Unspoken Plan Guarantee - Television Tropes & Idioms

"And now that I've described the plan in full, nothing can possibly go wrong."

When the main characters come up with a plan to save the day, its chances of success are inversely proportional to how much the audience knows about it beforehand.

As a side effect, you can ensure A Simple Plan's success by making it an Unspoken Plan, and guarantee failure by telling the audience the details of the Zany Scheme.

This, by the way, is why heroes always manage to escape a villain's Death Trap. Every time, the villains insist on describing exactly what the traps do.

Admittedly, the reason for revealing only failed plans to the audience is obvious. Where's the drama in something going wrong if no one knows what was supposed to happen? Conversely, where's the drama in seeing exactly what you were just told would happen?

This trope still applies if we get to see an A Team Montage assembling Chekhovs Armoury beforehand — as long as we still don't know how the guns within will be fired until the time comes.

This often crops up interestingly in Tabletop RPGs, where it arises from the players describing their plan in front of the GM — who will, naturally, enjoy the opportunity to botch the plan. The best way to avert this is to enlist the GM's help with the plan while keeping other players in the dark — again fulfilling the trope!

Examples

Anime

Lupin III regularly makes use of this trope. No matter how clever the bad guys are, Lupin always one-ups them at the last minute with a new gadget or a brilliant ruse - the audience knows he always has something up his sleeve, but we're almost never told what.
Episode 18 of The Wallflower has one of these plans as to how the tenants are going to save Sunako from a mob.
Yu-gi-oh not only does this straight, but makes it extremely obvious where many duels go where the face down cards of hero and villain alike often go unknown until they are used much like a spectator would see. Almost every time this trope is employed the flow is broken where the character would not only completely explain his plan in a drawn out monologue, but often visualize what could have happened.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Every episode up till the 8th features unspoken (or even unplanned) plans, and then they spend half an episode preparing for a well-described plan. Tropers, now is the time to get nervous. The plan actually does work, but Kamina dies executing it.
Averted in Death Note, but only at the end of the least important story arc. The details of the other two arc-concluding Xanatos Gambits are sprung when there's nothing anyone could realistically do about it, and the many Gambits in between fit this trope to a tee.
Used in varying degrees throughout Code Geass, most notably with the Zero Requiem. Although Lelouch and Suzaku refer to it in nearly every scene from R2 22 onwards, its true nature isn't revealed -or even hinted at- until the climax of the final episode, as it's being executed. Naturally, it works perfectly.
Referenced in the Lucky Star OVA during the voleyball match, where Konata announces that it's time to use the "Jet Stream Attack" and Konata, Tsukasa, and Misao get in position... until Misao asks just what the heck is a "Jet Stream Attack", whereupon Konata bemoans how she wasn't supposed to say that and now the plan won't work.
Mahou Sensei Negima pulls this off perfectly, during the festival arc. Chao's plan to reveal magic to the world is not explained until after Negi and company are forced a week into the future, where it has already succeeded. Upon learning HOW the plan goes, they proceed to go back in time using cassiopiea. This plan almost fails because it is explained, mostly, before hand, however several parts of the plan are left vague until the end... all of which succeed perfectly. Upon returning to the 3rd day of the festival, Negi and Company attempt to avert the plan. They technically FAIL, which is either a subversion because they knew the plan, or upholding the trope because it wasn't Chao who explained it to them, but Negi defeats Chao in combat, so she changes her wish. I would just like to ask why nobody brought that up before now.
- In Chapters 240-248, this trope is played straight, subverted, and toyed with. Negi goes into the match with some crazy plan to defeat Rakan that only he knows. Negi reveals one new ability after another, but it's never enough to defeat Rakan. Finally, Negi tricks Rakan into using one of his insanely powerful magical blasts on Negi. It's then revealed that the entire match was planned as a set-up by Negi: during an earlier lightning-fast attack which seemed too weak to defeat Rakan, he had also set up a magic circle that allowed him to absorb Rakan's attack. Negi then uses Rakan's own insane attack against him. This still isn't enough to defeat Rakan, but both of them are exhausted, breaking it down into a mere fistfight that ends in a draw.
Generally played mostly straight in Kaiji, where we usually only find out the least important half of the plan in advance, such as when we see Kaiji use balance theory to win a game with scissors but don't know that he expects the opponent to discover balance theory and thus walk into a second trap, or when we see him deliberately mark the cards against Tonegawa but don't know that he wants Tonegawa to realize it's a trap. Played painfully straight in the final game; Kaiji explains his grand scheme to overthrow the chairman in meticulous detail four episodes before the end of the series. No prizes for guessing that it blows up in his face.

