Never Recycle Your Schemes in Video Games.
- Averted in Azure Striker Gunvolt. While the goal The Big Bad of the second game, Zonda, is more or less the opposite of the first game's Big Bad Nova in that she wants to Kill All Humans for the sake of Adepts while he wanted to subjugate all Adepts to force peace between humans and Adepts, her plan is nigh-on identical: Merge with the Muse Septima and use its power for herself. Unlike Nova, whose plan failed because Joule was Fighting from the Inside at the end, Zonda takes the extra precaution to weaken Joule's will and adapt her Septima to herself before commencing the merging. And it works, and she's only stopped because the heroes were just strong enough to stop her despite her newfound powers.
- Fate/Grand Order: Averted to the point that the same scheme ends up being used twice. Ashiya Douman's plan in the Heiyan-kyo chapter is basically the same plan that he used in the Shimousa chapter, just with some edits. Later, a separate villain rehashes Heiyan-kyo, even to the point of recycling Douman's monsters, during the Fate/Samurai Remnant crossover event.
- LEGO Dimensions: Averted during the Sonic the Hedgehog Level Pack, Doctor Eggman reuses the Death Egg again. And rebuilds the Death Egg Robot. Sonic promptly lampshades it.Eggman: Oh, Eggman, you genius! Who would've expected a Death Egg Robot?
Sonic: Well, anyone... this is like the fourth time you've used it... - Mega Man:
- Mega Man (Classic): Dr. Wily averts this trope ten times over. He's got one plan — build/steal eight Robot Masters and use them to take over the world. Depending on the game, he may tack on an addition like "make it look like someone else is responsible for the mayhem", "steal a single, giant robot too", or "use something special to make the robots stronger". None of it has stopped Mega Man from breaking all of his dangerous toys.
- Conversely, Tiesel Bonne of Mega Man Legends is very careful to play this trope straight. Aside from relying on big machines he never uses the same scheme twice, even holding review meetings after each scheme (successful or not) to go over the strengths and weaknesses of the operation. In the first game alone he tries to attack the city to coerce the keys to the ruins from City Hall, then tries to dig to the treasure directly, then tries to steal Mega Man's keys, then tries to wait for Mega Man to unlock the treasure for him, then tries to fake his death and bide his time until he can strike at an opportune moment, and ultimately feigns admitting defeat to steal the treasure behind everyone's backs, which works. Even Barrel admires the man's tenacity. In the end of the series, when he's run completely out of schemes, he more or less just calls it quits and decides to just side with Barrel and Roll to try and rescue Mega Man.
- Averted in Metroid: The plot of the first game involves the Space Pirates trying to weaponize the Metroids in their hidden base on Zebes. The plot of Super Metroid is the exact same, with the slight wrinkle that they have to steal the Baby Metroid first, since the Metroids themselves went extinct during the events of Metroid II and its remake. note The Prime subseries expands on this, showing that weaponizing the Metroids is more or less a constant project for the Pirates, which makes the Federation's decision to hire Samus to exterminate the Metroids in Metroid II much more understandable.
- In Pokémon Black and White, Ghetsis manipulated N into convincing Unova to free all their Pokémon so that they would have no Pokémon to defend themselves with and he would be unstoppable, but the player character manages to defeat him in foil his plans. Two years later, in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, Ghetsis' plan this time involves force and revolves around having captured Kyurem and using it to freeze the world and steal every Pokémon directly, which he himself lampshades after Kyurem fuses with the Dragon (Zekrom/Reshiram) N showed up with.Ghetsis: You fool... Last time, I was going to use you to capture people's hearts and minds to rule them! But this time, I'm simply going to use overwhelming power and rule with an iron fist! Do you understand? If you had simply become king, Unova would have remained beautiful!
- In Shining Force II, a non-villainous scheme involves Sarah gets the party into Granseal castle by pretending to have a package that Sir Astral needs while he's checking up on the King. Later, after having broken out of Galam jail and fought your way outside, Slade, your newest recruit, attempts to do the same thing to the Galam soldiers in exchange for safe passage into Granseal, under siege by Galam. However, this time, it horribly backfires.
- In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, after fighting against the newly-formed Ouroboros, Moebius K broadcasted an illusion to the Irises of the soldiers on both the Keves and Agnus sides to perceive the Ouroboros as shadowy monsters, whom they would attack on sight. Much later, Moebius J (actually former Kevesi soldier Joran) considers pulling the same trick as the Ouroboros approach the Agnian Colony Lambda, but decides to come up with something with more dramatic flair instead.
