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Reassignment Backfire

623 statements
116 feature instances
72 referencing feature instances

Reassignment Backfire	type	FeatureClass
Reassignment Backfire	label	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire	page	ReassignmentBackfire
Reassignment Backfire	comment	In this plot, a hero in an organization like the military is reassigned by a vindictive superior who seeks to ruin the hero by transferring him to a nothing post, in hopes that the hero's career will dead end — or worse. However, a catastrophic crisis happens precisely at that backwater area and the hero saves the day using his skills and talents in a spectacular fashion. To the assigner's horror, the assignment he himself inflicted to shut down the hero's career has instead given the victim a spectacular career boost with commendations, medals and promotions galore and the formerly inconsequential map dot becomes the post to be assigned to. Basically the Springtime for Hitler result of either a Reassigned to Antarctica, getting Kicked Upstairs, or a Uriah Gambit. In Science Fiction, a variation of this trope can occur when the alien hero is assigned to our Insignificant Little Blue Planet to get him out of the way — only to have a major adventure that impacts the whole universe take place on Earth. Frequently overlaps with Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, since it often transpires that the rank-and-file have also been assigned to this out-of-the-way place, for similar reasons. In such cases, the hero's success largely arises from his ability to see and make use of their quirky talents. And some commanders may not be unhappy at the prospect of cannon fodder they wouldn't miss, but who actually get the job done. Compare Busman's Holiday. Examples
Reassignment Backfire	fetched	2024-04-18T09:45:13Z
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Reassignment Backfire	isPartOf	DBTropes
Reassignment Backfire / int_11c6567a	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_11c6567a	comment	In the first Thursday Next book, The Eyre Affair, literary detective Next gets transferred to a SpecOps post in Swindon (which also happens to be her quirky hometown). Her colleagues are puzzled at her seeming demotion (when she could have chosen a better post), but Thursday knows what she's doing.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_135f4195	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_135f4195	comment	An inversion happens in Dune, in which Duke Atreides is sent by The Emperor from his ancestral home planet to the desert planet Arrakis... which is the only place in the universe that the "spice" that their civilization runs on is made, and is thus actually the most important planet in the universe and best post possible. Of course, the reason why the Emperor relocated him there instead of playing the trope straight is that instead of wanting to sink the Duke's career he's hatching a plot to get rid of him directly, which succeeds. The backfire comes when his son Paul just so happens to be a Seer and becomes a Messianic Archetype who gathers the Proud Warrior Race Guy natives together and trains them to be a Bad Ass Army La RÃ©sistance, launching a coup d'etat.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_15c6ea92	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_15c6ea92	comment	In Wonder Woman (1987), when Wonder Woman died, the Amazons made her mother, Queen Hippolyta, take up the mantle in her stead, as a form of penance for indirectly causing Diana's death. Hippolyta enjoyed being a superhero so much that she kept at it even after Diana came back from the dead, and eventually abolished the monarchy entirely.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_19b1d7d2	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_19b1d7d2	comment	Advance to the Rear: General Willoughby is terrified to realize that sending Brackenbury and the other misfits out into the middle of nowhere right before a major gold shipment passes through the area is about to have them screw up worse than he can afford. This doesn't happen but they do end up getting the credit for an impressive coup when they foil the robbery.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_1a12bbee	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_1a12bbee	comment	Traditionally, the origin of The Mighty Thor involves Odin sending the character to Earth in order to teach him humility before he ascends the throne as his heir. It works, but Thor ends up liking Earth so much that he is often extremely reluctant to return to Asgard, and even more to becoming its ruler. This is partially due to Thor being the son of Mother Earth herself, Gaea.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_1f7d1392	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_1f7d1392	comment	Unreal II: The Awakening plays with this. The player, Dalton, was kicked out of the Marines for disobeying the order to leave civilians to die, and has been trying to get back in since. In the meantime, the only work he can find is as a Marshal in the Terran Colonial Authority, policing "...the ass-end of space". Guess where the troubles start?
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Reassignment Backfire / int_23553960	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_23553960	comment	Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Skull Face was one of The Patriots' best civilian-military operators until he grew resentful of Big Boss getting all the reputation and glory in the Patriots even after he quit. Zero reassigned him to Africa to look after his ethnic cleansing bioweapons, which caused the ethnicity-conscious hitman to snap, driving him to build a new form of portable Metal Gears which carried a very specific ethnic cleanser: it kills anyone who constantly speaks English.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_247422c7	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_247422c7	comment	The Honor Harrington series does this three times: The first novel, On Basilisk Station, sees Commander Honor Harrington and her old, underarmed ship Fearless dispatched to Basilisk Station, where the screw-ups and political embarrassments are sent. Honor not only manages to expose the smuggling and corruption running rampant through the system (Implicating several important business figures in the Manticore system), but also discovers and thwarts a plot by the People's Republic of Haven to invade the system and seize it from Manticore. In recognition, she is promoted two ranks directly to Captain (Senior Grade) and is placed in command of a newer, heavier ship also named Fearless. The sixth novel, Honor Among Enemies, sees Captain Harrington dispatched to the chaotic, pirate-infested Silesian Confederacy in command of a squadron of Q-Ships (Armed merchantmen disguised to look like regular freighters). She is selected for the role by her political enemies, who expect her to do some good against the pirates but ultimately be killed due the lack of proper support against overwhelming odds. She not only survives, but manages to (again) expose an operation by the People's Republic of Haven and even forges closer ties with the nearby Andermani Empire. In the tenth novel, War of Honor, Admiral Harrington is sent to take command of Sidemore Station, Manticore's primary naval base for operating in the Silesian Confederacy. This is an inherently important station in and of itself, but it's also far away and her political enemies hope that it will remove her from the domestic political situation back home. When the massive attack by the Republic of Haven throughout Manticore's territory validates all of her previous domestic political critiques, and she repels a Havenite attack on Sidemore itself, she returns home as an even bigger hero than ever before.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_275b6e73	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_275b6e73	comment	Captain Parmenter from F Troop was Kicked Upstairs to a command position at Fort Courage after his accidental heroism at the Battle of Appomatox caused some embarrassment to the U.S. Army.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_2b102a2	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_2b102a2	comment	The Death of Russia: Viktor Aksyuchits, a member of the National Salvation Front who wasn't an extremist (instead being a fairly standard Christian Democrat), was made the regional governor of Primorsky in order to get him away far away from any meaningful position in Moscow. As Siberia and the Far East descend into anarchy when the Second Russian Civil War kicks off, he declares Primorsky's independence as the Far Eastern Republic, and becomes a beloved leader after leading the young nation through a North Korean invasion.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_2c3cd68a	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_2c3cd68a	comment	X-Wing Rogue Squadron: Soontir Fel is banished to the 181st Fighter Group — bad enough to be nicknamed the One-Eighty-Worst — and quickly transforms it into one of the Empire's most elite units.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_32c541e6	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_32c541e6	comment	Fullmetal Alchemist: Olivier Mira Armstrong is promoted to Central to keep an eye on her and separate her from her loyal troops. However, she knows more than they realize, and takes advantage of her reassignment to quietly learn even more, while also secretly setting into motion a plan to foil the government conspiracy she's uncovered. Roy Mustang has a similar thing happen: he is transferred to the east because it is so dull. It backfires on the higher ups because they end up having to flee there because Scar was killing them in Central. Falman, one of Roy's subordinates, got this as well. After Roy's team was split up, he got assigned to Briggs, the harsh Northern Outpost. While there he Took a Level in Badass just in time to join the other Briggs soldiers in a coup attempt on Central.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_341c02e9	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_341c02e9	comment	In Batman Begins, Lucius Fox is assigned as head of the Applied Sciences division of Wayne Enterprises because Earle wants him out of the board and in a place where he won't have any influence over the company. However, when Bruce Wayne returns from his training with the League of Shadows, Fox's military prototypes catch his attention. After Bruce entrusts Fox with supplying him all the gear he needs in order to be Batman, Earle fires Fox for asking too many questions about a certain microwave emitter that was seized by the League of Shadows. At the end of the movie, Bruce has returned to being the head of Wayne Enterprises by buying back all of his company's shares, and also gives Fox a better job: Earle's. "Didn't you get the memo?"
