History Main / NoDelaysForTheWicked

* Averted in "WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand", where the pilot movie features the first firing of Zurg's evil ray gun getting delayed because [[SurroundedByIdiots his minions installed the batteries the wrong way]].

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. TheMenInBlack [[ItWasHereISwear 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 or decides he can make more money through {{blackmail}} or writing a tell-all book detailing the conspiracy. The commanders never [[GloryHound put their own careers]] over the goals of the organization, The WeirdnessCensor fails so rarely that the OnlySaneMan is easily dismissed, and the {{Mooks}} never [[WeirdTradeUnion form a union]]. If an employee is [[YouHaveFailedMe executed]], their family or work buddies don't get suspicious and investigate. If there's an EnemyCivilWar, it's probably because of deliberate manipulation on the heroes' part (such as FeedTheMole) or [[ResistanceAsPlanned a deliberate ploy of the enemy]] to reveal and [[ThePurge purge]] any nay-sayers within their ranks, rather than the villainous schemes just collapsing under their own weight and contradictions.

This power extends further to inanimate objects. An evil commander's cell phone is always reliable, but a hero's cell phone will go out of order [[CellPhonesAreUseless whenever it would be inconvenient]]. The stupid ticket machine at the airport which doesn't recognize the heroes' identification card will always give the villains the plane tickets they need, even if they were traveling under a fake name. Bad weather won't delay the villain's flight and mess up their strict timetable. The villains will never fail at anything ButterflyOfDoom. The exception is a SpannerInTheWorks, but that usually [[YouCantThwartStageOne only happens at the end]].

This power extends further to inanimate objects. An evil commander's cell phone is always reliable, but a hero's cell phone will go out of order [[CellPhonesAreUseless whenever it would be inconvenient]]. The stupid ticket machine at the airport which doesn't recognize the heroes' identification card will always give the villains the plane tickets they need, even if they were traveling under a fake name. Bad weather won't delay the villain's flight and mess up their strict timetable. The villains will never fail at anything ForWantOfANail. The exception is a SpannerInTheWorks, but that usually [[YouCantThwartStageOne only happens at the end]].

* Played up to egregious degrees in ''{{WebAnimation/RWBY}}'', as villains during the events of Volumes 4-7 are able to quickly move from one location to another in between episodes almost as though they had VillainTeleportation. One notable example being with Tyrian Callows, who during Volume 4 was able to go from [[BigBad Salem's]] evil lair to the Anima region and ''back'' in the span of the ''exact'' Volume that emphasized how arduous a task it was for the main characters, RNJR, to get just from the coast of Anima to its capital city, Mistral.

** This was parodied by British humorist 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?'

* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' occasionally suffers from this. While the Camarilla is desperate to keep humans from finding out about the existence of vampires, the Sabbat apparently gets a free ride - government agencies and police forces are apparently totally oblivious to them, even though they actively work to undermine the {{Masquerade}}. This was noted and explained in the Sabbat Splatbook - while the Sabbat officially scoffs at the thought of hiding from humanity, its own elders have come to the same conclusion as the Camarilla: Humanity knowing about vampires would be Bad News, which is why any Sabbat packs engaging in too obvious activities are told to turn it down and clean up after themselves in no uncertain terms. The difference between the sects is mostly in the clean-up: The Camarilla hides its skeletons in the closet with media manipulation and memory-rewrites, the Sabbat simply puts any witnesses right into the closet as well. The only time the Sabbat actively works at breaking the Masquerade is when fighting the Camarilla, reasoning that the other sect will believe the Sabbat doesn't care about humans finding out about them and thus spend its own resources to clean up, essentially making the whole thing into a game of Chicken.

* In ''Film/{{Outland}}'', the shuttle bringing the assassins sent to kill the protagonist arrives early. In the Mad Magazine parody, the hero comments that this is the first flight in the history of the station to not arrive late.

** Worth noting, the immigration process is only so ruthlessly efficient when dealing with innocent people. Season 1 of the [[Series/LawAndOrder mothership series]] had a VillainOfTheWeek who had been languishing in immigration custody for years as his removal process was pending.

