Despite the Plan

"Hermione, when have any of our plans ever actually worked? We plan, we get there, all hell breaks loose!" —Harry Potter sums up about half the series.

The dashing heroes have set up a plan to catch a villain, gain a MacGuffin or otherwise simply accomplish something.

The plan quickly deteriorates as someone has screwed up, an outside force has reacted unpredictably, or maybe fate just hates you. Despite that, thanks to either grace, improvisation or just plain fast thinking, the end goal is accomplished. Sometimes characters will count on this happening. Doesn't count if they cook up a new plan or at any time go back to the drawing board (though if that new plan isn't known to the audience...)

Compare with: Plethora of Mistakes.

Examples of Despite the Plan include:

• Scooby Doo embodies this trope so often, it would be easier to note when it doesn't.
  • Scooby Doo Mystery Inc: chapter 2, chapter 3 & chapter 6.
  • "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You" episode, "Nowhere to Hyde" featuring the Ghost of Mr. Hyde.
  • "The Scooby-Doo Show" episode featuring Mambo Wamboo.
• Persona 5: When our heroes discover a locked door in Madarame’s Palace (or museum if you prefer to call it that), they have Ann pull some strings so that Yusuke will unlock a door in Madarame’s house, as they’ve noticed it resembles the door in that palace. For the most part, the plan succeeds. However, when Yusuke investigates what is unlocked behind the locked door, he discovers evidence that Madarame is not the kindly old man he thinks he is. Up until now, he hadn’t listened to the party’s warnings that he isn’t to be trusted. And when the party unintentionally bring Yusuke with them to the Metaverse, his Shadow (unlike Madarame himself, he is completely honest) admits that he had been scamming people out of their money by lying that he was giving people a one-of-a-kind painting when he was forging copies of it.
• Done on the PBS children's show Clifford the Big Red Dog, when Clifford tries to catch Vaz's attention away from the latter's TV binge by hopping around outside. Instead, Clifford wrecks the satellite dish by accident, causing Vaz to go investigate. However, he sees Clifford outside, so Clifford successfully gains his attention despite the failure of his original plan.
• Pretty much the MO of Lawence Block's accidental secret agent Evan Tanner. Faced with a ridiculous surfeit of problems (uncover a Soviet plot at the Toronto World's Fair, avoid the Canadian authorities, rescue his adopted daughter, foil an assassination attempt on the Queen of England, dispose of a quantity of heroin) he works them out on the fly with little more than connections, friends and quick thinking.
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" involved an Ocean's Eleven-style casino heist where nothing went as planned, but everyone bounced back in time to pull it off.
  • They actually show us what the perfectly-performed plan looks like, too, and even mislead us a little into thinking it's the actual performance of the plan, with the characters narrating/explaining their parts. This makes the blunder-filled version that much more hilarious. And exciting. (Of course, this is the common inversion of the Unspoken Plan Guarantee: since we hear the plan, you know it won't go that smoothly in practice.)
• Many missions in the Grand Theft Auto series don't go as planned. Bank robberies and drug deals are particularly prone to failure. The more straightforward the mission seems, the more likely someone will botch it up or betray you and leave you running for your life.
• Grover Fischoeder from Bob’s Burgers had to wait six years for Cotton Candy Dan’s body to be uncovered, which meant he had to wait six years to frame Calvin for the murder. He assumed that the body would be discovered quickly, but it wasn’t.
• The shows Farscape and Firefly are united in that every single plan in either goes like this, and the characters are quite aware of it.

Zoe: Captain'll come up with a plan. Kaylee: That's good, right? Zoe: It's possible you're not remembering some of his previous plans.

• • Or:

John: I got a plan. Aeryn: Don't tell me you have a plan! John: (insulted) Why not? Aeryn: They never work!

• The A-Team! Nothing Hannibal ever planned ever went the way he planned it, but the good guys won every time. I love it when a plan comes together!

Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work.

