Never Recycle Your Schemes: Difference between revisions
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A subtrope of [[It Only Works Once]]. Compare [[So Last Season]], [[Forgotten Phlebotinum]], [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum]], [[No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup]]. Compare [[Adaptive Ability]], where it's the heroes that can't recycle the original means of the villain's defeat, and [[Reed Richards Is Useless]].
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== 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.
* Orochimaru of ''[[Naruto]]'' had the ability to bring any dead person [[Back
** The scheme '''is''' eventually recycled on a mass scale later on and, true to the trope, is quickly figured out by the heroes, until the technique brings back multiple [[Physical God
** 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
* 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.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'':
** In the Death-T arc of the manga, Mokuba a good example of why it is ''not'' a good idea to recycle your schemes. He tries to defeat Yugi in Capsule Monsters with the same underhanded trick that didn't work the ''first'' time and only fails ''worse''.
** Inverted and downplayed in Battle City arc, Marik's duel against Mai, Marik tries to set up the same combo (Jam Defender plus Jam Breeding Machine) he used against Yami through Strings, likely to summon Ra. Doesn't work this time; Mai is able to tear the lock down with ease.
== Comic Books ==
* Played straight by [[Marvel Universe|Doctor Doom]]. When he reviewed a brain tape replay, he realized that one of his very old plans could be made to work with just a little bit of modification. He stopped the replay before it got to the actual plan.
** Another time, Kristoff (standing in for Doctor Doom), dusts off one of Doom's old plans and corrects the fatal flaw which allowed the Fantastic Four to escape destruction the first time it was used. Needless to say, the Four come up with a ''different'' way to thwart the plan the second time around. (This may be why villains don't bother recycling their plans.)
*** They point out in story that while he eliminated the flaw, he didn't account for Sue having force field powers (she hadn't developed them when the plan was originally put into practice).
*** This was also how the fake Doctor Doom was noted: the real Doctor Doom never recycles his schemes.
* [[Superman|Lex Luthor]] suffers from this. Unless it involves exploiting one of Superman's various [[Kryptonite Factor
* "The Trouble With Dimes" by [[Carl Barks]] had [[Donald Duck]] try a scheme of buying rare coins from Uncle Scrooge for their face value and then selling them for a huge profit to collectors. Scrooge got wind of the scheme and tricked Donald into flooding the market so the coins were worthless. [[Don Rosa]]'s "The Money Pit" had Donald remember this flaw and try the plan again but this time vowing only to sell a few, ''very'' rare coins. After searching through Scrooge's coins for the rarest, most valuable ones gets him buried alive in the money bin, Scrooge expressly forbids the scheme from being recycled in any way again on the grounds of it being too dangerous: "I won't risk you being buried in my bin again. [[Jerkass Facade|Why, my insurance rates would skyrocket!]]"
* 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.
* [[The Joker]]. Everything he does is for the sake of comedy - or to be specific, his sick opinion of what's funny - and seeing as a joke isn't as funny the second time you tell it, he never uses the same scheme twice.
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[
* In ''[[Jack the Giant Killer (
* ''[[Batman and Robin (
== Live-Action TV ==
* All of the several ways to counter the Borg in ''[[Star Trek:
** During the course of ''[[Star Trek:
*** Let's not forget the grand-daddy of all forgotten weapons technology, Project Genesis from ''[[Star Trek II:
**** [[No Plans No Prototype No Backup]]. They can't use Genesis vs. the Borg, because everybody who knew how to make it is dead and their research notes destroyed.
** 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.
* Venjix and Tenaya 7 of ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' have this problem.
** Power Rangers ''generally'' suffers from this, but there are more than a few occasions (including RPM) where the villain recreates a monster than was defeated before, only with improvements.
** Subverted in the last episode of ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]''. Master Vile reveals his scheme to turn the Rangers into powerless children and Zedd responds with "I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but we tried this once before and it ''failed''!" Of course, to Zedd's chagrin, Vile's version of the plan worked surprisingly well and came much closer to wiping out the Rangers than Zedd or Rita ever did.
* Lampshaded by the [[Big Bad]] in the first season of ''[[
{{quote|
* In the first season of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' The Master, angry that Buffy has been killing so many of his servants, sends a trio of vampire warriors to kill her. They almost do, but Angel shows up and they run away. When they return to report that Angel intervened, he [[You Have Failed Me...|has them killed]], and has Darla try to remove Angel as a factor. While this at least shows he's paying attention to what caused the plan to fail, it doesn't change the fact that even if Darla gets rid of Angel, he's just killed off the only vampires he's got who not only survived their encounter, but sent her running.
** He had them killed not for failing, but for cowardice. It doesn't matter how well your minions ''can'' fight if they ''won't'' fight, so the Master's not really subtracting anything from his available firepower that he hasn't already lost.
== Professional Wrestling ==
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In the ''Timemaster'' game, the primary alien villains never reused a plan. And in a time travel game, you really ''could'' keep trying until you got it right. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] by said aliens being obsessed with "perfection"
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== Webcomics ==
* Mentioned [http://www.captainsnes.com/2005/03/20/good-morning-videoland-episode-16/ here] in ''[[Captain SNES]]'' with regards to ''[[Captain N]]'':
{{quote|
== Western Animation ==
* Plankton from ''[[
* Averted in the [[Looney Tunes|Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons]]. Wily frequently reuses his plans, either in that short or in the following ones, to the point that most episodes start with a bowl of "Free Birdseed" in the middle of the road. If the Road Runner didn't stop for [[Schmuck Bait|suspiciously free birdseed]] ''every time'', most of the Coyote's schemes ''wouldn't even begin''.
* 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...
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** 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.
* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Zhao went to some trouble to get the Yu-Yan archers in his service for capturing Aang. The archers accomplish this easily, but we never see them used again. [[Avatar:
* 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.
* [[Double Subversion|Doubly subverted]] [[Played for Laughs|for laughs]] in ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'': Mojo Jojo actually repeated one of his previous plans down to the tiniest detail, much to the surprise of the girls, who didn't believe it at first. When they confront Mojo, he says he studied [[Surveillance
** The ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]'' also features a villain named [[Satan|HIM]] who has openly ''stated'', as a point of [[
* 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 ''[[
** ''Challenge of the Superfriends'' was notorious for this. The Legion of Doom would come up with matter teleporters, time travel devices, and all matter of wonder
* Dr. Wily in the Ruby-Spears ''[[Mega Man (
** In "Cold Steel" he ''tried'' to recover his device so he could start the plan over later, but Mega Man stopped him.
* ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' had Doofensmirtz recycle his scheme from the first episode, with his only change being switching out his giant magnet for a giant magnet-inator. It ended the exact same way as before, with Doofensmirtz barely realizing his mistake. Mind you, the rest of the episode was about recycling the first episode's plot [[Recycled in Space|AS A MUSICAL!]]
* Justified in the ''[[He
* ''[[Superman:
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[[Category:Contrived Stupidity Tropes]]
[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]
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