Lets You And Him Fight / Video Games

Examples of Let's You and Him Fight in video games.

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• Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War: The war between the Osean Federation the Union of Yuktobanian Republics (the Strangereal equivalents of the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics respectively) is revealed to be orchestrated by a third faction: the Grey Men, a conspiracy of rich Belkan nationalists and Former Regime Personnel who seek revenge on the two superpowers for their role in the defeat of their Fatherland during the Belkan War fifteen years ago. Even after the Grey Men are foiled, Belka's desire for revenge leads it to continue meddling in world affairs through subtler methods such as supplying new technologies for other nations to start wars with, the Kingdom of Erusea being one of them.
• BioShock allows players to invoke this trope on enemies with a variety of plasmids, such as the Enrage plasmid, which makes enemies fight each other blindly, or the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid, which can be used to make two Big Daddies fight one another. It's one of the safest ways to kill the bastards.
• BioShock Infinite has the vigor "Possession," which when used not only makes automata to gun down enemy Mooks but also allows mooks to fight each other until the effect wears off.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II: Big Bad Raul Menendez instigates a second cold war between the United States and China.
• Castlevania: Curse of Darkness has this with the main character Hector, and the famous vampire slayer Trevor Belmont. Trevor believed that Hector was the Devil Forgemaster causing all of the trouble, and it's only until after the fight that Trevor learns better.
• Dawn of War
  • The Blood Raven Space Marines and the Imperial Guards in Dark Crusade are allies fighting for the Imperium of Man, but due to the Mêlée à Trois nature of the campaign where all factions want each other dead to completely control Kronus, the two are pitted against each other. In the campaign, they Handwaved the conflict as the two were given conflicting orders that prevent them from backing down. The Space Marine were ordered by their Chapter Master and Chief-Librarian (the sequel named him Azariah Kyras) to purge the planet so that they can possess relics that hold secrets of their unknown origin, while the Imperial Guards were ordered to secure the planet so that they can control the planet from the clutches of the T'au Empire. The two commanders respect each other but they must follow orders thoroughly, so they must submit the other by force. Since the Space Marine campaign is canon, people become suspicious of the Blood Raven's actions...
  • Like Dark Crusade, the Blood Raven Space Marines, the Imperial Guards, and the Order of the Sacred Rose Sisters of Battle, three armed forces in service to the Imperium of Man, are in a Mêlée à Trois conflict against all of the alien forces and each other for control of the Kaurava System. Unlike Dark Crusade, their reasoning against each other is lacking and unexplained, with only the Sister of Battle reasoning that they are tainted by corruption. With the former, they might have a point.
• In Demon Skin, several areas have enemies who attacks both you and each other, for reasons unknown - like the skeletons in the snowy regions aren't exactly allies with the Yeti in the caves, or that the automatons would attack both you and the giant insects in the forests. When that happens, you can choose to stay at the corner of an area and wait for onscreen mooks to kill each other before finishing off the rest.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has this to an extent. Jester/Arkham was playing Lady, Vergil and Dante, and trying to get them to fight and weaken each other so that he could come out on top when they're exhausted, and open the gate to hell using their blood.
  • Devil May Cry 4 has a zig-zagged example. Nero is initially sent on a mission to bring down Dante for shooting Sanctus in the head. It makes sense from Nero's perspective and even from the audience's (Dante might be heroic but he certainly did something suspiciously unheroic at the start, and Nero was simply following orders). However, it's later revealed that the Order of the Sword has evil intentions, they were planning to capture Dante to fuse him into The Savior's core, and Dante was trying to deal with them by assassinating Sanctus. Nero wasn't aware of these plans at first. Nero and Dante eventually formed an allegiance in order to stop Sanctus in the end.
• EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: This becomes the heroes' plan to defeat Dark Force, to pull his mothership into the Yami world, where its alien physics disrupt his ship's teleportation technology. Dark Force will waste troops defending against Yami natives, Yami Clan wastes troops attacking the Dark Force invaders, and the heroes will make decisive strikes on both.
