Basic Trope: A Failure Gambit backfires and becomes an unexpected, unwanted success.
- Straight: Bob is a general fighting a war against Emperor Evulz, with the plan to surrender and get himself Kicked Upstairs later. However, Evulz assumes that Bob's surrender is a feint and gives up himself.
- Exaggerated: Bob screws up even more badly than he planned and gets the earth nuked. However, that nuke ended up solving global warming, so he ultimately succeeded.
- Downplayed:
- Bob sends small pockets of units against the main army while the rest are sent away, to make sure those units were away at the time of loss. The ones he sent away found a stash of weapons that then proceeded to take out most of the enemy army.
- Epic Fail
- Justified:
- Bob had absolutely no idea that winning was even an option, so he did.
- 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 incompetent people to fail at the key jobs, he accidentally hires Bunny Ears Lawyers and Genius Ditzes.
- Bob attempts to screw up by taking endless risky maneuvers. This boldness accidentally pays off as not only are the long shots high-risk, high-reward but it amounts to Confusion Fu. His foes, who assumed he would employ reasonable tactics, are consequently caught off guard.
- The Emperor's spy network is staffed with incompetents feeding him misleading intelligence about Bob's capabilities. (Only too late does Evulz realize he's Surrounded by Idiots.)
- Inverted:
- Bob tries his hardest, and succeeds. Due to unintended consequences of his success, however, he ends up ultimately failing at his goals.
- Bob tries to succeed, but fails.
- 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 was itself 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 comprising strippers. It goes until morning, everything edible being consumed, even though Evulz's army has them surrounded. Bob hopes his soldiers will be so bloated and exhausted they won't be able to hold a weapon, let alone fight. However, it only convinces Evulz further that it's a trap.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob sabotages his army and surrenders to Evulz. Evulz responds in kind, only to reveal that he was feigning a surrender and his army seems to overpower Bob's, but then Bob's soldiers regain their composure and start killing Evulz' Mooks by the gross. Unfortunately, Evulz has Mooks to spare. But then Alice gets a Big Damn Heroes moment...
- Averted:
- Bob seriously tries to defeat Evulz, and succeeds.
- Bob tries to fail, and does.
- 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.
- Exploited: Bob relaxes his standards, and he and those around him respond by exceeding the previous ones.
- 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 Bob is such a failure, how did he succeed on his first attempt?!"
- Implied: Alice is told that they need to act quickly to take advantage of the new opening in the war front Bob has made. Before she leaves to do so, she sees Bob and thanks him for thinking up such a brilliant plan. Bob mumbles something about losing if he were that brilliant before walking away.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob succeeds at his goal, but nobody wants to associate with someone who succeeded by failing.
- The eventual discovery of Bob's success being built on an attempted fraud makes people get pissed at Bob. At best, Bob still believes his windfall to be a Plague of Good Fortune.
- Reconstructed: Success by deliberate failure is seen as no different than success by any other means.
- Plotted a Good Waste: The war is very one-sided, and Bob's goal of guarding Tropesburg from Evulz is supposed to be the defining battle as the battle would determine how the loss of the alliance goes. When Evulz gives up, it means the war is only going to go on longer with more losses.
- Played for Laughs: It should have been impossible to win the battle the way Bob set it up; however, due to many accidents, it ends up being an astonishing victory that beats all odds, to the point where the war is won by Evulz declaring that such a commander would most likely be planning something much worse.
- Played for Drama: Bob, who was tired of being mocked and insulted for his skill as a commander, fully intends to give over a post to Evulz just so he could get some respect. Just before the battle, however, Bob meets another commander who actually compliments him and respects him. Despite winning, Bob was not only worried about getting somebody he cared about killed, but is now called a hero by people he detests.
- Played For Horror: Bob's plan was supposed to hurt nobody. Evulz' decision to escalate in retaliation to Bob's success leaves behind a body count that is impossible to count (and quite honestly is too horrible to want to). Bob goes down in history as one of the causes of "The Evulz Massacre", the opening gambit of Evulz' downfall.
Fail to Springtime for Hitler
