9 Stupidly Risky Plans From TV's Most Notorious Villains

4. Habib Marwan Crashes Airforce One, Hopes The Football Survives €“ 24

Aside from sounding like a ridiculously awesome name for a sport, the nuclear football is a suitcase the President carries at all times, containing the launch codes for the USA's nuclear stockpile. Basically, if the Americans decide to blow up the world, they're going to need the nuclear football or the President can't sanction the action. What with it effectively being a doomsday device, it's provided fertile territory for thriller plots, and 24 tangoed with it during Day 4. Just to remind you of Day 4, the antagonist du jour was Habib Marwan, and his massively intricate plan involved setting up several distractions to mask his true purpose €“ getting his nefarious mitts on the aforementioned football. To accomplish this, he captures and threatens to execute the Secretary of Defence, instigates several near-meltdowns at nuclear power-plants and has an accomplice take down Air Force One with a fighter jet, the logic being that the football will still be intact and usable provided he can get to it before one-man murder conga Jack Bauer. Sure enough, he manages to extract a code before scarpering, and the plot rolls on. It must be noted that Marwan's plan relied on a tremendous amount of luck, seeing as it entirely hinged on whether the football could survive being shot at by a stealth fighter and a violent crash. Granted, it's in a pretty durable case, but that's still asking a hell of a lot €“ if the plane had gone down differently or we weren't relying on necessary plot-logic, there's every chance the football could've been compromised by sheer force and errant wreckage. Plus, shooting down a plane isn't a controllable variable, and if its descent had differed slightly, there was every chance it could've landed too far away from Marwan, and much closer to Jack for recovery. Luckily, because we need the plot to kick in, this doesn't happen, and it's a good job really €“ 24 needs 24 episodes, and you can bet it wouldn't have gone on that long if the terrorists' ace-in-the-hole had been compromised as it so easily could have been.