Spanner In The Works / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

A fairly common stock superhero plot consists of bad guys managing to finally defeat or capture the heroes, only to have the entire plan foiled by the appearance of an unexpected new recruit.

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• The Avengers:
  • In The Avengers #39, the Mad Thinker has nearly defeated the Avengers when Hercules shows up, the Thinker lampshading he could never have calculated the arrival of a legendary demi-god into his schemes.
  • In The Avengers #52, the Grim Reaper traps the Avengers in a death-like state with plans to finish them off permanently, until he is surprised and defeated by the newest Avenger; Black Panther.
• Civil War II: In the one-shot, The Accused, Matt Murdock is made the prosecutor for the trial of Hawkeye, who ended up killing Bruce Banner. However, he notices something wrong with how fast the trial is being pushed and, in his Daredevil persona, discovers a conspiracy to use the trial to push a second Super Registration Act. In the end, Matt is able to get Hawkeye proven innocent to prevent this from happening.
• Deadpool: Deadpool is frequently seen as such a rogue element that the guy who can copy someone's fighting style completely (Taskmaster) was still surprised by him.
  • In Cable & Deadpool #50 (the final issue of the series) the Savage Land mutate Brainchild is countering the moves of every other hero in their attack on his base, but none of his predictions of where Deadpool is are accurate; turns out DP took the "Super Mario strategy" and went through the sewer pipes.
• Fantastic Four:
  • In a strange way this is the hat of the Mad Thinker - he creates amazingly complex, unassailable plans at the drop of a hat, accounting for every possible action of his opponents. But, every time, there is some random variable (what he calls the "x-factor") that doesn't take into account and buggers up his calculations. Marvel Adventures Spider-Man once established that the Thinker hates Spider-Man because his precognitive Spider-Sense makes him the one person on Earth who can effortlessly derail the Thinker's schemes without even deliberately trying.
    • A short story placed during the Civil War (2006) has the Thinker putting a Lampshade Hanging on how often this "x-factor" (which more often than not is the "human" factor — as in, he cannot completely foresee how people will react) has come to bite him in the ass and warning Reed Richards that his complicated hyper-mathematics which show that the Super-Human Registration Act is the right thing to do cannot show what will people do if pressed. True to the Thinker's prediction, Reed's Straw Vulcan Well-Intentioned Extremist act ends up hurting his relationship with his wife Sue, who goes turncoat and becomes an important member of Captain America's Resistance, and even after the Pro-Registration side wins and Reed manages to successfully beg Sue to return, their relationship remains severely strained for a very long time. Other stories written much later showcased that in most alternate universes where the SHRA didn't ended up becoming the colossal shit-storm that Universe 616 had to endure, it was because Reed Richards did all the work by himself — turns out "too many cooks spoil the broth" can also apply to Illuminati conspiracies.
  • This happens to the one-off villain known as the Destroyer in the first Human Torch solo adventure in Strange Tales. He uses the local newspaper to challenge the hero and successfully lures him into a trap –- then he notices that there are also some curious teenagers around, and runs away in fear for his secret identity.
• The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk once witnessed a gigantic extraterrestrial energy beast materializing. Not knowing how to react, and being himself, he attempted to smash it and temporarily drove it away, thus preventing a properly equipped professional hunter from taking it down.
• The Mighty Thor: Somberly discussed in the aftermath of Fear Itself. Kid Loki perfectly pulled off a plan to manipulate a slew of people and ensure Thor destroyed the Serpent. But in private, he reveals that a seemingly accounted-for moment of the plan - an anticipated threat being countered with Thor's goats - was a complete accident on his part. He'd moved them somewhere else completely and they wandered back to their pen in defiance of his instructions. And if they hadn't, he would've been killed by the threat, and the entire rest of the plan would've crashed down.
  Kid Loki: "My plan only succeeded because of the stubbornness of goats."
• Runaways: The series often sees villains' perfect plans ripped to shreds by Badass Normal Chase Stein, who claims to be street smart but as a fellow teammate inquired, "What street? Sesame?"
• Spider-Man: In The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko) #24, Mysterio convinces Spider-Man that he's going insane, and then posing as a therapist who offers to help our web-headed hero. Of course, Mysterio then sets up more illusions to make Spidey think he's hallucinating again. Spidey's about to have a complete nervous breakdown when J. Jonah Jameson and Flash Thompson, who had both heard about the therapy session and wanted to support Mysterio and Spider-Man (respectively) wander into the house. When they start seeing and reacting to the same "hallucinations", Spider-Man realizes that he's being conned, and swiftly defeats Mysterio. It's later lampshaded when Jameson realizes that Mysterio was on the verge of making Spider-Man reveal his Secret Identity, and that his own arrival torpedoed the whole plan. After that, Jameson is the one who seems like he needs therapy.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: The Deadpool arc has the titular mouthy Merc being hired to kidnap the X-Men, fly them to Genoshia, and hunt them on TV. Things hit a bump when Spidey winds up brought along for the ride due to poor timing, which throws Genoshia's whole strategy out of whack. Deadpool himself sums up partway in that the hunt isn't going well because Spidey is the only thing they didn't plan for.
  Professor X: I'd like to thank you, Mister Parker. Things might have turned out very different if you hadn't been there to balance the odds in our favor.
  • Ultimate X Men: Cyclops in the arc "Return of the King". Let us recap the situation so far. Magneto has regained his memories and is going on a rampage across the world with his acolytes while he waits for Forge to get his Doomsday Weapon ready. All the X-Men are either captured, killed, or on the run and still have no idea where Magneto's base is. It looks like all hope is lost, when Cyclops, who everyone thought was killed by Wolverine a few issues ago, is taken into Magneto's base as an injured mutant in need of healing. After recovering Cyke busts his way out and clues the other X-Men in on where the base is. All of this leads to a truly epic smackdown against Magneto and saving the world.
• X-Factor (2006):
  • Layla joining XF Investigations ruined Damian Tryp's future predictions regarding them.
  • The "X-Factor" dupe retained the memory of Tryp killing Madrox's parents and when he kills himself, Madrox absorbs him and gets that memory back.
  • Quicksilver is this to the Isolationist on two levels. First, he saves Layla after Nicole tries to kill her which allows Layla to alert Jamie about Huber's intentions^note Layla actually didn't know who Huber was. She only knew his name because Nicole mentioned him as her master and when Layla told Jamie about it, he realized Huber was untrustworthy. Second, the Terrigen Crystals Quicksilver gave to Rictor during the X-Cell arc made him immune to the Isolationist's powers allowing him to defeat the villain.
• X-Men Red (2022): The events of Judgment Day manage to be a big spanner to Brand's own plans, with Uranos's attack on Mars being the big one. His killing Abigail means she has to use Krakoa's resurrection protocols, allowing Cable and Whiz Kid to snoop and find out what she'd been doing. Meanwhile, a smaller, secondary part of her plan is ruined elsewhere because she'd fed a NASA representative bad information, hoping to drive a wedge in Earth-Mars relations, but the disaster manages to let him make a bond with the Arakko inhabitants instead.

