Basic Trope: A character likes to make unnecessarily complicated plans.
- Straight: Bob makes complex plans because they are fun.
- Exaggerated: Bob is physically incapable of making simple plans or executing someone else's simple plan.
- Downplayed: Once per Episode, Bob adds a "favorite step" to his plan that doesn't help it go along.
- Justified:
- Bob's plan involves working with poorly understood Applied Phlebotinum, and no one has figured out simple ways to work with it.
- Bob wants Jim dead and he does not wants it to be quick and (relatively) painless, which the bullet through the head everybody who thinks they are being practical keeps badgering him about using would cause. He wants Jim to know, he wants Jim to despair, he wants to twist that knife so many times it will look like a fidget spinner.
- Inverted:
- Simplicity addiction. Bob's plans must be five steps or fewer.
- Bob's plans are always Simple, yet Awesome.
- Bob is Too Dumb to Fool and if he cannot accomplish anything by saying "yes", "no" or smashing someone's nose in, he deems it too complicated to try.
- Simple Solution Won't Work; the complicated plan has a thousand points of potential failure, but is the only way to reach the end Bob wants.
- Subverted:
- After Bob explains a complex plan, he outlines a "shortcut" that makes the plan simpler.
- Most of the complexity comes from the binary nature of the one that is supposed to execute it.
- Bob is still in the process of streamlining the plan.
- Double Subverted: The shortcut is only one less step.
- Parodied: When Bob agrees to be part of Alice's simple plan, he suffers from complexity withdrawal.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob can't decide whether to use the simple plan, or whether the complex plan has better enough results to matter.
- Averted: Bob streamlines his plans before executing them.
- Enforced: Alice and Bob must be a feature length film, and they need more things for Bob to do.
- Lampshaded: "Always there to meet and exceed the 20 step quota"
- Invoked: Bob finds many different parts for something he is building, and is determined to make use of them.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob's friends can't understand the plan, so it fails.
- Aiming for flashy over efficient shows too much of Bob's hand to his enemy.
- Alice becomes deeply upset that Bob needs to build a literally Machiavellian scheme just to tell her "hello" and dumps him (she probably would have been less upset if the scheming was made for other parts of their dating, but nope, "she will accept going on a date" and what follows is the part he left freewheeling).
- Reconstructed: Bob adds "learn better communication" to his plan, and assigns well-defined roles to his friends.
- Exploited: David sabotages one step of Bob's plan, derailing it entirely.
- Defied: "This plan will never work, I must make it simpler"
- Discussed: Bob ponders how many steps he can handle in a plan before it becomes untenable.
- Conversed: "The more steps a plan has, the funnier it is"
Back to Complexity Addiction
