History Main / Gambitroulette

Note that complexity alone does not make a plan into roulette. A few separate plans may combine while individually making logical sense. When a dozen things are going on, but the actual details of the plan aren't reliant on each item fortuitously itting into place, then it is just a regular elaborate plan.

* In the ''{{Marathon}}'' games, [[AIIsACrapshoot AIs who have gone Rampant]] tend to make these kind of plans.

* Admiral Yamamoto's plan for the Battle of Midway was supposed to be a Gambit Roulette that involved splitting his forces into seven different groups across the entire Pacific to defeat the American carrier fleet. A simpler idea like "Put all my ships in one fleet, sail in to attack Midway. The Americans don't have enough ships to stop such a fleet, so if they do force a battle, I destroy their fleet. If they don't, I conquer Midway," would have been a pretty good XanatosGambit. Yamamoto's roulette plan ended in a spectacular failure when American codebreakers figured out key details of his plan. Because his ships were split up into many groups, they couldn't support each other, leading to many ships not even seeing action; this was especially damaging since the escort cruisers with Yamamoto's scout plane equip cruisers were all assigned to a battleship taskforce which was not in position to scout for the carrier taskforce.

* Admiral Yamamoto's plan for the Battle of Midway was supposed to be a Gambit Roulette that involved splitting his forces into seven different groups across the entire Pacific to defeat the American carrier fleet. A simpler idea like "Put all my ships in one fleet, sail in to attack Midway. The Americans don't have enough ships to stop such a fleet, so if they do force a battle, I destroy their fleet. If they don't, I conquer Midway," would have been a pretty good XanatosGambit. Yamamoto's roulette plan ended in a spectacular failure when American codebreakers figured out key details of his plan.
** Though in all fairness, a simpler gambit probably would've failed as well in the face of the enemy knowing the plan in advance. And some of the more ridiculous elements, like the "diversionary" attack on Alaska (which contradicted the entire point of the operation and served only to weaken the main force), were imposed by Yamamoto's superiors.

* In ''{{Bleach}}'', much of Sosuke Aizen's ridiculously longwinded plans rely on this, which is odd given that he's been shown to be powerful enough to get what he wants via brute force. Later on, this gets brought to its logical conclusion: ''the entire plot'' (yes, as in the plot of the entire manga [or at least Ichigo's part in it]) has been ''exactly as planned''. Also, Kisuke Urahara engages in Gambit Roulettes as well, to the point where the series can be reduced to these two {{Chessmaster}}s dueling one another in a case of Aizen's "just as planned" attitude versus Urahara's "just as expected" attitude.

* Yubel, Judai�s StalkerWithACrush from ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh GX}}'' gives a prime example of this trope. During Season 3 of the show, she completes and executes one of the most intricate and chancy plans of the genre (then again, she did have several years isolated in space to contemplate it), by manipulating everyone and everything with mind-control, possession and, [[SeriousBusiness most unthinkably]], losing a match on purpose.

* While ''CodeGeass'' main draw was the GambitSpeedChess, there's the time Lelouch checkmated Schneizel? That recording trick may have been believable on Mao, but that's because he never went into any specifics and Mao was obsessed with C.C. He just said things that would rile Mao. He never directly had a conversation with the guy. But here, Lelouch somehow knew the first thing Schneizel was going to say, how he'd respond to any of his statements, and even the moment he'd ''interrupt him''.

* Montana Max's plan from the manga of ''{{Hellsing}}'' is just a big Gambit Roulette; It had a lot of things that could have failed, and all aimed to just one very specific purpose. Despite of this he succeed.

* In the YoungBond book ''Double or Die'', a teacher at Eton is kidnapped and only has enough time to send a letter confirming his resignation and send his last crossword to ''The Times''. In this, he manages to get clues to Bond and his friends about what's really happened to him, where they can go to find more information and that a friend of his is coming to Eton. This teacher probably attended a school where [[DeathNote Light]] was the headmaster and [[{{Saw}} Jigsaw]] was the art teacher.

* In {{LEGO}}'s ''{{BIONICLE}}'' universe, the main villain of every story year so far, Makuta Teridax, has been defeated several times, but has revealed that he has, in fact, ''planned'' for every possible setback ahead of time. The GambitRoulette is still turning, in fact, as he planned for all of the following to happen: the destruction of his own body, the death of the benevolent Great Spirit Mata Nui, the subsequent resurrection of said spirit, the rest of the world believing him dead... And the odd thing is, he seems to be the only one. There seems to be no GambitPileup coming, no (glaringly obvious) DeusExMachina, just a slow slide towards his victory, trying to keep him from winning as long as possible. Quite dark for a MerchandiseDriven children's story. It went [[DeathNote exactly as planned]]. Makuta committed GrandTheftMe on Mata Nui just as his soul was about to return to his body, becoming the universe as a result and banishing Mata Nui into a SoulJar and out of the Matoran Universe

[[caption-width-right:350:[[DeathNote Exactly as planned]].]]