Comic Books

Subversion: In The Sandman #22, Morpheus announces to the population of the Dreaming his plan to go to Hell. He mentions that he has "made certain plans" in case he is captured, but not what they are. However, he isn't captured, and the subject doesn't come up again.
Brutally, brutally subverted by the Big Bad in Watchmen. He goes on and on for pages about his incredibly convoluted plan to save the world from itself. The subversion? He has already done it. Thirty Five Minutes Ago to be exact.

Film

Done in the movie V for Vendetta, as V had an iron vest underneath his clothing near the end, although he was fatally wounded.
In Ocean's Twelve, what the audience believes to be "the plan" is shown to fail miserably. In fact, the real gambit is carried out successfully and silently in the middle of the movie, unannounced, and everything from there on is just a ruse to fool the antagonist.
Averted in the Seven Samurai. The heroes' plans are constantly detailed, and never totally fail.
The diner scene in The Godfather is planned out meticulously. Then the protagonist acts it out, but changes a bunch of details because Its Personal. It works fine.
- The implication, at least in the book, is that the Bad Guys were ready for the original plan, and he was lucky he didn't come out of the bathroom firing.
- A more orthodox case of the unspoken plan is Michael's scheme for wiping out all of the Corleone Family's enemies at the end of the movie. He never spoke of it and actually continually gave away details of planning to do the exact opposite to cover himself. Needless to say, the plan works perfectly.
A classic plan that's destined for disaster occurs, complete with visualization in Shaun Of The Dead. If the heroes could really "wait for all this to blow over," it wouldn't be much of a horror movie...
A possible villainous inversion of this is the Joker's train of Xanatos Gambits in The Dark Knight. They succeed so well precisely because the only time he reveals a hint of what he's about to do is when he's either completely lying his ass off, lying about the bit that's going to make you walk right into it, or telling you the bit that's going to make you walk right into it. 99% of the time Batman, the police, and the audience have no freaking clue what to expect next.
In The Sting we are lead to believe that the spoken plan is doomed to fail because we are not told that the man we think is an FBI agent is actually part of the scam. By the same token, we are not told two other important things: Salino's first name is "Loretta", and Gondorff hired a bodyguard for Hooker.
Averted in A Few Good Men, where the night before Jessup is put on the stand the lawyers have an onscreen meeting about their plan to make him confess, and the next day it's executed perfectly. Roger Ebert cited this as a flaw in the film, saying it's no fun if nothing goes wrong after you've already heard what's going to happen.
Inverting this trope is pretty much the entire plot structure of Reservoir Dogs. After the opening scene, which doesn't mention the diamond heist at all, we learn there was a diamond heist that has gone horribly wrong because someone in the group is a mole for the cops. Then, over the course of the movie, the plan which has gone wrong is laid out in flashbacks. Later, we find out who the cop mole was, and that his plan is going wrong, and again, then find out what his plan was. On the other hand, averted in the same flashback, when the cop's partner helps him learn a fake story to impress the other crooks on the heist. The plan to use the story is laid out in detail, and yet it succeeds. Then again, we already know it's going to succeed, otherwise he wouldn't be in on the heist.
A very interesting aversion is Stanley Kubrick's early film The Killing. Most of the first third of the movie is an elaborate description of a heist on a racetrack. The heist goes off, not "without a hitch," but let's just say everybody succeeds in doing what he is at the racetrack to do (even if some of them don't survive long after). It is only after the successful heist, during the "easy part," dividing up the money and going their separate ways, that things go horribly wrong for everybody.
The movie "The Heist", directed by David Mamet, is basically this trope extruded out for 90 minutes. Thankfully, all the double-crosses and surprises make sense at the very end.
Shows up in The Dirty Dozen, as the Dozen go over their infiltration plan multiple times, including a mnemonic for memorizing all 16 steps. Of course, the plan falls apart halfway through.
Would you believe this trope can be justified? In Push the Watchers can only predict your future by decisions, ie, they can only know what you're gonna do next if you make a decision to do something and they can see how that interacts with other peoples decisions. So to get the better of the bad guys the hero writes letters to each of his team with what to do next, which they open at specific times. He also writes one to himself before having his memory erased

