to think.
In the 1932 sci-fi mystery film Doctor X the Mad Scientist Serial Killer manages to not only trick the other characters into believing he is innocent but also manipulates them into physically restraining themselves so he can slaughter them at his leisure. Unfortunately he forgot about the Plucky Comic Relief Intrepid Reporter, who manages to dispatch him in a terrified and bumbling fashion at the last minute.
In The Caper film The Killing,(1956) one of director Stanley Kubrick's earlier efforts, a band of criminals pull off an elaborate robbery of a racetrack. Even though the most of the criminals kill each other off fighting amongst themselves, the Anti Hero and his Love Interest manage to escape to the airport and prepare to board a plane out of the country with all the loot. However, all their plans are foiled when a dog runs out in front of the luggage train, causing it to crash and spill the loot all over the runway for all to see.
In The Man Who Knew Too Little the main character foils a terrorist plot without even knowing there was one.
The Joker in The Dark Knight describes himself as a kind of non-stupid Spanner ('I'm a dog chasing cars, wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught one!'). Really, his Xanatos is just bigger than yours. His Character Filibuster about chaos and anarchy derailing 'the plan' could be either hanging a lampshade on this trope, and subverting the hell out of it. Or both. You decide.
- And the people in Gotham turn out to be the ones who ruin his plan.
Oh, the joys of Chicken Run - this is one of many visual gags, and surprisingly one that is relevant to the plot.

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A ditz cultist hands the newborn Antichrist off to the wrong unsuspecting parents in the beginning of Good Omens, thus setting off a plan that derails Armageddon itself.
- Of course, this may have all been a bigger Xanatos Gambit planned out by The Powers That Be. Your head hurting yet?
In JRR Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings the Dark Lord was eventually destroyed accidentally by poor Smeagol.
In Isaac Asimov's Forward the Foundation amidst the chaos surrounding high-level plots and counter-plots, Galactic Emperor Cleon I is assassinated by a totally insignificant palace minion, because he (Cleon) was insisting on promoting said peon, against the peon's fervent wishes, from "gardener" to "chief gardener".
Gunner First Class Ferik Jurgen, assistant to CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!, turns out to be the one who most often saves the day, with his combination of being a "blank" who nullifies psychic powers and the fact that he carries a really, really big gun.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Witches Abroad had a Xanatos Gambit based on Narrative Causality fall apart before the sheer onslaught of Nanny Ogg's ordinariness.
- Other leading Discworld characters have acted as this on occasion:
  - Rincewind never wants to get involved in events, being a coward. In Interesting Times, his great ambition is to stay as far away from the villain's Xanatos Gambit as possible. However, he always seems to run away from danger in the direction of even more danger... until he winds up cornered and desperate, at which point he does the right thing in spite of himself.
  - Some of the more inept members of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, especially Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs, fit this trope.
Happens to Queen Cersei in the A Song Of Ice And Fire book "A Feast For Crows". Lessons learned: 1, be careful about which member of your royal guard you let those newly empowered religious fanatics interrogate; and 2, younger twins count as younger brothers.
- Not that Cersei had the smarts to pull off a Xanatos Gambit in the first place. If it hadn't been one thing, it would have been another.
The Repairer of Reputations, one of the short stories in The King in Yellow, has the evil scheme being foiled by the title character getting his throat torn out by his own Right Hand Cat. Then again, since most people involved were insane, the plan might not have worked anyway.
Kender, gully dwarves and gnomes in the Dragonlance series...especially (by their very nature) the kender. While all of the above races have the ability to change events in the past through time travel, due to their origins as races created by the Greygem of Gargath (pure Chaos-in-a-rock), kender have innate fearlessness, insatiable curiosity, guileless but mischievous personalities, and chronic kleptomania as a racial trait. Tasselhoff Burrfoot, for example, is both the Xanatos Sucker of Raistlin's evil schemes and the only person unpredictable enough to screw them up. One of the most dreaded sounds on Krynn is the sound of a kender saying 'Oops.'
- Given the choice between being locked in a room with a hungry dragon or a bored kender, anyone with any sense picks the dragon.
  - Remember, the worst thing one can do to a kender is lock him up. The worst thing one can do to anyone else is to lock them up with a kender.
This trope is sort of lampshaded in the second Honor Harrington novel where the protagonist explains to her subordinate that the best swordsman in the world doesn't fear the second best one, but the worst swordsman in the world, because he can't predict what the idiot will do.
- Apparently there is some truth in that. An inexperienced swordsman is more likely to do something that gets both combatants killed than an experienced one trying to avoid dying.
John Blackthorne in Shogun is a rather magnificent one, as circumstances force him into a key role in the Thirty Xanatos Pileup of choosing Japan's next shogun in the year 1600. And he's based on a real guy, to boot.
Tom Clancy's Executive Orders: A pair of domestic terrorists spend most of the book preparing a massive cement truck bomb to kill Jack Ryan, driving it all the way across the country, dodging roadblocks put up as a result of The Virus spread by the other Big Bad of the book, only to be pulled over and arrested by a random Highway Patrolman just doing his job when they panic.
The titular assassin of Frederick Forsyth's The Day Of The Jackal seems well ahead of the international police effort to stop his attempt on Charles de Gaulle until some things come up to derail his plan. Just one of many comes up when his seduction of a baroness to gain a hiding location falls apart when said baroness eavesdrops on a call with his informant, forcing him to kill her and letting the police make him publicly wanted as a common murderer.
- And ironically, his last spanner was de Gaulle himself, who leaned forward to kiss a recipient on the cheeks instead of shaking his hand like the Jackal expected, therefore making the Jackal's shot miss and giving Lebel enough time to stop him.
David Eddings's Tamuli trilogy reveals that the Child-Goddess Aphrael and her priestess Sephrenia were this to a Man Behind The Man without ever realizing it until his plans were exposed.
In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, Rafen shocks Arkio's forces by being alive. Inquisitor Stele is quite glad that he will die in single combat, because he had landed in the plans by a fluke and quickly grown to "the most serious nuisance." Of course, he wasn't dead at that point. . . .
Mat Cauthon in The Wheel Of Time almost literaly personifies this trope. He isn't stupid, but he's rarely clued into just what exactly is going on around him. Despite this he foils many schemes, especially when he's actively trying not to.
The War Of The Worlds is essentially one long Curb Stomp Battle with the invading Martians effortlessly rolling over all of humanity's attempts to stop them. Then a month later they all die of common Earth diseases, germs and therefore antibodies being non-existant on Mars.