• Star Wars screencap webcomic Darths and Droids: in their version of Episode One, the entire Tatooine plot arc was just a giant Gambit Roulette performed by Qui-Gon Jinn purely by accident. He made so many stupid mistakes that they came full circle and canceled each other out. Summarized wonderfully here.
• Literary example: The breaking into Godwin Arms and Armaments in the Science Fiction novel Profiteer by S Andrew Swann. The Heroes have been betrayed, so the enemy knows they are coming, but they somehow pull it off anyway.
• Happens frequently in the Harry Potter series, particularly in the last book, where the trio spend roughly a month planning the break-in of the Ministry of Magic, and then another month planning the break-in of Gringotts. Neither goes according to plan, but they still pull it off anyway, both times. Lampshaded in the film version. In the case of the final chapter (The Flaw in the Plan), the flaw of the plan actually works in the heroes' favor.
• In Ninjago, Nya decides to abandon her waterbending training, because it wasn't going well. She decides to fight the ghosts using her mecha instead. However, not only does the mecha not work against them, they can possess the mecha and take control of it as well.
• Just about everything in Armageddon goes wrong, but they somehow manage to destroy the asteroid anyway. Put briefly, the Russian Space Station explodes for no reason just after they refuel, one shuttle is destroyed by debris and crashes (but Ben Affleck survives), the other crashes on an almost undrillable section of the asteroid, Steve Buscemi goes crazy with Space Dementia and starts shooting at everybody, the President almost decides to detonate the nuke prematurely and then doesn't, the asteroid kills more people with geysers, but the transmitter on the nuke was deactivated, forcing Bruce Willis to make a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Inglourious Basterds: Subverted, and gloriously so. While there are some bumps along the way (Three quarters of the Basterds dying before the plan is even underway, for example), its very satisfying seeing all three plans to kill Hitler succeed.
• The assassination of Franz Ferdinand. To wit, all the assassins were supposed to throw grenades, fire pistols, then drink cyanide and drown themselves in the river. Instead, all but one of them froze up, and the one who acted missed with both bullets and grenades and wasn't even successful in killing himself. (The cyanide had lost its potency and the river was too low to drown in—he was arrested immediately). Later that day, one of the guys who didn't shoot was walking out of a sandwich shop—probably feeling guilty about his massive failure—when the Archduke's driver got lost and wound up right in front of him. This time, he didn't freeze.
• Cyrano De Bergerac: Some of the plans in this farce work out... and given also is a tragedy, some of they will Go Horribly Right.
  • Roxane plans to marry Christian when she sees that De Guiche plans to visit her that night.
  • De Guiche plans a Last Stand for the Gascon Cadets
  • Cyrano plans to Playing Cyrano to Christian so he can win Roxane’s love
• Done frequently in The Dreamstone. A lot of times, Rufus and Amberley's attempts to stop the Urpneys fell short or led to their capture. They always ended up with the Dreamstone back however, given the Urpneys were perfectly able at screwing up their plans on their own
• The Iron Man: Armored Adventures episode "Field Trip", where Tony, Pepper and Rhodey's plan to get the armour back without Stane noticing only comes off at all thanks to interference from Gene, Happy and Stane's daughter.

Pepper: Well, that went perfectly. Apart from everything.

• Pocahontas: Chief Powhatan intends for the title character to marry Kocoum to secure the future of the tribe...but he dies after he lets his jealousy and prejudice overcome him when he sees John Smith kissing Pocahontas. Thomas witnesses what happens and shoots Kocoum to protect John from being stabbed.
• Chicken Run: Mrs. Tweedy intends to make herself more money by turning chickens into chicken pies. But not only is the pie machine destroyed, but the chickens realize what she is planning and decide to literally fly the coop (which leads to the aforementioned destruction of the pie machine)...a plan of which does work.
• The sequel Dawn of the Nugget has Mrs. Tweedy's plan to get revenge on the chickens and to make more money at the same time. She plans to make a partnership with Reginald Smith, knowing that he could expand Funland Farms and by extension the amount of chickens she can make into chicken nuggets. But not only does Ginger release the chickens from the farm, but the farm ends up being destroyed as well.