Literature

In the Discworld novel Going Postal, Moist von Lipwig and the Smoking Gnu work out a plan to destroy the semaphore company by blowing up the signal towers. The reader is told exactly how this plan will work. Just before they do it, though, Moist realises this would cause more problems than it solves, and comes up with a plan to destroy the company but leave the system in place. We aren't told how this one works until the payoff.
In Watership Down, not only is the audience never informed beforehand of Hazel's plan to steal does from Efrafa, he doesn't even tell the other rabbits, realizing that if he does, something is sure to go wrong before the plan is carried out. That's one Genre Savvy bunny.
- Hazel doesn't tell them because if any of the rabbits are captured "They'll make you talk, all right."
Happens in every damn book in The Dresden Files.
Many of the plans and strategems in Romance Of The Three Kingdoms.
The Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Outbound Flight features an interesting use of this trope. Protagonist Car'das, a guest/captive of Thrawn, escapes and sets into motion an unspoken plan that enlists the aid of the Planet Looter villains. It appears to go pear-shaped, until we learn that Car'das' plan was actually part of Thrawn's plan, which we didn't even know existed. It would have worked out perfectly except for Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth's final descent into megalomania.

Live Action TV

Every episode of Mission Impossible employs this.
It is also seen in sitcoms such as Threes Company.
The Season Three finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer demonstrates this perfectly. Two enemies make plans; one of the plans is fully detailed to the audience, while the other one is kept vague. The vague one, of course, is the one that succeeds.
- This one is particularly noteworthy, since the planning processes are superimposed over one another. Buffy will be just about to go into the details of her plan, and it then switches to Wilkins giving instructions to his vampires, then back to Buffy making vague allusions, and so on.
- And in Season 5, where they talked in vague terms about what they might have in the way of weapons, but never go into detail about all the parts of their plan. Meanwhile, the Big Bad has been getting pretty specific. And so...
- And again in Season 7. You always know what the Big Bad is going to try to do, but it's not until almost the very end, when the action is well under way, that you find out Buffy is having Willow use the scythe to activate all the potential Slayers into full ones.
  - In Season 7 we also have a literal unspoken plan, made via telepathy.
In the Red Dwarf episode "White Hole", Lister is trying to knock a planet into the white hole, using the principles he's picked up playing pool. It misses. After every planet in the system has been knocked against each other and one of them has sunk, he explains he was going for a trick shot. This is, of course, what anyone who gets lucky in pool will tell his friends even if it's blatantly obvious that it isn't.
Almost every episode of Hustle features a moment when it looks like the plan has failed, but it turns out that either the real plan was something else all along, or there was some brilliant improvisation that we weren't shown at the time.
- The best one is where Danny and Mickey go head-to-head to see whose methods work better. While Danny works a series of Short Cons, Mickey tells Ash he's got a Mark he's been saving for a rainy day, and begins elaborate preperations including preparing a forged stamp, and arranging a series of meetings. Towards the end Danny figures out Mickey's con, swoops in, buys the stamp from the forger, and attempts to take over, only to discover the supposed mark has no idea what he's talking about, and doesn't even collect stamps. Flashback to Mickey saying to Ash "I do have a mark I've been saving for a rainy day ... Danny." And then it turns out the whole thing was a con by Albert to win money from Ash and Stacie, by betting he could get Danny and Mickey naked in the middle of London. (The terms of the contest were they both started out with nothing).
Used in the seventh-season Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Badda-bing Badda-bang", in which the plan is detailed to the audience throughout the fourth act, not only with explanations but being acted out on-screen; of course, this is only so that the audience knows what's supposed to be going on in the fifth act, when everything goes wrong.
Spoofed in the Black Adder episode "Witchsmeller Pursuvient", when our inability to hear Baldrick's plan to escape is blatantly lampshaded... and then we don't see the plan either, we're just told it worked!
Both ends are in play in the Greek episode "The Great Cappie". The Simple Plan, detailing a secret Prohibition drinking party under a rule-following Great Gatsby theme party, is described in great detail...and is derailed when the dean shows up as an unexpected guest. Said party is saved by Plan B, which isn't known to the audience until it's put into motion.
Averted somewhat in Firefly, like in "Ariel." The whole plan was described in minute detail, complete with scenes of the characters rehearsing their parts, and except for the temporary arrest, both the heist and River's diagnosis are completed as planned. Same with "The Train Job," except for the Captain and Zoe getting trapped. And the opening scene of the Big Damn Movie, except for the Reavers. However, "Trash" and "Objects in Space" are perfect examples of unspoken plans going perfectly (almost). Also, this line from the movie pretty much sums it up:
Mal: I don't plan on any shooting taking place.
Jayne: Yeah, well, what you plan and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar.
- This troper notes that "Trash" both subverts and upholds the trope: the detailed plan for removal of the Laser goes off almost without a hitch (and is ultimately successful) and the unspoken backup plan in case of treachery is pulled off successfully.
In the episode entitled "Norman" of the vampire detective series Blood Ties, the heroes Vicki and Henry are forced to give a magic dagger to the demonic villain Norman when he kidnaps Vicki's secretary and holds her hostage. Norman needed the dagger to complete a spell to release the uber demon Asteroth into the world. However, unknown to the audience, Vicki and Henry had first taken the dagger to a priest to have it blessed before they gave it to Norman, so that when he used it, his spell of summoning failed and he was sucked back down to Hell.
Stargate Atlantis uses this trope masterfully. In one episode, the audience is disinformed about the protagonists' plan of liberating Atlantis. When all seems lost, the plan (as the audience knows it at that time) countered, their true plan immediately works out and only then is explained.
- Justified because the audience gets the information at the same time as an NPC and he is used to disinform the mind reading enemies.

