History BatmanGambit / Literature

* Saint Dane in the ''Literature/{{Pendragon}}'' series is a master Batman Gambiter; most of his plans are Batman gambits. In fact, he once pulls off a [[spoiler:'''double''' gambit: the characters '''realize that he's pulling one of these off, but that itself was what he wanted!''']]

* Creator/BramStoker's original novel ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', where the Count's master plan to infiltrate England and spread his vampire curse was only foiled by the DeusExMachina of asylum doctor John Seward [[ContrivedCoincidence just happening to be the former student of]] [[TheProfessor Professor Van Helsing]], the only person who'd recognise a vampire attack and know exactly what to do. Dracula's meticulous setup and coverup of his lairs and his later manipulation of Mina as a weapon against his pursuers was only matched by Van Helsing's [[OutGambitted counter-plan]] of hypnotising her to deduce the Count's location.

** ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'': The Númenóreans march on Sauron with such a massive force that Sauron's minions flee and he's captured. Of course, being the master manipulator that Sauron is, he goes from prisoner to king's advisor in only a few years, and manipulates him into making war on Valinor, the land of the Valar. The plan was simple, trick the Númenóreans into attacking Valinor so Sauron could watch them die spectacularly. He didn't anticipate that the Valar would lay down their power before Ilúvatar (God), and ask him for aid. Ilúvatar made the world round, made Valinor inaccessible except to certain individuals (namely the elves), and sunk Númenor into the sea. Sauron didn't even see it coming, and was swallowed under the ocean. When he emerged, he could no longer take a pleasing form again.

* In ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsYouBelieveHer'', Robot Penny manages to raid [[spoiler:Mech's]] lair by flawlessly exploiting his mentality, both as a MadScientist and as a fan of her parents. As a MadScientist he takes trophies and doesn't regard an ArtificialIntelligence (such as herself) as a person. So, she lets [[spoiler:Mech]] deactivate her, where he promptly [[spoiler:moves the seemingly-defeated robot into his lair, right next to the prize]]. She promptly breaks out with the prize of their fight, knowing the defenses were configured for intruders, not escapes. If more than one detail about [[spoiler:Mech's]] actions had been wrong, then even her backup plan would have had trouble.

* In ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsYouBelieveHer'', Robot Penny manages to raid [[spoiler:Mech's]] lair by flawlessly exploiting his mentality, both as a MadScientist and as a fan of her parents. As a MadScientist he takes trophies and doesn't regard an ArtificialIntelligence (such as herself) as a person. So, she lets [[spoiler:Mech]] deactivate her, where he promptly [[spoiler:moves the seemingly-defeated robot into his lair, right next to the prize]]. She promptly breaks out with the prize of their fight, knowing the defenses were configured for intruders, not escapes.

* In ''Literature/OutlawsShadow'', [[VillainousProtagonist Guy of Gisbourne]] is set up to reignite his feud with his classic enemy, Myth/{{Robin|Hood}} [[TheRival Hood]], by a single lie in a letter Guy is asked to read. Guy has a past animosity with Hood, and signals to TheChessmaster that he ''wants'' the target of his investigation to be Hood, while also being someone who has a tendency towards MurderIsTheBestSolution. Since TheChessmaster wants to foment chaos in the kingdom while the king is away, they put the lie in the letter, and it works like a charm… but [[GoneHorriblyRight too well,]] since Guy, who TheChessmaster personally cares about, puts himself in danger looking for the Hood.

* ''LightNovel/TheUnexploredSummonBloodSign'': Kyousuke relies on these to foil the plans of [[spoiler:the White Queen]], the main antagonist of the series. Because [[spoiler:the Queen]] is hopelessly in love with him ([[{{Yandere}} albeit in an extremely twisted fashion]]), he is often able to predict her behavior and exploit it. A good example is the end of the first volume, where he deliberately [[spoiler:summons the Black Maw That Swallows All, an EldritchAbomination that normally kills its own summoner. The Queen fights the Black Maw to the death ([[ResurrectiveImmortality though it doesn't last]]) to protect him]].
* Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'':

** Miles learned the lesson from an older, female counterpart Cavilo in ''Literature/TheVorGame''.

* In "Literature/SorcererConjurerWizardWitch", Mycroft's plan to deal with the Great Enchanter Colonel Zenf is based on people doing certain things if they believe certain facts to be true. It proceeds pretty much exactly according to plan, despite the fact that when Zenf emerges, Mycroft's been dead for fifteen years, and his successors [[WeWouldHaveToldYouBut have no idea what the plan is]].

