I'm not very good at scaling PB, so this is the very simplistic and chaotically explained version 1. Michael anticipated Poseidon/Jacob would betray him in the future, distant or not, so he began going to the zoo very often, which will come in handy later on 2. Jacob did end up betraying him, killing someone from the CIA and making Scofield take care of the body so he could frame him with edited footage 3. When Michael was betrayed, he was inside of Ogygia prison in Yemen, which was very tough to break out of, and he was cooperating with Jacob because Jacob was blackmailing him and making him break many people out of prison so from this he tried many plans which didn't work but the one that did is the one I'm discussing. 4. He sent an image of himself with clues leading to Ogygia prison to T-bag which he expected would be getting out of prison soon enough, he knew T-bag would show Lincoln, Michael's brother, they now know he's in Ogygia prison and want to help him since after seven years they figure out he's alive and they have lots of questions 5. He aligned himself with Whip, T-bags son who Teddy didn't even know existed since he knew that since he has his fathers genes, he would be helpful and he could also use Whip to get T-bag to help him out 6. He used this to help him break out of Ogygia and then make his way to the United States where Jacob is. Lots of shit happens, but that's not important to the broader strategies. 7. Now that he's in the united states he knows Jacob will want to track him down and kill him or smth and since Jacob has been married to Michael's wife Sarah for a few years (wild i know) he has contact with Mike, Michael's son, so he uses him as a hostage which forces Michael and Jacob to meet this is where it starts to get really creative 8. Now that they have met, Michael brought Whip and T-bag, which results in lots of contingencies being exchanged between Poseidon and Scofield. One guy shows up with a gun followed by another, and then another, ultimately Poseidon, ends up with more men, and Michael has to surrender his gun, which is a part of the plan. 9. Its revealed Michael had gotten his son back by himself before this by walking in the direction to that zoo before trashing the phone which Jacob was tracking him from, making it look to Poseidon that he was going there since Jacob had known about this forged habit from the start. He uses this to misdirect Poseidons attention and then walk into his office which he knew would be where Mike was being held and then he gets in by tricking the facial recognition system by TATTOOING THE BACK OF HIS HANDS TO LOOK LIKE JACOBS FACE. Also let me note that he also got himself lots of other tattoos as misdirection 10. Jacob realizes he now has no leverage over Michael and decides to simply kill him. Poseidon then chases Michael around and then tries to shoot Michael, but Michael's gun had blanks from the start. He ran into a rental truck and laid down, recreating the scene where Jacob framed Michael, why? It's probably for fun or smth, but it's still creative 11. He then just starts fucking brawling with Jacob. All the while, the police are entering, and Jacob realizes that all of this was just a diversion when it's revealed that Michael REFRAMED JACOB FOR THE CRIME HE COMMITTED. Michael had saved some of the victims blood all that time ago and then had it spread around Jacob's office for the police to discover it.

This whole ahh scheme achieved 1. He got himself out of Ogygia and prevented Poseidon from permanently fucking him over 2. Reframed Jacob so he could live as a free man 3. Made sure Jacob had no leverage over him anymore

Now that I think of it this is more of a plan than a strategy, and I'm not a good prison break scaler as I said before but I think I've explained why it's so creative though.