Theater

Older Than Steam example: In Romeo And Juliet, Friar Lawrence's plan involving the faked death of Juliet is described to the audience. So naturally, it ends horribly.

Video Games

Mostly averted in the Sly Cooper series, where Bentley describes in detail what must be done in each mission, and the mission usually goes just as planned. Not all of them, mind you, but exceptions are the exception rather than the rule. After all, it's considerably more fun to play through something you've heard about than to just watch it.
- There is a straight example of this trope, though, in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. In the final mission against Pirate Captain LaFwee, Bentley's plan appears to fail due to LaFwee's counter-planning, but it turns out to be much more elaborate than the plan described to the player.
- Honestly, this trope just doesn't happen very often in computer games. How would the player carry out an elaborate mission that they hadn't been informed of?
  - However, it shows up in Psychonauts. The plan Shegor's talking pet turtle comes up with that goes off without a hitch and very nearly solves everything is blanked out when discussed, then carried out in a cutscene.
This does, however, happen all the freakin' time in the Phoenix Wright games. Often his assistant or even Phoenix himself will mention that they've finally figured out the case, give some vague clue as to what conclusion they've reached, yet it's still up to the player to figure it out. Largely justified, since combining evidence to solve cases is basically the entirety of the gameplay, so having the whole thing spelled out for you at the last minute would kind of defeat the purpose of the whole thing.

Web Comics

Terror Island subverts this trope with the first time Demon-Jame possesses Jame. First Folio describes the plan clearly to Stephen and Sid, and the plan goes off without a hitch.
Averted in The Wotch: They had an Unspoken Plan, but Miranda had to Tempt Fate...
Parodied in this Dragon Tails strip.
Lampshaded in Order Of The Stick:
Lien: Anyway, given that, we had to keep a close eye on Elan, waiting for you to make contact.
Elan: Why didn't you tell me about it, though?
Lien: Because we wanted it to work! Seriously, how many times do I have to go over the, "Good, not dumb," thing?
- This may be less about this trope and more about Elan being an idiot they can't trust not to mess things up.
Lampshaded in this strip of Get Medieval.
Eight Bit Theater references this idea in the final panel of this strip. Of course, since Brian Clevinger is the epitome of the Teasing Creator, and this is Eight Bit Theater, it's impossible to tell what will happen.