* ''Literature/HerculePoirot'': The solution to ''Curtain: Poirot's Last Case'' revolves around the sadistic [[spoiler:pseudo-murderer Norton]]'s reliance on the Batman Gambit to [[spoiler:manipulate those around him into committing murder]] through [[spoiler:deft analysis of their own psychological weaknesses]]. Poirot identifies that [[spoiler:Norton has evaded capture for years because he is not technically the culprit, only the author, of the crimes he engineers]]. The creepiness factor is increased when the reader's naïve first-person-narrative counterpart, Captain Hastings, [[spoiler:is himself manipulated to within an inch of committing a murder, without this becoming obvious to the reader]] as it happens.

** Honor, teaching cadet officers, uses her own Batman Gambit victory over a [=StateSec=] armada at the prison planet Hades as an example of how such operations can fail. The cadets express admiration over her brilliant strategy of using her captured warship's thrusters to get into a position to ambush the enemy warships, thus avoiding detection which would have been inevitable had she used the ship's gravitational drive. Honor then has her fellow officer and friend Michelle Henke point out that if the Peeps had been paying attention to *any* other sensor system they had available, they not only would have seen her ship coming, they would have been able to trivially destroy it because without the drive operating, the ship's main defense, the gravitational wedges, would not have been operating and the ship would have been helpless. Honor notes it was only because of the desperate situation she found herself in that she even contemplated the idea.

* In Creator/JKRowling's ''Literature/HarryPotter'' saga, Batman Gambits are used many times:

** Basically everything Dumbledore does is part of two huge Batman Gambits: one of these, [[spoiler:training Harry and keeping him alive "so that he can die at the right moment"]] is successful. The other one -- luckily -- fails: [[spoiler:a Batman Gambit that would let him die undefeated so the Elder Wand would lose his power, but Draco disarms him, winning the Wand's allegiance. This makes it possible for Harry to become its true Master later and use it to defeat Voldemort]]. No wonder the last chapter is called "The Flaw in the Plan".

* This is done in the later ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' novels where Honor and her detachment are sent to do rear-area strikes to force Haven to redeploy their attack fleet to defend against her numerically inferior technologically advanced threat. They succeed, but unfortunately for Honor succeed so well they manage to trap her entire fleet.
** Interestingly, for the most part of the series, most naval commanders -- not just limited to Honor herself -- subvert this trope by heavily lambasting anyone who ''relies'' on the enemy doing what you expect them to do. In fact, they even refer to the need to deceive your enemy into thinking you're doing something when you're doing something else entirely, and many battles ended with the destruction of the enemy fleet because they fell into traps laid by their opponents pretending to do something else.

* In ''Literature/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'' [[MessianicArchetype Aslan]] pulls a Batman gambit on the White Witch when she wishes to execute Edmund for being a traitor (and to ensure he can't fulfill a prophecy against her) as the Deep Magic they both follow gives her that right. When Aslan convinces her [[CrystalDragonJesus to allow him to die in Edmund's stead]], it invokes [[ReadTheFinePrint a clause in the Deep Magic]] that the magic will shatter the table and death will be reversed if an innocent is sacrificed in a traitor's stead. If the Witch had stuck with her original plan to kill Edmund, the prophecy would have been delayed, and the status quo of her rule over Narnia would have been ensured for some time. But in her greed to kill her greatest adversary, she ended up killing no one, and her hold on Narnia was broken.