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In the Doctor Who story City of Death, Duggan, the detective who seems to have gotten into his line of work just because he likes hitting things, derails the villain's multi-millennial scheme with one thoughtless, well-timed punch.
Get Smart, of course; Maxwell Smart is as more likely to defeat KAOS by accident than on purpose.
A British Sketch Comedy program which this troper forgets the name of parodied this. A man is buying a camera, and is shown one that is "totally idiot proof". He then smashes it on the table. "What did you do that for?" "Well, I'm an idiot." The shopkeeper then shows him a camera made out of concrete.
In an episode of Wallander, the title character avoids a fatal bullet by tripping over a conveniently-placed rug.
In TNA, Taylor Wilde and Lauren Brooke derailed Dr. Stevie's attempts to turn Abyss into his puppet. Despite using drugs, physical abuse, and mind games to keep him in line, Dr. Stevie didn't count on Abyss falling in love with Lauren. Then, when he ordered Abyss to attack Taylor, he didn't count on her being Lauren's best friend...

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In just about any D&D module, the adventurers are the Spanner. And any good GM has to be able to handle a Spanner, as the PCs can be expected
- Example: Give the PCs the Eye of Vecna, you get some fun people fighting over it. However, one of the PCs sacrificing the Eye of Vecna to THE GOD OF JUSTICE? Not so expected.
In Unknown Armies, you can become an Avatar of an archetype by mimicking that archetype's classical behavior. One of those is The Fool, who can pull this off easily and walk away unscathed.
In Chrononauts, new players are the spanner. Plans in the game range from Xanatos Roulette to "I win next turn as long as no one makes a minor change in 1914". New players will often meddle with history (even starting World War III), steal random historical artifacts, or kill the makers of said artifacts, to "see what happens".