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Reassignment Backfire / int_3aeb1c75	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_3aeb1c75	comment	In Dragon Ball, the Saiyans, who travel to other planets to conquer them, send their infants to planets whose inhabitants are so weak sending an adult Saiyan would be overkill. Goku is one such infant, and after landing on Earth he made a head trauma-induced Heelâ€“Face Turn (or landing and being raised by Son Gohan, according to Dragon Ball Minus), became the planet's protector, and fended off the other remaining Saiyans as an adult — and discovered that Half Human Hybrids are stronger than pure-blooded Saiyans, in theory.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_3b72d0a5	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_3b72d0a5	comment	In The Weaver Option, this happens several times. The Fay 20th, recently rebuilt after being brutally mauled in a fight against Orks, was sent to an out-of-the-way post in that planet when the Orks arrived at Fay, keeping them as possible bait while the more glamorous "Grand Army" did the job of killing the Orks. In the end, the Grand Army is destroyed to the last man and the Fay 20th — after the miraculous appearance of Taylor Hebert — becomes the unit that breaks the back of the Ork army. Dragon was banished to Andes Primus because of her being in the same place as a heretek. When she crosses paths with Weaver, she joins her to help her — and this leads to her getting her own Forge Hive and becoming famous after her Dragon Armors prove the perfect counter to the Dark Mechanicus' Heldrakes. The Fabricator of Quayrian assigns Archmagos Thayer Sagami, one of his political rivals, to command the HMHMS Enterprise, clearly expecting to get him out of the way for a decade and potentially killed. Six years later, he is in command of the flagship of the fleet assigned to Operation Caribbean, which ends up destroying the Pavia system's pirate haven, razing Commorragh, and retrieving large amounts of incredibly valuable materials and priceless archeotech, including two of the Artifacts of Vulkan.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_3be307d1	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_3be307d1	comment	Tenchi Muyo!: Mihoshi seemingly only has a job in the Galaxy Police because her grandfather is the Grand Marshall, gets assigned to patrol Earth's solar system. After all, a planet that barely even has space travel could hardly have any trouble for her to get into, and there'd be nothing to report so her superiors wouldn't have to deal with her anymore. Naturally, she promptly gets involved in taking down the most notorious criminal in the universe. Kiyone, her partner, doesn't enjoy it in the least, mainly because being partnered with Mihoshi destroyed her career. Noike in the OAVs, on the other hand, gets assigned there when the GP brass realized that with two Imperial princesses, an Imperial prince, a former S-class criminal (statue of limitations expired), a former Most Wanted Battleship, the Galaxy's greatest Mad Scientist, a prospective heir to the throne, and their Goddess (and her sister) taking up residence there (there is some overlap), said planet that barely even has space travel just happens to now have the single highest concentration of political, supernatural, and military power in the universe.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_3e9c95a2	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_3e9c95a2	comment	Sharpe: In "Sharpe's Battle", a company of Irish guard are recruited into the British army, and the high command decides to send them to a far outpost on the edge of the front lines, in a terrible position, so they'll all desert and solve the problem of having to deal with a company that doesn't like England — then sends Richard Sharpe to whip them into place, expecting him to drive them off for good. He makes them crack soldiers instead and decimates an entire enemy brigade. Oops.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_3eb3a36f	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_3eb3a36f	comment	This seem to be the fate of the Class E students in Assassination Classroom. Originally transferred there to become the laughingstock of the school and set an example to the other students, their situation takes a turn for the better when they are assigned the task of killing an almighty alien who properly teaches them in all regular subjects (including assassination skills). Together, they eventually become far more skilled than their "elite" schoolmates and a 10-billion-yen bonus shall be given to whoever manages to kill him. However, they must do it in one year, or Earth is doomed.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_3fbd173e	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_3fbd173e	comment	Mr. Kornada of Freefall is a self-important dolt who embodies every negative stereotype of middle management. Eventually he gets Kicked Upstairs to the Vice-Presidency of Paperclip Allocation at Ecosystems Unlimited — which is a paperless office. When his nephew, Ecosystems Unlimited's CFO Mr. Ishiguro, goes on sick leave, he gains access to two executive security codes: enough to authorize the activation of a security failsafe on half a billion sapient robots so he can seize their assets. He's stopped, barely, but his superiors are horrified by how close he came to destroying 99.99% of the planet's workforce.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_41b0198a	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_41b0198a	comment	In The Dresden Files, Murphy's position as the head of Special Investigations is where people you really, really don't like are sent and they soon leave, disgusted with it. Murphy's the first person who's stayed long enough to warrant a nameplate. This is due to the fact that before Murphy, every SI head simply refused to acknowledge that anything supernatural was going on. This led to none of their cases ever being closed, and a quick dismissal. Murphy actually decided to start believing in the paranormal and so she actually did get results. In the end, though, even she can't avoid all the problems associated with the position. In White Night she is demoted, and by the end of Changes, her dereliction of duty results in her being summarily fired.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_468bebb0	comment	Discworld: In Thief of Time, several of the managers of the History Monks assign Lobsang Ludd (a troublesome child) be the apprentice of Lu Tze (widely seen as a great hero, but has lots of fun annoying the other monks), on the basis that either or both will break the other. Their combined efforts end up saving the world. Vetinari invokes this intentionally with Moist von Lipwig in Going Postal by putting the sentenced-to-death criminal to work reforming the Ankh-Mopork postal office, a job that has so far claimed the lives of the last four people who tried in short order, and assigning him an Implacable Parole Officer. If he succeeds, the Post Office is up and running again; if he doesn't, well, the city was prepared to kill him anyway, one way or the other. As he later describes it, it was a cruel joke that fortunately backfired in the best way possible. The advent of Mustrum Ridcully to Arch-Chancellor was the result of a spectacular error by scheming wizards who wanted an unworldly rural wizard in position to allow them time to scheme and plot, with a deliberately chosen weak nonentity in the figurehead role. What they actually got was a rumbustious BRIAN BLESSED of a man, who proved himself unkillable, who grabbed the role by the scruff of the neck and became the longest-serving Arch-Chancellor in history. His brother Hughnon succeeded a weak and doddering High Priest (killed by a dragon) through what the reader suspects is the same mechanism.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_4cc06582	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_4cc06582	comment	Played with in Hot Fuzz. The entire London police force is sick of Sergeant Angel's white-hot performance, so he gets relocated to a tiny country town. He discovers and shuts down a huge, awful conspiracy while he's there, but it's not his continued heroism which alarms the London office; it's the fact that without Angel, the crime rate in London has escalated out of hand and they need him back.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_50e2e357	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_50e2e357	comment	In Star Trek (2009), Scotty was reassigned to Delta Vega, thus putting him in position to help Kirk save the day.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_530296a4	comment	Scootertrix the Abridged: General Apple Bloom resents General Flash Sentry for succeeding at everything. When Bloom draws up her strategy for Equestria to wage a war on two fronts, she isn't the one who decides to send Sentry and his forces to the borders of the Changeling Empire — far away from the Crystal Empire, where the real fighting is supposed to happen — but all the same, she's openly glad that that Sentry won't be able to steal any of her glory this time. Then Apple Bloom's grand strategy falls apart within a week, while Flash Sentry's victories against the changelings wind up being the only good news from that same period.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_53b30902	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_53b30902	comment	In Valkyria Chronicles, General Georg Damon sends Squad Seven on seemingly unimportant or dangerous missions in the hopes that they will fail so that the regular army will look good while engaging the Empire forces. Instead, Squad Seven succeeds in their missions, and they end up being the ones who successfully push back the Empire, while the regular gets slaughtered in droves by Damonâ€™s incompetence.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_53ccae27	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_53ccae27	comment	Pretty much the whole plot of Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Tylor's superiors get more and more frustrated as the series goes on. They start by using the Soyokaze (Tylor's ship) as bait in important operations, gradually move to pointless suicide missions and by the end they are outright hiring pirates to kill him.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_576bff55	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_576bff55	comment	Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) features this as well. Bumblebee was given a position as a mere beat cop after playing a major role in ending the war. At the end of the series, it's revealed that he (and other major Autobots) were given lowly positions so that the corrupt government could denigrate Optimus Prime and keep them from interfering with their plans for galactic conquest. Unfortunately for them, Bumblebee's job devotion and loyalty to Optimus's legacy took him far from Cybertron and put him in a position to foil their (and many other villains') plans.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_59151283	comment	Metal Gear: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker: Hot Coldman was assigned from the director of the CIA to the CIA Station Chief of Central America because he orchestrated the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater and needed to be shut up. He then builds a small army known as the Peace Sentinels and plans to create an AI-driven nuclear deterrent that can kill everyone. He almost destroys the world. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain: Skull Face was one of The Patriots' best civilian-military operators until he grew resentful of Big Boss getting all the reputation and glory in the Patriots even after he quit. Zero reassigned him to Africa to look after his ethnic cleansing bioweapons, which caused the ethnicity-conscious hitman to snap, driving him to build a new form of portable Metal Gears which carried a very specific ethnic cleanser: it kills anyone who constantly speaks English.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_5995d4d5	comment	In Spies Like Us, Emmett Fitz-Hume (who only got his job through nepotism), and Austin Millbarge (who works in the bowels of a civil service building) have this happen to them. Emmett didn't study for the upcoming civil service exam, and while Austin initially refuses to help him cheat, both end up causing a scene in the exam room. Their superiors send them to Pakistan as decoys, claiming they'll be on a mission of great importance (when in reality, they're just there to keep the fire off the real agents)... except they eventually find their way to Russia, where they end up saving the day alongside one of the real CIA agents.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_5c897f4a	comment	Schlock Mercenary: At one point, the captain sends a ship full of dangerously stupid robots, who Turned On Their Masters and then for an encore went on to accidentally commit genocide, directly into the path of General Xinchub because they don't want to waste the ammo on killing them. They expect that to be the end of them. It is... but Xinchub ends up being acclaimed as a hero for saving Earth from them, counteracting his previous popularity nosedive that threatened to get him out of their hair permanently. Happens again later also involving Xinchub. After his plot to blackmail them into betraying some old friends eventually backfires, they have Xinchub and his minion in their brig. Rather than kill him, they sell him into slavery as a military consultant on a planet in the middle of a brutal civil war. The plan is that he'll be kept as a prisoner and/or killed by one side or the other, getting them paid for disposing of him. Within a year, he's betrayed his would-be masters to the opposing side and been crowned king of the entire planet for bringing peace to their world.