* Creator/JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': Gandalf used one of these to distract Sauron from the true location of the One Ring, convincing him that Aragorn had the Ring and was planning to use it against him. Of course, the whole thing was a diversion to allow the hobbits to enter Mordor unnoticed.
** This becomes the basis of the free people's entire strategy after [[ThereAreNoCoincidences Pippin looks into the palantír]], premised entirely on the assumption that [[EvilCannotComprehendGood Sauron would assume]] that his enemies would try to use the ring against him rather than try to destroy it.
** Sauron has one that fails big time in ''Literature/TheSilmarillion''. In it, the Númenóreans (think Atlanteans) march on Sauron with such a massive force that Sauron's minions flee and he's captured. Of course, being the master manipulator that Sauron is, he goes from prisoner to advisor to the king in only a few years. As the king is near death's door, Sauron manipulates him into making war on Valinor, the land of the Valar (minor gods, essentially). The plan was simple, trick the Númenóreans into attacking Valinor so Sauron could watch them die spectacularly. He didn't anticipate that the Valar would lay down their power before Ilúvatar (God), and ask him for aid. Ilúvatar made the world round, made Valinor inaccessible except to certain individuals (namely the elves), and sunk Númenor into the sea. Sauron didn't even see it coming, and was swallowed under the ocean. When he emerged, he could no longer take a pleasing form again.
*** It certainly backfired due to Sauron underestimating the opposition, but later in the mythos he seems to consider his fair form a worthy trade for the destruction of his only real competition for world domination.
*** As a rule, Sauron is actually quite good at the Batman Gambit himself, using his foe's psychological weaknesses against them quite a bit during the second and third ages: using the elves' desire to keep and preserve Middle-Earth to goad them into forging the rings and giving him valuable pointers on ring forging while they were at it, using the lust for power of the kings of Middle-Earth to get them to accept his rings of power and become the Nazgûl (he was less successful with the elves and dwarves), using the Númenórean's fears of death and resentment of elven and Valar immortality to goad the Númenóreans into a suicidal assault on Valinor, using Saruman and Denethor's desire to scry his plans via the palantír to push both past the DespairEventHorizon, driving Saruman into a FaceHeelTurn. He doesn't always get it right, but Sauron's frighteningly good at playing his enemies like violins. It's only when he's [[OutGambitted beaten at his own game]] by Gandalf and Aragorn that he's finally defeated. Or rather, that he would have been, had Sauron not been right about one thing; no one, not even Frodo, could willingly destroy the One Ring. Frodo falls at the end, and all Gandalf and Aragorn's plans and sacrifices would have come to naught except for the SpannerInTheWorks none of them foresaw, Gollum, who may be acting as the engine to fulfill [[BigGood Eru's]] will.

** And that's just the first book in the trilogy. The second two continue on in this tradition.
* In the Literature/ModestyBlaise novel ''A Taste for Death'', Modesty's plan for rescuing everyone from the villains depends at several points on specific villains reacting appropriately. To some extent this involves general predictions about obvious trends like Delicata preferring slow and amusing deaths for his enemies over just killing them outright, but it also involves specific predictions like getting [=McWhirter=] to let his guard down in a particular way at a particular moment.

--> ''General Zhang Fei will enter the city but will ignore meat and wine, as that is his normal way, and eat green onions wrapped in dough. The next day he will think to change and win the wager, and eat dough wrapped in green onions. General Zhang Fei will come back not having eaten in the city, and thus have no third meal at all.''\\

** ''Literature/OutboundFlight''. Ready? ''*deep breath*'' Commander Thrawn of the Chiss Expansion Defense Fleet has three Corellians in custody, and he's learned about the Republic and how to speak Basic from them. He's got his eye on the nomadic Vagaari, a slave-taking people that's coming close to threatening his own people, and steals a gravity generator from them. His own people, the Chiss, are getting increasingly disapproving of him and his tactics. A Trade Federation taskforce shows up, he curb-stomps it and captures the remains, including many droids, and is convinced by the Trade Federation captain to stop Outbound Flight, a potential threat to his people. Even if Outbound Flight goes on, they may run into something vastly worse, letting the far-outsiders learn too much about the peoples closer to the center of the galaxy. What does he do?

