Batman Gambits in Web Animations.
- In the Battle for BFDI episode "A Taste of Space", the challenge is to control the Sun's temperature to cool down X. After having cooled down X, X requests that they make Earth one degree hotter to provide a good temperature for X's aloe vera. Therefore, Firey has to get himself into the Sun's surface to warm up the Sun enough. When his attempt to push himself in there fails, he decides to sabotage the other team and help his own by insulting the members of the other team, the Have Cots, by calling them the Have Crybabies. This makes them push him into the Sun, which ends up making it hotter. However, the plan backfires when rather than making Earth one degree hotter like they planned, it makes it 800 degrees hotter, causing them to lose points for it.
- The Big Bad of Broken Saints plays with this a bit: He sends out early test signals of the transmission he plans to use to Take Over the World (sort of), knowing that there will be those who receive it and make the pilgrimage from wherever they live to his Evil Tower of Ominousness. The inquisitive minds who would accomplish such a journey are exactly the people he wants as his first apostles, to help him spread his gospel further. It makes more sense in context.
- DEATH BATTLE!:
- In appropriate fashion, Joker pulls one on Sweet Tooth. At Sweet Tooth's mercy, Joker persuades him to get out of his armored ice cream truck turned mech and gut him with his own hands through a speech that exploits his love of suffering. But just as Sweet Tooth is ready to finish him off, Joker whips out some of his lethal laughing gas, causing them to laugh hysterically as the former dies slowly, apparently leaving his face a permanent smile behind his already grinning mask.
- Deadpool does it against the hosts in "Deadpool vs. The Mask". They pit him against the Mask to get rid of him and his Fourth Wall Breaking antics and they do, but he sends a final touching letter that makes Boomstick wish him to be back in spite of everything — and because the letter comes with the Continuity Stone hidden in the envelope, having the wish leads to a Cosmic Retcon that makes it come true.
- Dreamscape: In "Over and Under", the Overlord of Evil wanted Drake and Keedran to attack him until he was annihilated, this temporarily unbound him from his Power Nullifier Sealed Evil in a Can, which was just enough time to brainwash Melissa into freeing him.
- A Moment of Awesome in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device is the Emperor taking back his Magnificent Bastard title with one of those. Needing to get rid of Inquisition's worst members, he orders the Inquisition disbanded, knowing that those truly loyal to him and his job will carry on, while the power-drunk psychopaths of the lot will storm the Imperial Palace to investigate the "heresy". Then he has Magnus on hand at all times to teleport them all to the Warp when they do arrive, handily solving the problem. And given how this ended up, he may not be done yet...
- He isn't. Sending the bad elements of the Inquisition to the Warp also got Fyodor Karamazov right where he wanted for something else; he'd been deliberately building up the man's ego so that when he convinced Fyodor that he was a fragment of the Emperor's soul, Fyodor believed it so hard and became so similar to the Emperor that the Warp made it true... and Karamazov was possessed by the Star-Child, the Emperor's discarded compassion and empathy.
- Etra chan saw it!:
- This video
had Hiiragi plan one against Akamatsu for a past incident where the former harmed the latter's mother. After hearing about a ramen place that had was known for gangs and scoping the place out himself, he intentionally took Akamatsu there and slipped one of his red hairs into the man's ramen when he wasn't looking. Akamatsu, who was infamously known for his temper over small things, flew into a rage, insulted the owner, and threw his bowl, which caused the gang members nearby to beat him senseless for insulting their boss. - One episode had Karin realize one of her in-laws didn't like her after being invited to a dinner where every dish served had eggs (which Karin previously stated her dislike for). So, she calls all of them individually and gives each a different claim that she dislikes something, knowing that the one who truly hates her wouldn't be able to resist using it against her.
