Spanner In The Works / The DCU

The DCU

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

• Justice League of America:
  • Justice League of America (Volume 1) #4: Villain Xandor traps the Justice League in an unbreakable diamond, but is thwarted by the arrival of Green Arrow.
  • In Justice League International issue #4, the team is attacked by a powerful android who is specifically equipped to deal with each of them. The android is ultimately defeated by Booster Gold, who had only shown up to join the League earlier that very day.
  • JLA (1997):
    • In a two-part story, Connor Hawke (the second Green Arrow) is forced to rescue the team after they are ambushed and incapacitated by the Key.
    • Prometheus's debut involved him taking down each member of the League with remarkable ease, having planned out their encounter to the letter. He hadn't planned that Catwoman would've snuck on board the Watchtower disguised as one of the reporters there for the day, and while he's trying to blackmail Superman into committing suicide on national television, she foils his entire plan by giving him a bullwhip to the nads.
  • The Other Side of Doomsday: Intending to take revenge on the League, T.O. Morrow took advantage that Flash's wife and Atom's fiancé were giving a public speech to kidnap them, hoping to lure their love interests into a parallel world controlled by himself. However, as kidnapping both women he also kidnapped Linda Danvers, unaware that she is Supergirl and can use her own powers to release his captives.
• 100 Bullets: The whole series is a giant game of chess, but nobody ever thought to tell the Minute Men, the most powerful pieces on the board. They never get a single answer to any of their questions and end up ruining every single character's master plan simply because they have nothing better to do.
• Batman:
  • Night of the Owls: For centuries the Court of Owls have used entertainment venues like Haley's Circus to recruit youths and brainwash them into their loyal elite Talons. They had planned to do the same to Dick Grayson (a descendant of one of their most successful Talons), but the deaths of Dick's parents and his immediate adoption by Bruce Wayne afterwards placed him out of their reach.
  • Batman: Hush: The entire plan might have worked except with a major element being Hush surgically repairing Two-Face's features so he could be a secret weapon. What he never counted on was the surgery also allowing Harvey Dent to reassert control, decide he wasn't going to work for a bad guy and throw the entire plan off-kilter.
  • Batman: No Man's Land: With Gotham's No Man Land status lifted, The Joker decides to squash that happy feeling by kidnapping and planning to murder every baby born during NML. In the search for the clown and the children, Sarah Essen-Gordon's radio is smashed, leading to Commissioner Gordon to tell her to head back to GCPD HQ to get a new one. What no one realized until too late was that that's where the Joker was hiding! By the time they get there, the Joker surrenders... only after shooting Sarah in the head in front of the kids.
• In The DCU, the Challengers of the Unknown are a team of adventure-seekers who miraculously survived a terrible plane crash, and therefore decided that they would willingly face any danger because, as they always put it, they were living on "borrowed time." It was revealed in The Lords Of Luck that this is literally true: because they did not die on their appointed death date, the Challengers are the only people in the world whose fates are not recorded in the Book of Destiny. They can freely disrupt predestined events that would otherwise be literally inevitable, making them the ultimate example of this trope.
• Justice: The Legion of Doom come up with an extremely brilliant plan to destroy the Justice League. It almost works, but they ignored a few guys like Captain Marvel, The Phantom Stranger, and The Metal Men.
• The Life Story of the Flash: While recounting the events of Barry's murder trial, Iris recalls that Abra Kadabra tried to manipulate the events of the trial so that Flash would be convicted and disgraced for killing Zoom...but Kadabra hadn't expected that Iris herself, having been saved by her birth parents just before Zoom could kill her, would be inhabiting the body of one of the jurors and thereby standing in the way of Kadabra's scheme.
• Fables: In the spinoff The Nearly Great Escape, Jack figures out that Goldilocks is working for Revise because she wears the same style of glasses that several of his minions wear. This is a complete coincidence, but it turns out that he was right anyway.
• Superman:
  • In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Batgirl's trap to expose Lex Luthor's crimes worked ironically thanks to The Joker and Emil Hamilton setting their own trap, and Supergirl making the sudden decision to fly to Gotham and help whether Batgirl liked or not.
  • In Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, Lex Luthor accidentally abducts Mary Jane Watson when he kidnaps Lois Lane, an act that got Spider-Man involved in stopping him. If Peter had not been there to stop Luthor and Doctor Octopus, Superman would have got to choose between stopping the tsunami and let Lex escape.
  • In Elseworlds story The Death of Superman (1961) Lex Luthor manages to murder Superman. He thinks he's going to get away with it and no one can stop him now, but an unknown girl wearing Superman's costume breaks into his secret lair, reveals that she is Supergirl, Superman's cousin and secret emergency-weapon, and she takes him away, bringing him to Kryptonian Bottle City of Kandor where he is put on trial for murder and sent into the Phantom Zone.
  • In Who Took the Super out of Superman?, villain Xviar gaslights Superman into believing he can't use his powers as Clark Kent, irradiates him with a device which turns him into a ticking bomb and puts him through a Boss Rush in order to trigger a Super-Power Meltdown. While Xviar was enacting his scheme, though, Clark captured an Intergang boss who attempted to murder him and was subsequently called as a witness at the trial. Being in a hurry to go to the court, Clark picked up a spare suit from his office, which hadn't been tampered with by Xviar, and realized his powers still worked, ergo someone was manipulating him.
