Crazy Prepared / Webcomics

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• 8-Bit Theater:
  • Thief has two clauses in everyone's contracts specifically for winning arguments. The first reads, "Yes, it is," and the second reads, "No, it isn't."
  • Red Mage, who reveals that he has numerous contingency plans for any unlikely situation. He doesn't use any of these plans, since generally, his allies will just blast or stab everything he doesn't get to first. Though it needs to be said that Red Mage's plans are nearly all undermined by the fact that he doesn't know what he's doing most of the time. He's simply convinced he does.
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja:
  • The setting is a town with its own zombie defense system. Obviously comes in handy during the Zombie Apocalypse story arc. It makes a certain amount of sense, since the Genre Savvy Dr. McNinja is written by a man whose basic philosophy towards writing is always go forward. Turns out to be not quite Crazy Prepared. The Mayor who instituted the zombie defense policy was revealed to be a time traveler who knew it was coming.
  • Dr. McNinja also has a barber on speed dial in case of emergencies.
• All Manner Of Bad: Jase and his wife have an end of the world plan. It's a simple plan. Which is more effective but less fun than Bryan's plan.
• Antihero for Hire's got a few of these. How many weapons does Dechs have on him in any given.
• In This Basic Instructions strip, silent hero Rocket Hat displays this in regards to the moon emperor stealing his hat.
  Moon Emperor: In retrospect I should have guessed that his hat would have a self-destruct mechanism.
  Moon Minion: And it was particularly clever of him to set its triggerphrase as "look at me, I'm Rocket Hat," spoken in a girly falsetto.
• This exchange in Bob and George:
  Dr. Wily: I'm sorry to disappoint you, Bob, but you didn't kill me, only one of my many robotic clones.
  Bob: What, you just leave them scattered around your fortress, on the off chance a deranged psychopath breaks in and attempts to kill you?
  Dr. Wily: It worked, didn't it?
• In Casey and Andy strip 649, Quantum Crook is prepared for Quantum Cop despite not knowing he's also in 1886. Quantum Cop is prepared for Quantum Crook being prepared...
• In Chaos Theory, Kevin's suit contains every explosive device known to man, and is rigged to explode if he so much as twitches in the wrong direction.
• Chopping Block: Butch always carries a spare.
• In Commander Kitty, CK's crew has a plan for any possible situation Fluffy could end up involved in - including being stuck up CK's nose.
• In Crimson Dark, Sarah, former controller of Espenson Station, is able to quickly take over the station's computer systems when Whisper, the other resident computer genius, disables the anti-wireless jamming in Sarah's cell. It turns out that Sarah leaves back doors in every computer system that she ever works with, because you never know when an employer will try to screw you over.
• NASA in Daisy Owl is running a Space School on the moon to train grown Space Babies for fighting off aliens. They don't know of any aliens existing yet, but better safe than sorry!
• Darths & Droids: Pete, having to fill in for the usual Game Master, prepared for chance that one of the other players might try Grappling with Grappling Rules. They do, and he unfolds a series of "handy tables and flowcharts". Not that this stops a five-second scene from taking a hundred panels when un-glossed◊.
• In the world of Digger, preparedness is practically an instinct to a wombat.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Mr. Verres instantly produces a full presentation — complete with pointer, easel, and a poster-sized graph — to explain why Elliot is the de facto chaperone for Grace's Birthday party. And when Elliot's Half Identical Twin / Opposite-Sex Clone Ellen voices an objection he produces another poster-sized graph that shows her to be more impulsive than her "brother". Given that Ellen had been in existence for less than two weeks at that point one wonders where he got the data.
  • Victor von Hip, a schoolboy New-Age Retro Hippie with self-published pamphlets for every occasion. And in case he didn't cover something yet, there's his pamphlet on his pamphlets, so the people would know they can bring it to his attention, man!
  • Mr. and Mrs. Dunkel have maps and a flipboard presentation...for a trip to the store. Elliot naturally lampshades this.
  • When Sarah is nervous about transforming, Tedd offers to scan her so that she'll have a backup of herself if anything goes wrong—with the side benefit that in later years, she'll be able to turn into a seventeen year-old version of herself at will. After an encounter with a villain who uses a transformation/mind control virus, every single member of the main cast independently decides to get a backup of themselves.
• EVIL: In his first appearance, Gabriel reveals that he has arranged for incriminating pictures of Jezebel to be uploaded on tumblr if anything happens to him.
• The protagonist of Geist Panik has a display◊ which features: a water gun in case of witches, a stake for vampires/tents, the sonic screwdriver for use against both Daleks and shelves, a crowbar for headcrabs, a fiddle in case of Satan, a nail-gun in case of Jesus, and a huge ass-gun in case of zombies/raptors/misc.