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_5d53fe54	comment	Sano Ichiro: In The Way of the Traitor, Sano is sent to Nagasaki by his rival Chamberlain Yanagisawa in hopes that he will destroy his career on a difficult case there; instead, Sano successfully solves the case and adds to his sterling reputation.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_5e150650	comment	Exalted: The Realm's Vermilion Legion is composed of drunks, petty criminals and surplus younger sons. Tepet Ejava, one of the Realm's most formidable military commanders and a candidate for the Scarlet Throne, was given command of them and sent off to get killed in the constant low-level violence in the Southeast. Of course, she's managed to turn the Legion into a crack unit and a serious power base. Oops. It didn't hurt Ejava's efforts that the so-called "Red-Piss Legion", being the Ragtag Legion of Misfits that it is, remains immune to the nepotism and favortism of the other Legions and actually rewards merit and skill (the rewards starting with, "you can avoid being killed by the A-1 psychos the Vermillions have to fight"). The pro-Solar Golden Faction of the Sidereals found themselves being reassigned to conventions of the Wood — the wildest regions filled with powerful, uncontrolled Essence users — and the Convention on Essence Users in general, which was more of the same. When the Solars actually came back, this put the Golden Faction in a prime position to hide and train them.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_5f5ef0ef	comment	Under Siege: Chief Casey Ryback is a Navy SEAL reassigned as a cook for striking one of his superior officers. This proves invaluable when terrorists take control of his ship, as he's in the kitchen, away from them when they take the crew hostage.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_60156176	comment	Vorkosigan Saga: Miles Vorkosigan is assigned to Kyril Island, an out-of-the-way training base, as the Weather Officer. This is specifically a test to see if he can handle a normal, boring assignment without causing problems, since his ongoing insubordination and need to do something doesn't fly in a real military posting. Before his tour of duty was up, he had joined a mutiny and barely avoided treason charges, the fallout of which got his commanding officer dishonorably discharged. As usual, it's genetic. Aral Vorkosigan had ups and downs like this. He'd do the right thing, but nobody would like it, so he'd get assigned to some punishment post... and come out of it smelling like roses. Most notably, this was part of The Plan that turned him into the Barrayaran Cincinnatus.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_605dd875	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_605dd875	comment	Stargate-verse: Stargate SG-1: In the episode "The Warrior", "K'tano" (actually the minor Goa'uld Imhotep disguised as a free Jaffa leader, using their ideology against him to gain his own army) sends Teal'c on a suicide mission against the System Lord Yu. Yu spares Teal'c, tells him Imhotep's true identity, and sends him back. Teal'c returns and kills Imhotep via Klingon Promotion. A rare positive variant concerns General Hammond. When he took over from General West, he initially seemed to be counting down his days to retirement in a dusty secret facility. Then the Stargate reactivated, putting Hammond on the track of becoming a Reasonable Authority Figure for much of the show's run. Stargate Atlantis: The starting situation for Major John Sheppard: he screwed up in Afghanistan and was reassigned to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Thing is, he not only turned out to be a fiendishly good pilot (he used a passenger helicopter to repeatedly dodge a drone weapon)... The next thing he knows, he's being offered a chance by an extragalactic expedition's leader to tag along... Let's just say, this is how he became the series' resident Colonel Badass. In an Alternate Universe, he's drummed out of the Air Force for the same stunt and ends up becoming a police detective in Las Vegas, spending much of his time drinking and gambling. Long story short, he ends up saving the planet by making a Heroic Sacrifice. Rodney McKay is by and large a complete Jerkass in his appearances in SG-1. He had already been Reassigned to Antarctica (literally) when the Atlantis expedition was authorized, which then reassigned him even further away. However, Atlantis sees him teamed up with a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and subject to lengthy Character Development, meaning that his punishment actually ends up being extremely good for everyone involved.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_60f02ddb	comment	American Dad!: One episode has Stan going too far with some jokes at his superior that get him 'promoted' that requires relocation to the middle east. While originally horrified at the prospect while the rest of his family enjoys the change, he later comes to the realization that the culture is extremely sexist against women which feeds on his misogyny of being the man of the house and as a result he starts to love his new assignment.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_61052082	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_61052082	comment	In The Pentagon Wars, Colonel Burton raises enough general hell with the design of the Bradley APC that, after circulating a massively critical memorandum to virtually the whole Pentagon, he is reassigned to the "prestigious" Alaska posting. Later, when he's called to testify before Congress, his boss on the design team arranges for his commander to be unavailable to give him permission to testify. Pity that he forgot about the reassignment; Alaska's commander is more than happy enough to let Burton testify. Didn't See That Coming.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_626a75bc	comment	BlazBlue: Continuum Shift toys with this trope a bit. Hazama, in a bid to freely Mind Rape Noel and Tsubaki, sends his (competent) lieutenant Makoto to the NOL branch in Ibukido as a way to keep her away from her close friends (the aforementioned Noel and Tsubaki). This crosses as a Uriah Gambit as, while he expected her career to dead-end long enough to let him do with them as he pleases, having her choke on seithr or get timefucked by the local cauldron works, too. While there are no accolades or desired reallocations to the 5th Hierarchical City in the wake of her work, to say the whole thing backfired fails to adequately describe how bad an idea this was in hindsight. Not only did this fail to kill Makoto, but she fell into an alternate timeline and witnessed events which she could use to abort or reverse Tsubaki's intended change in alignment; acted with the interest of her friends first and foremost, which flies in the face of Terumi's ideal of despair, proceeding to balls up his plans as collateral damage; made friends with the "shitty vampire" Rachel Alucard and returned to her origin timeline; and learned the truth about beastkin and Prime Field Devices like her best friend Noel. Long story short, Terumi's options for a permanent Makoto solution boil down to Relius or homicide; she's capable of adapting to, if not already resilient to, just about everything else.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_628b55b0	comment	Played with in Dances with Wolves: The Hero chooses his reassignment to the Dakotas, out in the middle of nowhere. He then actually does end up sinking his own career when his superiors learn that he's been making friends with the natives.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_65d07453	comment	Another villainous example occurs in Captain America: The First Avenger. Johann Schmidt is reassigned by Hitler to a base in the Swiss Alps after being disfigured. This gives him privacy enough to make his own army behind Hitler's back.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_6738714d	comment	In Designated Survivor, HUD Secretary Tom Kirkman was named the Designated Survivor to keep him out of the way during the State of the Union Speech (since the President was going to fire him soon) and also because a conspiracy considered him the least prepared member of the government to take its reins. During the speech, a terrorist attack takes out the half of the Capitol, killing the Government, all of the House of Representatives (bar one who is involved in the conspiracy), all of the Senate (save for the Republican Party's Designated Survivor), all of the Supreme Court and pretty much anyone else with power in Washington D.C. — which leaves Kirkman as the new President of the United States.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_68c8e9ad	comment	The Super Robot Wars franchise likes to play with this trope often. In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, Kyosuke Nanbu is reassigned to North America's Langley Base after surviving the crash of the Wildraubiter's test flight at the Izu Far East Base. The person who reassigned him, Colonel Hans Weber, is later revealed to be a Mole for the Divine Crusaders and caused the crash. After arriving in Langley, Kyosuke is placed on the ATX Team and eventually goes on to defeat the United Colony Corps with his new friends at Langley and aboard the Hiryu Kai. When he returns to Izu, Hans is not pleased at what Kyosuke has become. Later, when Hans' treachery is revealed, he has to face Kyosuke and if the player feels like it, can be killed by the very same pilot he got rid of to make his plans succeed. As per Gundam SEED's plot, the casts of both Super Robot Wars Judgment and Super Robot Wars W (well, part of the cast in Judgment; the Alaska bit is one route split choice) get reassigned to the Joshua Base in Alaska by The Federation, hoping to get rid of them in an elaborate trap set to weaken ZAFT's military using the Cyclops System since the heroes are doing too well. Like in Gundam SEED, Mu La Flaga (another case of this trope) discovers the Cyclops System and warns everyone to get the Hell out of Dodge. The heroes eventually get back at The Federation in a big way, particularly in W, where one division of Neue Warter (the heroes) intercepts The Federation's fleet on its way to crush ZAFT using nuclear weapons to overpower them. And then they proceed to utterly destroy The Federation's forces and kill the commander who left them to die in Alaska, General Colbert. As mentioned above, the "Ms. Nadesico" contest from episode 19 of Martian Successor Nadesico happens in Super Robot Wars W, but plays out differently. Baron Ashura, disguised as Professor Yumi (as per one episode from the Mazinkaiser OVA), gets caught up in the contest and after finding out what the contest is about, the Baron casts a vote hoping to sabotage Warter (the heroes). In spectacular backfire fashion, it is Ashura's vote that is the tie-breaker that gets Yurika back her old job. In Super Robot Wars Alpha 2, the crew of the Albion gets reassigned to a backwater post in space under the guise to protect the GP-02A Gundam "Physalis" (in reality, The Federation wants nothing to do with them and wants the Albion's crew far away from them). Sadly, the GP-02A gets stolen and the Albion team joins up with the Alpha Numbers to get it back and go on to stop Nashim Gan Eden, among other threats to the Earth in that game. And then, the Albion's crew gets assigned to menial tasks again in Alpha 3 (partially due to a lot of Alpha 2's story getting retconned), and once again, they take to the field and help save the day from Keiser Ephes, the Spirit Emperor.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_691be369	comment	The X-Files: Scully was pulled out of being a professor at Quantico to debunk Mulder's work on the X-Files, to get it shut down so he couldn't find the Truth. This backfired massively when she is not only unable to debunk his work, but starts siding with him and becomes part of the X-Files herself. Plus, falling in love with your partner and having a child with him adds to that.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_695bc26c	comment	In SPYÃ—FAMILY, Henry Henderson was demoted after punching Murdoch Swann for insulting and mocking Anya Forger to the point of tears, with Henry even realizing that he had become a little too hard about things lately. He seems to take his demotion and being in charge of the first-graders of Cecile Hall in stride, considering it an opportunity for him to rediscover and reignite his passion for teaching.