  • In The Unknown Supergirl, Lesla's plan (step one, brainwashing and impersonating Supergirl; step two, helping Luthor kill Superman; step three, disposing of Luthor; step four, taking over the world) could have worked but for Krypto, who figured out she had replaced Kara and forced her to switch places back with the real Supergirl. The next chain of events ensured Lesla had not opportunity to replace Kara again.
  • In Superman vs. Shazam!, Karmang's plan to trick Superman and Captain Marvel into fighting each other while he activates his world-ending engines fails because he did not count on Mary Marvel following her brother and comparing notes with Supergirl, which leads both heroines to the conclusion that their relatives are being manipulated.
  • The Girl with the X-Ray Mind, Lesla-Lar heads towards a desert island to break several Kryptonian criminals out of the Phantom Zone and kickstart her world-conquering scheme without the Supers suspecting anyting. However, Lori Lemaris spots Lesla while she is flying over the ocean, and becomes puzzled about that strangely-dressed flying woman. So, Lori secretly spies on Lesla and the Phantom Zoners, and later relays their plans to the heroes.
  • In The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor, a criminal gang kidnap Supergirl, planning to keep her imprisoned by gaslighting her into believing her cell nullifies her powers by duplicating Krypton's environment. Supergirl is trying to figure out how to get out, but she keeps being distracted by a fly buzzing and flitting around her head. Then Kara realizes that insect would be unable to fly if her cell duplicated Krypton's high gravity, and she uses her powers to break out and hunt her kidnappers down.
  • In The Phantom Zone, Dru-Zod's ploy to deceive USA and the Soviet Union into nuking each other fails because he had not counted on Supergirl and Wonder Woman intercepting and destroying all missiles.
  • The Day the Cheering Stopped: King Kosmos spens months planning how to take Superman down, and his plan fails because he did not count on a sentient, empathic weapon showing up and strengthening his enemy.
    Superman: (thinking) "There's one factor Kosmos didn't figure into his little equation when he sent the force of his spirit to meet me here and plotted to rule the Earth! And that factor was— THIS!"
  • The Death of Lightning Lad: Saturn Girl finds out the council of planet Mernl has foretold one member of the Legion of Super-Heroes will die fighting Zaryan the Conqueror. Quickly, Saturn Girl manipulates events so that she is the only Legionnaire on duty when Zaryan strikes. However, her plan to protect her teammates by sacrificing herself fails because she did not think Mon-El would read the Mernl's warning before she destroyed it, or Mon would warn Lightning Lad.
  • Brainiac's Blitz: Brainiac sets a death trap to kill Superman, not counting with Supergirl interfering, forcing him to use his trap, and then goading him into destroying it.
  • Supergirl's Greatest Challenge: The Chameleon Men manage to knock the Legionnaires out and banish Supergirl into a dimensional prison, but their plan fails because Supergirl had previously run into her super-powered cat's descendant Whizzy, who decided to follow her around. After being accidentally dumped into the Zone together with Supergirl, Whizzy telepathically influences a robot-maker into building a Chameleon android who infiltrates the invaders' lair, finds the Projector and releases Supergirl.
  • "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining": Emerald Empress' ploy to destroy the United Planets and the Legion fails due to the interference of Supergirl, a Legionnaire who she knew nothing about and was not expecting to meet.
  • Superboy (1949) #201 features Molecular Master, an android programmed to infiltrate and poison the Legion and steal the Miracle Machine. His master's plan fails because of the appearance of Wildfire, a Legionnaire who Molecular Master was totally not expecting because Wildfire had been recently declared dead in action.
  • "The Super-Steed of Steel": Nomed's ploy to overthrow his uncle by paralyzing Endor's pegasus fails when Supergirl suddenly shows up riding her own flying horse which she lends to Endor so that he can lead the royal parade.
  • "Supergirl's Big Brother": Biff Rigger's ploy to steal Jan Danvers' inheritance meets an unexpected obstacle when he learns the Danvers have an adoptive daughter that he knew nothing about. When he discovers her secret identity, his original plan is abandoned in favour of tricking Supergirl into giving him powers, which leads to his death.
  • "Superman and Spider-Man": Doctor Doom fails because he did not expect Spider-Man's intervention. So, while Spidey used his webbing to remove the Kryptonite dust coating Superman, his stolen Spider-Sense warned Parasite that he should NOT put on the harness which Doom designed for him.
  • In the Masters of the Universe crossover "Fate Is The Killer", Skeletor uses a dimensional gate to Earth to retrieve one half of the Power Sword (which he needs to enter Castle Grayskull and take over his world). However, Superman is drawn into the portal, and realizing that he has been drawn to Eternia to deal with Skeletor again, he heads towards Castle Grayskull, wrenches both Swords away from Skeletor and hurls them far away before the villain can perform the proper merging ritual.
• In the DC Infinite Frontier relaunch of Suicide Squad, the Squad ends up getting revealed thanks to their failure to capture Blur of the Teen Titans Academy. During the scuffle, some students took notice that Superboy was part of the group, which really didn't make sense. They told the teachers, leading to them contacting the real Superboy himself to find out what was going. His investigation not only exposes the Squad, but reveals the Superboy that was part of the team was actually Conner's clone, Match.