** Lampshaded and then explained away in the episode "E.B.E.", where Scully questions why a government incapable of a balanced budget could mastermind conspiracies that The Lone Gunmen espouse. Byers responds that the kind of men who engage in these conspiracies aren't a bunch of politicians on Capitol Hill "trying to bone pages," but are supposed to be an inner level of government that focuses strictly on those kinds of ops. It has implications for the rest of the series; are the Cigarette Smoking Man and his international cohorts acting with the explicit authorization of their parent governments (in short, does the POTUS know of the aliens), or are they so deep and integral that they act with impunity, having no direct line of authority to contend with? [[spoiler: It's later revealed that Truman at least knew (and possibly also the later Presidents), but the secret cabal is so powerful they can do essentially whatever they'd like. Since they already killed at least one President (JFK) doubtless all of the rest know better than to defy them. It's also explicitly stated they transcend governments.]]

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' tends to avert this. They keep a worldwide {{Masquerade}} running... ''barely''. It is very clear that it only works because most world governments are cooperating/funding the Foundation, and they [[NecessarilyEvil must cross all kinds of moral lines]] to keep the [[ArtifactofDoom objects]] contained. Yet, read enough of the site, it becomes clear that with the many close calls, containment breaches from employee errors, and many other incidents, things are only kept secret because the Foundation has [[EasyAmnesia drugs that can completely wipe people's memories]].

** An excellent example is Warp travel, (almost) the only way to get from planet to planet. Where humans depend on Navigators and regularly fall victim to [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace daemons and warpspawn and other horrible things living there]], the forces of Chaos can control the Warp (if their gods aren't feeling like dicks to them that day), the Eldar use a different dimension called the Webway, the Tau use a safer but much slower method that doesn't ''quite'' enter the Warp, the Tyranids move at sub-FTL in realspace (and good thing too, otherwise they'd have eaten the galaxy already), the Necrons have science so advanced they can go at FTL in realspace... In fact, the only faction to not fear getting waylaid by Warp currents are the orks, because it means a good fight either way.

* Literature/TheDraka are an exaggeration of this trope. They are founded by loyalists fleeing North America after the Revolutionary War and they somehow turn South Africa into a productive, industrialized slave-owning state within ten years. By 1900 they control all of Africa and have the second-largest economy in the world. By 1950 they control almost of Eurasia as well. They're technologically a generation ahead of everyone else and less than 10% of their population isn't a slave. They never fail, they ''always'' win, [[IdiotPlot and the world's other nations never do anything about it until it's too late]]. When they '''know''' the Draka are planning a first strike against them, they delay their own in the hopes they can negotiate peace. This is despite the fact the Draka's ideology is "enslave the strong, crush the weak, torture/rape the rest". Nuclear holocaust is preferable to Drakan rule. The entire trilogy is S.M. Stirling handing Social Darwinist slave owners an "I Win" button.

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. TheMenInBlack [[ItWasHereISwear 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 or decides he can make more money through {{blackmail}} or writing a tell-all book detailing the conspiracy. The commanders never [[GloryHound put their own careers]] over the goals of the organization, The WeirdnessCensor fails so rarely that the OnlySaneMan is easily dismissed, and the {{Mooks}} never [[WeirdTradeUnion form a union]]. If an employee is [[YouHaveFailedMe executed]], their family or work buddies don't get suspicious and investigate. If there's an EnemyCivilWar, it's probably because of deliberate manipulation on the heroes' part (such as FeedTheMole) or [[ResistanceOnSchedule a deliberate ploy of the enemy]] to [[ThePurge purge]] any nay-sayers on their ranks, rather than the villainous schemes just collapsing under their own weight and contradictions.

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. TheMenInBlack [[ItWasHereISwear 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 or decides he can make more money through {{blackmail}} or writing a tell-all book detailing the conspiracy. The commanders never [[GloryHound put their own careers]] over the goals of the organization, The WeirdnessCensor fails so rarely that the OnlySaneMan is easily dismissed, and the {{Mooks}} never [[WeirdTradeUnion form a union]]. If an employee is [[YouHaveFailedMe executed]], their family or work buddies don't get suspicious and investigate. If there's an EnemyCivilWar, it's probably because of deliberate manipulation on the heroes' part (such as FeedTheMole), rather than the villainous schemes just collapsing under their own weight and contradictions.

* {{Lampshaded}} and subverted in ''VideoGame/ManiacMansion'', where [[MadScientist Dr. Fred]] is forced to work with cheap equipment because he's on a budget. Most notably is the fact that he apparently had to cut a lot of corners in constructing the [[ILoveNuclearPower nuclear reactor]] that powers his mind control machine, to the point where he has to use his ''swimming pool'' to cool the fuel rods. Needless to say, his slipshod approach makes it tragically easy to cause a meltdown that destroys everything within a five-mile radius of the mansion, not to mention the mansion itself.