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In Grandia II, this role goes to Millenia. The Big Bad's plan requires that all eight pieces of Valmar be absorbed by Millenia so that Valmar's resurrection can be brought about and the Big Bad can merge with him. What the villain didn't count on was Millenia refusing to absorb the Horns after they merged with Ryudo, and then sealing them inside Ryudo rather than risk killing him. As a result, not only was Valmar's resurrection incomplete, but Ryudo eventually used the Horns as a weapon to kill the villain.
Arguably, what Jimmy did to Bully, Though Jimmy was smart (in terms sociality).
In The World Ends With You, Neku points out to a Manipulative Bastard that it is utterly impossible to predict what Beat is going to do. Heck, if you collect the Secret Report after the end of the game, even the Angel, Mr. Hanekoma, thought Neku was screwed before Beat's Heel Face Turn, which was conveniently possible because of his Face Heel Turn in the first place.
Persona 3. After his Reveal as The Chessmaster, Shuji Ikutsuki plans to sacrifice most of the party by forcing Robot Girl Aigis to murder them, in order to bring about The End Of The World As We Know It. He's just about to succeed, too. At that point, the player is reminded that Ikutsuki forgot to crucify the dog, too.
- "And I would have gotten away with it, too! If it weren't for you meddling kids and that dog!
Kristoph Gavin's ultimate scheme in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney was meant to be the murder of Vera Misham via a poisoned postage stamp depicting the magician act Troupe Gramarye. However, the girl is such a huge fan of the Troupe that she saves the stamp for seven years; her father eventually uses the stamp instead and dies. The flaws in Gavin's plans run deeper than this, but this is his only apparent mistake; everything else is because of Phoenix Wright's meddling.
- Larry Butz also counts, owing to his tendency to do unreasonable things that end with him stumbling onto vital evidence. In the first game, he was coincidentally returning a boat he had been using at precisely the right time to overhear a gunshot, in the third he shirked his work as a security guard when the villain's plan relied on him being at his post so that he would hear the noise of a panic button, rush into the room and arrest the wrong person and then in a later case his choice to wander around at night in the cold leads to him witnessing a number of things he wasn't meant to.
- In the fourth case of Justice For All, the lead that helps Gumshoe and company track down Shelly de Killer is, of all things living and not living, Matt Engarde's cat, who meows at the end of a transmission from de Killer.
"All right, chums, let's do this! LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEENKINS!".
Xenosaga: The entire plan of the Big Bad, that has taken centuries and all three games to complete, is undone because Allen can take a beating and look really pathetic while it happens. It's more awesome than it sounds.
A much more minor, but hilarious, example comes from Chrono Trigger. Ozzie, inept sidekick to the great Magus, was originally defeated by being dropped down a trap door. In his second coming, he's smart enough to make the switches instead drop the heroes down the trap door. When they come back, Ozzie's ready for anything... except for a random cat, which wanders in, flips the wrong switch, and down he goes...
- This troper always assumed that the cat knew exactly what it was doing and that the whole scene was simply the universe shouting "You Suck!" in Ozzie's face.
  - It's not random, it's one of Chrono's cats, scattered through time in the last ending, and is there specifically to help its master (Alphador is one of Chrono's cats too)
In Soul Nomad And The World Eaters, Lujei Piche apparently is stated to have ruined the effort involved in banishing Sulfur of Phantom Brave, sending him back to Ivoire as a Bonus Boss.
- Revya and Gig, for all the multiple times they are Xanatos Suckers during the storyline, also become epic spanners: The demon path is basically you laying waste to the entire Thirty Xanatos Pileup: Virtious, Thuris, Dio, Rashka and all the other manipulators' year-long plans are ruined by one free-roaming Omnicidal Maniac doing it For The Evulz.
Final Fantasy IV offers a minor example in the Dark Elf. A monster who messed up Golbez's plans to steal the Earth Crystal from Troia by snatching it first and running off to a cave where he rendered metal weapons unusable. Golbez works around this by sending protagonist Cecil to fetch the crystal in exchange for Rosa.
Ash DragonBlade's story in Dragon Fable from Artix Entertainment consists of Ash foiling the plots of would be Big Bads through his own sheer stupidity.
In La Pucelle Tactics the plans of both Noir and the spirit infecting Croix are foiled not by the Maiden of Light, but by Priere, a newbie priestess who is perhaps the least likely person you'd expect being a nun, though she has a mean right hook and an even meaner set of legs.
In Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, Larkeicus does this to his own Xanatos Gambit. He builds a tower to reach the point in the sky where the hero's going to cause the crystals 2000 years ago to vanish, and prepares for every possible outcome, including his own defeat. Too bad he forgot to consider how the hero would get that high up in the first place.
In Evil Genius, this can easily happen to the player if (s)he gets careless. Even the lowest of the agents of justice can become the Spanner In The Works if you neglect to pay attention.
- Ditto Dwarf Fortress; the tinest breach in your defenses can lead to goblins cutting a swath through your dining hall, or a fortress-wide tantrum-spiral.
General Shepherd didn't expect one thing in Modern Warfare 2. SAS Captain John Price. Price firing the nuke at Washington caused Shepherd to resort to some Xanatos Speed Chess and move up his timetable for TF 141's disposal, but Price's willingness to co-operate with Makarov pushed him on to the defensive and gave him a knife through the eye.