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_6b616153	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_6b616153	comment	Phule's Company starts off with the main character getting reassigned for strafing a peace-treaty signing; it's intended as a punishment because his new post involves taking charge of the Space Legion's losers on a backwater planet. Of course, things go much differently than planned, and this is more-or-less the last time Phule and the Omega Mob get transferred/"promoted"/etc. without malicious intentions. Tellingly, the only reason Phule was reassigned at all and not court-martialed was due to the fact that his father owned the largest munitions company in the galaxy. The Legion's top brass was intending Phule to become so fed up with his Ragtag Band of Misfits that he would voluntarily quit, as a bored, rich kid can find other ways to amuse himself.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_6bbd7b36	comment	In The Fourth Protocol, MI5 investigator John Preston is reassigned to Ports & Airports after annoying his Pointy-Haired Boss. This puts him in the position to investigate a Soviet plot to smuggle the components of an atomic bomb into the country. When he tries to get the attention of his boss re this plot, he's put on leave — this gives him the time to run a Rogue Agent operation to track down the agent assembling the bomb.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_70814599	comment	Stargate SG-1: In the episode "The Warrior", "K'tano" (actually the minor Goa'uld Imhotep disguised as a free Jaffa leader, using their ideology against him to gain his own army) sends Teal'c on a suicide mission against the System Lord Yu. Yu spares Teal'c, tells him Imhotep's true identity, and sends him back. Teal'c returns and kills Imhotep via Klingon Promotion. A rare positive variant concerns General Hammond. When he took over from General West, he initially seemed to be counting down his days to retirement in a dusty secret facility. Then the Stargate reactivated, putting Hammond on the track of becoming a Reasonable Authority Figure for much of the show's run.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_72262aee	comment	Avatar: The Last Airbender: Fire Lord Ozai scarred his son, exiled him, and sent him on a Snipe Hunt for a legend in punishment for speaking up for the cannon fodder. This was ultimately a factor in the toppling of his empire and his personal deposing and imprisonment. At the end of the series, Ozai promotes Azula to Fire Lord right before making the position irrelevant by declaring himself Phoenix King. This causes Azula to have a Villainous Breakdown and makes her go from a pragmatic, nigh-unbeatable combatant to being able to be taken down by Katara and Zuko, and lets them capture the Fire Nation capital and palace.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_73d7930f	comment	Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A case of a character trying to do this to himself occurs when Commander Sisko, distraught over the loss of his wife takes assignments near Earth in order to ride out his time in Starfleet. He is reassigned to DS9 despite his protests that it's not the "ideal environment" in which to raise his son. DS9 is a wreck of a halfway abandoned space station near an unimportant planet. Then they discover a stable wormhole nearby, the aliens inside declare him as their Emissary, and that station becomes one of the most important field assignments in Starfleet. Kira Nerys, whom the Provisional Government sent to Deep Space Nine just so she'd be less likely to yell at them over every little matter (no luck, Kira's introduced yelling at her superior over the comm.). As a result, she becomes the second officer to the Emissary himself, and a major player in all the events that follow over the next seven years, including the election of the next First Minister of Bajor. Gul Dukat, who because of a political scandal was demoted from top military advisor to his government to commanding a mere freighter, managed to earn back his position after a brilliant capture of an enemy ship. He turned down the position and decided to go rogue, only to eventually stage a Dominion-backed coup to become supreme dictator of his homeworld. Quark considered his bar an embarrassment, and would have abandoned it by the pilot had Sisko not blackmailed him into staying. Not long after, he was praised for his lobes in finding such a profitable location without even knowing the wormhole was there at the time. Not to mention Rom, who wound up working for his brother after losing everything, and finished up becoming the Grand Nagus.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_74365738	comment	Vetinari invokes this intentionally with Moist von Lipwig in Going Postal by putting the sentenced-to-death criminal to work reforming the Ankh-Mopork postal office, a job that has so far claimed the lives of the last four people who tried in short order, and assigning him an Implacable Parole Officer. If he succeeds, the Post Office is up and running again; if he doesn't, well, the city was prepared to kill him anyway, one way or the other. As he later describes it, it was a cruel joke that fortunately backfired in the best way possible.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_74603f32	comment	Arcane: Marcus punishes Caitlyn for leaving her post at her family's tent and getting involved in a crime scene without permission by sending her to the graveyard shift guarding the fairgrounds. Her narrow survival of Jinx's bombing that night only drives her on even more to investigate the crimes, convinced of a criminal conspiracy.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_75149ccd	comment	Wedge Antilles in the X-Wing Series is Genre Savvy enough to take advantage of this trope. To create Wraith Squadron, he deliberately cherry-picks skilled pilots who are about to be washed out or court-martialed.note He'd initially started with fifty candidates; he'd hoped to trim that to twelve, but for various reasons, only ten were fit to join the squadron at all, forcing him to round out the numbers by adding himself (as leader) and Wes Janson. Still, he had expected that he'd get a lot of irredeemables among the misfits, so he was still pleased that he was able to come up with anything near a full squadron. This is because it's easier than trying to cherry-pick the best of the best, since rival squadron leaders would fight to keep their aces, but wouldn't care if they could get rid of an unwanted pilot. Sure enough, the Ragtag Squadron of Misfits basically Indy Ploys their way into legend.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_7668653a	comment	In Mass Effect 2, Tali is reassigned to the Normandy when she is on trial for treason because the Obstructive Bureaucrat on the Admiralty Board wants her exiled from the Migrant Fleet and thinks that Commander Shepard will be a poor advocate for her. As part of this, they have Tali officially renamed to "Tali'zorah vas Normandy": by making her ship name that of Shepard's ship, they essentially send the message that Tali is all but exiled at that point and the trial is simply a formality. That does not go according to plan (unless Shepard is a poor diplomat). After which, feeling that Shepard has been a greater friend to her than any quarian, she decides to remain "vas Normandy" permanently.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_77be988d	comment	In Thief of Time, several of the managers of the History Monks assign Lobsang Ludd (a troublesome child) be the apprentice of Lu Tze (widely seen as a great hero, but has lots of fun annoying the other monks), on the basis that either or both will break the other. Their combined efforts end up saving the world.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_7988cb68	comment	Mass Effect: The series features Ashley Williams, whose name bears some serious stigma — her grandfather was the general who surrendered his garrison (for good reasons) to the Turians during the First Contact War. She and her father were passed over for promotion many times and assigned posts with no action (and thus no opportunity to demonstrate capability). Then along comes Sovereign, the Geth, and Saren — and Shepard to take her along for the ride. Needless to say, her actions clear her family's name. In Mass Effect 2, Tali is reassigned to the Normandy when she is on trial for treason because the Obstructive Bureaucrat on the Admiralty Board wants her exiled from the Migrant Fleet and thinks that Commander Shepard will be a poor advocate for her. As part of this, they have Tali officially renamed to "Tali'zorah vas Normandy": by making her ship name that of Shepard's ship, they essentially send the message that Tali is all but exiled at that point and the trial is simply a formality. That does not go according to plan (unless Shepard is a poor diplomat). After which, feeling that Shepard has been a greater friend to her than any quarian, she decides to remain "vas Normandy" permanently.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_7ac43256	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_7ac43256	comment	In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, Kyosuke Nanbu is reassigned to North America's Langley Base after surviving the crash of the Wildraubiter's test flight at the Izu Far East Base. The person who reassigned him, Colonel Hans Weber, is later revealed to be a Mole for the Divine Crusaders and caused the crash. After arriving in Langley, Kyosuke is placed on the ATX Team and eventually goes on to defeat the United Colony Corps with his new friends at Langley and aboard the Hiryu Kai. When he returns to Izu, Hans is not pleased at what Kyosuke has become. Later, when Hans' treachery is revealed, he has to face Kyosuke and if the player feels like it, can be killed by the very same pilot he got rid of to make his plans succeed.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_7f87dafc	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_7f87dafc	comment	As per Gundam SEED's plot, the casts of both Super Robot Wars Judgment and Super Robot Wars W (well, part of the cast in Judgment; the Alaska bit is one route split choice) get reassigned to the Joshua Base in Alaska by The Federation, hoping to get rid of them in an elaborate trap set to weaken ZAFT's military using the Cyclops System since the heroes are doing too well. Like in Gundam SEED, Mu La Flaga (another case of this trope) discovers the Cyclops System and warns everyone to get the Hell out of Dodge. The heroes eventually get back at The Federation in a big way, particularly in W, where one division of Neue Warter (the heroes) intercepts The Federation's fleet on its way to crush ZAFT using nuclear weapons to overpower them. And then they proceed to utterly destroy The Federation's forces and kill the commander who left them to die in Alaska, General Colbert.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_7f8a38b6	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_7f8a38b6	comment	In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Relena Peacecraft was made Queen of the World by Duke Dermail in order to improve Romefeller's image and to get her out of the way with a meaningless figurehead title. However, her idealism and charisma cause Romefeller to support her over Dermail, turning her figurehead position into one of actual authority, resulting in Dermail losing almost all of Romefeller's support and indirectly causing his death. Also doubles as Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, since Dermail was trying to perpetuate War for Fun and Profit, uniting most of the planet under Romefeller; Relena's nation is one of the last resisters. Her actions in making Romefeller benevolent end up resulting in The Federation we see in Endless Waltz.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_81692f99	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_81692f99	comment	Star Trek: Star Trek: The Next Generation: In his debut episode "Hollow Pursuits", Lt. Reginald "Reg" Barclay was thought to have been transferred to the Enterprise just to get rid of him. However, throughout the series, Barclay came into his own as a Starfleet officer under Picard's command. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A case of a character trying to do this to himself occurs when Commander Sisko, distraught over the loss of his wife takes assignments near Earth in order to ride out his time in Starfleet. He is reassigned to DS9 despite his protests that it's not the "ideal environment" in which to raise his son. DS9 is a wreck of a halfway abandoned space station near an unimportant planet. Then they discover a stable wormhole nearby, the aliens inside declare him as their Emissary, and that station becomes one of the most important field assignments in Starfleet. Kira Nerys, whom the Provisional Government sent to Deep Space Nine just so she'd be less likely to yell at them over every little matter (no luck, Kira's introduced yelling at her superior over the comm.). As a result, she becomes the second officer to the Emissary himself, and a major player in all the events that follow over the next seven years, including the election of the next First Minister of Bajor. Gul Dukat, who because of a political scandal was demoted from top military advisor to his government to commanding a mere freighter, managed to earn back his position after a brilliant capture of an enemy ship. He turned down the position and decided to go rogue, only to eventually stage a Dominion-backed coup to become supreme dictator of his homeworld. Quark considered his bar an embarrassment, and would have abandoned it by the pilot had Sisko not blackmailed him into staying. Not long after, he was praised for his lobes in finding such a profitable location without even knowing the wormhole was there at the time. Not to mention Rom, who wound up working for his brother after losing everything, and finished up becoming the Grand Nagus.