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No Delays for the Wicked: Difference between revisions
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The exception is a [[Spanner in The Works]], but that only happens at the end.
This is perfect for maintaining a [[Masquerade]]. You can have hundreds, nay, ''thousands'' of people keeping the same secret, and nobody will screw it up. [[The Men in Black]] [[It Was Here, I Swear|Cleaners]] will never get the wrong address and remove all evidence of alien activity at the house next door of where they should have gone. The assassin never gets cold feet or an attack of guilt (unless he's about to become a main character), or decides he can make more money through [[Blackmail]] or writing a tell-all book detailing the conspiracy. The commanders never [[Glory Hound|put their own careers]] over the goals of the organization, The [[Weirdness Censor]] fails so rarely that the [[Only Sane Man]] is easily dismissed, and the [[Mooks]] never form a [[Weird Trade Union|union]].
The only way that an [[Enemy Civil War]] can occur is through deliberate manipulation on the heroes' part (such as [[Feed the Mole]]).
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One more thing; this trope describes (real or fictional) entities which are either realistically prone to complications or unrealistically immune. Examples of how (real or fictional) entities are [[Justified Trope|protected]] by the [[Weirdness Censor]], [[Bavarian Fire Drill|human nature]], or [[Xanatos Speed Chess|integrate those complications into their plans]] belong [[Xanatos Planned This Index|elsewhere]]. In other words, [[Gargoyles|David Xanatos]] is ''not'' referenced here, and is in fact smirking at [[Unwitting Pawn|all of you who believe in this trope]].
From a narrative standpoint, this happens because it is emotionally satisfying to see the intrepid heroes defeat the villain's plans because of their determined efforts to overcome both the villain's schemes and random obstacles. It is considerably less satisfying to see the villain fail because the airline lost his luggage and the heroes just got lucky. Also, the audience usually wants to see that the villain's plan would have succeeded were it not for the heroes, and because [[Villains Act, Heroes React]], the villain's first action would have to have succeeded. That said, there are still plenty of aversions and inversions in the examples below.
Inversion of [[Evil Will Fail]] and [[Fascist but Inefficient]]. [[Xanatos Roulette]] is a [[Sister Trope]], where all the factors that would most likely make the plan fail just don't happen.
See also [[
Contrast [[Harmless Villain]], [[Third
{{examples
== Anime ==
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** Sort of subverted, though, when it's later revealed that the universe has multiple time lines and that everything that can happen, does happen. We're simply seeing the particular time line where everything broke the Draka's way, there are many many many time lines where things went otherwise.
* One way of knowing that the [[The Empire|Royal Military of Markerterion]] in ''Stationery Voyagers'' isn't ''[[But Not Too Evil|too evil]]'' is that they actually [[Surrounded By Idiots|DO have to worry about mass incompetence in their ranks]], including several Idiot Balls being held rather tightly. While not themselves entirely immune to the [[Idiot Ball]], most of Astrabolo's [[Pirate|Yehtzig Pirate League]] plays this trope much more straight. And if they DO fail to accomplish something the easy way...[[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|they seem to always have a rocket launcher handy]] to compensate.
* The Party of Oceania in Orwell's ''[[Nineteen Eighty
** This was parodied by British humourist Alan Coren in a short story entitled 'Due To Circumstances Beyond Our Control, 1984 Has Been Unavoidably Cancelled...' which depicted Winston Smith in a world filled with the apathetic, the lazy, the bloody-minded and the incompetent. The telescreens are broken, Room 101 contains a single wheezing stoat because they can't get rats at this time of year, etc. The author's note at the start of the story states that it is intended to prove 'that totalitarianism could never work in Britain. Nothing else does, so how could it?'
** As [[Isaac Asimov]] pointed out in his review of ''1984'' (which he thought was overrated), while the economy of Oceania is in shambles, the television sets (which always have to be switched on) seem to work all the time.
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* Subverted in an episode of ''[[Jackie Chan Adventures (Animation)|Jackie Chan Adventures]]''. The [[Monster of the Week|episode's antagonists]], a well-organized magical cult, plan to harness the Stonehenge's magical power. These cultists had planned for every possible event and had Jackie and Jade in a tight spot for most of the episode. They ultimately complete their ritual, only to discover {{spoiler|[[We Could Have Avoided All This|that the Stonehenge really wasn't magical]].}} Hilariously, {{spoiler|a UFO lands at the site after everyone has left}}.
* There are a few occasions in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender (Animation)|Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' where the bad guys' army seems to be thwarted by incompetence of and poor communication between its forces which have nothing to do with the actions of the protagonists.
* Lampshaded in ''[[The
{{quote| '''Kuzco''': Wait, how did you get here before us?<br />
'''Yzma''': I - How ''did'' we get here before them, Kronk?<br />
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