• In Final Fantasy X-2, this is eventually revealed to be the case with New Yevon and the Youth League fighting. It makes a surprising amount of sense once you know all the details.
• Mission 6-4 of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. What makes this so annoying is that it's probably the hardest battle in the game.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: In Eirika's route, Valter murders Glen when the latter decides to let Eirika. He then takes the corpse for Cormag to see it, telling him that Eirika was the one who killed Glen to put him on a revenge quest, but thankfully Eirika is able to talk him out of it and he realizes it was Valter who did it.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, This is Anankos' modus operandi. Despite being a dragon with powers rivaling that of a god, he mostly keeps to plotting in the background instead of just outright invading the world outside of Valla. Since he's weaker outside of the Invisible Kingdom, he orchestrates in-fighting between the human nations of Hoshido and Nohr to eventually wipe them out, because a direct invasion of Hoshido or Nohr is liable to end in failure.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts, Sora ends up in a fight with Leon shortly after he arrives in Traverse Town.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Roxas is tasked to defeat a "giant heartless" in Halloween Town - said Heartless happens to be Xion, who attacks him because she is under the impression that he is her target. Their missions were rigged by the Organization so that one of them could assimilate the other.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Xaldin tricks The Beast into going berserk and attacking the protagonists who spend the fight trying to calm him down. Throughout the series, Hades, being the Manipulative Bastard that he is, uses various means to get his enemies to kill each other, such as making a deal with Cloud and brainwashing Auron. In The Land of Dragons, Sora mistakes Riku for a member of Organization XIII and attacks him. Riku later attempted to warn the Emperor of China about the Heartless Dragon that Xigbar created, but had to fight and defeat Shang to get to him.
• Mega Man first met his brother, Protoman, under these circumstances in Mega Man 3. Also, Duo for Mega Man 8. Also, an impending fight between Mega Man X and Zero has been hinted upon ever since X2 (Though in a non-canon process just before the final battle in that case). It was again touched upon in X4 before finally taking place in X5, and by extension, both X6. (And not Mega Man Zero 1 and 3, since that's a copy.)
• In Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe's story mode, there wouldn't be a story without this. Only when ready to battle Dark Khan does everyone realize the obvious. And when he does appear, he infects absolutely everyone with the Kombat Rage to keep it going until Superman and Raiden are the only ones remaining.
• In the Story Mode of Mortal Kombat 9, the heroes get into fights with each other a lot, either via misunderstandings or just plain getting angry at one another. Most of the latter examples involve Johnny Cage, who acts like a jerk a lot over the course of the story.
• In Mortal Kombat 11, Raiden realizes that he and Liu Kang are constantly pitted against each other (which invariably results in Liu Kang dying and Raiden getting corrupted) across different timelines. Kronika eventually confesses that she does it because their combined strength is the only thing that could potentially be a threat for her, which is proven right when Raiden decides to save Liu Kang by fusing with his Past and Revenant selves, turning Liu Kang into a God of Fire and Thunder that proves strong enough to defeat Kronika.
• In Myth: The Fallen Lords, in the mission Seven Gates, you can exploit an Enemy Civil War and maneuver your units in order to lure enemy patrols into each other.
• Nintendo Wars:
  • This is pretty much the plot of Advance Wars 1, as Sturm (and his pawn, Olaf) set up a massive war between the protagonists Orange Star and the other nations, using clones of Orange Star's CO Andy, with the idea of cleaning up the remains.
  • Combined with Gambit Roulette in Battalion Wars 2. Kaiser Vlad, leader of the Germany-equivalent Xylvania, orchestrates a preemptive invasion by the UK-based Anglo Isles on the Japan-esque Solar Empire, who promptly counterattack by invading the Anglo Isles with Russian-stand-in Tundran Territory support. All this to invade the Tundran Territories in an attempt to find a weapon placed there. It's implied that he may have done it once before, setting the America-counterpart Western Frontier against the Tundrans to set up mining operations in the Frontier.