:::He furthermore learned from her that making all paths lead to victory only works so long as only one of those paths is taken, convincing him to use his strategy of only picking one stratagem at a time while making everyone believe that he has elaborate interlocking plans.

* ''LightNovel/MagicalGirlRaisingProject'': When Shadow Gale is kidnapped by Puk Puck, Pfle needs to create an opportunity to have a chance at rescuing her. In order to do so Pfle first goes to Mana in the Inspection Department and tells her that she should probably be arrested for something she's done. Pfle then takes advantage of Mana's sense of justice to get her to investigate the Puk manor for Shadow Gale and Snow White. Rather than assuming Mana would manage to get them out, she counts on Mana's confrontation escalating to violence, which would then give the Osk faction the excuse they need to openly work against the Puk faction. Then Pfle has to convince Osk to let her participate in their operation as someone worth listening to. She accomplishes all of this while barely knowing anyone involved and missing a lot of details she'd normally be aware of due to her mindwipe.

* Ermintr- erm... ''Daphne'' from Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Nation}}'' uses one to free herself from Foxlip and Polegrave and protect the titular Nation from them. In their captivity, she serves them mother-of-beer. Foxlip knows it might be poison, so he threatens to shoot her unless she drinks some too. Daphne does... after spitting in her cup and singing a [[AlternateUniverse Pelagic]] folk song about Air's four sons racing around his belly. She orders Foxlip to do the same, but he refuses on the basis of being above "savages" ([[SarcasmMode because he]] ''[[SarcasmMode hadn't]]'' [[SarcasmMode murdered an old man a few hours ago, don't be silly]]), drinks his mother-of-beer... [[spoiler: and dies. The mother-of-beer ''was'' poison, and Daphne ''did'' serve it to kill him. There was a chemical in human spit which reacted with it to make it non-lethal, and the reaction time was the length of the folk song. Daphne exploited the fact that Foxlip ''would'' be too prejudiced to obey her if it meant following a Pelagic tradition]].

* Ermintr- erm... ''Daphne'' from Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Nation}}'' uses one to free herself from Foxlip and Polegrave and protect the titular Nation from them. In their captivity, she serves them mother-of-beer. Foxlip knows it might be poison, so he threatens to shoot her unless she drinks some too. Daphne does... after spitting in her cup and singing a [[AlternateUniverse Pelagic]] folk song about Air's four sons racing around his belly. She orders Foxlip to do the same, but he refuses on the basis of being above "savages" ([[SarcasmMode because he]] ''[[SarcasmMode hadn't]]'' [[SarcasmMode murdered an old man a few hours ago, don't be silly]]), drinks his mother-of-beer... [[spoiler: and dies. The mother-of-beer ''was'' poison, and Daphne ''did'' serve it to kill him. There was a chemical in human spit which reacted with it to make it non-lethal, and the reaction time was the length of the folk song. Daphne exploited the fact that Foxlip ''would'' be too prejudiced to obey her by following a Pelagic tradition]].

* Ermintr- erm... ''Daphne'' from Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Nation}}'' uses one to free herself from Foxlip and Polegrave and protect the titular Nation from them. In their captivity, she serves them mother-of-beer. Foxlip is just bright enough to know it might be poison, so he threatens to shoot her unless she drinks some too. Daphne does... after spitting in her cup and singing a [[AlternateUniverse Pelagic]] folk song about Air's four sons racing around his belly. She orders Foxlip to do the same, but he refuses on the basis of being above "savages" ([[SarcasmMode because he]] ''[[SarcasmMode hadn't]]'' [[SarcasmMode murdered an old man a few hours ago, don't be silly]]), drinks his mother-of-beer... [[spoiler: and dies. The mother-of-beer ''was'' poison, and Daphne ''did'' serve it to kill him. There was a chemical in human spit which reacted with it to make it non-lethal, and the reaction time was the length of the folk song. Daphne exploited the fact that Foxlip ''would'' be too prejudiced to obey her by following a Pelagic tradition]].