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_84809b33	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_84809b33	comment	L.A. Noire: The result of reassigning Cole Phelps to the police department's version of Antarctica is a backfire of epic proportions. In trying to move public scrutiny away from Vice by giving the media a new Chew Toy, they put Cole directly on the scent of their conspiracy. Whoops. Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_85384a88	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_85384a88	comment	Kazuhiro in Gung Ho was put in charge of Assan Motors' fledgling US assembly plant, in order to fail because his bosses felt he thought too much like an American. Didn't quite think that one through.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_86772227	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_86772227	comment	Knights of the Dinner Table: When Hard 8 reinstates Nitro's GM credentials, it is with the provision that he is only allowed to GM the Pee Wee Hackleague. Nitro proceeds to take his Pee Wee team all the way to the Garycon finals.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_8ac4e993	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_8ac4e993	comment	Gundam: In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Relena Peacecraft was made Queen of the World by Duke Dermail in order to improve Romefeller's image and to get her out of the way with a meaningless figurehead title. However, her idealism and charisma cause Romefeller to support her over Dermail, turning her figurehead position into one of actual authority, resulting in Dermail losing almost all of Romefeller's support and indirectly causing his death. Also doubles as Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, since Dermail was trying to perpetuate War for Fun and Profit, uniting most of the planet under Romefeller; Relena's nation is one of the last resisters. Her actions in making Romefeller benevolent end up resulting in The Federation we see in Endless Waltz. Mobile Suit Gundam SEED inverts this slightly. When the Archangel arrives in JOSH-A, the Earth Alliance brass reassign three crew members — Mu La Flaga, Flay Allster, and Natarle Badgiruel — to other sections as they feel they have greater purposes for the war and leave the rest of the Archangel crew at JOSH-A. However, Mu has a suspicion that something's wrong and discovers that it's a trap — the brass know that ZAFT is setting up to attack and have armed a Cyclops System to wipe them all out and the Archangel is the bait as they believe that, because of Kira Yamato's time on the ship, it's "tainted" by his Coordinator presence and thus the Archangel can die with the rest of them. Mu stays with the Archangel, Flay is kidnapped by Rau Le Creuset and Natarle is the only whose reassignment sticks. Oh, and those on the Archangel become a real pain in everyone's sides.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_8d814070	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_8d814070	comment	MAS*H: Subverted in "Fade Out, Fade In". Charles is sent to the 4077th by a higher officer who owes him money. Shortly after his arrival, he is able to prove that his surgical skills are invaluable, ensuring that he becomes the permanent tentmate of Hawkeye and BJ (much to his chagrin). Played straight a few seasons later when the higher officer comes back. Because of a sequence of events that would lead to trouble, he expects Winchester to cover for him so that Margaret's career would be ruined and his career would be fine, with a reward of finally going back to Tokyo. Due to Character Development making him turn from a Jerkass to a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Winchester has enough morals to loudly call him on it.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_8d81bb26	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_8d81bb26	comment	NCIS has a Navy officer, Evan Dearing, being reassigned to a battleship after he violates procedures by videotaping a fellow soldier having sex and showing it to various personnel as a prank, alongside two friends of his. Said ship ends up being destroyed in a terrorist attack, resulting in Evan's death, as well as a very angry Harper Dearing, Evan's father.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_90c73dda	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_90c73dda	comment	A bit of a variation in Animorphs: the disgraced Seerow is stationed on the Hork-Bajir homeworld, which the Andalite superiors believe to not be in any way significant. Then the Yeerks arrive. The variation? Seerow is killed almost immediately; it's his daughter (who was stationed there with him) who becomes a heroine due to the reassignment.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_97931756	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_97931756	comment	In Rush Hour, LAPD Detective James Carter believes he's gotten picked by the FBI to help search for the kidnapped daughter of the Chinese Consul, but is really ordered to keep Chief Inspector Lee, who was summoned by the ambassador, distracted while they handle the investigation. Lee and Carter manage to find the daughter themselves and expose the kidnappers.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_985ddbb1	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_985ddbb1	comment	In Super Robot Wars Alpha 2, the crew of the Albion gets reassigned to a backwater post in space under the guise to protect the GP-02A Gundam "Physalis" (in reality, The Federation wants nothing to do with them and wants the Albion's crew far away from them). Sadly, the GP-02A gets stolen and the Albion team joins up with the Alpha Numbers to get it back and go on to stop Nashim Gan Eden, among other threats to the Earth in that game. And then, the Albion's crew gets assigned to menial tasks again in Alpha 3 (partially due to a lot of Alpha 2's story getting retconned), and once again, they take to the field and help save the day from Keiser Ephes, the Spirit Emperor.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_9d47a2a2	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_9d47a2a2	comment	A Song of Ice and Fire: Joining the Night's Watch is seen as a last resort for criminals and failures, where they will spend the rest of existence guarding a giant wall in the frozen north, far away from the war and turmoil of the seven kingdoms. However, the Night's Watch is under constant threat from the nomadic Wildlings and inhuman Others, and after their alliance with King Stannis Baratheon, the Night's Watch proves to be one of the most relevant forces in the war. Position of Master of Coin is supposed to be the weakest position on King's council. Basically, the job involves collecting taxes and providing money whenever the king needs it, with no prospects for gaining personal glory or fame, committing valiant deeds, or being remembered at all. Then King Robert assigned the position to Littlefinger... From the backstory, there's the rivalry between Unwin Peake, the scheming regent and Hand of the boy-king Aegon III, and Alyn Velaryon, the Oakenfist, a legitimised bastard and popular hero. Eventually Peake ordered Oakenfist to put down the then-ongoing Iron Islands rebellion; this would involve sailing his fleet clear around the continent, through the middle of an ongoing naval war between the Free Cities and the pirates of the Stepstones, to engage a numerically superior foe on his home turf. Unfortunately for Peake, the leader of the Iron Men was murdered by one of his salt wives and his rebellion fell apart, and on the way home Oakenfist managed to find the king's long-lost brother, Viserys, and bring him home, making him an even bigger hero than before. Aerys ordered Jaime Lannister into the Kingsguard to make him basically a hostage against Tywin Lannister, robbing him of his rightful heir, notwithstanding that Jaime had a mind of his own, had a tipping point for Aerys' craziness, was very well armed... and was left alone with the king. Tyrion Lannister was the subject of being The Un-Favourite his entire life, at one point he mentions that while his siblings were given positions of power, he was put in charge of looking after the sewers. He also notes that while, yes, it was a lowly function, at no other point in Casterly Rock's existence did the sewers work that smoothly and he was quite proud of it.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_9d9a1df3	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_9d9a1df3	comment	In Farsight, the Fire Caste commanders of Tau were getting a bit too popular for their Ethereal superiors' comfort, so two of them were placed in cryostasis despite dire need for their skills. The third commander was sent far away, across a gulf in space that takes years to travel through- ordered to reclaim colonies that humans had stolen from the Tau. The Ethereals gave him a lot of ships and personnel and figured they'd never have to deal with him again, because all prior wars against humans had ended in a Curb-Stomp Battle. Except that the commander did manage to cross the gulf, and did fight the humans off, and did reclaim the colonies. And he was so upset with the Ethereals by this point that he and all the colonies he'd conquered went rogue...proving to every Tau that life without the Ethereals' authority is possible.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_9e8e9ba3	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_9e8e9ba3	comment	In the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, Colonel-Commissar Gaunt has been living in reassignment hell for the last 15 years. The fact that such reassignments have backfired time and time again have not stopped the higher-ups whom he has offended to keep trying. The reassignments have been meant to do a little more than get his career stuck, so it's also a case of Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder since most of Gaunt's men also manage to survive the experience.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_a86b7660	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_a86b7660	comment	Played with in Due South: Fraser was assigned liaison duty with the Canadian Consulate in Chicago as retribution for arresting a fellow Mountie — and for being, in general, just a little too good for anyone at home to feel really comfortable with. He becomes something of a local phenomenon in Chicago, but remains persona non grata at home, and the Consulate continues to function as an apparent dumping ground for misfits.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_a9c57bd	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_a9c57bd	comment	Happens in The Greatest American Hero when Bill Maxwell's boss, exasperated with his loss of government cars, assigns him a Volkswagen bug and the case of a missing circus clown. It leads to him busting a major spy ring. The bad guy even tells Bill he'll get a promotion out of the case.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_aa1d4fb4	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_aa1d4fb4	comment	In Suikoden III, Thomas is sent to Budehuc Castle in order to keep him out of his scheming councilman father's way. When he turns the area into a thriving Truce Zone, the Zexen Confederacy is less than pleased, and tries to force him to stop. Not only does he refuse, he winds up eventually providing the game's headquarters.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_aedc983a	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_aedc983a	comment	Wing Commander: Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga: In the intro to Wing Commander II, Christopher Blair is accused of treason. There's no solid evidence against him, so the court martial only convicts him of negligence and demotes him, but Admiral Tolwyn remains convinced he's a traitor and reassigns him to a little backwater station. Ten years later he encounters the Kilrathi in the area and is forced to save the day, soon becoming the hero of another major campaign. In Wing Commander III, he's given another crappy assignment by the same admiral. This time, however, Tolwyn deliberately assigned him to an unimpressive carrier so that when the time came, he could use Blair in his plan to end the war without drawing too much attention from the enemy. The true Reassignment Backfire occurs in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom when Blair gets involved in going rogue to fight a conspiracy that turns out to be run by Tolwyn himself. He ends up exposing his eugenics plans and gets him convicted for treason.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_afc0b059	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_afc0b059	comment	A variant occurs in Antares Passage. Captain Drake has nothing against his Sandarian exchange officer, Ensign Philip Walkirk. However, this particular ensign happens to be Crown Prince of Sandar, and Drake is terrified of the possibility that he might get killed while under Drake's command, so he assigns him to command the Marine detachment, figuring that there's little chance they'll see any action. Later, the Marines end up boarding a Ryall transport. Fortunately, Philip survives unscathed.