Films

Films

• The Avengers:
  • Had Thor not been there to keep the Hulk at bay the Helicarrier would have crashed and Loki's plan would have more than likely been successful.
  • The arc reactor in Tony Stark's chest. It prevents Loki from mind-controlling him and turning him against his allies, which would have derailed everything just as much as the Hulk's potential rampage.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• On Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Lincoln's severe wounding by James during the fight on the Zephyr put him in a situation where he sees that Daisy has the necklace that she'd foreseen being present in the explosion that kills someone on the team, which clues him into the fact she's preparing to take the warhead up in the Quinjet herself which then motivates him to do it instead, being the only one who has the power to fry the Quinjet's systems so Hive can't stop it. Had James not seriously wounded Lincoln, he wouldn't have had the conversation with Daisy.
  • In the seventh season, the team finds themselves sent back in time to 1955 and have to infiltrate a SHIELD base. Simmons poses as iconic SHIELD operative Peggy Carter and, thanks to being from the future, has all the details needed to make the impersonation work for the low-level agents who only know Carter by reputation. It's just bad luck that also at the base is Daniel Sousa who just happens to have worked with the real Peggy Carter and thus knows this is an imposter.
• In Jessica Jones (2015), Kilgrave had just been Blown Across the Room by Jessica, who then has him Bound and Gagged. And then Robyn, who harbors a huge grudge on Jessica, knocks the woman who she thinks killed her brother, before releasing the guy who actually did so, thinking he's someone Jessica is abusing. This leads to her and a few other people nearly being hanged on Kilgrave's command, along with Kilgrave's escape, Hope's suicide, and the abduction of Kilgrave's father.
• In The Incredible Hulk (1977), David Banner is a 2-in-1 spanner: he tends to accidentally stumble into some illegal activity going on. When the bad people in each episode try to get rid of him using violent methods, it leads him to transforming into the titular character, who is a big green spanner that ruins the schemes for good.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: In "Masters of Evil," Baron Zemo is thwarted because he didn't realize Black Panther and Hawkeye had joined the Avengers, and thus failed to take their presence into account when coming up with his plan to destroy the team.
• Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends
  • Miss Lion, Aunt May's dog, in "Seven Little Superheroes". By tagging along with Peter Parker-as-Spider-Man on a trip to a mysterious island, she is able to foil The Chameleon's scheme to separately kill off Spidey, Iceman, Firestar, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Namor the Sub-Mariner and Shanna the She-Devil, particularly when she can sniff out evil drones disguised as various X-Men.
  • The episode "Spidey Goes Hollywood" had Mysterio's scheme to terminate the Spider-Friends unintentionally thwarted by the Hulk.

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