Never Recycle Your Schemes: Difference between revisions

== Anime & Manga ==

* ''[[Mazinger Z]]'': [[Big Bad]] Dr. Hell played straight it most of the time, coming up with a new [[Robeast]], weapon or device put Kouji or Mazinger Z through the wringer (Gromazen R9's acid blaster could melt Aphrodite A's armor, Kingdan X10 projected mirages, Holzon V3 set eathquakes off, Jinray S1 flew at Match 5, Aeros B2 could absorb Mazinger's attacks and hurling them back, Desma A1 caused hallucinations, Gumbina M5 was nearly impervious to all Mazinger's weapons...) and then he never again used it. However, sometimes he averted the trope, improving some old weapon or reusing formerly intended strategies.

** To clarify, its used by his [[Bastard Understudy]] Kabuto for the puroposes of global war. Oro was crippled following that fight took several hundred chapters / episodes to recover, so he never really had the ''chance'' to use it again. It could also be a question of their different fighting styles- Oro used it mainly for psychological warfare, and he is ''more'' than willing and able to take on some of the toughest characters in the series man to man-, or that Oro is more [[Genre Savvy]] since most of these zombies are beaten by teamwork relatively easily (Oro used used them to overwhelm a single powerful opponent) and Kabuto is implied to overestimate how effective the jutsu actually is, especially since many of the zombies actually [[Explaining Your Power to the Enemy|tell their opponents how to beat them]] because they just don't like being controlled, or don't want to hurt their old teammates.

* While played straight for the most part in ''[[Samurai Pizza Cats]]'', one episode Big Cheese decided to build a giant killer robot that was an amalgam of every single one of the giant killer robots they used before. Not only did it look even more ridiculous than usual, but it was destroyed rather unceremoniously when Lucille panicked and unloaded her missile hairdo on it.

 

== Comic Books ==

* This is inverted in the Polish comic series ''Kajko i Kokosz''. The villain Hegemon likes to reuse a simple plan of capturing the heros' village: build a siege tower and use it to get his soldiers over the village wall. He also has the habit of setting fire to the tower after everyone else has climbed to the top so none of his men dare retreat. This means that he has to rebuild the tower every time he recycles the plan. The trope is played straight with the heroes who will use a different method every time they have to foil his plan.

* Invoked in ''[[Superman|Adventures of Superman #520]]'': on Christmas Eve, 100 criminals plot to commit acts of theft at midnight; rounding up the criminals strains the resources of the police, even with Superman's help. Supes and the Metropolis P.D. have to round up every single criminal in order to hammer home the message that this type of scheme doesn't work because if word got out of its success, criminals in other cities without a big name superhero could overwhelm the local police by copycatting the original 100.

 

== [[Film]] ==

** During the course of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'', the Federation either encountered, captured, or developed several different pieces of technology that would have made dandy anti-Borg weaponry. The soliton wave (originally intended to be a "warp drive for ships without a warp reactor") and the sentient nanites, just to name two. But did Starfleet use such weapons? Of course they don't...

*** Let's not forget the grand-daddy of all forgotten weapons technology, Project Genesis from ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan]]''. Let's see the Borg adapt to '''''that!'''''

** And of course they never reproduce the one technology that has proved itself repeatedly effective against the Borg: bullets and other such kinetic energy weapons. The fact that the Borg haven't already adapted to it proves that they can't -- what are the odds that of all the species the Borg have assimilated, they never encountered one that used guns?

*** The Borg have been successfully taken out with kinetic impact (fists, knives, bullets, etc.) in multiple episodes, written by multiple writers, across multiple seasons and multiple ''shows'', and have never yet adapted to them. This one's canon, folks.

* Lampshaded by the [[Big Bad]] in the first season of ''[[24]]'', when Ira Gaines points out he can still use Jack Bauer's daughter as leverage. Ironically, {{spoiler|Drazen would end up kidnapping Jack's daughter later on and using her in the same fashion}}.

{{quote|'''Andrei Drazen''': When Plan A fails you go to Plan B, not Plan A recycled.}}

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

 

== Tabletop Games ==

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* Plankton from ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]''. "I've used every plan from A to Y!" He then proceeds to use Plan Z.

* Non-villainous, [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] example: in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode ''Today I Am A Clown'', Maggie has locked herself in the bathroom. The family try various ways to get her out including using a coat hanger. All attempts to open the door fail. The family is just about to try their zaniest scheme yet when Lisa announces she got Maggie out. Everyone asks how. Lisa replies, "I tried the coathanger again. I don't understand why we only try things once."

* ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' seemed to not only use each plan once, but would often consider the plan a failure if the ''funding stage'' failed. Brain then [[Lampshade Hanging|hangs a lampshade on this]] by spending one episode trying to find new methods when he thinks all his old plans amount to the same thing...

** Even worse Brain's plans often failed due to wildly improbable circumstances that had little or no chance of recurring.

*** Worse than that, many of Brain's plans ended during the financing or resource gathering phases. Brain never seems to imagine that he could simply postpone the plan and use a different resource-gathering method and abandons the plan as a failure before it even begins.

* Not only does Dr Claw of ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'' never use the same evil plan twice, he always hires a new specialist agent for each new plan (but uses the same generic mooks for everything else).

* In one episode of ''[[Gummi Bears]]'', Toady suggests to Duke Igthorn that they build another catapult to attack Castle Dunwin (as they did in the first story). Igthorn scornfully remarks that they tried that idea already.

* The plans of Koopa in ''[[Super Mario Bros Super Show]]'' were always foiled because the heroes just happened to be around whenever he carried out his plan. If Koopa ever went back and tried again after the heroes left he could have succeeded.

* In one episode of ''[[Superfriends]]'', Braniac uses a super vacuum to suck the ring right off Green Lantern's finger. ''He never uses this again'' despite it being capable of ''immediately disabling one of the most powerful Superfriends''.

* Dr. Wily in the Ruby-Spears ''[[Mega Man (animation)|Mega Man]]'' show never repeated a plan. Sometimes [[Justified]] by Dr. Light coming up with a counter to whatever he had tried.

** In "Cold Steel" he ''tried'' to recover his device so he could start the plan over later, but Mega Man stopped him.

[[Category:Contrived Stupidity Tropes]]

[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]