Discussion Main / CrazyPrepared

Example suggestion: 13 Assassins - scenes immediately pre-battle when they rig the town with traps, explosives, etc.

Anyone frustrated about the trope image?

A shotgun with no stock is shot from the hip, which is used in close range to the chest.

It's as useful as keeping a prepared supply of poison for when the terminators and other robot hoards attack.

Have an example I read several years ago, but I've lost the specific comic issue.

It's a title where Nightwing's living in Bludhaven. Some goons manage to get ahold of him, knock him out, and tie him hanging from the ceiling of the old half-ruined warehouse they're in. When he wakes up, they tell him they're gonna run his fingerprints. (NW's gloves are a mess, with at least four fingers showing.)

The search runs headlong into one of Oracle's programs. This lovely bit of computer fun keeps an eye out for anyone running searches on the Bat family, including fingerprints, and redirects the search to Oracle. (Upon which an alarm sounds.) Wouldn't work with someone who knew their civilian I Ds, but with these clueless goons...

Although, to add insult to injury, Nightwing's identity comes back to the goons as a really really ridiculously goofy multi-multi-syllable name.

He did manage to get loose and kick both their arses.

Shouldn't Jason Todd (Red Hood) be added to the Batman folder? From the Under the Red Hood movie/comic arc we have

- Detachable car roof for Batplane's grapple. - Rope from the station tower to swing into the station. - Bombs at the station to cover his escape and a bike to escape on. - And a friggin' bomb in his helmet (which he wears on his head), in case he takes it off and rolls it towards his opponent.

Another form Batman and Robin includes planting bombs on the train tracks to keep the heroes busy while he makes his escape and having safe-pads all over the place with weaponry and costume spares. Lampshaded in his own series - Red Hood and the Outlaws - where he says that the one lesson Batman always stressed was to be prepared and then reveals its application - him hiding his guns in flower-pots, in case he is surprised by his enemies there.

What about good old Fantomas, the original Supervillain? Starting in 1912, he starred in dozens of books and several very early film serials. He pretty much invented Crazy-Preparedness! In the first book, he isn't especially well-prepared at all, gets caught, and only escapes the guillotine through a very complicated last-minute ruse involving a drugged lookalike (Fu Manchu and Dr, Frankenstein later did exactly the same thing).

By the second book, he's learning. Although he does still have to improvise a bit, and some of his Crazy Preparations are quite basic, such as rigging his entire house to explode if it's ever stormed by the police (which of course it is), at one point he is captured by the police, but they almost immediately lose him again, because even though he was off-duty and relaxing with several floozies in a bar, he was wearing his special slipping-out-of-the-grasp-of-the-cops coat with totally convincing fake rubber arms in the sleeves! This scene is especially well done in the 1913 movie, since, having escaped in this ridiculous way (he also just happens to have a getaway car in exactly the right place), he simply drives round the block and walks back into the party, knowing it's the last place the cops will look for him! Which they don't - the director was firmly on the side of the baddie.

By the third book, he'd really gotten the hang of it. For starters, his house is equipped with two absolutely identical rooms, one of which is inside a large elevator. The point of this is that, having disguised himself as some random totally innocent guy, he arranges for his arch-enemies to be in one of these rooms hiding behind the curtains all night, getting thoroughly bored because nothing happens, thus giving him an alibi. Meanwhile, a murder takes place in the other room, which replaces the first one the moment the cops have left, and it all becomes very confusing indeed.

At the end of the book, he is captured again, but escapes again because he has installed huge electromagnets under the floor of his apartment (a different one - he's got two Crazy Prepared houses in the same book), so the cops are are rooted to the spot by the nails in their shoes! How Crazy Prepared is that?

Oddly enough, for all the comic book portrayals of Cobra Commander, his "GI Joe Vs. the Transformers" version from Devil's Due shows this in spades in the lass issue of Volume 2.

Having previous made Starscream into a Nightraven (as well as his personal craft), he ends up making one more change in him leading to a CMOA.

When Starscream escapes the Commander and begs for the chance to return home among the Decepticons to Shockwave (who's led them since Megatron's defeat by Optimus and the Joes and eventual disassembly in Volume 1), a recording begins to play from him. In it, Cobra Commander addresses Shockwave and lets him know the shortcomings of Starscream.

Shockwave lunges at a scared Starscream...only to have that whole floor of the building explode. taking them and several other Decepticons with him. The final words of the recording?

"But it's nothing the Forty-Five Pounds of Plastic Explosive I lined his housing with won't fix."

No mention of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series? Isn't this trope basically what those books are all about?

I'm more used to the other wiki, so I'm not sure this belongs on the main age, although it looks like the things written there. I'd like to say this explanation in answer to the example: "This is sorta a Truth In Television. The U.S. government does in fact pay people to come up with plans for any possibility.[...]"

• Think of it is way: 18 years old cadets. Too much time on their hands. Too much government budget allocated. I mean, the US Army has paid for ridiculous shit, like *skateboarding as a means of urban transportation studies*! That's the only explanation!

Anyone think we should put a folder for Batman examples?