• Girl Genius:
  • Zeetha wears special non-textile underclothing to guard against the use of a Wacky Weave Destabilizer. Apparently, these were used quite a bit as practical jokes by the audience before the actresses in traveling shows got wise.
  • Zola had her brain specifically prepared in case Lucrezia tries to possess her. Not only is she immune, it backfires perfectly.
  • Mechanicsburg itself. They have a system that showers the entire town in case they are attacked with poisonous or sleeping gas, and have systems capable of launching entire buildings attackers. Combined with Castle Heterodyne below, and the readers gets a very good impression as to why Mechanicsburg has never been taken by enemies.
  • This page shows just a small slice of the levels of Crazy-Prepared Castle Heterodyne is. Being prepared for a weapon that stops time and having defenses that will allow the Castle to remain on-line and still able to control some defenses while locked in a stasis field where time is frozen takes this trope up to eleven.
    The Castle: Tch. Such small imagination. So typical of the enemies of the family... I am prepared for more contingencies than you would believe possible.
• All the Homestuck universes. All of them. And, for that matter, all the minions of Lord English, though ESPECIALLY Doc Scratch. Aside from, of course, the kids and trolls. The exceptions can be counted on one hand. If you want specifics, Terezi, Vriska, Aradia, and their Beforus counterparts.
• Grrl Power discusses how far you can reasonably expect to go to be prepared, in The Rant to #566: "Even if you could actually predict all possible outcomes, there are still limitations on preparation time, like the actual time it takes to prepare for those outcomes and the material resources required to overcome, for instance, the leviathan making the vault its nest, [...] In a universe full of superhumans and supernaturals and cryptids and aliens, “all eventualities” is an absurdly large possibility space."
  It really comes down to managing probability. [...] The Leviathan taking up residence in or near the vault? Maybe worth considering, but only to the degree that you prepare in a way that would allow you to deal with any number of large obstacles. Like, I don’t know, a grenade launcher. That’s the only practical way for someone like Batman to operate.
• Vlademyre Hynner from Mortifer has this in spades, to go along with his genius IQ. Best exemplified on this page, complete with Lampshade Hanging (Warning: Spoilers!).
• Shine from NEXT!!! Sound of the Future hates rain so much that she used to carry around a minimum of four umbrellas on her at all times just in case of it raining. This ended up proving useful on the day she and Gumiya first met, where she noticed him outside in a rainstorm without an umbrella and was able to give him one.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Haley keeps carts for carrying loot in her Bag of Holding. The justification? "Girl's got to be prepared! Tee hee!" Belkar Bitterleaf one-upped Haley in this strip.
  • As a wizard, Vaarsuvius exemplifies this trope. "Bugsby's Cat-Retrieving Hand!"
    Blackwing: I don't know what's weirder-that you keep preparing that spell, or that you keep needing it.
  • The Oracle of the Sunken Valley, thanks to his precognitive abilities, always knows when a bad even is heading his way, and plans accordingly. He regularly schedules appointments with clerics to resurrect him when an unhappy customer decides to Shoot the Messenger, sometimes has a post-mortem vengeance prepared, and always has magic wand if the ghost of someone he doesn't like show up and needs banishing.
  Oracle: True, I'm not a cleric...but ain't it funny how I always seem to have just the right magic item here in my robe?
  • General Tarquin has learned how to counter many obscure fighting styles in case he had to one day fight somebody who knows one of them. He's even able to block Elan's pun-based swordplay by tripping him up with etymology. (Though his knowing this specific case was due to Elan's teacher, Julio, being one of Tarquin's more frequent foes.)
  • Tarquin mixes this trope with Genre Savvy, including having written manuals for his guards explaining that there are no surprise inspections, and anyone showing up with that excuse is an intruder.
  • In the fight at the pyramid, Tarquin is wearing a helmet in an attempt to disguise himself as Thog. Roy figures out pretty quickly that it's an imposter, and knocks off Tarquin's helmet— only to reveal that he's wearing a mask (with "Nope!" written on it, to boot). Tarquin proceeds to lampshade it:
    Tarquin: Totally worth wearing a mask underneath my helmet for two days.
  • Tarquin's party member Miron Shewdanker has a contingency spell designed to teleport him to safety when he takes too much damage, as he's a Squishy Wizard compared to Tarquin. However, on V's suggestion, who had been given intel on Tarquin's companions, the Order focuses on him for one round, doing enough damage to trigger the spell deliberately to take him out of the fight.