* ''DeathNote'' is essentially GambitRoulette: the series. The most impressive is the plan that [[WhamEpisode changes the course of the entire series]] -- Light arranging [[spoiler: L's death]] while coming off completely above suspicion -- which involves an extended MemoryGambit, at the end of which every element needed to be exactly in the place they were in order to work.

* ''In HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'', Draco remembers a tragedy play his father brought him to see (an expy of DeathNote), and at the end, Lucius asked him what the meaning of the play was. Draco mistook it to be as clever as the characters. His father chastised him, saying that any plan that requires more than three steps to succeed is unlikely to the point of worthless. And because only a fool goes with a plan that is barely possible, you really should never plan more than two steps.
* Anytime anyone does anything in ''LightAndDarkTheAdventuresOfDarkYagami''.

* In ''WildThings'', Suzie plots to kill the dirty cop who killed her ex-boyfriend. She does this by entering into a conspiracy with an heiress and a guidance counselor, that both girls will cry rape against him, but Suzie will recant on the stand, opening up the heiress to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, to be paid by her mother and split between the three of them. With this plan complete, the guidance counselor approaches the dirty cop at Suzie's suggestion, giving him a plan to kill Suzie and the heiress, and split the money between the ''two'' of them, but the guidance counselor only faked Suzie's death, giving the two of them the chance to kill the cop; Suzie then betrays the guidance counselor and, presumed dead, gets away with the money. And [[ButWaitTheresMore as if that's not enough]], in the final scene, the defense lawyer from the rape trial, chosen from the phonebook, implies that he was somehow in on it all along.

* In ''{{Angel}}'', Jasmine claims that virtually ''everything'' that's happened in the series up to the point of her arrival on Earth was the result of her manipulation. She may have just been trying to be impressive, though.

* Dartz, the leader of the Doma Organization in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'', used this to recruit his followers; except for Mai, Haga, and Ryuzaki, all of his servants' past troubles that eventually lead to their joining the Organization were orchestrated by Dartz himself just so he could inflict a rage against humanity in them and use MoreThanMindControl to cajole them into signing up. Later on, Yami Bakura's master plan comes up, which [[{{Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series}} took over 200 bloody episodes]] to come to fruition.

* In ''Fanfic/KyonBigDamnHero'' Mori proposes to Kyon that the threat of deletion of Yuki may be a plan of the IDSE to make Haruhi use her power safely. Kyon disagrees since he doesn't believe any of them is predictable enough for the IDSE to risk it.

* In the retcon type, it has been revealed that WWE's {{Wrestler/Kane}} has been working a plan that's equal parts this and IndyPloy since he debuted fourteen years ago, the overall goal to be to exact vengeance against his {{kayfabe}} brother TheUndertaker by overcoming him and taking his place as the dominant force in the WWE.

* ''Reindeer Games'' would be completely forgotten if it wasn't for the BeyondTheImpossible twist ending that's so insane that it pretty much defies all logic.

* ''DominicDeegan'', with his limited ability to [[OmniscientMoralityLicense see the future]], plays TheChessmaster in almost every arc, manipulating events to [[BeyondTheImpossible a more ridiculous degree each time]]. By the Snowsong arc, he's stepped into GambitRoulette territory even ''considering'' his powers, albeit mitigated by some minor setbacks.

This is a SpoileredRotten trope. Expect spoilers and avoid using spoiler tags unnecessarily.

* The ''FullmetalAlchemist'' manga revealed that ''every single military action'' since Amestris's founding was orchestrated by Father, who was using his Homunculi to move the army and gain land until Amestris was large enough to turn into a giant Transmutation Circle, while using the casualities of said battles to [[PoweredByAForsakenChild power it]].

* ''{{Children of Men}}'', while a brilliant film, contains a pretty major spin of the wheel in the bandit attack: it turns out the terrorist group Clive Owen's character, Theo, is travelling with decided on a bit of regime change. Julian's death during the attack was part of the plan to bring Luke to the leadership of The Fishes. But that means the plan involved a perfect pistol shot, taken from the back of a speeding motorcycle, into a very small car containing not only the pregnant girl who could be the last hope of humanity, but the would-be leader as well. In a realistic film like this it's hard to imagine a plan so dangerous even being considered.