• Happens to everyone in Rival Schools. Characters from the respective high schools start disappearing and come back Brainwashed and Crazy, or at the very least Not Themselves. Nobody knows who's behind the chaos until the very end, after they've all beaten each other to a pulp.
• Starcraft II basically introduces Amon as the mastermind who put each faction against each other from ancient times, and is now even interfering in the campaign through his servant Duran/Narud.
• The SRX and ATX teams meet this way in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, due to the ATX team being used as a test for the new units that the SRX team got. The participants notice it's obviously a bit contrived and only some go through with their orders.
  • In Super Robot Wars Z, our heroes, ZEUTH, had split up and, during that time, the bad guys had convinced the other side that they had done terrible things. One side is comprised of the Universal Century Gundam, Turn A Gundam, Baldios, Gravion, Daitarn 3, Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger heroes lead by the Minerva while the other side is comprised of the Gundam X, Getter Robo G, Grendizer, King Gainer, Aquarion, Big O, Xabungle, Zambot 3 and other heroes lead by the Archangel. It's an all-out brawl that's also a Fix Fic to Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny's Operation Angel Down event.
  • In Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier, the player's party is tricked by Saya, Big Bad of Namco × Capcom, into attacking her pursuers, namely Reiji Arisu and Xiaomu, the main heroes of Namco × Capcom. What plays into Saya's favor is that Reiji and Xiamou wear red and black, a color scheme also worn the Orchestral Army, seen by the player's party as being up to no good. Upon the party's meeting of Reiji and Xiaomu, two of the party members suspect they've been lied to, but goes ahead with the beatdown and decide to figure things out later.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: In the Subspace Emissary, Mario and Pit fight Link and Yoshi when one team finds the other standing over the dissolving fake trophy of either Zelda or Peach. Which team finds which depends on the player's actions. In both cases, the misunderstanding is eventually cleaned up and they join forces. This is one of several such misunderstandings that occur throughout the Subspace Emissary, most of which involve Meta Knight (i.e., Marth, Lucario, almost with Snake). There's almost one between Fox and Sheik, but it is broken up before an actual fight can occur by Peach. With tea. The use of this strategy by a player, during a multiplayer match, is the bane of "Stop Having Fun" Guys everywhere.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The series' Illusion School of magic has a few spells that can utilize this.^note Several of the following spells have been classified differently at various points in the series, but are primarily classed as Illusion. The "Frenzy/Fury" spells send targets into a blind rage, causing them to attack friend and foe alike. "Rally" spells bring a neutral target into the fight on the side of the caster. "Command" spells put the target under the command of the caster, and can be used upon otherwise hostile opponents. A Master of Illusion can do quite well by simply getting enemies to fight one another, and then finish off the (weakened) victor once the spell wears off.
  • Skyrim:
    • A number of random world encounters include members of two opposing factions battling one another (Stormcloak rebels vs. Imperial soldiers, Stormcloaks soldiers vs. Thalmor justicars, Vigilants of Stendarr vs. Vampires/Necromancers/Daedra worshipers, etc.). Depending on your allegiances, you can aid one side against the other, or simply sit back and slaughter the weakened winning group.
    • In a storyline-driven example, crossing over with Enemy Civil War, it's revealed that the Thalmor-led Aldmeri Dominion have been carefully manipulating the Stormcloaks and Empire into a war with one another, as part of a grander plot to weaken them both for an inevitable Second Great War, and eventually, exterminate all of mankind as part of an even greater plot to unmake the mortal world...
• The Legend of Spyro: This happens three times in. The first two times, the present villain tries getting Cynder to fight Spyro, the first time, they pretend to fight for the crowd. The second time they try this again so Cynder can take out Gaul's staff but Gaul sees it coming and knocks her out when she tries. The last time it's for real when Malefor takes over Cynder's mind and makes her attack Spyro.