Web Original

Played with by way of No Fourth Wall in Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog. Dr. Horrible's plan fails because it turns out that Captain Hammer and the police have been watching the video along with the audience. (Something of a subversion, though, since the audience doesn't even know his target until his recap of the failure.)
- Also subverted with his revenge plan - we are told nothing, save that it will be both vicious and final. It... almost works.
Homestar Runner example. In Looking At A Thing In A Bag, we don't hear The Cheat's plan to get some drinks, and it goes perfectly. It still doesn't make any sense at all though.
In Unforgotten Realms Schmoopy at one point refuses to tell his allies his plan for this very reason.

Western Animation

Any episode of Scooby Doo where the plan to capture the monster is spoken out loud will be ruined, usually by Scooby and Shaggy's incompetence, though it will invariably succeed in a different way because of this.
- Subverted in The Movie, along with most other Scooby Doo cliches, by having the spoken plan... actually work.
In "Brain Drain" on Legion Of Super Heroes, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl both announce their plans to capture Brainiac 5's wayward headless body, and both plans fail. Lightning Lad then asks Saturn Girl to read his next plan from his mind for no apparent reason, and that plan is the one that succeeds.
Subverted in an episode of Kappa Mikey, where part two of the plan turns out to be...
Mikey: "And now we just have to stay in this room for the rest of our lives!"
Used straight in Jem's first episode, "The Beginning". After summarizing the gifts from her late father, Jerrica states, "I know how to stop Eric Raymond." We don't get the plan—until we learn who Jem is!
One of several reasons the invasion plan in Avatar The Last Airbender was doomed from the start. The heroes spend almost a whole season talking over it, culminating in an on-screen briefing. Unfortunately, the bad guys knew about the invasion and had several off-screen meetings, preparing a trap for the protagonists.
Playfully averted in the second season of the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Obi-Wan and Anakin are leading the siege of a city when Anakin discovers a secret way inside past the shields. In a deadpan voice, Obi-Wan says, "So your plan is to sneak in through the sewers, under the shield and into the main generator, destroy the generator and have our troops swarm in?" They then do exactly that.
Pay close attention whenever Ben 10 goes for the Omnitrix. If he specifically says which alien he is becoming before slapping it, odds are he's about to turn into the wrong alien. (There are exceptions, but they make up fewer than 15% of all transformations.)
Double Subverted in the Fairly Odd Baby Made For TV Movie of The Fairly Oddparents. Timmy comes up with an Unspoken Plan that appears to fail miserably... but it then turns out it wasn't actually finished, and once it is, it does work perfectly.
Subverted in grand fashion in an episode of Codename Kids Next Door. We're given a step-by-step breakdown of the team's plan for infiltrating an assembly of villains complete with accompanying imagined footage of them enacting the plan... and it works perfectly.
Drakken, Duff Killigan and Monkey Fist were elaborating plans to defeat Kim Possible using the Time Monkey Idol during A Sitch in Time, they failed. Shego did not reveal her plans (until the late Evil Gloating), and surely enough she became The Supreme One. Oh, and she yawned during the guys planning.
- And Drakken's most successful plan to defeat Kimpossible (in So The Drama) was the one where he didn't even tell Shego what he was planning until Kim was safely captured.
Subverted in Power Puff Girls where Mojojojo whispers a plan to defeat an alien invader. Its failure leads to him having a break down.
Danny announces such a plan in a Danny Phantom episode. Though Danny didn't suspect Walker to use the Fenton Thermos against him, he didn't suspect Danny's plan, so it all works out in the end.
Subverted in Transformers Animated the first time the Autobots fought Starscream: After a short Power Of Teamwork speech, Sari quippes in by saying "Okay, here's my plan...". Cue the next scene, where Sari is running after the Autobots, asking them to hear her plan.

Real Life

This is inverted with members of the military, becoming—essentially—the Spoken Plan Un-Guarantee. If an exact date or time or plan for any action is given at any point, the odds become quite strong that whatever it is won't happen as planned. Or even close.
- Also known as "No Battle Plan Survives Contact With The Enemy", due to the unpredictable nature of human reaction.

The First Law Of Trope Examples

« Laws And Formulas »

What Measure Is A Non Human

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing

Tools

Toys

Examples