- This video
- Mackenzie Zales pulls off one that sets in motion the end of Season 3 and the events of Season 4 in The Most Popular Girls in School. Her plan involved her best friend Brittnay Matthews, the Greater-Scope Villain Jenna Darabond and the former Alpha Bitch Cameron Van Buren. It involved burning Brittnay's car so she would blame Jenna and punch her in the face, thus causing a parent-teacher meeting to which she knew Shay's mother wouldn't attend, so she called Shay's sister, Cameron and Jenna's father, knowing she would seduce him. Later, she took Deandra's robotic arm and falsely tried to break Jenna and Justin off, making her admit she already confessed all her crimes to him, including burning the mall, which she recorded with Deandra's arm's voice recorder. Ultimately, when Cameron's and Jenna's father's relationship came to light, he resigned of his post as Senator, leaving Jenna without her political protection and getting arrested for arson.
- Otakebi: This video has a woman whose husband hired a man to make her have an affair with him. When she found out, she decided to go along with the plan. When she was going out with the affair "partner" she revealed that she knew, causing the plan to fail and the husband, who has the camera ready to catch her in the act to come out and the guy to bail out of the plan. As a result, the husband was forced to do things by his wife for the rest of his life.
- The Super Mario flash series Power Star has Devil Mario revealing that his constant fights with Luigi were part of a ploy to allow the rest of the boo army to gather every other Power Star in the land and provide Devil Mario with more than enough stamina to curb-stomp Luigi by the time they return.
- Red vs. Blue has several examples:
- Tex pulls it off against Wash and the Meta in the Season 8 finale by showing them an obvious trap, betting that they'd recognize the situation from their Freelancer training and stop before falling into it... leaving them in the perfect place for the real trap — proximity mines around where they parked their Warthog. Notably, Doc figured it out before the trap went off, but Wash dismissed his concerns as Doc "overthinking it".Doc: Told ya so.
- The Reds and Blues pull one off themselves during the Chorus Trilogy, against Felix. Felix really loved him some Evil Gloating, so Tucker attacked him, failed, and prodded him into revealing his whole plan to manipulate both sides of Chorus's civil war into killing each other off, while Church recorded the whole thing on Tucker's helmet cam, and the others took down the radio jammer, allowing him to broadcast the whole rant to everyone on Chorus. Realizing he'd been played like a fiddle by the guys he'd dismissed as idiots gives Felix his first moment of Sarcasm Failure.Felix: You... you're dead!
- Tex pulls it off against Wash and the Meta in the Season 8 finale by showing them an obvious trap, betting that they'd recognize the situation from their Freelancer training and stop before falling into it... leaving them in the perfect place for the real trap — proximity mines around where they parked their Warthog. Notably, Doc figured it out before the trap went off, but Wash dismissed his concerns as Doc "overthinking it".
- RWBY:
- General Ironwood's paranoia and insistence of keeping order during the Vytal Festival causes him to bring a large section of the Atlesian robotic army and airship fleet with him as security. Cinder anticipates this, and forms a part of her plans to focus on hijacking control of the army by inserting a virus into the flagship Amity's computers. How does she pull this off? By letting Ironwood capture Torchwick (knowing he'd want to keep the known criminal mastermind close to his tightest security) and having Neo slip in as part of the guard rotation.
- During Volume 7, Ironwood uses his opponents natures against them to obtain the outcome he wants. He publicly reveals the Amity Communications Project to the population while sending Robyn Hill to an openly stated location to help with Mantle's evacuation. Amity is used to tempt Watts out of hiding because he cannot resist investigating and sabotaging any technological project that his rival, Ironwood, is involved in; Salem also cannot afford to have the Kingdoms reunite after destroying global communications in the first place. Robyn is used to lure out Tyrian, a serial killer who cannot resist causing chaos and mayhem, and who has been murdering Mantle rights activists to and framing Ironwood — Robyn is the most important Mantle defender of all. The gambit works and both Watts and Tyrian are captured.
- Cinder takes advantage of her Volume 3 success to manipulate Ironwood again in Volume 7. By leaving a black queen chess piece in Ironwood's office, Ironwood gives in to his paranoia and self-doubt, instantly questioning every decision he's made and whether it's played right into Salem's hands. Concluding that it has, he sends Winter to claim the powers of the Winter Maiden, thereby revealing the Maiden's secret location to Cinder; this is exactly what Cinder wants, as she's in Atlas to steal the Maiden's power.