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_b30ae4db	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_b30ae4db	comment	Game of Thrones: Tyrion Lannister mentions that when he was sixteen, his father assigned him to oversee the sewers and cisterns of Casterly Rock, as a means of getting him out of the way. However, Tyrion ended up revolutionizing the system, and remarks that Casterly Rock was never cleaner. After Pod's previous master was hanged, with the noose already tied for Pod, Lord Tywin heard that Podrick's family name was Payne, commuted the death sentence and sent him to squire for Tyrion as mutual punishment for the two. Podrick ended up enjoying his new master and saving Tyrion's life.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_b449a8c7	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_b449a8c7	comment	In the American Civil War, Union General Lew Wallace was stripped of his command for his performance in the Battle of Shiloh, in which he seemingly sent his 6,000-man division every direction except towards the enemy, not arriving on the battlefield until 7 pm on the first day as the fighting was dying down. Though he would never receive another front-line command, his backwater assignments would still give him new chances at glory. After Shiloh, Wallace was assigned to the military Department of Ohio, in which he was placed in charge of the defense of Cincinnati. Faced with an incoming Confederate army advancing from Braxton Bragg's Kentucky invasion, Wallace was able to assemble an odd mix of regulars, militia, black laborers, police officers, and civilian volunteers into a fighting force so large and formidable that the Confederate army ultimately decided against attacking the city. Then in 1864, Lew Wallace led 6,000 troops at the Battle of Monocacy against Jubal Early's 15,000-man invasion force. Faced with an army more than twice his size, Wallace's men were eventually overwhelmed and forced to retreat to Baltimore, but they had held up Early for a full day, giving the Union time they needed to bring up reinforcements to secure Washington D. C. against Early's threat. Today, Wallace is best remembered for writing the book Ben-Hur after the war.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_b4fe32c9	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_b4fe32c9	comment	Invader Zim: Zigzagged regarding Zim. The titular character's assigners and rulers, the Tallest, make up a planet past the edge of their star map, and send Zim there so they will never see him again. They're shocked when, six months later, Zim reports back alive and well, saying that he has built his home base on some planet called "Earth". Earth still is a backwater planet with nothing of interest to the Irken race and Zim is ultimately too incompetent to conquer it, meaning that (outside of reports) the Tallest don't have to deal with him as often as before. During "Backseat Drivers Beyond the Stars" this comes back to bite them as Zim hijacks the Tallest's ship in order to bring them to Earth to witness his latest plan for world domination in person, almost killing them both and blowing up their ship in the process. It backfires on them more permanently in Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, where Zim's antics create the titular Negative Space Wedgie, which swallows up the entire Irken fleet, Tallest included. This also backfired somewhat with their assignment to Invader Skoodge. The Tallest openly despise him, seemingly even more than they hate Zim. When he shows up for assignment they don't even put up a facade that he's important to them. They assign him to the home planet of the slaughtering Rat People and even provide an illustration of said Rat People preparing to rip Skoodge apart making it abundantly clear that they're sending him there to die. Then Skoodge ends up being the first invader to conquer his planet. While the Tallest have another planet added to their Empire, they still have to deal with the short, ugly, obnoxious, and still living Skoodge. The Tallest decide to deal with this by giving Skoodge the 'honour' of a brand-new tradition: That the successful invader be loaded into a cannon and fired as the opening shot of the Orbital Bombardment to cleanse the planet. If the show hadn't been cancelled, Skoodge was planned to survive this as well and eventually be assigned to Zim, making him a double example of this trope given Zim's tendencies for his plans to backfire onto the Irken Empire.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_b50aa03f	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_b50aa03f	comment	The Reynard Cycle: At the end of Reynard the Fox, Nobel, feeling that much of his thunder is being (rightfully) stolen by Reynard, names him The Baron of Maleperduys, a place which is not only little more than a forest full of monstrous Chimera, it's also located behind enemy lines. Meant to be a meaningless title at best, and a very unsubtle insult at worst, he doesn't really expect Reynard to go there, let alone rule. Reynard promptly does so, and ends up becoming a war hero in The Baron of Maleperduys due to the actions he is forced to take in order to survive there.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_b87c1da0	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_b87c1da0	comment	In the beginning of Island in the Sea of Time (Series), Capt. Marian Alston is assigned to the Eagle, an old World War II-era German boat that's been repurposed as a training vessel for the US Coast Guard, because her superiors strongly suspected that she's a lesbian but didn't want the PR nightmare that might ensue from firing a highly respected black officer over her sexual orientation. She ends up around Nantucket during the Event, and her crew becomes the closest thing that the island has to a military during the turbulent early years of its adjustment to being sent back in time to the Bronze Age, thus making her a power player in the Republic of Nantucket.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_b8eb4fe5	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_b8eb4fe5	comment	Played with in Sakura Wars. The backwater post into which the talented rookie is forced despite complaints and obvious unsuitability? Yeah, there's a catastrophe going on... and his superiors knew it all along.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_ba07853c	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_ba07853c	comment	Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker: Hot Coldman was assigned from the director of the CIA to the CIA Station Chief of Central America because he orchestrated the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater and needed to be shut up. He then builds a small army known as the Peace Sentinels and plans to create an AI-driven nuclear deterrent that can kill everyone. He almost destroys the world.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_bcadd7cb	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_bcadd7cb	comment	During the Second War for Armageddon in the background for Warhammer 40,000, the corrupt Planetary Governor Herman von Strab reassigned Commissar Sebastian Yarrick to Hades Hive as a punishment for going over his head and requesting reinforcements from the Imperium. Unfortunately for the incompetent and traitorous Governor, rather than dying as he had hoped Yarrick was put into the perfect position to stall the Ork advance and become the famous Hero of Hades Hive. This is actually a double-layered backfire — the only reason Yarrick was on Armageddon at all was because some political enemies had pulled strings with the Commissariat to get him pulled from field assignments and banished to a recruitment/basic training facility to mark time until retirement. Then Thraka arrived and Yarrick found himself on the front lines of a major war anyway.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_bcdcf629	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_bcdcf629	comment	Transformers: Animated plays with this. Optimus is assigned the unglamorous job of Space Bridge maintenance, but circumstances conspire to place him and his crew in the middle of events that could change the course of galactic history (and yes, this takes him to Earth). The thing is, Optimus wasn't assigned the crap job out of malice. It's just that with the disaster that lost Elita-1, Ultra Magnus had to make an example out of someone, and with Optimus taking the blame, Ultra Magnus was bound by protocol to do that to him (him getting the assignment was Ultra Magnus pulling strings for Optimus). Played more straight with Bumblebee, as him taking the blame for Bulkhead's clumsiness led to Sentinel Prime sending him to work for Optimus. Subverted with Bulkhead, as although he was given the crap job like Bumblebee, because Bulkhead loves Space Bridges, any excuse to work on them makes him happy. Being elevated to the heroes of Cybertron was just a bonus.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_be47eb2c	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_be47eb2c	comment	In Down Periscope, Rear Admiral Graham tries to torpedo Lieutenant Commander Dodge's career by assigning him the most screwed-up crew he can find for the USS Stingray (an old WWII diesel submarine) hoping they would fail the naval exercise Dodge was participating in as a hypothetical rogue sub commander seeking to harm the US. As with most ragtag bunches of misfits, each member proves to be supremely skilled at their job when handled correctly, allowing Dodge to surpass all expectations and succeed. Bonus points for exploiting the specifics of the old rusty bucket submarine itself to confuse the "enemy" in a way that wouldn't be possible in the slightest with a modern nuclear submarine.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_c090a117	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_c090a117	comment	Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga: In the intro to Wing Commander II, Christopher Blair is accused of treason. There's no solid evidence against him, so the court martial only convicts him of negligence and demotes him, but Admiral Tolwyn remains convinced he's a traitor and reassigns him to a little backwater station. Ten years later he encounters the Kilrathi in the area and is forced to save the day, soon becoming the hero of another major campaign. In Wing Commander III, he's given another crappy assignment by the same admiral. This time, however, Tolwyn deliberately assigned him to an unimpressive carrier so that when the time came, he could use Blair in his plan to end the war without drawing too much attention from the enemy.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_c34ab4c	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_c34ab4c	comment	In This Bites!, to restore good PR, Sengoku sends Knight Templar Akainu and other like-minded marines to the New World and fight the Four Emperors outside the public eye. However, Akainu has been working with the Five Elder Stars on a mass recruiting campaign from isolated nations.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_c43df4d8	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_c43df4d8	comment	Doctor Who: "The Five Doctors" subverts this when the Doctor is made President of Gallifrey in the hopes of tying him to the position and halting his endless gallivanting across time and space — instead of coming quietly to rule from behind a desk, he gives an order placing the one who promoted him in command until his return and dashes off in the TARDIS with no intention of returning. He finally shows an interest in the post in "Trial of a Time Lord" when he tries to play the 'Presidential immunity from prosecution card', only to find out that he had been deposed during his absence for neglecting his duties.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_c4b4fb11	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_c4b4fb11	comment	Subverted in an episode of Lou Grant. For violating a newspaper policy, reporter Joe Rossi is assigned to the dullest story Lou can think of — profiling a minor state official, who commutes between Los Angeles and Sacramento (he even admits to his subject that he's being punished). Then Rossi discovers that the official is a bigamist, with a family in each city... and gloats that his story is "going to write itself". However, in the end, he can't bring himself to ruin two families' lives, and instead turns in a story which Lou dismisses as drivel.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_c67be877	comment	Flashman is a good example of this. Harry Flashman, freshly expelled from Rugby School, joins the prestigious 11th Hussars. Within a year, he gets into a duel over a woman, and is posted to Glasgow, assisting the local militia against agitating mill workers. He seduces the prettiest daughter of the mill owner he's billeted with, and is forced to marry her. This doesn't sit well with Lord Cardigan, the commander of the 11th Hussars, and he gets posted again, this time to India (a location hated and despised by Cardigan). Flashman's skill with a horse and lance impresses the Governor General, and he's sent as an ADC to Kabul, on General Elphinstone's staff. He gains (stolen) credit with the natives as "Bloody Lance", the lone killer of five would-be assassins, and gains credit with the military and public when he's one of the few survivors of the Kabul Retreat, and "defends" a small fort outside the besieged Jalalabad — he's found surrounded by dead, clutching the flag to his chest. As the only (white) survivor, he feels free to not contradict the CO's assumption that he wasn't cowering uselessly in bed, and was in fact about to throw the flag to the attackers. He gets a hero's send-off from India, a hero's welcome upon his return, and a medal from Queen Victoria herself.