Sometimes the villain is working through a complex plan of subtle manipulations where barely anyone other than the initiator has any clue that something might be going on at all.Sometimes the hero is doing the exact same thing. The villain may or may not be aware of it. The hero's plans may be a deliberately induced subset of the villain's.
And sometimes it's the hero, the villain, every last sidekick, all the henchmen, the chief of police, the mayor, governor, in fact every political figure up to and including the Grand Overlord Of The World whom you only learned about in Chapter 89, plus every last not-innocent bystander on the street and your cat, who turns out to be the mastermind behind everything. And none of them knew the others were out there and doing anything at all.
Sometimes you just give up and throw the book into a wall.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GambitPileup?from=Main.ThirtyXanatosPileup
Or the disc. Quoting from the page description on the Wild Things movie entry:
Plot of first film: Rich girl Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards) accuses Sam Lombardo (Mat Dillon), her guidance councellor, of raping her. Then another student named Suzie (Neve Campbell) does the same, making the audience think that both girls are working together to screw Sam over. Sam gets off the hook, then successfully sues Sandra Van Ryan, Kelly's mom. Then it turns out that they were both working with Sam to trick the mom into doing something stupid so that he could sue her and they could split the money three ways. Then Sam has to kill Suzie because she was acting like a total spazz and might have spilled the beans. Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon), a cop who has been investigating this whole thing, assaults Kelly, who shoots him in the shoulder, forcing him to shoot and kill her. He concocts a BS story to his superiors and gets fired. Then it turns out that he and Sam were working together to kill both girls, frame Kelly for Suzie's murder, and split the money two ways. Then it turns out that Sam and Suzie were working together to fake Suzie's murder and betray Ray because Ray had killed one of Suzie's friends before the movie even started. Then it turns out that Suzie never had any intention of sharing the money with Sam, and kills him. She also has genius-level intelligence. Then it turns out that Ken Bowden (Bill Murray), was working with Suzie all this time. Then it turns out that the whole thing was just an excuse to film a movie with Denise Richards and Neve Campbell making out... twice.
So. Yeah.
Also, George R.R. Martin. About fifty zillion times.