* Ermintr- erm... ''Daphne'' from Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Literature/{{Nation}}'' uses one to free herself from Foxlip and Polegrave and protect the titular Nation from them. In their captivity, she serves them mother-of-beer. Foxlip is just bright enough to know it might be poison, so he threatens to shoot her unless she drinks some too. Daphne does... after spitting in her cup and singing a [[AlternateUniverse Pelagic]] folk song about Air's four sons racing around his belly. She orders Foxlip to do the same, but he refuses on the basis of being above "savages" ([[SarcasmMode because he]] ''[[SarcasmMode hadn't]]'' [[SarcasmMode murdered an old man a few hours ago]], don't be silly]]), drinks his mother-of-beer... [[spoiler: and dies. The mother-of-beer ''was'' poison, and Daphne ''did'' serve it to kill him. There was a chemical in human spit which reacted with it to make it non-lethal, and the reaction time was the length of the folk song. Daphne exploited the fact that Foxlip ''would'' be too prejudiced to obey her by following a Pelagic tradition]].

* Ermintr- erm... ''Daphne'' from Creator/TerryPratchett' Literature/{{Nation}} uses one to free herself from Foxlip and Polegrave and protect the titular Nation from them. In their captivity, she serves them mother-of-beer. Foxlip is just bright enough to know it might be poison, so he threatens to shoot her unless she drinks some too. Daphne does... after spitting in her cup and singing a [[AlternateUniverse Pelagic]] folk song about Air's four sons racing around his belly. She orders Foxlip to do the same, but he refuses on the basis of being above "savages" ([[SarcasmMode because he ''hadn't'' murdered an old man a few hours ago, don't be silly]]), drinks his mother-of-beer... [[spoiler: and dies. The mother-of-beer ''was'' poison, and Daphne ''did'' serve it to kill him. There was a chemical in human spit which reacted with it to make it non-lethal, and the reaction time was the length of the folk song. Daphne exploited the fact that Foxlip ''would'' be too prejudiced to obey her by following a Pelagic tradition]].

* Everything Tavi does in ''Literature/CodexAlera''. Ever. At all. He's this trope so through and through that other characters pull a Batman Gambit ''[[UpToEleven on the premise]] of [[CharacterTic Tavi]] pulling a Batman Gambit''.

* In ''Literature/OutlawsShadow'', [[VillainousProtagonist Guy of Gisbourne]] is set up to reignite his feud with his classic enemy, [[RobinHood Robin]] [[TheRival Hood]], by a single lie in a letter Guy is asked to read. Guy has a past animosity with Hood, and signals to TheChessmaster that he ''wants'' the target of his investigation to be Hood, while also being someone who has a tendency towards MurderIsTheBestSolution. Since TheChessmaster wants to foment chaos in the kingdom while the king is away, they put the lie in the letter, and it works like a charm… but [[GoneHorriblyRight too well,]] since Guy, who TheChessmaster personally cares about, puts himself in danger looking for the Hood.

** Lord Rust, in ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'', illustrates how spectacularly this can go wrong.

* Creator/JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': as explained on the WhatAnIdiot page, Gandalf used one of these to distract Sauron from the true location of the One Ring, convincing him that Aragorn had the Ring and was planning to use it against him. Of course, the whole thing was a diversion to allow the hobbits to enter Mordor unnoticed.

** In ''Literature/HaloShadowOfIntent'', the Prelate wishes to kill his foe the Half-Jaw, but his light starship is no match for his opponent's enormous assault carrier. So the Prelate hatches a plan to even the odds step by step. First his starship attacks several peaceful colonies, so Half-Jaw will be enraged and come at him guns blazing. Next he lures the assault carrier to battle at a planet with an unstable star, with its magnetic storm wreaking havoc on the carrier's shields and weapons. Despite this, the Half-Jaw's ship still has the upper hand, [[spoiler:but the Prelate has just enough an opening to get his ship close so he and his soldiers can board the carrier and and try to hijack it for themselves. Unfortunately for the Prelate, the carrier's defenders successfully wipe out his entire force]].