The Producer Thinks of Everything

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

This trope concerns where the Production Team has clearly Shown Their Work in regards to the entire show, but more so than just that.

If your TV show has plenty of Chekhov's Gun, Chekhov's Gunman, Chekhov's Armory, A Batman Gambit or two, Arc Words, Myth Arcs, and the Early-Bird Cameo, chances are your show is in the hands of a production team that goes above and beyond the call of duty to create a truly memorable and deeply detailed experience. Not to be confused with an actual Batman Gambit, Xanatos Gambit, or the Myth Arc itself. Other signs of the producers foreseeing everything would include introducing plot points far before they become important, possible sneak peeks of characters in the Pilot Episode, and a generally close attention to detail that you wouldn't find on just any show. This is about not only careful planning, but also anticipating and routing around troubles such as Real Life Writes the Plot and Executive Meddling.

Producers and the Creative Talent 'behind' the show are the key here. This trope does NOT concern the in-universe or in-story examples of characters planning things out to a ridiculous degree.

Compare The Dev Team Thinks of Everything for the video game equivalent, and contrast Truth in Television Indy Ploys and Writing by the Seat of Your Pants for when they have almost no idea where things may lead to, leading to The Chris Carter Effect.

(Feel free to improve upon this description and add more examples).

Examples of The Producer Thinks of Everything include:

Anime and Manga

  • Eiichiro Oda's work on One Piece shows shades of this. The discussion mentions a Vice Admiral Garp, Luffy's grandpa, Laboon the whale and Brook, the Little Garden giants and their ex-subordinates at Enies Lobby.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist - The first anime was completely different to the second specifically because the mangaka had plans for the story and wanted them to come about on their own pace, and because she didn't want Filler Arc after Filler Arc.
  • Naoki Urasawa. The man is simply a genius at constructing insanely complex stories with little filler, where characters often appear quite a while before their importance is revealed and every question posed will be answered.
  • The first season of Death Note. Your Mileage May Vary concerning the second season.

Literature

  • Harry Potter quickly gained a reputation for this, with its fans obsessively poring over every minor character or object introduced trying to find out what importance they had. It got to the point where, when presented with the mystery of who stole one of Voldemort's Horcruxes and left a note with the initials RAB, many fans incorrectly dismissed a character with those initials who had been mentioned all of twice in books one through six as "too obvious".
    • There's also the one time it backfired on JK Rowling. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Rowling gave the kid that Dudley was bullying the last name "Evans", which is the maiden name of Lily Potter and Petunia Dursley. She had no intentions to make him a secret relative of Harry's, but don't tell that to the fanbase, who went crazy with absurd rumors regarding this kid as soon as he was revealed.
  • Warrior Cats, because the author Victoria Holmes plans out each Myth Arc before she writes it, you can find future plot twists foreshadowed many books before they appeared, throwaway lines loaded with guns of the Chekhov variety and many Chekhov's Gunmen hidden among the background characters. Just to name one example, in Sunset Brambleclaw thinks that because of the lush summer, even the normally slim Leafpool is looking quite plump. Six books later in Sunrise, it's revealed that Leafpool was pregnant in Sunset. And this is one of the minor examples.

Live-Action TV

  • J. Michael Straczynski had planned out all five seasons of Babylon 5 before the show even entered production, and while some details here and there had to be changed, it still showed.
  • Fringe. There's a visual clue in every episode as to what the next episode will be about... and it's always so subtle or obscure that you never notice it on your first viewing. Then there's the Observer making appearances in every episode (and in other Fox shows, like American Idol!), the mysterious glyphs before commercial breaks forming an alphabetical cipher that spells out words, seemingly random text in the background turning out to be important clues... even Olivia's dark-colored clothing and Walter's seemingly-random food cravings are significant...
  • No matter what some people may claim, there has always been evidence that Lost showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have always known where the show was going, or at least the major plot points and twists. The misconception that they're "making it up as they go along" came from the stalling during season 2 where they were unable to reveal anything major without knowing how much longer the series would last.
    • Well, they've known since around mid-season 1, at least. They've confirmed several times in interviews that they hadn't worked out the show's main mythology until they knew the show would actually last more than twelve episodes.
    • Jacob and The Man In Black are foreshadowed in the pilot; they weren't named by that point, but they did have plans for a personification of light and dark to appear.
  • Daniel Knauf planned six seasons in advance for Carnivale. Unfortunately, studio interference led to a less challenging second season and cancellation soon after.
  • Arrested Development, in too many instances to count.
  • Degrassi of all shows, can do this when the writers actually work really hard on a story. The biggest example of this would be Rick's storyline leading up to the shooting.
  • The production team on QI correctly guessing which joke answers the panelists would give and setting them as the forfeit.

