- Somewhat inverted in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series:Mom: Well, that's nice, but you don't need to broadcast it coast to coast! Just look for him (Hobbes) quietly.
Calvin: Of course! If I continue to shout for him to show up, he'll know where I am and get farther away from me! On the other hand, absolute silence means absolute secrecy! It's so crazy it just might work!
- Beyond the Veil Volume One: Arrival
: Harry and Deadpool are up against a feral Wolverine and Sabertooth.Deadpool: Don't know why I'm doing this, maybe you can magically amplify my bullets to actually break through the healing factor. I know, nutty and off the wall, but...
Harry: It just might work. - Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness: While caught in the middle of a fight between Megas and Yuuka Kazami, Reimu decides on a risky plan to end the fight without any casualties. She knows there's a strong chance it'll end up killing her (and wiping out Gensokyo by extension), but decides to do it anyway with no other justification than "this entire evening has been stupid enough to begin with". Her plan? Using herself as an extra power source for Megas, transferring her ability to fly into its systems and giving it the ability to do meaningful damage to Yuuka.
- Company0051: Has grenades taped onto dodgeballs. Granted, it'd just be easier to throw the grenades themselves, but it does allow the Kid Soldiers to show off their mad dodgeball skills.
- The Life: Chapter 81 involves the protagonist's team dropping without him. He convinces the captain of the ship to do a flyover near the position of his squad. He jumps from the cargo bay of a frigate with a jetpack that he doesn't know how to use and a tank with parachutes attached to it. While playing "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath on the helmet's speakers.
- Harry Crow: Hermione suggests that they all wear mirrored sunglasses, blind the basilisk with an illumination spell and cast at its eyes as fast as they can.
- Harry Potter and the Rule of Three: Harry, Hermione and Susan decide to form a triad.Susan: It's crazy, but it's just crazy enough to work.
- Thorns - A Goblet of Fire Story: Draco suggests that Harry summon a snake, enlarge it and use it to distract the dragon during the First Task.Marissa: Guys, this is insane. We've literally just decided that the best way to make it as entertaining as possible is to scare people even further by placing a dragon-sized snake in front of their faces and oh my god it might actually be stupid enough to work.
- Advice and Trust: In chapter 7 Rei was fighting Zeruel alone because Shinji and Asuka got fired. Despite her most valiant efforts Zeruel was trouncing her. Shinji and Asuka could not seem to help her because they were out of the Geofront, and even if they made it they could not use their giant robots (Rei was piloting Unit 01 and Zeruel had butchered Unit 00 and 02). Then Shinji got an idea: driving to the base as fast as possible and hijacking Unit 03, an Evangelion that neither had ever so much as TOUCHED before that day and could be contaminated by an Angel, hoping that maybe Hikari -who was stuck inside- would help them to move it around given her connection to both. It worked after a fashion: they did not win but they kept Zeruel distracted, allowing Rei to kill it.
- Asuka Quest: Most of Asuka's AT field tricks are this. Constrict AT fields to create ultradense matter usually found in the cores of neutron stars? Why not. Cause a Reality-Breaking Paradox? Only in the sims, bucko. Cause massive explosions by setting AT fields to block only certain subatomic particles? If you can stand the explosion. Hit Sahaquiel with AT fields formed into the bat? Result: Home run. Rant to Lorenz Kihl in Sophisticated as Hell language to get the drop on him? It does result in a hit. Of course, some of her ideas don't work and end up causing problems, like getting Shinji drunk before the Matariel fight.
- A Crown of Stars: Shinji and Asuka were trying to free their world from the dictators and thugs ruling it after the end of the world, but their army was cut off and they were unprepared and outnumbered. So, how did they seize Buenos Aires? Misato and other commanders came up with the idea of pretending that they were preparing a rock concert to lure the enemy troops into a stadium. It worked. And it was very awesome, indeed.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Par for the course for Ash. Even if he has everything against him, he won't rest until he finds a way out. Some of his most impressive victories include:
- In the Celadon Gym, Erika's Leafeon summons a long-lasting Rain Dance, that hampers Ash's Pokémon with type advantages against Erika's Grass-types. When he realizes he won't be able to win if he doesn't get rid of the rain, he does... with his own Rain Dance. This sounds absurd at first, but it works, because the resulting downpour gets rid of the moisture in the air, meaning the rainy conditions can't be sustained any longer.
- In the semifinals of the Fuchsia Tag Tournament, Ash and Pikachu's opponent is a Mudsdale that has just about everything on its favor: type advantage as a Ground-type, thus rendering his Electric attacks useless, an ability that boosts its defense every time it takes damage, and on top of that, hitting as hard as it can soak damage. What does Ash do? Have Pikachu store as much electricity as he can in his tail, and then attack the battlefield, sending out a barrage of rocks over Mudsdale, damaging it enough to end the battle with one last Iron Tail.
- Later in the finals, faced against Paul's Torterra, Ash tells Red that in order to win, Red needs to evolve his Charmeleon. Red and everyone else thinks he's crazy, but Ash insists that he can see his Charmeleon has the power to evolve and just needs the motivation to do so. Red then awkwardly gives Charmeleon a pep speech, and to everyone's shock, he does evolve, becoming strong enough to overpower Torterra.