* The last car chase of ''{{TheSkulls}}'' sees the heroes Luke and Will being chased at high speed along a train track before it finally comes to a stop with them crashing full speed into a dirt berm at the end of the tracks and the bad guy about the shoot Luke. But a split second before he pulls the trigger, he is shot (at long range) by the cop who then tells them that it was his plan all along to have this happen, thus showing that even the good guys can have convoluted plans. Of course, at any time during the car chase, Luke and Will could have crashed and been killed. Or the cop could have missed his long range shot with a pistol, allowing the bad guy to shoot Luke. But I guess that was part of the plan as well,

* BatmanTheMovie (1966), Entire Movie
* In [[EagleEye Eagle Eye]], A.R.I.I.A knows all, and was creepily anticipating everything except the fact that Jerry is alive.
* Jigsaw, the main villain of ''{{Saw}}'' is the textbook writer on this. Not only does he manage to contrive up elaborate traps (some of which can easily be thwarted in the end), but he also can somehow pick out the best people to inflict these on, and figure out exactly how they're going to reach to further his aims. And he does this all while being bedridden. And later, ''dead'', and still able to accurately predict everything that will happen in the world several years after his death, down to the tiniest of details.

* The person running the tables in ''Eagle Eye'' at first appears to be damn near omniscient and prescient, able to (as just the most "damn"-worthy example) call the cell phones of every single person on a train within ''seconds'' of needing to do so. It becomes slightly more believable when it's revealed "she's" a [[AIIsACrapshoot government supercomputer]]... until the FridgeLogic sets in.

* In the anime and manga ''{{Spiral}}: Suiri no Kizuna'', the ability to ravel and unravel {{Xanatos Gambit}}s and Roulettes is, although it's not stated quite so baldly, a superpower many characters possess. Most of them assert that everything in the plot is a giant Roulette planned by the protagonist's older brother.

* In ''FairyTail'', Jellal reveals his GambitRoulette after the Magic Council fires a magic laser for the purpose of destroying his aim to resurrect an evil mage. When the dust clears, it's found that it had been his plan to do so all along, as some special crystals have absorbed all the magic fired, giving him the power source to resurrect him. One could say that it was more of a XanatosGambit, considering he planted an astral projection of himself in the council in order to guide them to that point, but there was no guarantee they would use the magic laser, hit the tower straight on, and the crystals would absorb all the magic, and that he wouldn't be found out...etc.

* Oto x Maho has Konata, Kanata's mother, having in the first chapter, what appears to be a XanatosGambit. Later, in a flashback scene, we find out that the supposed XanatosGambit was only the last stage of a GambitRoulette years in the making, which included nothing happening to her and her son, her finding a "supervisor"(A sort of messenger for a MagicalGirl), a bad guy showing up at PRECISELY the right time, her being physically stronger than her son when it ends, not to mention everything else that is purely in the realm of chance. Of course, because of UnspokenPlanGuarantee, it goes off without a hitch.

* [[StarWars Darth Sidious]]- see XanatosGambit.

* The {{Antivillain}}s' scheme in ''InsideMan''. It hinges on ensuring that EverybodyLives (hence their AntiVillain status) while simultaneously keeping the cops thinking they're deadly dangerous. While the movie presents this as a simple XanatosGambit, or really, GambitSpeedChess, it falls apart when you consider that it relies on the cops not making any mistakes like accidentally shooting a hostage.

* The ''{{Dune}}'' series by Frank Herbert contains some of the most elaborately [[JustifiedTrope justified]] Gambit Roulettes ever committed to paper, due primarily to the fact that the protagonists and many of the antagonists are genuinely prescient. The king of these, of course, is Leto Atreides II in ''Children of Dune'', who becomes Emperor on the strength of a plot that pits him against his father, aunt, and grandmother, all of whom are or were operating their own {{Xanatos Gambit}}s. The prize, of course, is absolute domination of humanity's future. To elaborate, the plot involves Leto faking his death, which was anticipated by both Jessica and Alia. Jessica sets up a test to see if Leto is possessed, which Alia knows about and infiltrates with her own instructions to have Leto killed no matter what. The method of their testing: overdosing him with spice, awakens Leto's prescient memories and forces him to choose his vision of the Golden Path without which humanity is doomed. Leto then confronts his father, Paul, who had earlier faked his own death in order to escape the curse of prescience, and wrests control of the vision from him, then proceeds to take the throne, killing Alia and utterly humiliating every other participant in the GambitPileup.