Stephen Fry: What was the Great Disappointment?
Jo Brand: Have you been speaking to my husband?
[klaxon]

Stephen: Name a poisonous snake.
Jimmy Carr: Piers Morgan.
[klaxon]

Stephen Fry: Imagine you've been transported to the 19th century, and the trip has given you a banging headache, and you want to have a hole drilled in your head to relieve the pressure. So, where's the best place to have it?
[Alan Davies points to the top of his head]
[klaxon]

  • The Sarah Connor Chronicles has a ton of subtle foreshadowing through the first and second season. For example, the seemingly unrelated Terminator of the Week Greenway in "Automatic For the People" (2x03) loses an eye during the brawl with Cameron. That same eye is recovered by Catherine Weaver and Ellison, and is used to replace the destroyed one in Cromartie's chassis half a season later when he becomes the body for John Henry.
  • In the Firefly episode "War Stories" (and later, Serenity) we learn that River was being turned into a living weapon by the Academy. We don't see her true ninja-osity until the movie, apparently. Apparently is the key word, because in "Ariel," while she is handcuffed by the Alliance guards, if one looks closely, one can see that she's quietly trying to slip out of her restraints when no one is looking.
  • Star Trek: DS9 introduced the idea of the Dominion in a Ferengi episode (DS9 for 'joke episode'). The Dominion turn out to be the main villain after the next season until the end of the show. In the extras, the producers even say they did this intentionally.
    • Thus the producers inverted the origin of the Ferengi on Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were introduced by name and reputation, intended to be the new big villain race. Instead, they were toothy, ineffectual little trolls, showing how little the TNG producers had it together their first season.
  • The creators of How I Met Your Mother plan their use of flashbacks ahead of time. How far ahead? During the second season (filmed in 2006), they revealed that they'd shot some footage to be used as a flashback for the series finale.
  • The opening credits of Game of Thrones. Not only are there stunning Clock Punk castles rising up from a map, breathtaking music and the backstory told by metaphor, but the areas given detail change per episode in accordance with what areas are the main focus of the episode.
    • Not only this but also they've put the house sigils in front of the actor's name, respective to their character.
  • Doctor Who may be this. Steven Moffat planned the whole River Song arc from the start.
    • In one of the most interesting cases, the musical cue for the Silence briefly plays during Amy's introduction in "The Eleventh Hour", a season before they become a threat.
    • There have also been reports of a Silence being spotted in the background in "The Beast Below".
    • In a mid-season two episode, a briefly seen newspaper has a reference to the final enemy of season three.
  • As the main description on HBO's The Wire, "all the pieces matter" accurately explains David Simon's plotting of the series well in advance. Multiple plot points are set up a season (or multiple seasons) in advance, and are foreshadowed so subtly that it requires a second viewing to catch all the instances. Barksdale soldier Bodie's death is telegraphed right from the third episode of the series. A key witness in Clay Davis' trial in the final season is a chauffer who was (initially thought of as) a bit character in a first-season episode. Omar's death is foreshadowed more than two seasons before it actually happens via the character of Kenard.

Video Games

  • Level 5's games' plots in general usually have a Chekhov's Armory, with a couple of the subtler details not boomeranging back until the sequel, or even the sequel's sequel. Interviews with CEO Hino Akihiro have confirmed that they do plan out entire trilogies at a time, and it's not just Writing by the Seat of Your Pants. Some specifics:
    • From the very beginning of the Professor Layton series, the title professor always wears the same hat, refuses to take it off, and will go to ridiculous lengths to do so. The reason for this is revealed in the ending of the third game.
    • Likewise, Don Paolo establishes himself in the first game as the self-proclaimed archnemesis of Professor Layton, who has no clue what he ever did to upset Don Paolo. How this came to be is also revealed two games later. (And it's even related to how he got his hat!)
    • The first Inazuma Eleven game introduces a finishing technique named "Emperor Penguin No. 2" halfway through the game, which is likely to leave the player wondering if there's a "No. 1" anywhere. What Emperor Penguin No. 1 is, and even the reason why nobody dared so much as mention it previously, is finally revealed halfway through the second game.
    • In another case similar to Professor Layton's hat, from Kidou's first appearance in the very first chapter of the first Inazuma Eleven game, he is always wearing a pair of blue-rimmed goggles, except he is consistently shown without them in flashbacks to his childhood. The reason for this is explained in the third game.

Web Comics

  • Sluggy Freelance has call-backs to events that occurred long before, the most drastic being the fact that Pete had been dropping hints about Oasis being a pyrokinetic from her very first appearance, nearly a decade before The Reveal. The forums have a lot of speculation as to how much Pete Abrams plans out in advance and how much is just stuff he throws in to foster this image (a character that first appeared rather suddenly during the Oceans Unmoving arc getting his arrival in Timeless Space explained four years later, for example, seems more like a throwaway Continuity Nod.)
  • Order of the Stick is all over this trope.
  • Eight Bit Theater is a Ten Year Long Brick Joke.

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Futurama first appeared to be a pretty entertaining animated show where nothing ever changes, with the only long-term story arc focusing on the fairly mundane possibility of Fry and Leela hooking up. Cut to where we find out how Fry ended up getting frozen (we can even see the perpetrator's SHADOW in the pilot episode), Bender being buried in the desert, the crew being the crash-landed ship in Roswell, finding out why Fry is the way is he is, and others. This show was surprisingly well laid-out from the beginning, not a lot felt like it was made up as they went along.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender is an example of this. Sure, some episodes were more filler than others but the creators had the whole series planned out before hand.
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