- Paper Mario X: In chapter 54: "Hmm…that's crazy enough to work!" pondered Samus.
- Decks Fall Everyone Dies: The whole plot is to pull off a plan that's so crazy it might work to bring card games back.
Unsorted
- Abridged on Titan: Singing in the face of certain death. In universe, it's called the Menken Musical Maneuver, and while it was apparently a horrible failure for Dot Pixis, it tends to work to great effect in the present:
- Armin improvises a song called Please Don't Kill Us Please to plead for his, Eren's and Mikasa's lives; Dot Pixis pardons them on the spot because it reminds him of his own attempt at the Menken Musical Maneuver.
- Eren tries singing the same song at his trial, which gets Levi interested in him as he thinks Eren's singing voice would work great for his barbershop quartet.
- Levi orders his squad to sing when they're being chased by the Female Titan... so they can discreetly communicate when Levi's trap should be set off.
- Eren sings F**k It to psyche himself up to engage in the final battle with Annie, when he couldn't before because of his memories of her as a squadmate.
- The Child of Love: Asuka's plan to deal with a flying Angel shot light beams was… getting a giant mirror to reflect its light beams back towards it. Since they had no giant mirrors Asuka thought of using two solar panels.
- Evangelion 303: During their dog fight, Asuka was chasing Shinji and coming on his heels. Then Shinji abruptly braked and flew backwards. Asuka got frightened and swerved to dodge him, allowing Shinji to tag her.
- In Vengeance from the Grave Harry suggests that a couple of his fellow Unspeakables deal with several giants using their Animagus forms by having the panther slash the giants' Achilles tendons after which the bull will push them over. The team leader comments "That's just stupid enough to actually work."
- In NGE: Runaways Misato needs to come up with a plan to break Rei out of Nerv while Shinji escapes to rescue Asuka. Something all but impossible. Then she says: "You know, this might be total madness, but I actually might have a plan..." What is her plan? Later we find out:Rei: "Are we stealing an Evangelion?"
Misato: "Yes we are, because we are insane." - From Bajor to the Black: Kanril Eleya takes out a Borg probe by charging it, neutralizing its shields with those of her own ship, and beaming a photon torpedo aboard, then running like hell before the torpedo blows.Captain Jay Yim: Lieutenant Kanril, are you insane?!
Eleya: It worked, didn't it? - The aversion of this trope (and Lemony Narrator pointing out why "Crazy Enough To Work" is plainly not going to work) is also a minor Running Gag amongst the writings of EarthScorpion. The one time this is played straight, on the Neon Genesis Evangelion/CthulhuTech crossover Aeon Natum Engel, it actually makes the one who gives the idea (a Misato Katsuragi so drunk and full of despair at the oncoming Angel that she proposes equipping the Evangelions with plasma miniguns, which would need to be built from scratch (and later are)) to do a Double Take.
- In My Short Story Haven Godric Gryffindor's spirit suggests kicking Dumbledore out of Hogwarts and making baby Harry the new Headmaster (and his guardian Severus Snape interim Headmaster) as a distraction, allowing him and the other Founders to improve the school behind the scenes.Salazar Slytherin: That idea is crazy.
Godric Gryffindor: Well?
Salazar Slytherin: Yet it is so crazy that it might actually work. The way your crazy ideas usually do. - In chapter 25 of Son of the Seven Kingdoms, William Baratheon uses the Storm Call Shout on the Iron Fleet, knowing that he is risking the destruction of his own fleet, or even King's Landing. Fortunately, it pays off.
- In Hawk-Eyed Charlie Charlus Potter decides that Neville's parents are suffering from a magical version of PTSD and he and his mostly-Muggle fellow veterans should kidnap them from St. Mungo's so they can recover among friends.Old Harry: It's so crazy it just might work! Hell, it helped Danny boy when he came back from 'Nam when his own kids wanted to ship him off to a nursing home!
- The Death God Alliance had the problem of Nico di Angelo going missing after an attack by magicians. Hades becomes quite angry and prepares to destroy the magicians of the House of Life, which would end badly. However, Nico can't simply pop in and say he's fine because he got part of Anubis's soul stuck in him and Hades would react badly to that. His solution: Make it seem like he had simply been playing Mythomagic for a week with Anubis and hadn't noticed anything amiss. This worked, despite even Percy Jackson thinking the plan was completely ludicrous.
- The Night Unfurls: Chapter 11 of the original has Sanakan suggest that the Alliance troops should just "break through" the orcs in front of the gates of Ansur. One of their members, Alaric, thinks she's going to pull a Leeroy Jenkins. Sanakan reminds him that they have magic artillery (Olga), so it will be fine. Alaric internally notes that "this crazy plan was probably going to work after all". And boy it does.
- The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: Vix-Lei's plan during the late stages of the battle with the Nightmare. It involves setting her hammers on fire and using them to pound their enemy.
- In Missing Persons Harry offers to pretend to be a captive so that Emma can infiltrate a kidnapping ring.Katie: Harry, that's crazy!
Neal: It's just crazy enough that it might work. - In Sonic and the Death Cheese 2, Knuckles theorizes that the Death Cheese 2 and the real Cheese colliding will cancel each other out, like matter and antimatter. Against all logic, this works.
