Basic Trope: A character has a specific plan devised to help them with their current circumstances, no matter how unusual or unlikely those circumstances are.
- Straight: Amazing Girl and Bob have uncovered evidence of malevolent aliens infiltrating the government to prepare Earth for a massive invasion. Much to Bob's surprise, Amazing Girl has a plan for just this eventuality.
- Exaggerated:
- Amazing Girl is The Omniscient, and has literally planned for every eventuality in life. Including that one you just thought of, and that one, and the ones after them too.
- Amazing Girl has a a plan that not only takes into eventuality the possibility of alien infiltrators (a problem with a broad definition), but that covers an increasingly absurd amount of minute details such as the alien infiltrators having a base in Walla Walla guarded by cyborg T-Rexes with technology powered by cream cheese (which is completely different from the plan for alien infiltrators having a base in Knockemstiff with Civil War soldier zombies and the secondary objective of brainwashing the whole world into eating only tofu).
- Downplayed:
- Bob and Amazing Girl find themselves in a cave. Amazing Girl pulls out rope and a flashlight, as well as a local map of the caves.
- Thanks to Amazing Girl's efforts in coordinating with law enforcement, there is a Police Code for Everything. Practicality and encumbrance got in the way of having police officers equipped for everything, though.
- Xanatos Gambit
- Justified:
- Amazing Girl is a Crazy Survivalist or otherwise Properly Paranoid or Batman.
- Amazing Girl has precognition and prepares for what she knows is going to happen.
- Turns out that every one of Amazing Girl's plans has many different practical applications. Plan 9 for space ants works just as well for space termites.
- Amazing Girl's preventive measures are just more evidence that she lives in a World of Weirdness — seriously, why else would she have been able to purchase T-Rex repellent from a professional veterinarian?
- Alice has been in a world of shit a whole lot. She goes through all the trouble to make 26 plans because they all inevitably fail on her.
- Inverted:
- Amazing Girl doesn't have a plan, but she is very very good at the Indy Ploy or MacGyvering.
- Amazing Girl never knows what to do in the most mundane of situations.
- Amazing Girl refused to build or prepare for anything, relying entirely on her bare hands and spur-of-the-moment plans.
- Subverted:
- Amazing Girl does have a plan; unfortunately, she Forgot to Feed the Monster, and is unable to put the plan into effect.
- Amazing Girl has a plan, but something she doesn't anticipate happens, thus completely ruining it.
- Amazing Girl has a plan, but it's more complicated than it is practical, and backfires greatly.
- Amazing Girl puts the wrong plan into effect.
- Amazing Girl insists she has a plan to calm her allies, but it soon becomes clear it's an Indy Ploy.
- Doubly Subverted:
- Fortunately, Amazing Girl also has a plan for what to do if something prevented her from putting into effect the original plan or unexpected developments arose.
- Amazing Girl was prepared for her own failure and this failure automatically activates the backup plan.
- It only looked like the wrong plan; Amazing Girl in fact hit Exactly What She Aimed At.
- She is, however, better at improvising things on the fly than good old Indy because she took time to develop a very varied skill set.
- Parodied:
- Amazing Girl carries around with her the Big Book of Complicated (or Simple) Plans for Unlikely Situations, which she consults whenever she's faced with a problem. It invariably contains the solution.
- Amazing Girl has a plan in case aliens infiltrate the government, but she's only planned for that highly specific situation and it never comes up... or it does come up, but once some other crazy situation appears (say for example "being chased by Satan-worshipping biker gangs through Death Valley") it turns out she doesn't have a plan for it (for additional irony points, it may be because it is too crazy even for her).
- The absurd amounts of preparation Amazing Girl has readied are more proof of her being a Parody Sue.
- Amazing Girl knows what to bring because she read the script.
- Zig-Zagged: Amazing Girl has a plan to thwart the Big Bad but as it turns out, he had his own contingencies going and countered her plan. Just when it looks like the heroes will lose, it turns out Amazing Girl had a Batman Gambit in place that centered on allowing the bad guy to get close to winning before defeating him. After it is all over, she admits the second plan was really just an Indy Ploy she thought up on the fly.
- Averted:
- Although Amazing Girl has planned for some eventualities, there are some things that even she can't see coming.
- Whatever kind of fancy gadget Amazing Girl brought along for the sake of being prepared, it only attracted trouble instead (such as thieves).
- As "crazy" as Amazing Girl's preparedness was, the situation is a billion times worse than any of her assumptions (because drama) and she is not prepared enough (ex. Alice lives in Kansas, bought a house capable of withstanding F-5 tornadoes... which becomes ground zero for the landfall of history's first recorded F-10).