Films

Films

• Teen Titans Go! To the Movies: Slade-as-Jade made sure every superhero was distracted by them having their own movie, even The Challengers Of The Unknown. What he didn't count on were the Titans, who had no movie and therefore were the only ones who confronted Slade at S.T.A.R. Labs, and he really didn't count on them being competent enough to grab the MacGuffin away from him, countering his moves. This drives "Jade" to try to distract the Titans by Divide and Conquer while making the Robin movie the main vector for his Mind-Control Device.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • In Batman Begins, Batman himself is the Spanner towards Ra's al Ghul and the Scarecrow's plan to destroy Gotham.
  • By refusing to sacrifice each other, the passengers on the two boats end up being this for The Joker in The Dark Knight, in that his social experiment in proving that anyone could be corrupted ends in failure.
  • And in The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman serves as one when she saves Batman from Bane in the climax.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• From the Justice League episode "A Better World": An evil (or rather, corrupted Knight Templar) alternate universe Justice League has captured the "real" League. Their Batman designed inescapable prisons for each Leaguer, because he's Batman. The Flash manages to escape by speeding up his heartbeat so it looked like he flatlined, and when the other Batman unlocked the cell, Flash beats him up at super speed. Lampshaded by our Batman:
  Batman: He anticipated everything I would have thought of. But who could anticipate you?
  • Indeed, Batman is surprised to know Flash could have pulled that trick and Flash admits he's never actually tried it before so it was no wonder the Justice Lord Batman couldn't have seen it coming.
• Superman: The Animated Series: In "Knight Time", Roxy Rocket, the villain from the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Ultimate Thrill", inadvertently ruins Brainiac's plan by informing Superman that Batman went missing. She didn't even know Brainiac was involved.

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