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In the Homestar Runner holiday toon "A Death-Defying Decemberween", Homestar announces to one and all that he's going to sled down the Steep Deep - a vertical cliff face - and Strong Bad catches The Cheat surreptitiously helping Homestar bury a mattress at the foot of the alleged slope. Of course, Strong Bad being Strong Bad, he moves the mattress expecting Homestar to maim himself on impact...but the next day, when Homestar sleds down the Steep Deep, he makes a perfect landing. As it turned out, the mattress was full of "hammers, broken glass and candy canes sucked down 'til they're all pointy"; the whole thing was a ridiculously elaborate (and painful) scheme to get out of having to spend Christmas with his girlfriend Marzipan's parents, one that Strong Bad successfully sabotaged (even if the end result wasn't quite what he had been expecting).
In a recent episode of Yu Yu Hakusho Abridged:
Kurama: "...so I believe Hiei's superior speed would be the best choice for this fight."
Hiei: "Well Kurama, your plan sounds good except for one fatal flaw."
Kurama: "What? What are you talking about? My plan is foolproof!"
Kuwabara (screen-shift): "Here kitty kitty!"
Kurama: "I stand corrected."

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In the Sluggy Freelance story arc "GOFOTRON Champion of the Universe," Zorgon Gola has a pretty nice Gambit set up where he pretends to be an Omnicidal Maniac, so that the heroes will sacrifice themselves trying to prevent a chain reaction that would destroy the universe, leaving him free to take over the Punyverse. What he didn't count on was Torg, Riff, and Bun-Bun accidentally teleporting themselves into the Punyverse. They end up hijacking a vital piece of the heroes' Combining Mecha (the crotch). Without this, the heroes have no way of pulling off their Heroic Sacrifice, and Zorgon Gola, along with the rest of the Punyverse, is blown up. Oops.
Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon end up doing this to Darth Maul in Darths And Droids. In a clever little inversion, this whole scenario is actually made up on the spot by the DM, after the events took place in which the players apparently screwed up everything by going Off The Rails. The author suggests this technique as a way of getting back at players who mess with your established scenario too much.
Quentyn Quinn in Tales Of The Questor is something of an aversion: it is his sense of honor and desire to help that make him accept quests which almost always indirectly monkey-wrench SOMEONE'S plans, generally without even knowing it.
Fighter of 8-Bit Theater is the living embodiment of this trope, as he's too stupid to know whether he's supposed to fall for a crazy plan or not. He bends the Theory Of Narrative Causality by his very existence.
Roy Greenhilt of Order Of The Stick might qualify for this in one early instance, despite being a very intelligent person, simply because he does something so very unexpected. Xykon honestly doesn't expect the heroes to stop him (and rightly so, as he has an army of monsters, 10 or more levels on the strongest PC, and a monster strong enough to send Paladins flying by LIGHTLY TAPPING THEM). He has three characters immobilized, two more being stalled by monsters, and he had JUST shattered the leader's ancestral sword. Confident that the battle is as good as over, he starts to call out the aforementioned monster to finish the heroes off. And then Roy goes and tosses his bony ass into a body-destroying gate that holds an Eldritch Abomination at bay. The Big Bad is out of commission until he gets better anyway.
Antihero for Hire's Wizard lays it out cold for would-be Chessmaster Hector:
You always overthink things. The reason your plans keep failing is not because your enemies are geniuses. It's because they are idiots. A plan is only truly foolproof if you consider the fool.

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In the Whateley Universe, this is Jade's purpose in life. She's screwed over at least four Xannatos Gambits, simply by being there. See "It's Good to be the don", "Christmas Elves", "Christmas Crisis", and Ayla 7-6.

