Flaw Exploitation in Video Games.
- Any game with "Artificial Stupidity" allows the player to do this.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Thalmor goad Ulfric Stormcloak into seditious acts against the Empire through a combination of his malcontent towards a lopsided "peace" treaty the Empire and Thalmor have, and his own impatience and brashness. They know all his buttons and just which ones to push, thanks to him being a prisoner of war to them. He's not a Manchurian Agent, but still manipulable. The end result is that the Stormcloak Rebellion impedes the Empire's preparations to heat the cold war back up again.
- If that's not devious enough, they actually create a flaw in him by torturing him into giving up information and convincing him that that information led to the fall of the Imperial City- despite the fact that the city had already fallen by the time they finally broke him. His guilt over his perceived failure is still a major motivator for him.
- Fallout:
- Injured pride is a great weapon indeed: it will take high Charisma and Science skills, but if you're able to convince the Master from Fallout that his plan to Take Over the World by turning the world's humans into Super Mutants will inevitably fail (he wants to save humanity, but Super Mutants are sterile and cannot reproduce), he will commit suicide due to the realization that his efforts were all for nothing.
- In the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Lonesome Road, Ulysses can tell you that if you're going up against Lanius that you can take advantage of his fear of defeat in order to make him back down. Most of the Speech options do involve convincing Lanius that he has no long-term hopes for a campaign after this battle or bluffing him into thinking that he's walking into the kind of trap that felled his predecessor Joshua Graham.
- In Jade Empire your beloved Master Li strikes the main character/you through a series of holes in your defense that he built into your techniques himself! Glorious Strategist, indeed.
- Bioware has another good one with Mephistopheles engineering circumstances to make you free him to wreak havoc on the surface world.
- In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, the main conflict in Wonderland involves the Queen of Hearts seeking to punish Alice for stealing the Queen's memories. After Sora defeats the Trickmaster, the actual culprit, the Queen is still confused and suspects Sora and Alice of doing something to her, at which point Alice then lies and claims that the Queen had tasked them with eliminating the Heartless. When the Queen seems suspicious, Alice asks if the Queen really doesn't remember, prompting the Queen to convince herself that she did give Sora's group those orders and let them go. After the Queen leaves, Alice explains that she knew that the Queen is too proud to admit to forgetting something, so she'd rather lie to herself and claim to remember something that never happened.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Ganondorf does this so often that's it's practically one of his defining characteristics. Countless times he's kidnapped Zelda knowing that Link would come rescue her, and in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (and to an extent, Wind Waker) his plans were actually based around the idea that Link and Zelda would try to stop him. And then there's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where he exploits Zant's anger and ambition, using him as a tool to free himself from the Twilight Realm and conquer Hyrule.
- And in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Chancellor Cole uses Zelda's fear of mice to interrupt a battle.
- Throughout Mortal Kombat, Shang Tsung betrays quite literally everyone he works with, bar none. In Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, Liu Kang actually counts on this, waiting for Shang Tsung to backstab every other threat before confronting him at the last minute.
- In Radiant Historia one of the side quests has this. The bad guy grabs hostage the innkeepers' daughter.
- The final puzzle in Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Culture Shock turns villain Brady Culture's "It's All About Me" egotism on his head. Brady orders the Brainwashed Soda Poppers to attack Sam; interestingly enough, the Soda Poppers aren't brainwashed to follow Brady specifically, and so Sam can order them around as well. The end result appears to be a stalemate, but if Sam orders the Soda Poppers to "worship me!", Brady petulantly yells at them to "worship me!" instead of ordering them to attack Sam as usual. If Sam then orders the Soda Poppers to "attack me!", Brady's knee-jerk reaction is to scream "no, attack me!" - the last order he's in any condition to give them.
- Sword and Fairy 7: The Big Bad's plan relies on impulsive nature of Demons to lure them into a hopeless war, and wipe them out no matter the cost. To elaborate: He tries to seal the only Spring in Demon Realm, and thus deprieve them of spiritual energy, which sustain all life. He can uphold the seal only for so long, but, when faced with threat of extinction, Demons would launch the attack without thinking twice. The plan actually works, and the war does not start only because the party's allies prevent Demons from doing anything rash long enough for the heroes to stop the Big Bad.
