Springtime for Hitler/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character tries to fail miserably and ends up succeeding at their goal.

  • Straight: Bob is a general fighting a war against Emperor Evulz, with the plan to surrender and accept a cushy position as an advisor. However, Evulz assumes that Bob's surrender is a feint and gives up himself.
  • Exaggerated: Bob screws up and gets the earth nuked. However, that nuke ended up solving global warming, so he ultimately succeeded.
  • Justified: Sometimes, the upside of failure can be even better than if people had succeeded.
    • Also, Bob doesn't really care much about what he's doing. It's really all the same to him whether he fails or succeeds.
    • Alternatively: When Bob sets out to find incompetents to fail at the key jobs, he accidentally hires Bunny Ears Lawyers and Genius Ditzes.
  • Inverted: Bob tries his hardest, and succeeds. However, due to unintended consequences of his success, he ends up ultimately failing at his goals.
  • Subverted: Evulz' surrender was false and he wipes the floor with Bob's army. Bob ends up failing at his ultimate goal.
  • Double Subverted: However, this surrender in and of itself was a Springtime for Hitler scenario because Evulz knew he didn't have what it took to take on Bob anyway.
  • Parodied: Bob throws a huge party the night before a decisive battle, with gallons of wine, mountains of food and a second army made entirely of strippers. It goes til morning despite the fact Eluz's army has surrounded. Bob hopes his soldiers will be so bloated and exhausted they won't even be able to hold a weapon, let along fight. However, it only convinces Evulz further that it's a trap.
  • Deconstructed: Bob succeeds at his goal, but no one wants to associate with someone who succeeded by failing.
  • Reconstructed: Until they notice that the drive and attention to detail Bob used towards failing can be used an example to new officiers. Bob becomes a textbook example of hardwork.
  • Zig Zagged: *???
  • Averted: Bob seriously tries to defeat Evuluz.
  • Enforced: "It's time for an homage to The Producers!"
  • Lampshaded: "Well, I was trying to fail because..."
  • Invoked: Alice convinces Bob to try to fail, knowing he's such a failure he'd even fail at that.
  • Inverted: Bob tries to succeed and fails.
  • Defied: Bob took extra time to consider what he'd do if he succeeded, setting up a Xanatos Gambit.
  • Discussed: Bob and his adviser Alice are watching the plan resolutely fail to go awry. "Alice, where did I go right?"
  • Conversed: "If he's such a failure, then how come Bob's succeeded at his first attempt?!"

Fail to Springtime for Hitler.

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