- Enforced: The writers want to stress what a brilliant tactical genius Amazing Girl is.
- Lampshaded:
- "... There is no possible way you could have seen that coming". "And yet"
- Raccoon Kid: "What, are you gonna track the aliens with a personal satellite?"
Amazing Girl: "..."
Raccoon Kid: "I was just kidding you have a satellite?"
- Invoked: Amazing Girl spends every waking moment thinking of every possible situation that could arise and making a plan for it.
- Exploited:
- The Big Bad knows Amazing Girl plans for everything, including how to stop her own allies in case they pull a Face–Heel Turn or get Brainwashed and Crazy. He steals these plans in order to defeat her teammates, then frames her for it.
- The Big Bad steals Amazing Girl's Hidden Supplies to bolster his own (hey, even overlords need food, too).
- Defied:
- The aliens spend every waking moment and divert all of their resources towards devising a plan which absolutely no one could possibly anticipate.
- The aliens destroy her plans, including the one about what to do when aliens destroy your plans.
- The aliens kill Amazing Girl. Her friends find out the hard way that she really didn't had a plan in place for that eventuality.
- Discussed: "I've been traveling with Amazing Girl for years, and so far I haven't encountered a single situation which she doesn't have a plan for. It's actually kind of creepy, really".
- Conversed: "Amazing Girl must be the most forward-thinking fictional character I've ever come across".
- Deconstructed:
- Since there is absolutely no way that Amazing Girl could conceivably plan for every single eventuality, Amazing Girl's plans look good on paper but are inevitably flawed when they come into contact with real situations.
- Because Amazing Girl's plans are that good, people begin to suspect that she's in on it, since no one could be that well prepared.
- Amazing Girl's mind is slowly shattering under the strain of trying to prepare for every eventuality, no matter how unlikely.
- Amazing Girl prepared for everything... except the sheer WEIGHT of all those wonderful toys. As a result, she has to abandon her preparations and end up going into battle barehanded and unprepared.
- Amazing Girl's greatest weakness is Didn't See That Coming. While the reaction of most people having a Spanner in the Works appearing would be them going "Oh, Crap!" while they try to figure things out, she instead freezes to the point she has risked getting herself (and other people) killed.
- Amazing Girl's plan, for reasons beyond her control or comprehension, becomes a Corrupted Contingency. Now she is going to have to look at the survivors in the eye and admit that whatever horrors they endured were her idea.
- Reconstructed:
- Although Amazing Girl's plans can't cover everything, they are at least good enough to work from, and Amazing Girl is adept at adjusting them to compensate for situational and contextual differences.
- Amazing Girl is prepared for people suspecting that she's in on it, and she has a plan how to prove her innocence.
- Amazing Girl's mind has already shattered, and this is precisely why she is so obsessively prepared.
- Amazing Girl is not only prepared for anything, but the items she has used to prepare herself are all multifunctional and relatively light, allowing her to carry them about fairly easily.
- None of Amazing Girl's plans ever come in handy, but the practice of constantly making plans for new scenarios makes her an expert at the Indy Ploy.
- As horrible as things got because Amazing Girl's contingency plan backfired/misfired/was hijacked, they could have been a hell of a lot worse.
- Played for Laughs:
- Amazing Girl gets into slapstick dangers and her plans are very funny and weird.
- Amazing Girl just happened to find some rope lying around about a minute before it was needed and decided to act like she was prepared all along.
- Amazing Girl seriously thinks that something sensible and common to do like carrying a ballpoint pen in her pocket or credit card in her wallet counts as "being crazy prepared". For additional comedy points, that pen or credit card is what saves the universe.
- Amazing Girl's preparedness makes her the Deus ex Machina to the tale of Jim, the guy who has busted himself to the bone trying to survive the alien invasion. For further comedy points, her role as the Deus ex Machina happens at the exact time and place that makes Jim's efforts a complete waste of time.
- Played for Drama: Amazing Girl is cornered by two rapist thugs. She has planned for this possibility, and darts through them to the right. She did not plan for a larger gang to be waiting for her there, let alone each with super powers, as she is not being targeted for rape but being kidnapped by Human Traffickers. She prays every minute she escapes. After some tense moments and injuries, she finally escapes.
- Played for Horror: Alice "Amazing Girl" Troper is an absurdly hyper-competent Serial Killer that loves to hand her victims a Hope Spot only for them to find out that she's at least a hundred and fifty steps ahead and there is absolutely nothing, and that is nothing ever in the universe (not even thinking that getting the attention of that Alien Invasion that just started will hopefully Summon Bigger Fish to get her off their backs), that will stop her.
I knew you'd want to go back to Crazy-Prepared...