** Fringe writers seem to enjoy justifying this trope. in the episode ''Plateau'', the villain Milo gained XanatosGambit super powers by taking a drug. He orchestrated peoples deaths by setting a pen on the ground and creating a chain reaction ending in a traffic accident. In the most recent episode its been revealed that the observers are crazy good at these, but that's justified by time travel or by the fact that time isn't even linear for them. They can see ''all points of time at once.''

** Potentially a subversion. At first glance, the Scuba Diver does seem to rely on an uncontrollable event and a second person performing a XanatosGambit of their own, but neither are really required. Barney did not specifically need to steal that particular girl, Lily regularly has set up Ted on dates, and any one of them could have started his plan. Lily's XanatosGambit wasn't actually required, she could have just grabbed the book out of his hands and ran and Barney's plan still would have worked. Barney baited her to launch the gambit, but he didn't actually need it.

*** Worth noting that the attack on Prospero was in itself one of his {{Xanatos Gambit}}s. First, he lets Magnus, one of the most powerful psykers in the universe forsee a future where the Imperium is destroyed, causing Magnus to break his word, his father to turn against him and all of this before anybody even knew he existed. Second, he allows Magnus and his legion of psykers to get the crap kicked out of them so they had no choice to turn to him for aid. Third, he causes them to use the Rubric, resulting in his now faithful legion of Supersoldiers being literally nothing but GambitSpeedChess playing psykers or their mindless servants.

* Let's talk [[{{Exalted}} Sidereals]], shall we? As they have access to the LoomOfFate, they have the power to observe the tiniest workings of Fate and all its potential consequences. Moreover, they can subtly alter fate more or less by ''[[CelestialBureaucracy filling out the right paperwork.]]'' As such, they have a bad tendency of putting forth {{Xanatos Gambit}}s and Roulettes with disturbing frequency.

*** It's beyond that in complexity. Ocelot actually pretends that Liquid's arm took over his personality by self-suggestion in order to trick the Patriots into believing he was a similar threat as Liquid Snake in ''Metal Gear Solid 1'', so the Patriots would pull their own XanatosGambit to use Snake to defeat Ocelot, which is what he exactly planned for, as they became so focused on defeating Ocelot that they failed to realize that [[MindScrew in the course of defeating him Snake would also end up destroying the Patriots]].

* In ''SherlockHolmes Versus [[GentlemanThief Arsene Lupin]]'', Lupin's entire scheme pretty much exemplifies this trope. And then it turns out that the whole scheme- which took months to set up- was actually a smokescreen to ensure that the whole of London's police force would be in the wrong place while he carried out his ''actual'' theft. This required a XanatosGambit of its own. And then the ''game'' has been playing Gambit with you all along, and if you fall for Lupin's ploy it gives you a really disheartening ending. While you are given a hint to the real target at the beginning of the game, it is tempting to choose the obvious option when the clue to your final destination is basically "It starts with 'B' and ends with 'ig Ben'." Choosing Big Ben, however, results in a cutscene of Watson, Lestrade and the Prime Minister coming up with precisely nothing, and then you are treated to a screen explaining that, [[ThisLoserIsYou due to your incorrect choice, Watson and Holmes become estranged, Holmes retires because he's crushed by his failure, and Lestrade is demoted to traffic duty.]]

** Throughout the entirety of ''ApolloJusticeAceAttorney'', Phoenix spends 70% of the game off working on a "Secret Mission". The ending reveals that Phoenix has been manipulating Apollo, Trucy, Kristoph, Klavier, and several other characters for years to single-handedly correct a major flaw in the current legal system, get revenge on Kristoph Gavin for having him disbarred (itself a XanatosGambit against Phoenix), solve a seven year-old mystery, clear the name of three different people whom he barely knows, ''help recover the memories of an amnesiac woman he's never met outside of knowing her husband for all of two weeks and one day, AND REUNITE HER WITH HER CHILDREN, APOLLO AND TRUCY.'' AND EVERYTHING GOES JUST. AS. PLANNED.