• Thief: The Dark Project: Whenever there are both human guards and undead or monsters in the same level, you can make them fight each other and laugh from the shadows. Right from mission 2: Break from Cragsleft Prison.
• Team Fortress 2: What to do when the RED Demoman and BLU Soldier are becoming best pals, before they realize that their opposing militias are secretly run by the same woman? Invoke this trope through new weapons and a bit of Berserk Button-pushing.

• The battle with Savyna in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. Once you win, you realize that it was a misunderstanding, and she joins the party.
• In Kirby's Adventure and the remake Nightmare in Dreamland, a sheer misunderstanding on Kirby's part resulted in Kirby collecting all the star rod pieces from King Dedede and his minions. King Dedede wasn't given a chance to explain properly that the reason why he broke the Star Rod in the first place was to prevent Nightmare from possessing the Fountain of Dreams.
• In Cave Story the protagonist is attacked by Curly Brace before he has time to explain to her that he's not after the Mimigas.
• The Awakened DLC for Dead Space 3, which involves the newly-awakened Brethren Moons manipulating the two playable characters, Issac Clarke and John Carver, to fight each other, buying time so they can reach their newest snack: humanity.
• Touhou Project introduces many of the characters this way. In the Fighting Game Touhou Suimusou ~ Immaterial and Missing Power, many of the heroes already know each other but still assume the other is a villain.
  • As well as the follow-up fighter Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and its expansion, the versus-shooter Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View is also very guilty of this.
  • In Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night, the 4th stage boss is either Reimu or Marisa, who attack your party for causing the titular imperishable night. In truth, the team you pick did do this, but only because of the real incident: the corrupted moon, and are trying to buy time. Not that Reimu and Marisa are willing to listen to that reasoning, though. In fact, they are either oblivious to the moon problem, or immediately blame you for it once you bring it up.

• The Sonic the Hedgehog series is a big fan of this trope:
  • In Knuckles' very first appearance, in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, he fights Sonic because he thought that Sonic meant to steal the Master Emerald. Then after he has been established as a character, Robotnik tricks him into fighting Sonic again in Sonic Adventure and again in Sonic Advance 2.
  • Sonic Heroes has tons of fights between the 4 teams (Team Sonic, Team Dark, Team Rose, and Team Chaotix). Despite being on the same side, they constantly fight each other for petty reasons and misunderstandings throughout the game. Noticeably, it is Team Dark who kept attacking people because their opponents might have saved the day before they could for their own reasons.
  • Sonic Rush subverted this a bit; Sonic and Blaze fight each other over who would fight Eggman (or Nega), even though they both know near the end that both are good guys (in fact, Blaze knows that Sonic is a good guy from the near start, but she felt that it was her responsibility to stop the Eggmans and refused to let anyone else intervene).
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) has Silver, who arrived from the future and is told by Mephiles that Sonic is the Iblis Trigger (basically the cause of Silver's Bad Future). Mephiles is manipulating Silver to destroy Sonic - in order to make Elise cry, and ergo release Iblis and cause the bad future that Mephiles wants. Silver only wisens up when Shadow shows him the past, after spending most of the game pursuing Sonic.
  • The Sonic Rivals series is full of this. In the first game, 4 of the main characters - Sonic, Knuckles, Shadow, and Silver - fight each other because they want to be the first to confront Eggman who turns out to be Eggman Nega later on. In the second game, the same 4 characters fight each other again, this time with a companion on their side (Tails, Rouge, Metal Sonic, and Espio respectively). Even Team Dark teammates Shadow and Rouge fought each other.
  • At a meta level, this is the modus operandi of Sonic the Fighters and Sonic Battle. The former has a nonsensical plot that doesn't remotely make sense, the latter has the characters grab the Idiot Ball and fight each other to gather all eight Chaos Emeralds and power a rocket ship.
  • Subverted in Sonic Colors. Eggman attempts to start a fight between Sonic and a brainwashed Tails, but his mind-control beam runs out of power before Tails could attack.