• This Penny Arcade! strip:
  Tycho: Yes, Mr. President?
  President: What do you know about manticores?
  Tycho: Goddamn near everything.
• Questionable Content:
  • Pintsize shows up in a full set of miniature samurai armor:
    Marten: So you've had this for a while then? Just in case some situation arose where you would need full samurai regalia?
    Pintsize: Well yeah. What's your point?
  • Faye's mother came up with a code phrase for Faye to use in the event that she was being held against her will ("the peaches are ripe"). This was Truth in Television in The '80s, when parents were encouraged to come up with innocuous-sounding phrases for children to warn them with.
  • While on a date with Sven, Hannelore leaves her purse somewhere, prompting her to reveal what she keeps inside it:
    Hannelore: My cell phone, wallet, keys, mace, taser, multitool, Swiss army knife... OH MY GOD I'M TOTALLY DEFENSELESS!!!
• Justified in Rebirth. Noah has already lived through the apocalypse in the first timeline, so he knows what's going to happen and how he can better prepare for it. His odd behavior doesn't go unnoticed by other characters, though.
• Implied in Scandinavia and the World. One of the many features of Switzerland's banking system is a cow that chases thieves away. The rest are never revealed, as Switzerland knows his security system works best if no details about it are divulged.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Tagon, in this strip:
    Prisoner: What kind of person keeps four sets of nanny-cuffs on him?
    Tagon: A person with pockets. And what makes you think I've only got four sets?
  • At Bunny and Theo's wedding, Schlock eats the cake and destroys the replacement under Ennesby's orders.
    Ennesby: I know Petey. If he made two, he made more than two.
    Petey: Actually, I made eleven in case you managed to do something genuinely unpredictable.
• Parodied in Skin Horse, where UNITY has spent a great deal of time planning strategies to fight historical figures. All of them consist of, "Look a (something historically connected to the person in question)! Leg sweep!"
• Sluggy Freelance: Torg has a pair of emergency pants. Why? "Don't know, but every hypothetical I've come up with, I'm glad I have them." Of course, it's in this same story that they're attacked by supernatural clothes-eating moths.
  "This looks like a job for emergency pants!"
• In Spacetrawler, Growp tries to kill Emily in her sleep, only to find there's a decoy in her bed. Emily had set this decoy up even though she could not have possibly known beforehand that Growp was coming for her.
  • When Dimitri is kidnapped by a secret society, they check him for hidden transmitters, and are shocked to find eighty-six bugs on a single person. Cut to King Mihrrgoot explaining that he'd actually planted ninety-two, and hoped they'd miss a few.
• Sunstone it seems that Ally is equipped to handle many different fetishes and situations that arises if ever she found herself in such a relationship, despite being too shy to seek out that kind of thing for some time. Lampshaded in a strip.
  Lisa: I thought you weren't into Pet Play?
  Ally: I was never in the scouts either but I still stick to the ''Always be Prepared" motto.
• Mikayla of Thespiphobia, on several occasions.
  Tito: Rats. Rats, Mikayla.
  Kay: Rabies booster, left drawer. Tetanus shot's in the cabinet. Disinfectant is in your pocket.
  Tito: Your pay is SO docked.
• TwoKinds: Alaric. From the time Keith was banished, Alaric had been working nonstop, becoming a general, exploiting every loophole in the law he could and writing hundreds of documents, all so Keith would have to be acknowledged by society. Keith is now recognized as the Ambassador for Basitin society, representing their entire civilization to the world. And one of the four (previously three) generals subject only to the Basitin King.
• Walking on Broken Glass's Nick. To quote the caption of the linked image, "Why yes, he does keep one ^namely  a paintball gun in his office. For just such an occasion."
• When the leads of Weregeek are trapped in a house surrounded by zombies, Abbie orders everyone around in the fashion to most effectively avert zombie movie tropes while patching herself up. When the lead asks her how she even knows all this, Dustin says she's watched a lot of zombie movies while Abbie herself declares she's been training for this her whole life.
• Willys ville verden (Willy's wild world):
  "We need stronger firepower to stop this guy. Didja bring the bazooka?"
  "Check the glove compartment."
  • On the next page, the villain diverts the heat seeking missile with a Molotov cocktail he happened to be carrying.
• xkcd
  • Here, xkcd takes a Real Life example of Crazy Prepared (a speech written in case of the astronauts from Apollo 11 never making it back to Earth) and cranks it up to eleven by presenting speeches written for every possible and not so possible occasion of what might have happened ot them.
  • "Everyday Carry": "It was hard work collecting all the everyday carry products on the internet, but now I'm finally ready for anything."

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