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_ca08598f	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_ca08598f	comment	The Wire: In the first season, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits is put on a deadend assignment. They (mostly) succeed in taking down the biggest drug empire in West Baltimore. By the start of Season 2, McNulty has been put in his nightmare assignment of harbour patrol, and manages to blow open a human trafficking operation. In a variation on the usual trope, this isn't so much out of irrepressible heroism as it is a calculated attempt to embarrass his old boss. He's already so low on the career ladder that Rawls can't do anything meaningful in retaliation anyway. Prez gets justifiably stripped of his gun and stuck on a desk. Turns out his intelligence and skill at pattern-recognition mean he's much more effective as a Desk Jockey than he was as a beat cop. Michael Santangelo is a somewhat incompetent Homicide detective who is assigned by Rawls to the Barksdale detail, ostensibly to spy on McNulty. When Bunk and McNulty help him out of a jam, Santangelo refuses to rat on a fellow officer, and thus takes a demotion to a patrol officer in the Western District. When McNulty and Kima run into him in season 3, Santangelo admits that he actually is a lot happier as a patrol officer, because he keeps the same pay and pension, is much better at the position than he was at being a detective, and doesn't have overbearing bosses like Rawls watching his every move. Santangelo's happiness in patrol leads McNulty to decide to join him and Carver on the Western District beat when he transfers out of the Major Crimes Unit.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_ccf875f7	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_ccf875f7	comment	The Criminal Minds episode "Legacy" features a Detective McGee of the Kansas City Police Department. His OCD makes him seem unstable, but his superiors feel that they can't fire him, because his dad was the captain's partner and was killed on the job. Instead, they promote him to detective so that they can keep him away from the general public by assigning him to the downtown area to keep an eye on the homeless, the prostitutes and the drug users. Then, of course, his compulsion to catalogue everyone he encounters on the streets causes him to notice when 63 of them just aren't there anymore, and thus he discovers a Serial Killer who kills society's castoffs.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_cd2a0a83	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_cd2a0a83	comment	Zigzagged regarding Zim. The titular character's assigners and rulers, the Tallest, make up a planet past the edge of their star map, and send Zim there so they will never see him again. They're shocked when, six months later, Zim reports back alive and well, saying that he has built his home base on some planet called "Earth". Earth still is a backwater planet with nothing of interest to the Irken race and Zim is ultimately too incompetent to conquer it, meaning that (outside of reports) the Tallest don't have to deal with him as often as before. During "Backseat Drivers Beyond the Stars" this comes back to bite them as Zim hijacks the Tallest's ship in order to bring them to Earth to witness his latest plan for world domination in person, almost killing them both and blowing up their ship in the process. It backfires on them more permanently in Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus, where Zim's antics create the titular Negative Space Wedgie, which swallows up the entire Irken fleet, Tallest included.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_cec99ed9	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_cec99ed9	comment	Played somewhat unusually in the third Safehold book. The commander in question is in fact incompetent, but the general doesn't want to fire him for political reasons, so he puts him in command of the rear of their defense of a mountain pass. Unfortunately, the other side gets around behind them, so they have to move quickly to escape the pass and redeploy. Unfortunately, the incompetent commander has to get moving before the rest of the army can go anywhere.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_d1449385	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_d1449385	comment	A variation occurs in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight. Rona thought that transferring Simone from Chicago to Rome would soften her up (though Buffy herself thought she did it simply because she didn't want to put up with Simone anymore). Instead, Andrew annoyed her so much that she ended up going rogue, becoming one of Buffy's greatest enemies.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_d461f757	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_d461f757	comment	Battlestar Galactica (2003): Commander William Adama, assigned to the so-old-we're-using-it-as-a-museum Galactica, which ended up being the only Battlestar not incapacitated by the Cylons due to not being networked. One can guess that many of the other officers and crew were sent there to get them out of the way. Tigh certainly didn't seem to be a model XO and Starbuck was the queen of insubordination. If you were competent and ambitious you probably did not get assigned to the Galactica. Roslin was also sent to the Galactica as a way to get her out of the way for a short time. She went against the president when negotiating with the teacher's union and the party leaders had to keep her away from the public spotlight while they neutralized any political fallout.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_d56cb367	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_d56cb367	comment	An interesting case concerning Power Rangers S.P.D.. After discovering SPD's elite team, A Squad, Cruger decides to end B Squad's tenure as protectors and returns them to A Squad pick up duty again. Then, A Squad ended up being evil and B Squad had to save the day.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_e269e8b2	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_e269e8b2	comment	The New Order: Last Days of Europe: Hitler decides to put Himmler away in Burgundy so he wouldn't interfere nor gather political power to threaten him... and ended up giving him a place where he could consolidate his own sort of power, implement a government even the Nazis think is horrifying, and generally advance his plots, including the part where he touches off the nuclear apocalypse on purpose, so that the master race can live through it and reconquer the world.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_e4732abc	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_e4732abc	comment	Stargate Atlantis: The starting situation for Major John Sheppard: he screwed up in Afghanistan and was reassigned to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Thing is, he not only turned out to be a fiendishly good pilot (he used a passenger helicopter to repeatedly dodge a drone weapon)... The next thing he knows, he's being offered a chance by an extragalactic expedition's leader to tag along... Let's just say, this is how he became the series' resident Colonel Badass. In an Alternate Universe, he's drummed out of the Air Force for the same stunt and ends up becoming a police detective in Las Vegas, spending much of his time drinking and gambling. Long story short, he ends up saving the planet by making a Heroic Sacrifice. Rodney McKay is by and large a complete Jerkass in his appearances in SG-1. He had already been Reassigned to Antarctica (literally) when the Atlantis expedition was authorized, which then reassigned him even further away. However, Atlantis sees him teamed up with a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and subject to lengthy Character Development, meaning that his punishment actually ends up being extremely good for everyone involved.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_e6267766	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_e6267766	comment	Star Wars Legends: Wedge Antilles in the X-Wing Series is Genre Savvy enough to take advantage of this trope. To create Wraith Squadron, he deliberately cherry-picks skilled pilots who are about to be washed out or court-martialed.note He'd initially started with fifty candidates; he'd hoped to trim that to twelve, but for various reasons, only ten were fit to join the squadron at all, forcing him to round out the numbers by adding himself (as leader) and Wes Janson. Still, he had expected that he'd get a lot of irredeemables among the misfits, so he was still pleased that he was able to come up with anything near a full squadron. This is because it's easier than trying to cherry-pick the best of the best, since rival squadron leaders would fight to keep their aces, but wouldn't care if they could get rid of an unwanted pilot. Sure enough, the Ragtag Squadron of Misfits basically Indy Ploys their way into legend. Sort of also applies to Thrawn, he was reassigned to his old stomping ground in the Unknowns to calm his political opponents. The fact that he made Grand Admiral on his tactical prowess rather than any political links made this a foregone outcome. However, we find out later that his "exile" was a cover story for a mission to pacify and organize the Unknown Regions... which he did, to the tune of 250 sectors, one quarter of the size of the Galactic Empire at its height, and far larger than the Imperial Remnant by the time our heroes stumble upon it.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_e694aadb	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_e694aadb	comment	Inverted by a fellow Commissar, Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM), who wants a nice, comfortable out-of-the-way post in order to keep himself out of harm's way. He'll "heroically" volunteer for the most boring posting he can, only to somehow put himself in the most dangerous spot possible. Ironically, his tendency to find himself running up against seemingly impossible odds and triumphing by sheer dumb luck have earned him the status of a Hero of the Imperium, meaning he's expected to be at the front lines, facing enemy fire. From his perspective, he's now suffering the trope since he's forced to accept these assignments to keep up his reputation and not disappoint his friends and colleagues. A straight example is his aide, Gunner Jurgen. The malodorous soldier was originally assigned to Cain as a practical joke, but between his skill as a soldier and hidden Anti-Magic abilities the arrangement became the foundation of Cain's rise to fame.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_e7bfb4e0	comment	The true Reassignment Backfire occurs in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom when Blair gets involved in going rogue to fight a conspiracy that turns out to be run by Tolwyn himself. He ends up exposing his eugenics plans and gets him convicted for treason.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_ea787cd1	comment	Galaeron Nihmedu, the protagonist of the Forgotten Realms trilogy Return of the Archwizards, Galaeron Nihmedu was assigned to far tomb guard due to wizards-vs.-sorcerers discrimination. Where he met some "grave robbers" who turns out to be something more, accidentally participated in release of Sealed Evil in a Can planned anyway, and acquired both priceless report from top Netherese spy, as well as means to put it to good use and save his home city.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_eeaaec28	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_eeaaec28	comment	As mentioned above, the "Ms. Nadesico" contest from episode 19 of Martian Successor Nadesico happens in Super Robot Wars W, but plays out differently. Baron Ashura, disguised as Professor Yumi (as per one episode from the Mazinkaiser OVA), gets caught up in the contest and after finding out what the contest is about, the Baron casts a vote hoping to sabotage Warter (the heroes). In spectacular backfire fashion, it is Ashura's vote that is the tie-breaker that gets Yurika back her old job.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_f1281a6b	comment	Interceptor: Captain J.J. Collins accuses her superior at the Pentagon of sexual harassment, so becomes the subject of a hate campaign by her colleagues and gets reassigned to SBX-1, a weaponized sea platform in the middle of the ocean. Then terrorists attack the platform to knock out its interceptor missiles so they can launch nukes at the United States, and she becomes a national heroine for foiling their Evil Plan.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_f3ef0f86	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_f3ef0f86	comment	In Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, elf LEP recon captain Holly Short is assigned to guarding an abandoned shuttle port where nothing has happened in literally a hundred years. Naturally, she encounters a huge goblin smuggling program which involves the use of a human contact and illegal weapons.