• In World of Warcraft, in Nagrand, Lantresor of the Blade provides an unusual example of a good guy pulling off this scheme.
  • Most of the game revolves around both the Alliance and Horde being at odds with each other but working towards the same end. A prime example is the Icecrown Gunship Battle, where both sides are using a gunship in order to get to the top and set up a base camp for the strike force...and end up trying to shoot each other down in the process.
• A City of Heroes arc has you tracking an evil double of yourself. At the same time, a good double is also tracking the evil double. You run into the good one first, and you both (unaware that there's three of you running around) assume the other's the evil one, so you fight one another, and sort things out afterward.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces, the cast mainly fights "memories" of the other characters, showing what they were like in the past or would have been like if things had not turned out as well as they did. In Fate's story, the real Vita mistakes her for a Memory and begins attacking her. After the player wins the fight, Fate succeeds in convincing Vita that she's real.
• Alpha Protocol has you attempting to foil an assassination plot planned on a Taiwanese president. You're given information saying that one Omen Deng is the one planning the hit. Cue giant battle to take the plaza nearby the president's press conference. Ending with you and Omen (possibly) talking. Seems he received info that You were the assassin. just as you'd received the same. Cue Oh, Crap!
  • It's also possible for Mike to pit Conrad Marburg and Alan Parker against each other in the finale by either revealing to Marburg that Parker was responsible for him going rogue years ago or, if Madison Saint James, AKA Parker's daughter is killed, telling Parker that Marburg was the one who did the deed. Either way, it ends with Parker dead and Michael getting a chance to even the score with Marburg.
• Near the end of Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, Professor Layton takes over the role of prosecutor and goes up against Phoenix in court. Of course, he doesn't really believe your client is guilty, but just wants to make sure you can really get to the truth. Also, he becomes prosecutor at a point when you need the existing prosecutor to testify, so that helps too.
• In Jables's Adventure, neither of the first two bosses are bad guys. Lumber Jacques mistakes you for a walking tree (and after you defeat him, he gives you a powerup to apologize). Then Rutherford Goldbeard thinks you're a cattle rustler (and/or a brain squid victim) and attacks you to defend his property.
• Happens in the opening of Halo 3 where the Master Chief notices a cloaked elite and moves in to attack it until Johnson stops him saying that the Arbiter is with the humans. The Arbiter was cloaked because he was on reconnaissance.
• This can be used in levels in the Sly Cooper series that contain patrols other than guards (Bears in Canada, Wolves in Holland, and Carmelita to escape detection. When a guard spots you, you can alert said patrols and the two of them will typically fight it out while you run away.
• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale uses a rivalry system to organize the roster, and while some of them make sense (Ratchet & Clank vs. Jak and Daxter) most of them come so far out of left-field that justifying their fighting requires a number of pretzel-like twists in logic to work. Besides Nathan Drake and Sly Cooper's rivalry (which is quite personal) the vast majority of the rivalries have the characters stepping on one-another's egos or being needlessly argumentative/callous.
• Monster infighting is often used by players in Doom.
• The Sith Warrior can do this in an early mission in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The player is sent to protect a package his master is receiving. Two gangs appear, intending to steal it, but it turns out they hate each other. They actually discuss working together to defeat the Sith/Imperial forces guarding the package, but a few clever words from the player will set them at each other's throats; they wipe each other out completely in a cutscene.
• Star Trek Online: In episode "Allies", mission "Memory Lane", the Tal Shiar leak false information to try and get the Romulan Republic Player Character and a Republic captain allied with the opposite faction to take each other out. This fails, but not before the Romulan PC kills several of the other captain's squads.
• In Pulp Adventures, two teams of protagonists (the Spider and the Avenger, versus the Green Hornet and Kato) have an encounter in a warehouse which has just been cleared from the mod using it. Since the Green Hornet is a vigilante pretending to be a criminal mastermind in order to fight crime from the inside, the Avenger tries to arrest him, which would have turned into a fight (the Green Hornet intended to resist) if the Shadow didn't appear at this exact moment and explained what was really going on.
