Just As Planned
From Tv Tropes
- I defeated his minions, and he cackled and said, "Exactly as I planned."
- I discovered his secret fortress. "Exactly as I planned."
- I breached his defenses, and still he said, "Exactly as I planned."
- I slew him in single combat, and with his dying breath he gasped, "Exactly as I planned."
- I stood over his grave and I said, "You never really got the hang of planning, did you?"
- -- Rebecca Borgstrom, Nobilis
Uh-oh, looks there's trouble for our beloved villain. The heroes destroyed his Phlebotinum research facility, the government realized that the man they thought was president was actually an evil robotic duplicate, and his entire accounting staff has just turned into mimes. What's his response?
Excellent. Everything is going according to plan.
That one little phrase is all it takes to cause even the most monumental apparent loss to be completely turned on its head. Was the villain Crazy Prepared enough to insure that even his failure somehow turns into a victory? Did he prepare a plan only just incompetent enough that the heroes could predictably defeat him?
Well, we're not going to find out anytime soon. In all likelihood he's relying on the Unspoken Plan Guarantee to catch everyone off guard so that we can proceed to the real plot. Stay tuned next week for the exciting new development!
In terms of writing, this is a relatively meta trope in that in most cases it's technically irrelevant. Regardless of whether anyone actually says the phrase, whatever gambits are floating around are still floating around. This is because the phrase is used primarily as re-assurance- either for the audience, or other characters. Strictly speaking it can be used with plans that as far as anyone can tell are already going as planned- it's just a status update so that we only ever worry when people stop saying it.
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[edit] Anime and Manga
- Kira of Death Note repeatedly uses this phrase to let Ryuk know that what appears to be an outmaneuvering actually falls in line with Kira's long-term goals.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ikari Gendo (along with his right-hand man, Fuyutsuki) and the members of SEELE were fond of saying things were going "all according to the scenario." Should be noted that they were ultimately pulling for different scenarios, but no matter what, whatever happened was always according to the scenario, or at the very least irrelevant to it.
- Their differing scenarios were only divergent at the end, so it makes sense. At the point where something went according to Gendo's scenario that was NOT according to SEELE's scenario, SEELE sent in the JSSDF to kill every single last person at NERV HQ.
- Just like with Gendo and Kira, his forebears, Lelouch Lamperouge is fond of saying "the preliminary conditions have been met", as well as many variations of that phrase. He is also fond of Chess metaphors.
- Bleach has Sousuke Aizen.
- In Monster, "all according to plan" is said more and more as approaching the ending of the story. However, in an episode where it was used much too often, it's thoroughly deconstructed as the head of the organization doesn't know if it's according to his, to The Man Behind the Man's plan or Johann's.
[edit] Film
- The Emperor from Star Wars is quite fond of this.
- Subverted in The Dark Knight. While the Joker says these (or nearly these) exact words, he's describing how other people tend to make intricate plans and schemes, while he (nominally) is an agent of chaos.
[edit] General Animation
- In Codename Kids Next Door Cree says this when modifying the garbage disposal rocket she was inside to fly towards the KND Moonbase.
[edit] Literature
- Hari Seldon did this throughout the Foundation series from beyond the grave, and he planned for several millennia's worth of events.
[edit] Television
- In the Dollhouse episode "Needs," Adelle DeWitt uses a somewhat different phrase to give the same effect:
- Dominic: I was just informed that we have four actives planning to escape.
- DeWitt: (smiles) ...Right on schedule.
[edit] Video Games
- Similar to the Nobilis quote above, The Lich King, Big Bad of World Of Warcraft, plans himself right into a grave. The players spend half of the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion killing off sub-bosses as if they were mooks, until finally when the players in their 10 or 25 man group face him, he claims it was all according to his plan to train and equip the most powerful people in the world so he can kill them and use them as generals in his army. Oops.
[edit] Web Original
- Referenced in the Rifftrax commentary for 300. "I know it looks bad but its all part of the plan!" during one of the many scenes when Spartans are slaughtering large numbers of Persians.
| This page uses content from TV Tropes. The original article was at JustAsPlanned. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. The text of this article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. |