* Wilhelm from ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}''. It wouldn't be a far stretch to say he had prepared and planned a XanatosGambit, [[GambitPileup which involves MANY other Xanatos Gambits]], that spans ''several millenia''. And involves resetting the universe countless times, not unlike a GroundhogDayLoop, so that the whole plan may actually span ''many tens of thousands of years''. And that's probably on the lower end of the scale. However, this actually has a good Justification. Wilhelm possesses something called the Compass of Order and Chaos, which allows him to see the flow of the human conscious. He has also been the head of Vector since humanity left Lost Jerusalem (Earth); the kicker is that, if Vector didn't exist, humanity would've been wiped out. Because humanity needed to rely on Vector's goods to survive, it gave Wilhelm ''de facto'' control over humanity. Additionally, being the head of Vector, a former member of politics in the world of VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}, a Cardinal of Ormus by the name of Heinlein and the President of Hyams Heavy Industries, Vector's main rival]], Wilhelm has extensive knowledge of what's happening throughout the story. It helps that he's also a [[TheChessmaster chessmaster]] extraordinaire, probably due to living for [[TimeAbyss several millenia]]. Given all this, it really isn't a far stretch that his plan worked simply because he had ''that'' much control over events.

* (Also XanatosGambit) Obscure example, but in [[AvatarTheAbridgedSeries GanXingba]]'s [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhVPxYCXeRA Avatar: TAS]], a comment is made mocking Zhao's- and Light's (Death Note) -ability to have plans that rely on perfect timing and actions they shouldn't be able to see coming.

* There is never a full outline of what the plan was, or who was planning what, but the events of the third season finale and fourth season premiere of ''TheVentureBrothers'' required an absurd amount of chance and relied on a ShockingSwerve for resolution. Molotov Cocktease and Hunter Gathers manipulate events so that Brock Samson kills OSI's top three assassins in a fairly straightforward XanatosGambit to ensure the supremacy of their Blackhearts organization. Although not specifically stated, they may have also been responsible for Brock's car attempting to kill him, which itself relied on pure luck on several levels. It gets ''completely ridiculous'' once it turns out that the whole storyline going back to Hunter's sex change operation was an elaborate plan by Hunter Gathers, who is actually TheMole for the Blackhearts who reversed his sex change, in order to convince Brock to join Hunter's SPHINX organization. The plan is either the most convoluted and implausible plan of all time or an unbelievably well executed game of GambitSpeedChess.

* Xanatos himself does one in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' episode "Metamorphasis." His plan to fake the death of his colleague Dr. Sevarius and get a mutated Derek Maza on his side requires that the Gargoyles attack his lab at exactly the right moment before Derek is about to receive a "cure," then for Sevarius to get knocked into his aquarium during the ensuing fight and somehow not receive a fatal charge from his ''two'' electric eels.

* The entire plot of ''FinalFantasyV'' can be considered one massive GambitRoulette. Indeed, [=ExDeath=] even goes so far as to leave all of your party's equipment and crystals in a chest when Galuf comes to rescue them, all in the hopes that everyone escapes to destroy the crystals blocking his complete [[AGodAmI rise to power]].
** That's not really a Roulette. Exdeath can pretty easily control the conditions inside his own stronghold.

* In ''TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', the entire Civil War could be interpreted as the Thalmor pulling one of these. If the Stormcloaks win, the Empire is weakened and they can eventually isolate and defeat Skyrim. If the Empire wins, they'll expend so much manpower that they'll be vulnerable to conquest. Either way, the mistrust and hatred spawned by the war calls attention away from the Thalmor's efforts to purge Talos worship from Tamriel.

* The metaplot of the ''AssassinsCreed'' series involves a truly elaborate scheme by [[{{Precursors}} Those Who Came Before]] to avert TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt in 2012, after failing to stop it thousands of years previously. To wit:
** Breed a HalfHumanHybrid race of people who will possess some of the senses and abilities of the Precursor species.
** Said hybrids are immune to the dominating effects of their technology, so they lead a revolt, stealing some of the Pieces of Eden in the process.
** The descendants of those revolutionaries give rise to the Assassins who later battle the Templars across the millennia for control of the Pieces of Eden.
** Imbue the Pieces of Eden with information that can be read by the right people. This information allows them to reconstruct parts of the ancients' LostTechnology, leading eventually to the creation of the Animus.
** The people who use the Animus to view the lives of their ancestors will uncover the memory of the Pieces of Eden, which allows Those Who Came Before to speak through them into the present.
** Eventually everything comes down to Desmond Miles synching with Altaïr and Ezio via the Animus in 2012 and learning how to use the ancients' technology to prevent the Earth from being wrecked by the recurrence of the same cataclysm that destroyed the First Civilization.

-->-- '''RogerEbert's''' review of ''[[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19990709/REVIEWS/907090302 Arlington Road]]''

* In TheElderScrollsVSkyrim, the entire Civil War could be interpreted as [[spoiler: the Thalmor pulling one of these]].