• You can play the role of The Chessmaster inciting three factions to fight each other and profiting in Fallout 4 Battle of Bunker Hill quest. Although you are initially sent there by the Institute to recapture escaped synths, you can inform the Brotherhood of Steel who want to kill everyone instead, as well as the Railroad, who are the ones hiding the synths there. Cue a three way battle between Brotherhood troops in Powered Armor, Institute SkeleBot 9000 troops and Railroad heavies with armored trench coats and Wave Motion Guns, while you can sit back and watch. Once the fight is over, regardless of who wins, you can loot all those Powered Armor pieces, armored long coats, expensive Gauss rifles, synth components and laser weapons from all the corpses, making a huge ton of caps. Furthermore, Bunker Hill can become an allied settlement.
• In Mass Effect 3, Cerberus attempts to incite a krogan-turian war by detonating an extremely powerful bomb on the krogan home world - a bomb placed there by the turians a thousand years ago as a failsafe.

• The plot of Blazblue Cross Tag Battle throws the heroes of Blazblue, Persona, Under Night In-Birth and RWBY into an alternate dimension that resembles their respective worlds mixed into one. A mysterious entity reveals that there exist four special Keystones, one for each world; the side that gathers them all will be allowed to return home. So the race is on to gather the Keystones and possibly also identify and confront the mysterious entity.
• The Bunny Phenomenon from Rabi-Ribi, which causes everyone in the area to become obsessed with bunnies to the point of attacking bunny-girl Erina on sight. Word of God is that it was written into the story as an excuse for boss fights with characters who would never attack Erina otherwise. A lesser instigator is the fact that Erina is continuously mistaken for one of those "bunny-loving weirdos" at the UPRPRC due to her ears (bunnies are rare in the world of Rabi-Ribi, and polymorphed bunny-girls even moreso,) and a few characters hate the UPRPRC with a passion and attack her on sight.
• In The Legend of Zelda game Hyrule Warriors, Midna's entrance starts with her already at war with Cia, but due to a misunderstanding on the battlefield, she assumes Lana and Agitha are part of Cia's forces and attacks. When Cia retreats, it leaves Lana to defeat Midna and sort out who's on whose side.
  • In Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the Rito get attacked by monsters being commanded by an Evil Counterpart to the little Guardian that is helping Princess Zelda and her companions. So when Link and Impa scout ahead with the little Guardian on their way to help Zelda recruit Revali as the Rito Champion, Revali assumes they're in league with the monsters and attacks them along with many Rito soldiers. It takes Zelda showing up personally to plead with Revali to stop for the misunderstanding to be cleared up. Similarly, Master Kohga disguises himself as Gerudo leader Urbosa to trick the Gerudo into attacking Zelda's party on their way to recruit the real Urbosa, who shows up in time to reveal Kohga's deception before he can kill the princess.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • When the heroes travel to the Orleans Singularity in 1431, Mash attempts to ask some passing French soldiers what is going on, but she addresses them in English. This makes the soldiers think they are part of the English army and attack them. Also, because Jeanne Alter looks like Jeanne d'Arc, this makes the the French hate and fear Jeanne, often forcing her to hide.
  • In the crossover with Fate/Requiem, Erice Utsumi is very hostile to the heroes because she doesn't understand what they are doing and thinks that they enslave Servants. When she sees Voyager working for them, she goes berserk and thinks they stole him from her, not knowing he is a different version of him. When she later finds out Chaldea's mission to save the world, she apologizes.
• In HyperRogue, one area, The Hive, spawns massive colonies of coloured bugs, guarding treasure at the centre of the nest. Defeating a colony single-handedly is difficult and will result in you being pushed away from the centre and likely losing your way back. The far superior strategy is to lure one colony to another colony of a different colour, letting the two colonies duke it out, and stealing the treasure while the two colonies are preoccupied or after defeating the few survivors.