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Pinky of Pinky And The Brain is the downfall of pretty much all of Brain's schemes.
- Brilliantly subverted in one episode, where Pinky convinces all of the world's leaders to hand over control of the world to Brain on a silver platter, only to have Brain himself torpedo the plan.
- There are several occasions where it's Brain's own oversights that doom his plan (the Jeopardy episode where he blew the last question due to it being a pop culture one, as an example.)
  - And in said episode Pinky is completely obsessed with the show the Final Jeopardy question is based on. If only Brain listened to him...
- And let's not forget the episode where Brain builds a machine to calculate exactly what common factor keeps causing his plans to go wrong. Sure enough, the catalyst is not Pinky, but Brain himself.
- Lampshaded in this Kids' WB! promo for the show, in which Pinky confesses:
  "I'm not really that stupid. I purposely sabotage Brain's plans because if he ever succeeded, the show would be over, wouldn't it?"
Deedee from Dexters Laboratory is almost always the one to ruin her little brother's scheming.
Coop of Megas XLR does this constantly. Prime examples: he once destroyed a planet-eating monster by firing an EMP-missile-turned-fridge packed with Mentos and Coke, and in another episode he destroys the Glorft mothership by accidentally beaming his slushie onto one of its control boards.
Bullwinkle, of Rocky And Bullwinkle, is an idiot whose sheer stupidity endlessly frustrates villains Boris and Natasha.
Inspector Gadget is a perfect example, as he often inadvertently helped Penny and Brain solve the cases through his clueless bumbling. This is pretty much his job description, really.
Beavis and ButtHead, of all people, pull this off in the movie Beavis and Butt-Head do America. In the hope of "scoring", the dimwitted duo travel to Las Vegas and foil a criminal terrorist plot without realizing it.
Used explicitly and spectacularly in the second C.A.K.E.D. episode of Kids Next Door. At the episode's climax, Nigel responds to the Delightful Children's five-person-unison speech about having planned every last detail by declaring that they forgot one thing: "MY CRAZY GIRLFRIEND!"
The Flying Brains of Futurama intend to collect all the information in the universe and then destroy it, using their telepathic powers to keep anyone from stopping them. But they didn't count on Phillip J. Fry, the one man in history too stupid for those powers to affect.
- Technically, it wasn't because he was too stupid, it's that his stupidity happened to cause his unique mental condition.
  - Other way around: His unique mental condition caused his stupidity.
  - But surely, his stupidity contributed significantly to his decision to "do the nasty in the past-y," thus bringing about the circumstances that gave him the unique mental ... my head hurts.
Ron Stoppable of Kim Possible.
- And when the bad guys remember to account for Ron, out pops Rufus.
From the Justice League episode "A Better World": An evil alternate universe Justice League has captured the "real" League. Their Batman designed inescapable prisons for each Leaguer, because he's Batman. The Flash manages to escape by speeding up his heartbeat so it looked like he flatlined, and when the other Batman unlocked the cell, flash beats him up at super speed. Lampshaded by our Batman:
Batman: He anticipated everything I would have thought of, but who could anticipate you?

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Greece might have been this in World War II. If they hadn't held off the Italy invasion that required Germany to help them, Operation Barbarossa might have been started earlier, and the invasion of Russia might have succeeded.
- Even before surrendering to the Allies in 1943, Italy was probably as much a hindrance as a help to the Axis war effort through opening new fronts and then calling for German help (the desert war was another example, starting when Italy tried to invade Egypt from Libya and promptly collapsed to the British counterattack until Rommel arrived... which, of course, meant Rommel wasn't on the Eastern Front). Perhaps Germany would have been better off if Italy had been neutral from the start... which may mean that, ironically, we should be thanking Mussolini for his role in history. If, you know, he hadn't been a role model for Hitler to begin with.
  - Originally Mussolini despised Hitler, and apart from some basic similarities, their ideologies were very distant (Mussolini's original Facism didn't have a racial doctrine of any sort, for example) - but we still might have to thank Mussolini for eventually jumping into Hitler's bandwagon, when it started to seem that Jackboots & Mustache might actually win.
- In the first World War, Germany intended to go through neutral Belgium in order to attack the French. It probably would have worked if not for the Belgian resistance delaying them.
Santa Anna's plan to finish off the Texas Revolutionaries at San Jacinto on April 22, 1836 was ruined by Sam Houston's decision to attack first a day earlier despite the Mexicans outnumbering the Texans 1,400-900. Santa Anna also sealed his own fate by diverting away too many of his soldiers and failing to post lookouts while his army rested (not to mention supposedly getting seduced by the "Yellow Rose of Texas" Emily Morgan). The Mexicans surrendered to Sam Houston's assault after just 18 minutes of fighting.
If you're doing user interface design, one of the best tests is to hand the software to an entirely untrained user. They will ferret out all kinds of little bugs and quirks because they'll choose utterly ridiculous but nonetheless logical ways to use your application.
- Similarly, video games. Less skilled gamers will find those accidental holes in the wall before experienced gamers, who aren't, you know, accidentally running into walls all the time.
Developers of the perl programing language have stress-tested new versions by having it parse /dev/random as input. Bugs that had resulted in segmentation faults were discovered this way.
This trope strikes me as describing the entire history of economics. The most brilliant economic models and philosophies can and will break down for mundane reasons (usually that people are not always rational and cannot be counted on to make rational decisions every time) when taken to their logical extremes. (I suppose similar things could be said about other “soft sciences,” and their penchant for unpredictable results from predictable data. God, you clever bastard!)

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