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_f43685a2	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_f43685a2	comment	A rare villainous example appears in Battlefield Earth. Terl has been reassigned to Earth and condemned there indefinitely as petty revenge for getting involved with the daughter of a senator, which leads to the destruction of the Psychlo race.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_f599977e	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_f599977e	comment	Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: Trigger is transferred to the Spare Squadron by Osea High Command after aledgedly getting former president Harling killed during a skirmish, under the assumption that he'll be killed in a suicide mission. Instead, Trigger becomes one of Osea's best pilots after surviving an engagement with the Erusean Ace Mihaly, and becomes instrumental in ending the war. The Spare Squadron is a unit in the Osean Air Defense Force made up of criminals who were meant to be used as cannon fodder to soften up occupying Erusean forces so that the regular military can mop up the rest, and to probe for holes in Erusea's drone network. When Trigger gets assigned to them, they end up proving to be Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder, so the squadron is disbanded, and the pilots are reassigned to the regular forces.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_f634206e	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_f634206e	comment	In Ratatouille, the jealous Head Chef Skinner learns that a finicky group of customers at Gusteau's are requesting a new dish and are so used to the founder's cooking that choosing a less used recipe will not be accepted. In an attempt to discredit the new chef, Linguini (who, unknown to Skinner, is simply a front for Remy the rat, who is a brilliant cook), he orders him to prepare an off-menu dish using an obscure recipe that even Auguste Gusteau wrote off as horrible. However, Remy is able to modify the recipe dramatically and make the dish a scrumptious success that runs the kitchen staff ragged supplying all the patrons who now want to try it. To Skinner's shock, this busy night removes all doubts in the kitchen staff that Linguini is a master chef.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_f74b5f80	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_f74b5f80	comment	Babylon 5: After making too many political enemies on Earth, EarthGov promotes Sinclair to Ambassador and posts him to Minbar as a method of quietly shipping him out of the way. They also don't provide him with staff or funding. Largely ignored by the Earth Alliance, Sinclair instead becomes the Entil'zha of the Anla'shok (Rangers) and then travels back in time to become the Minbari religious figure Valen. Londo Mollari was sent to be the ambassador on the station partly due to the fact that Babylon 1-4 all blew up or disappeared, and partly because it was considered a "joke" posting where it was safe to dump underperformers. Babylon 5, however, succeeds in its mission as an outpost of international diplomacy, and Londo's position becomes extremely important. He ultimately becomes emperor. Londo's assistant Vir was sent there because his progressive views were seen as an embarrassment to the family. Vir's reassignment to Minbar also counts. At that time Babylon 5 was one of the most important places and Vir was acting as Londo's conscience. Londo had him reassigned to Minbar since having someone acting like your conscience can get in the way when you're busy making a Deal with the Devil. Vir ended up working against his own government to save Narns. In the sequel novels, that also gives him credibility with the Interstellar Alliance to support his claim to the throne to help drive out the Drakh who secretly dominate the Centauri Republic. Vir later becomes Emperor after Londo.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_f7ee873b	comment	Luminous Arc plays with this a bit. Kingston created the Garden Children idea to get Heath out of the way when he started asking too many questions, on the premise of creating a crack squad of orphans raised to be excellent soldiers. Here's where it starts to zigzag. Kingston got exactly what he asked for — a group of highly proficient soldiers who work very well together, and thanks to Heath being incredibly zealous to try and get back in the good books and keep sniffing around, they're completely loyal to him and his ideal. He then proceeds to reassign Heath again and Sends the Fatal Hounds on a wild goose chase to get them out of his hair, giving them time to defect and become a very sharp thorn in his side. If he'd kept them on a tighter leash and used them as an actual strategic asset, he would have won.
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Luminous Arc (Video Game)	hasFeature	Reassignment Backfire / int_f7ee873b
Reassignment Backfire / int_f9742e61	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_f9742e61	comment	In the Dragonriders of Pern series, this appeared to be the case with Masterharper Petiron, the old harper of Menolly's repressed, backwater fishing hold. Subverted later in Masterharper of Pern, when we find out that Petiron asked to be sent there, to make a fresh start where no one knew he was other than "the harper". And he chose this over the protests of his superior, his son Robinton.
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Dragonriders of Pern	hasFeature	Reassignment Backfire / int_f9742e61
Reassignment Backfire / int_fb092f55	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_fb092f55	comment	In the first entry of the Tales of the Undiscovered Swords, when Himetsuru is sent on a Uriah Gambit for being an annoying dickbag, he not only survives the battle but also singlehandedly cuts down all the enemies and defends his friends. While having sustained critical damage, no less.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_fb9c177d	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_fb9c177d	comment	Transformers: Transformers: Animated plays with this. Optimus is assigned the unglamorous job of Space Bridge maintenance, but circumstances conspire to place him and his crew in the middle of events that could change the course of galactic history (and yes, this takes him to Earth). The thing is, Optimus wasn't assigned the crap job out of malice. It's just that with the disaster that lost Elita-1, Ultra Magnus had to make an example out of someone, and with Optimus taking the blame, Ultra Magnus was bound by protocol to do that to him (him getting the assignment was Ultra Magnus pulling strings for Optimus). Played more straight with Bumblebee, as him taking the blame for Bulkhead's clumsiness led to Sentinel Prime sending him to work for Optimus. Subverted with Bulkhead, as although he was given the crap job like Bumblebee, because Bulkhead loves Space Bridges, any excuse to work on them makes him happy. Being elevated to the heroes of Cybertron was just a bonus. Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) features this as well. Bumblebee was given a position as a mere beat cop after playing a major role in ending the war. At the end of the series, it's revealed that he (and other major Autobots) were given lowly positions so that the corrupt government could denigrate Optimus Prime and keep them from interfering with their plans for galactic conquest. Unfortunately for them, Bumblebee's job devotion and loyalty to Optimus's legacy took him far from Cybertron and put him in a position to foil their (and many other villains') plans.
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Transformers (Franchise)	hasFeature	Reassignment Backfire / int_fb9c177d
Reassignment Backfire / int_ff9ab17f	type	Reassignment Backfire
Reassignment Backfire / int_ff9ab17f	comment	Star Trek: The Next Generation: In his debut episode "Hollow Pursuits", Lt. Reginald "Reg" Barclay was thought to have been transferred to the Enterprise just to get rid of him. However, throughout the series, Barclay came into his own as a Starfleet officer under Picard's command.
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Reassignment Backfire / int_ff9ab17f	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Trek: The Next Generation	hasFeature	Reassignment Backfire / int_ff9ab17f

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Reassignment Backfire	processingCategory2	Index Backfire
Reassignment Backfire	processingCategory2	Plots
Mobile Suit Gundam Wing / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
X-Wing Rogue Squadron (Comic Book) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Knights of the Dinner Table (Comic Strip) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
The Weaver Option (Fanfic) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK (Fanfic) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay (Fanfic) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
There's No Rule That Says A Wolf Can't Be A Jedi (Fanfic) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
We Are Here: The Emerald Spark (Fanfic) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Advance to the Rear / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Batman Begins / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Battlefield Earth / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Down Periscope / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Hot Fuzz / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Ravenous (1999) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Rush Hour / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Spies Like Us / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
The Pentagon Wars / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Heavy Object / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Angel in the Whirlwind / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Antares / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Catch-22 / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Children of Earth and Sky / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Ciaphas Cain / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Decades of Darkness / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Dragonriders of Pern / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Fire & Blood / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Gaunt's Ghosts / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Heavy Object / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Phule's Company / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Sano Ichiro / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
The Death of Russia / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
The Reynard Cycle / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Timeline-191 / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
AztecMythology	seeAlso	Reassignment Backfire
JamesBuchanan	seeAlso	Reassignment Backfire
JohnTyler	seeAlso	Reassignment Backfire
Mario4812LikedTropes3	seeAlso	Reassignment Backfire
PeterMandelson	seeAlso	Reassignment Backfire
TheGoodGuys	seeAlso	Reassignment Backfire
TheodoreRoosevelt	seeAlso	Reassignment Backfire
Assassination Classroom (Manga) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Cat's Eye (Manga) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Behind the Bastards (Podcast) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Gayaverse (Roleplay) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Designated Survivor / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Endeavour / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
F Troop / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Foundation (2021) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Hell's Kitchen / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Impeachment / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Lou Grant / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
The X-Files / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Tulsa King / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Doom (Video Game) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
L.A. Noire (Video Game) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (Video Game) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Orcs Must Die! (Video Game) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Pirate101 (Video Game) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga (Video Game) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Wishful Thinking (2019) (Visual Novel) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Scootertrix the Abridged (Web Video) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Captain Star / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Ratatouille / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Rocky and Bullwinkle / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
The Legend of Vox Machina / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015) / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Irresponsible Captain Tylor / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire
Empire from the Ashes / int_4a32f262	type	Reassignment Backfire

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